2024-W21 EOW Report

Highlights This Week

• Finally finished working on the story tags. On a rational level, I know it was procrastination. On a psychological level, I know it was insecurity. On a physical level, I know I’m recovering from exhaustion. So while one part of me wants to feel bad for not pushing through on actual fiction work… a larger part of me is OK with what happened. Perhaps this is maturity or old age or wisdom. I dunno.
• Lost my reading streak on Storygraph after crashing on Monday. 85 Days of 40pgs. min. You could argue that Sense and Sensibility broke me.
• Long convo with LK on Signal processing the last 5 years/15 years/life.

Project Status Dashboard

The following are ongoing fiction writing projects broken down to what stage they’re in. Legend in footnote¹.

ZERO PROGRESS this week!!! Was working on this

EOW Time Tracking

In this section, I track daily actions (axn) and emotions (emo), aiming for just 30 minutes of fiction work a day. If time permits, more is done. AXN emoji legend in footnote².

STREAK COUNT: 0 Days

BEST STREAK: 18 Days

Four Thousand Weeks

The rundown exhaustion continued on Monday and Tuesday. I was worn down at the office and could barely function but still pushed through. I lost my daily book reading streak. I set it as 40 pages a day on Storygraph 85 days ago. I remember pushing myself to get through Sense and Sensibility on Monday night and my body just broke. It wasn’t just the exhaustion though, it’s a combination of that plus both Sense and Sensibility and How the Crusades Changed History being mediocre or slow, or I dunno. Just not into it. 85 days is a pretty good run though. Energy levels came back for Wednesday. Started feeling a little more confident at the full-time contract too. Thursday night - jammed with C-Chord. Friday, they introduced me to Jujutsu Kaisen (2020- ).

Long convo with LK on Signal Saturday morning – processing everything that happened with the toxic client the last three years and why I stayed, and expanded to my marriage, where I’m at in my life/career, and we both came to interesting conclusions about where we were in life, what we valued, what tradeoffs I accepted. Something I’ve been thinking a lot about over the last few months since I listened to The Vietnam War: An Intimate History (2017) is how I wouldn’t be in Canada had that not happened. Just a cruel string of butterfly effects. What so many people in my family gave up. Two uncles, their lives.

So I finally replaced the New Balance trainers I bought back in 2004 when I read Body for Life (1999). So discounting those two years I actually trained (2004-2005), and when I finally started going to the gym (2017-present)… That’s 3X/week use for about eight years? RR laughed at them when he found out they shoes were almost as old as he was, then kept laughing as the shoelaces fell part, then the soles. I mean. It is funny. Twenty years is a pretty damn good run (pun intended). Fuck you, planned obsolescence! I’m driving my 2010 Prius until it completely breaks down on the side of a highway leaving me stranded and needing to call BCAA.

Book Reading

• Still thinking about Never Let Me Go (2005). Posted my breakdown here. I also took extensive notes on the middle, part 2. The more I think about it, the more perfect this middle is to me. It builds momentum and mysteries leading up to it, they go to Norfolk, they answer a bunch of questions, and open up one last and big one for part 3. It really is perfection.
• At 70% mark for Sense and Sensibility (1811). I’m… bored with this one. The Dashwoods are basically Mrs. Jenning’s hostages being dragged around while the men around them are playas - intentional or unintentional. There’s very little forward momentum, whereas Pride and Prejudice (1813) has the mystery of Mr. Darcy vs. Wickham. I just need to get this done so I can move on.
• Almost done Great Courses How the Crusades Changed History (2013). Read another chapter of Directing the Story (2008) by Francis Glebas. Listening to BBC’s version of Hamlet (1601) where Michael Sheen plays the Prince of Denmark and I keep asking myself why Tony Blair is pretending to act like a deranged maniac. I guess to my kids’ generation, he’s Aziraphale. But he’ll always be Tony Blair to me.

Archive of all EOW reports here