It was still January for most of this week, a.k.a. The Neverending Month.
Then it became February!
Each month, I do pull a card from my Music Oracles deck. Last month was Bob Marley. February's card is Nina Simone. A piano playing rebel & multiple genre legend will hopefully make for a phenomenal month ahead.
I still haven't done a goals post for 2024. January was a lot. My goals for this year are:
- Complete Sparker and query agents.
- Complete The Curse of... and submit it to a screenplay contest.
- Complete the declutter of Tiny Condo.
- Blog at least once per week.
- Cross train for curling and softball.
- Learn piano.
- Self-care with crafts, reading, gaming, and sports.
I've tweaked my schedule to make this happen.
I'd also like a partner, but I feel weird about setting it as a goal.
Arts & Crafts
Saturday was a day of crafting. First on stream and then with friends in the evening. I had to make a lot of yarn cakes in advance of it because my yarn arrived in time! The reason to make yarn cakes is to avoid the knot that is almost always somewhere in the skein of yarn from the store. It's much easier to fix it before it's on the needles.
Decluttering & Minimalism
Ok, it might be weird, but I've been moving rugs around my condo to different locations. This is to make some areas cozier and others more functional. I had an epiphany on the weekend of exactly what I needed to do in each area of my condo and began making it happen.
I've moved my piano behind me. Now it will be easy to move my laptop as needed to practice with Playground Sessions.
A lot of my clutter... shocker... is paper-based. I used to do a lot of my writing on lined paper or post-it notes and the like, so that is going to take a bit to clean up. I began shredding what I can this week. It's good prep before tax season, I suppose.
Fitness & Budo
I got some walking in outside of the only curling I had this week at GSL. My team at Rainbow was not in the bonspiel and I didn't get to spare. I made up for it with work around the condo.
At GSL this week, I made some nice shots once I was warmed up. In the last end, I was skipping and I split the house. Then I did a draw style takeout. The trainer said that he called the sweeping to end like 3 seconds too soon. We had no points on the board yet and they had 3. My shot would've scored 4 points had it just nudged their rock a slight bit further! Unfortunately, that's life sometimes.
Gaming & Streaming
In Diablo IV this week, I died harshly to Duriel, so it's time to side quest for a bit to level up and get some stronger potions and the ability to carry more. I figured I would need to at some point before dealing with Lilith and Mephisto anyway. My character feels weaker at 50 for some reason. Perhaps Hammer of the Ancients isn't the best end game build.
I also played some Stardew Valley. It has elements from Minecraft and Animal Crossing with a relateable story, so I'm really digging it. And by digging it, I mean I'm completely addicted to it.
Health & Wellness
Med #3 seems to be better for me so far. I'm less dehydrated, not seeing things that aren't there, and I'm not having rashes. I am having some normal Canadian winter blues due to the lack of sun, which is thankfully returning more each day. The sun I mean, not the blues. I've found it OK to take a day off once a week to prevent dehydration.
Some friends have asked how I figured out that I'm allergic to yellow dyes. The answer is 11 years of elimination diets and tracking my reactions to foods and medications. I will be testing the other dyes at some point.
My myofunctional assessment was this week. That's for the tongue tie thing that I mentioned back in Week 1. It was a strange appointment where I did things like push my tongue against a tongue depresser. Anyway, my tongue tie is pretty severe, so I'm absolutely a candidate for release. I'll have therapy first to strengthen my tongue. This helps ensure that the release will go well. There will be more therapy after to correct the compensations I've done all my life and to get used to far more function. Unfortunately, the therapy appointments are not covered by my insurance. Hopefully the surgery will be. Between that, my car, and the outstanding amount on my bathroom reno, it will be an expensive year.
Music
Whenever I'm having trouble getting motivated at work, the answer is to put music on.
I did some noodling on the weekend playing around with sounds in Ableton and different keyboard settings.
PWHL
It was a lighter week for PWHL with only the 3-on-3 NHL Showcase on Thursday and one game on Saturday. It was Minnesota vs Toronto. And Toronto beat Minnesota hard. I never thought I'd see that. They were at the bottom and just beat the top team and now I feel unmoored in a pleasant way. These women are all so amazing that it's truly anyone's game when they play.
Writing
*Brief grammar rant here. I've struggled for far too long on the distinction between a while and awhile. It's been bothering me for ages. And the definitions of the two did not help discern when to use one or the other. So I did some deeper research and this is what I found:
- awhile is an adverb, so it's usually following a verb, also known as an action word.
ie. She stopped to rest awhile.
- a while is a noun phrase and seems to often follow a FANBOY (for, and, nor, but, or, yet) or a preposition (in, on, under, etc). A list of prepositions can be found here because it's quite lengthy.
ie. She hadn't seen them in a while.
I don't spend as much time focusing on grammar compared to other writers that I know. Some friends love it. I have never fallen deeply in love with it. A lot of it I have intuited via reading quality books or I learned via the grammar courses they had us take during college. But, I do get stuck in my writing sometimes when I can't figure out which is the correct option, so I'm glad I've finally found the answer I needed to put this one to bed.
Anyway, I did get a bit done on my novel this weekend. Another chapter has been edited. For the bulk of this month, I will be turning my attention to a screenplay because there is a contest with an early bird deadline of February 29th. With screenplay contests, one can enter later, but it becomes more expensive at each stage.