I was supposed to send this out last night. Honestly, I forgot to do it. I will send it out next Friday because I’d like to include the scene I’m working on now and possibly the scene planned after it. So, my apologies for forgetting.
Now, to get ready to eat and go raid. I hope I can hear over Vent well enough. My ears are closing up because my loving husband has shared his cold with me. ><
Real Life
Sometimes…
Sometimes, life sucks.
Right now, I’m in the middle of completely redoing a project me and one of my coworkers spent two weeks on. Because of this, I missed getting to watch the Super Bowl and missed seeing my team win after 40+ years of not even being able to dream they’d make it.
That’s right: I’m a Saints fan. I have been ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.
At any rate, I’ve managed to finish the update to Alayne’s Story for this week already (yay!) and I’ll have plenty of time to work on The Unexiled (another yay!). It would have been nice to get to see the Super Bowl yesterday but life doesn’t work out that way.
Ah well. Back to work.
New Schedule, Better Priorities
I’ve just got a new schedule at work. Our company redid our contracts so I’m down to working 37 hours a week instead of 42 – 45 (on a “slow” week) or 45 – 50 (on a “omgwtf” week).
That means, more time for writing! Yay!
So, I’ve juggled my schedule around again and am now spending my lunchbreaks writing instead of doing dailies or playing Dragon Age. On an average day, that means that I add about two pages to Alayne’s Story or The Unexiled. I now work on Alayne’s Story starting on Monday and continue on until I have five full pages. After that, I stop working on Alayne’s Story for the week and go over to working on The Unexiled or on a game-design project I’m working on with a few friends. I also spend my evenings doing just one random heroic (working towards “the Patient” so I’m pugging it all the time) and then I log off WoW (if I’m not raiding that night) and work on my stories.
Hopefully this new schedule will allow me to get more added to The Unexiled and to this other project I’m on. So far, it’s working out all right. I was able to send out The Unexiled last week which means the next update will be a week from this Friday.
Anyhow, lunch is over now. Back to work.
Clone Wanted
I really need to develop a cloning machine so I can do all the things I want to do.
I’m currently so addicted to Dragon Age that I find myself playing until three in the morning. I’ve had to force myself to work on Alayne’s Story and The Unexiled instead of sitting at my computer playing Dragon Age.
It’s that good. 🙂
Still, I am still writing, taking some advantage of my forced vacation to get some work done. I also need to kick my husband out of the apartment for a day to get some serious cleaning done. But, between Dragon Age, WoW, writing, and reading, I’ve not had much time to update this blog. So, I’ll take a moment to let you know that I had a good Christmas. I’m not looking forward to the beginning of January, though. My brother was born in early January and this will be the first birthday with him gone.
I miss him a lot. I wish there were some way to bring him back. I hate being the only one left. I feel like all the expectations my parents had for him are now on my shoulders and I don’t know that I can live up to all that. Hell, it’s been tough enough living up to just what they expected out of me. Now that he’s gone, I’ve got a whole different set of ideals and responsibilities to live up to. As if his slacking off when we were younger, forcing me to do all the chores so we both wouldn’t get in trouble wasn’t enough…thanks, Jerry. I really and totally needed this. Truly. ><
His ass is so kicked when I get up there. He and I had a good system worked out to take care of our parents. He wanted to stay in Mississippi and I wanted to never see the place (aside from the occasional visit) again. He was content there. I was a star-peg in a square hole. After I pretty much ran off and got married (and ran off to France of all places), found my dream job, and set up a pretty good life for myself, Jerry and I said that he would stay in the South and take actual care of our parents when they got old and I would do what I could from a distance. I would send money (God knows I make enough of it at my fairly awesome job). I could lend moral support. I could come for a visit and bring exotic gifts and stories that my mother would listen to politely without understanding but that Jerry would get and would laugh about.
And now, that’s not going to work. My folks have always been wanting me to at least move back to the States. I’m willing to, as long as it’s some place like California or Texas or some place that is NOT a repeat of where I left. But, I’m starting to wonder if that would be good enough for them. Mom has definite ideas of what she wants and no matter how many times I try to explain to her that it’s not what I want, she doesn’t really listen. Dad does but she doesn’t.
Why oh why did this all have to happen? And why oh why can’t I just go smack the shit out of those responsible for it? It’s hard enough for me to stay still when my inclination is to run off again, to vanish for a while, start a new life, and try very hard not to remember the past. But, I’m married now. That trick won’t work. And, I can’t get much further away than I have already. The moon, perhaps…
I’ve always gone through life like a bit of a tumbleweed. I don’t put down roots. I don’t get attached. I don’t let very damned many people get to know the real me. I’m fine like that. I’m safer that way. Hell, I’m happier that way. But now…now I feel like I have no choice. I’ll have to put down those roots. I’ll have to try to let people at least think they know me. I’ll have to fake a closeness I won’t feel and an open-ness that isn’t true. At least, until it drives me crazy and I gnaw my leg off to escape the trap I can feel closing down on me.
