At least I managed one pre-11pm blog thanks to yesterday. Today was a wretched day, because I forgot a lecture got moved, despite multiple signposts. What can I say, I’m not perfect, I’m still a bit out of it, and it’s gonna happen. I’m saying this after the 8 hours of self-flagellation and despair so maybe it’s a good thing this is a late blog post after all. What a mess of a day. I’ll do better tomorrow.

One thing I did do today was move TUS from Google Docs to Scrivener. Still dunno how I will manage this as I do wanna keep the Google Docs versions up to date too, but I think this is gonna help me do better editing. I guess we’ll see if that holds up.

Five days off of 1,500 days of 1K, and the last 50~ of that have been a bit bizarre. Not having a ‘main story’ hasn’t been as terminal as I once feared it might be, but I do also feel a little more rudderless than my best expectations hoped for. I guess the problem is I want to start working on my Deep Blue project, but I need to do a lot more research before diving in, what with it being a true story and all and one I need to know more in depth. The books and articles about it are fascinating but this step takes a while when I have to give most of my reading energy to, you know, my degree.

I am at least posting this before 11pm, if only by like a quarter hour if that. I’m not feeling as poorly either which I’m taking as a good sign, but it all depends on how this week proper goes. For all I know I’m about to crash hard. I really hope not as I have a lot of essays to finish. And on that note, I’ve turned to an old friend to help with said essays: Scrivener. The logic is that as a tool, Scrivener is perfect for compiling all my research and notes in one place, has Chicargo referencing built in, and lets me keep all my essays within one project, which should help when it comes to avoiding self-plagiarism and also when I eventually reach my dissertation. Or dissertations. I feel I should know if I have to write one or two. I think it’s two. I really hope it’s one. Weh.

I had a total nothing day today, and it’s honestly helped quite a lot. I feel much less ill even if the cough is refusing to vacate the premises as of yet. But yet another 11pm target bodes ill in other ways. I need to arrest this slip because I cannot afford to let my routine shake like this.

It’s ok. We have this under control. Breathe…

This week was not a shining one for me. It was a quieter one at least, but I feel I dropped a lot of balls, and I feel I’m starting to drift in my writing. Granted I always become more pessimistic when I’m ill but still, I need to arrest this spiral, real or imagined. And the best way to do that is to kick off a new project. Well, bought a new journal today, and I’m hoping it’s gonna grow into That project.

To be clear, writing ATM is still nice, but I am restless. I’d love to just write comfort fiction, but I feel compelled to go grander. Just need to be sure it’s not at the expense of my health, because that ain’t looking so great right now.

Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Course, half my degree is about what an unmitigated myth that whole story is, but that part is technically correct. It’s about the only part that is in the conventional wisdom but hey ho. You know what else is technically true? I am technically on top of everything right now! Yay. I, really need to stop blogging at almost midnight. I have absolutely slipped, both before and during this latest illness, and I need to arrest that trend as soon as I can, especially with deadlines coming up.

But I’m also starting to come around to what story I want to tell next in my writing. I bought Feng-hsiung Hsu’s book ‘Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer That Defeated the World Chess Champion‘, so I’m starting to do more active research on the topic that I would love to turn into a stage performance. I haven’t written a script in quite some time, over ten years, but fortunately my partner is insanely prolific at writing them so I have a good tutor on standby. Guess we’ll see if this story idea pans out.

I’m so done with being ill. I feel I have done a respectable job of not whinging about it on here but it’s starting to get irritating now. Like I can feel my gut threatening to fall back into it and I am just not having that. It’s making everything so much harder and I have enough on right now I don’t also want to be hacking and coughing every five minutes. But on the plus side, I am carrying on regardless. I guess maybe I’m more resilient than I gave myself credit. Now I just need to keep that momentum going for 4 years plus any further degrees and I’m all set.

In all honesty, being this ill and out of it, and still feeling I’ve made one of the best decisions of my life is a gratifying feeling.

I really miss being well. I always do when I get poorly, which I assume is the same for most people. You get nostalgic for when a tickle in your throat didn’t send you into hysterical coughing fits and make your brain feel like a beaten up potato in a washing machine. I also miss when I wasn’t always blogging at gone-11pm. I miss being asleep at this time. Ah well. Maybe tomorrow.

At least writing ATM is still going well. But even then I’m restless. I want to start a project, but it still hasn’t quite clicked enough. And by it, I don’t even know because I don’t know what to work on.

Ugh, this one’s gonna be a short one too. Still ill. Really want to go in tomorrow, but I don’t know if I can or not. I did manage to do my job today, so it was only a uni sick day, but yeah, my confidence is shaky. I’m gonna sleep, and just hope.

I hope I don’t need to explain why I’m not printing that number in the title of a blog entry. Tomorrow will continue with 1,489 as normal – assuming I don’t fall into a coma or randomly give up on 1K. With how I’m feeling the latter is impossible and the former could’ve happened on Thursday for all I knew at the time, and thankfully did not as it wasn’t that serious. Still, it was darn unpleasent, and I’m still in the last steps of recovery. I’ll work from home tomorrow morning assuming I don’t wake in agony again, and then we’ll see as far as going into Sussex goes.

I really do want to start work on another project but I do not know what. ATM is really helping in the meantime both buy me as much time as I need, and teaching me more about my characters as I go. Sometimes like today, it’s that the character’s past experiences were much, much darker than I realised at first.

Being ill suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. There, that is the extent of moaning about that I am going to allow myself today on here.

I’m really enjoying writing ATM at the moment, but I do have a slight concern in the back of my mind. See, it’s great, and it’s gonna help with editing a lot, but I really do want to find a way to get comfortable counting uni work towards target. Like, it absolutely should count, and I fully intended it to, but then I was like “AAAA what if I stop writing stories??” so I caved and started writing even more. And I’m not saying that’s why my health collapsed, but you know by now as a long time imaginary reader what I’m gonna cite:

1K+ lives in infamy as the time I went “Hey you know this great approach to sustainable productivity you developed? Let’s triple the output at random for no good reason.” Uni work, more specifically uni notes, often come to well in excess of target. This is just 1K+, and I need to fix it. If I don’t, these burnouts will happen more often and I won’t be eyeing a 1st, I’ll be eyeing a hospital bed. Only problem is, I have no idea how to do that, and also meet my needy brain’s needs for target, to, be…

Why am I not just saying uni can count up to 500 words?

No seriously why not? On non uni days you get a full 1K but otherwise? Yeah, screw it, that’s how I make this work. Or try to. Watch this space. It might be a while because am sick.