2025-W17 EOW Report

Anti-Goal Cycling

• Once I submitted my idea to Cat Rambo on Monday, which was Easter Monday, a day I took off, the clock started ticking. I spent this week on prj:WAITE. It was supposed to be as low level in world-building, language-learning, easter-eggs as possible. Just avoid it all. But my mind, of course, was briefly tempted to learn noire fiction, and read up about everyday life in the 1920s, and read occult detective stories. I’ve killed those, for now. I spent the week refreshing myself on the major arcana via Eden Grey. That’s it. Lots of symbolism and characters. And by Friday, I had to clarify the ARC for my sanity. I think I have it. I tried plotting a bit but it didn’t take without a CLEAR ARC. Not surprised. But now that I have an ARC, I think I can dive into drafting. If not the ending at least roughly, then the opening scene. I think I should start with the end though.
• I think all the feedback I’m going to get for prj:MUSIC is in. Will need to review, make edits. Garage Fiction have requested to read it, of course, because they’re amazing friends and are happy I’ve finally produced something after talking about stuff for over 18 months now with nothing to show for it. But selfishly, if I’m going to show them prj: MUSIC, it’s going to be a second draft so I can get eyes on the next draft and not THIS draft which I have enough feedback on already.
• There are a lot of weird Christian imagery in the Tarot. Did you know that? The archangels Raphael, Gabriel, and Micheal, obviously. But the tetramorph is something new to me. I kept wondering why the lion, bull, eagle, and man are so significant on The World and Judgment. So…
  • Ox - Luke - Taurus - vernal equinox - Earth/Coin
  • Lion - Mark - Leo - summer solstice - Fire/Wand
  • Eagle - John - Scorpio - autumnal equinox - Water/Cup
  • Winged Man - Matthew - Aquarius - winter solstice - Air/Sword

Four Thousand Weeks

• Saw Mogwai on Thursday night, got home at 1130PM and still pushed to get to the gym the next day at 5ish. Paid for it the rest of the day. Didn’t help I had bloodwork in the afternoon. And then went to bed at 10PM, and despite good intentions to get up early on Saturday, ended up sleeping until 1030am with a bit of a scratchy throat, a bit sniffly, low energy, almost felt like cancelling TTRPG that night. Point is - I’m old and I don’t have the same amount of energy like I used to and “something” happening Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday… that’s a lot man. It’s a lot. And then I made this really dumb mistake Saturday night by ordering from the WRONG BBQ Chicken. Heard the words “North Road” and didn’t register it’s not the one near my house on “Westwood” and I am fucking angry the entire drive out. Literally drove by my brother’s house and then that Hanin mall was full up and had zero parking and that made me angry again. I am swearing in my car and smashing my steering wheel. This is not appropriate behavior even in private but I just got so mad at myself for making this dumb mistake, and in retrospect, why? Why was I so angry? Was it because of that morning of me not really wanting to do this TTRPG thing? It could be. But then once there, I did enjoy myself. I dunno. I’m tracking these 4000 weeks and now that I’ve figured out ARCs, I feel like I have so much lost time to make up and too many outside activities just put me on edge. Maybe that’s something I need to decide on. Do I need to kill this monthly TTRPG as well? Another part of me that was annoyed was the fact that I was semi-expected to read up on the rules, and to be fair, to BE fair, that is a something any good player should be up on. I just wasn’t keen on it at all because I was so busy this week. So I dunno. Something to think through. Is once a month really so much that of a mental bandwidth, am I being a diva, do I still get enjoyment from this activity? When I was pre-4000-Weeks, and believed I could do all-the-things, I never questioned. I just never questioned. That’s how I ended up with a lost decade of good intentions to write fiction and not really doing it. So now that I’ve been pushing so hard the last 18 months and angry at myself for not understanding the basics of storytelling until recently, it took a lot of sacrifice and killing all alternate paths to parallel universes and realities to get here. And I find myself still ruthlessly cutting. Just cut it all out so that I have unfiltered time to work on fiction. So I don’t know if I need to cut this too. Mogwai was great though.
• Middle one got a summer job.
• Garage Fiction was, as always, a restorative conversation with Bryan Cheyne facilitating so much of it. I hope he knows how much he contributes by driving it. I mean, I’ve told him. Maybe I need to tell him again. I brought up how SIWC might be a good opportunity to meet up. Maybe not this year, but the next. But it got Olivia and Lauren thinking, maybe this year in the summer. So they’re thinking dates now. I mean, it has been almost a decade since we met online.

Story Introspection

• JFC, Last of Us S2 hits hard. Craig Mazin went HAM, no holds barred, went aggro.
• Reread Mary Robison’s Likely Lake (2002) and really took the time to think through all the elements and how it was constructed. I don’t know if I have these stories of heightened awkward conversations in me. I did thoroughly enjoy it though. It’s grief, but it’s post-grief and the PROT, Buddy, has built this extremely safe routine life around him, a girlfriend who I imagine is dating him because he’s low-maintenance (her own career dealing with the mentally unstable), the cats are a stand-in for how little Buddy needs, the gardening. And here comes along Caroline attempting to ruin his perfect homeostasis, and despite the second scene of Buddy saying he’ll dissuade her gently, (which he easily could’ve done by pointing out he has a girlfriend), but he DOESN’T. No, instead, Buddy goes full on TMI and tells her about how he misbehaved post-grief. Like just doesn’t dismiss her, he SCARES HER OFF, Like, next scene, she ran off because Buddy had to feed the cats, that was her escape window. That is a fascinating strategy of attack from Buddy. No scaling, no easing. No, let’s just drop a nuke to get rid of this unwanted attention.
• So many issues this week were sublime. Martian Manhunter #2 with the mindfucker hopping into the brain of a shooter, Wonder Woman #7 with the Lady and the Tiger, Assorted Crisis Events #2 with the time hopping. And then Green Lantern #22, Superman #25, and X-Men #15 were all just FUN. Strong week… and/or, after a year of this, I’ve really learned how to curate and cut/drop as necessary.

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