2024-W40 EOW Report

Highlights This Week

• I’m still drained, energy wise, from last week. Attempts to pull myself out of it hasn’t worked too well. I find myself procrastinating needlessly, and then staying late to finish work, and it becomes a vicious cycle. It’s especially rough after a run of stacked meetings where I need to leave my desk, but there’s so much work left, but I leave anyway, and then I either crash on the couch, or have a hard time coming back, and when I do… I dunno. This has just been a rough week.
• Here’s where I’m at with BECKY. After a conversation with LK, I forget when it was, but two things cropped up. Did I understand the assignment properly? And the answer is no. So I downloaded the article suggested by the context and realized how off track I am. Second signal to this, Garage Fiction had our monthly-ish group call. Both Olivia and Lauren told me to be as “on the nose” about the theme as possible and not to be subtle. OK, so I’m totally off track. So now I’m reassessing what I’ve done and I need to change directions.
• The second thing that came up again, and it’s probably due to the feeling ignored and walking-on-glass-shards thing last week is having an existential crisis of WHY I’m doing this. I started doing Sandra Tayler’s first exercise as we’re meeting in a week, and what I thought was a simple exercise blew up into a 3500 word self-journalling thing by Wednesday, and it’s still going right now. It’s a review and assessment of this whole year really.

Project Status Dashboard

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

Got thrown off track from my research path for BECKY. Reviewed the Strange Horizons context rules and their recommended articles this week. Will probably need to start a totally different story. Garage Fiction Podcast monthly therapy session also told me that I should be really “on the nose” with the messaging and not be too fucking clever or subtle. So OK. Change of direction.

EOW Time Tracking

Three Sentences First Thing Streak

• CURRENT STREAK: 0 Days
• BEST STREAK: 83 Days (September 20, 2024)

Thirty Minutes A Day Streak

• CURRENT STREAK: 0 Days
• LAST STREAK: 10 Days (August 17, 2024)
• BEST STREAK: 18 Days (May 10, 2024)

Four Thousand Weeks

The middle one was away the whole week on a camping trip. The eldest is driving better, stressed about grade twelve exams. The youngest one is cooking more, got new shelves, a pin board. I don’t have much to write here because of that massive self-journaling from Sandra Tayler’s SLSC exercise.

Book Reading

• STILL NO NOVEL READING
• So, since getting back into comics, it was very clear to me that fans would NOT shut up about two things: Ram V and Something Is Killing the Children. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, (after wrestling with an essay my eldest wrote – which btw, was about the clipshow format on TV series, and how the Community episode, Paradigms of Human Memory (2011, S2E21) upturns that convention… which made me so proud to see him dissecting pop culture), I was like screw you work-I-need-to-do, I’m going to read my Ram V graphic novels I bought even though it’s 2AM. Read Rare Flavors until 3AM. I haven’t stayed up this late in ages. And of course I paid for it later, but I needed a fucking treat after that week. And yes, Ram V. is a god. I have joined his cult. I read These Savage Shores the next, well, technically, the same day, but later in the evening. And that was also fucking amazing. I am so freaking excited for The New Gods (2024) now. I even have Evan Cagles uninked, uncolored pencils as my phone and desktop wallpaper now. And this is BEFORE I’ve gotten my order of Jack Kirby’s original run in the mail. It’s truly a joy to have so much faith in a writer, to be excited about what they’re going to do next, and know that you’re in for a ride.
• I finished up Hawkeye (2016). What a beautiful, funny, heartwarming run, and how utterly upsetting it is that it was cancelled.
• Started Spider-Gwen: The Ghost Spider (2024) on Marvel Unlimited because Stephanie Phillips. It’s good. Still plugging along on James Robinson’s Scarlet Witch (2015) and my 20-years-later reread of Planetary (1998). But the crown jewel of all this exploration has got to be finally caving into the Momoko-verse. Ultimate X-Men (2024) is just such a different and well done artistic interpretation of X-Men in general. Yes, just let Peach Momoko cook as the kids say these days. Let her cook. And finally, surprisingly, I’m surprised at how bland the Ultimates Invasion set up was. Almost didn’t need four issues to set up the Ultimates universe. But I guess you need a four issue arc to set up stuff and to maximize revenue. Which brings us to…
• Absolute Power (2024), here’s another four issue arc, plus a giantsize flipbook to set up the All-In Initiative and the Absolute world. And the fourth issue ended up in a whimpering, lets-wrap-everything-up-real-fast-so-we-can-get-on-with-it breakneck speed. No, I didn’t read all the other tie-ins. I read the reviews. But i/r/t the main miniseries… it really needed a fifth or sixth issue to let it breathe. How the heroes won, and how Waller lost.
• OTHER STUFF FROM WEDNESDAY’S DROP: Still need to re-read X-men #5 and Storm #1, but first impressions was a true joy and love whenever I get to the X-Titles. The indie comics I picked up, Hyde Street and Skin Police were both great. And finally, enjoyed Nightwatcher’s origin revealed. Had to go back and re-read Nightwatcher #1 though, and omfg. I finally realized the grey captions was the stupid kid, not Nightwatcher. That did not work for me. I think in a TV show or film, it would’ve worked as a voiceover and it’s obviously a kid voice. But having a kidnapped victim be the voiceover for like 15 pages, and not seeing them until page 17 or so… that was a bad decision. Or I’m really dumb.

Comic Book Issues Tracking

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