Well, enough whining out of me. Back to working on these stories and then playing Dragon Age or WoW.
Gonna hafta face it…
I’m addicted to Dragon Age Origins.
This game is awesome.
I had to force myself to take a break tonight to get some writing done. Hopefully, I’ll finish this week’s update to Alayne’s Story tomorrow and get a good crack on The Unexiled as well.
And now, off to bed.
I hate being sick
Whenever I decide to take time off work to relax, I get sick.
I hate being sick.
Really.
I managed to contract some kind of mutant, intestine-liquefying stomach virus on my way home from the States last week. This nasty piece of work has had me bed-ridden or, worse, toilet-ridden, since Sunday night. Today is the first day I’ve been able to eat anything which means, I hope, that whatever it is that took up residence in my gut has finally been forcibly evicted. Details of said eviction will, of course, be kept to myself because I doubt any of you are that interested in my bodily functions.
The only upside to this is that I have probably managed to drop ten pounds in a few days. Not that I care much for this particular method of weight-loss but hey, whatever. I will always try to look for the silver-lining, even in this particular stinky cloud.
Anyhow, Alayne’s Story will be updated tomorrow and The Unexiled will go out tomorrow.
Now, back to drinking dark tea and praying that this thing really has gone for good instead of just tricking me into thinking it’s gone like it did earlier this week.
What. A. Week.
It’s only Thursday and I’m starting to wonder if I qualify for an early retirement.
What can I say other than it’s been a helluva week.
On Saturday, my husband came down with the flu.
On Sunday, he passed out twice.
On Monday, he had to give his thesis defense. He did well and was granted his Ph.D. I am extremely proud of him for managing to do it at all, let alone when he was still suffering from the flu!
On Tuesday, I had a doctor’s appointment* in Paris. There was a strike on the RER B that I would normally take to get there. I had to take a rather round-about course to arrive at all and then found out that the doctor I saw was not specialized in what I needed. She did, however, refer me to someone who is specialized in the area of concern and I now have an appointment for next Tuesday with a new doctor…
…provided, of course, that this doctor emails me her address so I can get there.
Oh, and I wound up walking about 3km Tuesday to get home because of the aforementioned strike.
Wednesday was Armistice Day. I woke up with a six alarm migraine that did not go away until around noon (I managed to drag my happy ass out of bed around 10 am even though I woke up at 9. It took that long for the pain to recede enough that I was comfortable with that much movement).
Today is Thursday and my office is starting to resemble a bunch of people trapped for far too long on a desert island. I’m starting to look for green beams I can stand in in order to regain some of my lost sanity. I did just manage to finish this week’s update for Alayne’s Story (yay!)
Tomorrow is Friday. All I have to say is “Thank God.”
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish lunch and get back to the insanity.
*No, it’s nothing serious that anyone needs to worry about. Just general weirdness.
Time Management Am Goal
Well, once again, I’ve gotten better at managing my time. Instead of using my lunch break to do pointless dailies or level yet more alts, I’m using it to write. I managed to clear 3.5 out of 5 pages for Alayne’s Story today. Hopefully I can finish up that update tomorrow during lunch and spend the rest of my time on The Unexiled.
I wouldn’t say I’m getting back on the horse just yet, though. I still have my days. I’m not raiding nearly as much as I used to. Plus, everyone at the office is getting sick so I’m just waiting for my turn to catch whatever it is that’s going around.
At any rate, hopefully I’ll be able to keep this up. Now back to work. 🙂
Edit: Finished this week’s update! That means that I can spend the rest of my time on The Unexiled!
Ahead of schedule
A little bit, at least.
That’s right. I’m already 90% with the update for Alayne’s Story this week. That means that once I finish the last page (should finish sometime tomorrow), I can spend the rest of my writing time this week on The Unexiled.
That’s actually a pretty big relief for me. I always feel so guilty when I start working on The Unexiled before I’ve finished Alayne’s Story for the week. It’s stupid, I know, but I feel like I’m letting people down by not getting an update ready for them.
But, at least this week that won’t be a problem.
Must. Do. Better.
Sorry for the silence. I’ve been busy with writing and reading. And, last week, we had a team meeting at a location well away from the office that lasted two days. Two days where I got nothing done because by the time I got home, my bed was calling me loudly.
I guess I’m doing better lately, though. I’ve felt weird and kind of craptastic but I’ve been going to church again and getting back into my personal faith (I’m an Orthodox Christian). I’ve found that it’s helping a lot with dealing with my brother’s death and it’s also helping me with developing more discipline in my writing.
At any rate, even though I’ve gotten better about scheduling my time, I’m worried that this week’s version of The Unexiled won’t be much bigger than the first round was. I’m having some trouble with a particular series of scenes and I keep having to rework them. I had a bit of inspiration during my lunch break today, though, and managed to blast out a scene I really liked during some dead time at the end of the day.
Well, that’s really it for the update department. I’ll try to get better about posting here more often.