A highly irregular update 2

Hi there, it's been a while. These updates are called highly irregular for a reason after all. But anyway...stuff came up. I took a trip to visit my family in October, sometime after my last update. These family trips always mess with my routines and rituals. I set aside my usual schedule to prepare for them; and after the trip, I have to regain my momentum all over again. This time, just after re-adjusting my days, another massive project was about to start. A coding project in particular.

I'm a large corporate software engineer who yearns for a self-reliant job. I have a few options. Taking this content creation journey more seriously, get better at it and expand it until it provides for me. Or, taking a massive risk and move toward THE goal head first: fiction writing. That's even less likely to be an income source for me in the short term. The third, faster and more viable option is to continue coding and, at some point, earning money from independent projects. Or freelancing if that doesn't work out. That's the tough decision I had to make on how to manage my minimal free time, all things considered. That's not to say I'll let go of my writing, fiction or non-fiction. Just that the sooner I'll take more control of my working days, the sooner I'll be able to spend more time and energy to writing. That's how I spent my January this year: an indie hacking project.

Oh, and by the way, I started running around the same time. I began a "sports cycle" a few months before that: one particular sport each season, then pause and move on to the next sport. Maybe I'll write about it one day in my blog about why I incorporated working out in this way and how it affected me. I ran 3-5 times a week and finished a 5k event last month. It's menial, but it meant a lot to me. I am proud of myself for it.

Lo-and-behold, January came to an end, and I couldn't finish the coding project roadmap. So, I continued to prioritize that. Then the time came for another family trip and this time I returned home down with the flu. After recovery and rearranging my priorities, finally here I am with another highly irregular update.

Writing update

I have done little writing in the past 6 months. Around the same couple of months I covered above, I enrolled in three connected writing courses in a sequence. The first one was in October about structuring and outlining. I couldn't finish it. The second one in November, on writing the draft, I went through half of it. I didn't have an outline for my novel from the previous course. So, my assignments were all half-baked and all over the place. The third one was in January on revising the draft. There was no draft to revise. I couldn't finish the last course either. This failure added to the mental pressure of being behind on everything I wanted to achieve. New ideas find me now and then, but I don't even dare noting them down. I'm afraid of never getting back to them, developing them. That's a fear I must overcome.

Reading update

At least, I had a moderately good reading run in the past few months. Lots of progress in my fantasy tournament; almost finished with the 1/4 of the current tournament. Reviews for some of them are in my fall update and the rest are upcoming in my winter review issue. The plan was to choose the first semi-finalist before pausing for a while this spring, but I'm behind. To see the current status of the tournament checkout the latest post. The chart is there.

Last year I tried out a new service called mytbr. It's a subscription service that collects your book preferences and a "bibliologist" recommends three books just right for you. I asked for modern classics, reflective books with the themes of solitude and books to broaden my literary horizons. For the reflective book, my bibliogist suggested reading Violets by Shin Kyung-sook. It was a slow-burn Korean queer fiction set in the 1990s. It tackled desire, isolation, and rejection. I loved reading it for its atmosphere, even though the story was slow and almost eventless in the middle part. This was a nice first experience with the TBR platform. Meanwhile, I've started the second suggested book and I'll talk more about it when I'm finished reading.

I also read a short book from my "thread" series, a series that I choose my next read from the "Readers also enjoyed" section of the previous book on Goodreads, creating a thread of related books along the way. The book was called "People From My Neighbourhood" by Hiromi Kawakami. I previously read "Strange Weather in Tokyo" by her and loved it. "People From My Neighbourhood" was more experimental and strange. A narrator talked about people in their neighborhood in short, disjointed, non-linear stories, some with surreal elements. It was a different, enjoyable read.

I also finished a book on writing: Bird by bird by Anne Lamott and I listened to another on audiobook: On Writing by Stephen King. Last year, I published some ideas from Lamott's book. I might publish more in the future. It was an insightful and handy book. King's book was immensely inspiring, too. I purchased a print version too and I'll reread it soon to highlight some important parts. Now, however, I've started reading "The elements of style." I was longing to read a grammar book for a while now.

During my runs, I listened to a few generic history books. Recently, I realized history is the best genre for me to listen on audiobooks. I'm not that good at reading non-fiction in print. It's just difficult for me to keep focus. And I rarely need to comprehend every little detail in a history book and I hardly ever feel the need to highlight a part. I just enjoy learning about historical events in an easy to digest manner: enter audiobooks. I'll continue to listening to history audiobooks in the future while working out or doing chores.

Post and notes

• I wrote a post on how I optimized my gadgets to prevent "doom scrolling" (Exclaimer: doom-scrolling as in scrolling content feeds until I'm filled with self-loathing, not just scrolling through bad news as the early definition of the phrase suggested)
• And this is my fall fantasy update I talked about earlier.
• I shared a note on improving writing skills too. The source material was the main I got interested in reading grammar books.
• And last but not least, a note on the dilemma of double knowledge work a day. Maybe a complimentary note to the struggles I shared in the first half of my update here.

Upcoming posts

Next up in my blog, I'll post some highlights from the writing books I read recently, maybe more than one post. I'm also working on preparing what I read for the fantasy tournament during the winter. After that, I'll set aside some time to fiction writing to draft my next installment on a short story writing journey.

Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter and checking out this issue. Comment on your thoughts and ideas on what I shared; I'd love to read them!See you next time!