Writing
Writing is progressing at a relaxed pace. I haven't done much with my novels in the past week or so. Instead, I've been focusing on two short stories for contests. With the horror one I'm at the point where I need to polish things to make it more emotionally gripping. With the other I had a beginning and end, but I needed a middle. I have the story written now. It is my first attempt at literary fiction. I'm working with a character and plot from generators and changing elements that I really can't connect to like a hobby of stamp collecting. It needs to be under 2,500 words and right now it's at 1,923. I'm wondering if I need to make it longer or not. I'm reading last year's winning piece for guidelines.
I haven't been writing a lot before today as I've just felt too ill.
Health
I've been really lucky, I think. Despite having a condition for at least 20 years untreated, I haven't (so far) had anything worse than B12 deficiency. Not that I'm minimizing that. The anemia from it is kicking my butt pretty good, but I've been to an optometrist and she took neat photographs of my eyeballs and my eyes are in great shape despite the dryness. I'm getting new glasses. They're a vibrant purple befitting a fantasy and sci-fi author. My boss might hate them, but there's a lady at work with some blue in her hair so :P. They look great on me. I'll post a picture when I have them. Boy, am I glad for OHIP and benefits! Eye exams are really expensive, but I only had to pay a small fee for the photos. I'll have to pay for my glasses and get refunded later, but that'll be OK. My benefits might even reimburse for the photos.
As I mentioned, I've been feeling pretty awful. It's mainly exhaustion on workdays. I've scaled back my martial arts as a result. It's probably because my body is trying to regulate my immune system and is trying to deal with the B12 deficiency all at once. It's always feast or famine for me though. When I began having food sensitivities, I was also dealing with a divorce, and my workplace was being divested. Literally everything in my life was imploding. It's not that crazy right now though, just hard to do much more than one thing in a day. Hopefully it will level off soon. Early on I had SO MUCH ENERGY! Now I get good spurts then usually crash hard. My sleep has been messed up too, which doesn't help the tiredness.
I still get a little dizzy sometimes too and that's not fun to exercise with. My legs also get shaky pretty easily. At least almost all of my moodiness and irrational anger are gone. I was getting pissed off at cabbies driving like idiots and considering there are a lot of cabs one drives near daily in this city... Well I was angry A LOT. I seem to be getting my sarcasm back, which I haven't seen in several years. They say that's the sign of a healthy brain. I'm not sure who they are... Aliens, perhaps. At least that's probably what Mulder would say or the government that covers up the aliens.
Budget
I need to do one. May is going to be filled with excitement and adventure. I really hope this B12 thing and my immune system are happy by then. The weekend of the 1st has Ad Astra, which I missed last year and want to attend this time. Comiccon is May 13-15 or the weekend Mother's Day falls on. I bought my mom Sheena comics one year. Then the long weekend is usually the Sei Do Kai iaido seminar in Guelph. All this to say, I better make sure I have cash for all of the events and sleeping places. I'm waiting on some reimbursements hopefully from my benefits that will help.
Martial Arts
I just watched yesterday at karate. It was fantastic though. Our Sensei was there and he went through a lot of bunkai for Heian Shodan. I'm really looking forward to training more. We're doing shotokan with some aikido. They really go well together. Add that to my sword art and I should hopefully get a really good sense of distances. This will teach me a lot about my own body too.
Speaking of the sword art, we did one of the oldest sets today and were encouraged to be pretty free form about it. We've done this before, but I'm a little more experienced this time around and my focus is also better, so I found the possibilities enthralling.
Anyway, time to rescue my clean clothes and head off to read a little before bed.
Ciao,
R~
Writing is progressing at a relaxed pace. I haven't done much with my novels in the past week or so. Instead, I've been focusing on two short stories for contests. With the horror one I'm at the point where I need to polish things to make it more emotionally gripping. With the other I had a beginning and end, but I needed a middle. I have the story written now. It is my first attempt at literary fiction. I'm working with a character and plot from generators and changing elements that I really can't connect to like a hobby of stamp collecting. It needs to be under 2,500 words and right now it's at 1,923. I'm wondering if I need to make it longer or not. I'm reading last year's winning piece for guidelines.
I haven't been writing a lot before today as I've just felt too ill.
Health
I've been really lucky, I think. Despite having a condition for at least 20 years untreated, I haven't (so far) had anything worse than B12 deficiency. Not that I'm minimizing that. The anemia from it is kicking my butt pretty good, but I've been to an optometrist and she took neat photographs of my eyeballs and my eyes are in great shape despite the dryness. I'm getting new glasses. They're a vibrant purple befitting a fantasy and sci-fi author. My boss might hate them, but there's a lady at work with some blue in her hair so :P. They look great on me. I'll post a picture when I have them. Boy, am I glad for OHIP and benefits! Eye exams are really expensive, but I only had to pay a small fee for the photos. I'll have to pay for my glasses and get refunded later, but that'll be OK. My benefits might even reimburse for the photos.
As I mentioned, I've been feeling pretty awful. It's mainly exhaustion on workdays. I've scaled back my martial arts as a result. It's probably because my body is trying to regulate my immune system and is trying to deal with the B12 deficiency all at once. It's always feast or famine for me though. When I began having food sensitivities, I was also dealing with a divorce, and my workplace was being divested. Literally everything in my life was imploding. It's not that crazy right now though, just hard to do much more than one thing in a day. Hopefully it will level off soon. Early on I had SO MUCH ENERGY! Now I get good spurts then usually crash hard. My sleep has been messed up too, which doesn't help the tiredness.
I still get a little dizzy sometimes too and that's not fun to exercise with. My legs also get shaky pretty easily. At least almost all of my moodiness and irrational anger are gone. I was getting pissed off at cabbies driving like idiots and considering there are a lot of cabs one drives near daily in this city... Well I was angry A LOT. I seem to be getting my sarcasm back, which I haven't seen in several years. They say that's the sign of a healthy brain. I'm not sure who they are... Aliens, perhaps. At least that's probably what Mulder would say or the government that covers up the aliens.
Budget
I need to do one. May is going to be filled with excitement and adventure. I really hope this B12 thing and my immune system are happy by then. The weekend of the 1st has Ad Astra, which I missed last year and want to attend this time. Comiccon is May 13-15 or the weekend Mother's Day falls on. I bought my mom Sheena comics one year. Then the long weekend is usually the Sei Do Kai iaido seminar in Guelph. All this to say, I better make sure I have cash for all of the events and sleeping places. I'm waiting on some reimbursements hopefully from my benefits that will help.
Martial Arts
I just watched yesterday at karate. It was fantastic though. Our Sensei was there and he went through a lot of bunkai for Heian Shodan. I'm really looking forward to training more. We're doing shotokan with some aikido. They really go well together. Add that to my sword art and I should hopefully get a really good sense of distances. This will teach me a lot about my own body too.
Speaking of the sword art, we did one of the oldest sets today and were encouraged to be pretty free form about it. We've done this before, but I'm a little more experienced this time around and my focus is also better, so I found the possibilities enthralling.
Anyway, time to rescue my clean clothes and head off to read a little before bed.
Ciao,
R~