[oromendur]

Greetings all!

 

This won't be long -- I'm just throwing this thread up to say that a) I AM doing a challenge this time around and b) it will just be pretty much a continuation of the last one. Life has been beyond difficult lately and I have neither the time nor the energy for the deep consideration needed to change things up right now.

 

Since I'll still be at home all the way up until Week Five (which will involve leading an American Hiking Society volunteer vacation in Northern California -- in passing, if you're in easy striking distance of the US West Coast and want a cheap and easy chance for some big-tree-ocean wilderness adventure, there are still spots left on this trip), I'm going to continue with the living-quietly-in-the-Shire idea and keep working to shore up the foundations of my routines. I honestly don't expect there will be much in the way of narrative updates to this thread (no change there either ). Still, even without a lot of interaction, just having these public challenges going really works for me. So, well, here we are. Thank you, kind reader, for being part of my journey!

 

Lack of updates notwithstanding, my spreadsheet shows that I actually managed to do pretty darn well on my goals last time. (This is admittedly only true as measured by overall scores rather than actual accomplishments; I didn't do very well at all on the things I historically struggle with, but after some simple changes to my routines I absolutely ROCKED the extra credit ). For this challenge I've made a few minor tweaks, basically still casting about to find something that will work to replace the things that very definitely didn't. If for some odd reason you are interested in reading about the details of my routines, have a look at my last challenge thread and substitute "do anything AT ALL with a wretched kettlebell" for the aspirational forearm mobility that only happened once, and substitute "for gods' sake leave the [BLEEP]ing house and go somewhere once in a while" for the 'get dressed before noon' extra credit opportunity. 

 

Maybe by the time I get back from the next adventure, things will have slowed down enough to let me do some real assessment and proper challenge-crafting (shrug) Until then, I'm just going to carry on.

 

Good luck to everyone else on your own challenges!

 

Quote

"'It is no good our starting to go in zig-zags,’ said Frodo. ‘That won’t mend matters. Let us keep on as we are going!'"

                             ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings 50th Anniversary Edition, p. 90.

 

[Ann of Owlshire]

Oh hi. 🦉

[oromendur]

11 hours ago, Ann of Owlshire said:

Oh hi. 🦉

[oromendur]

Well, I guess since @Ann of Owlshire's appearance hauled my thread out of its dead-last position in this huge forum party, I guess I might as well do a quick update while it's here at the top and I can see it without digging for it.

 

(I am totally not procrastinating the nonfiction writing I need to do today. Absolutely and TOTALLY not  )

 

Even if I say it myself, I think I did a pretty darned good job of carrying on in Week Zero (overall score: 79%, thanks to more rocking of extra credit), and an even better one in Week One (a solid B score of 85% with less extra credit and more actual tasks -- go me!), and there's nothing else to do but just keep chugging along here in Week Two.

 

Looking at the spreadsheet, the following observations jump out: I'm (generally) doing well at doing my writing work, and this is a good thing. I'm starting each week strong on the physical health side of things (yay Monday energy) but I lose momentum by Thursday or Friday and the weekends kind of turn into stinky piles of garbage (not great but could be worse). I suck at cleaning my house no matter the day

 

So, normal jogging, really

 

There is one huge life-goal highlight of Week One I'd like to gush about for a second: my book was officially published on Tuesday!!

 

Spoiler for pics and excitement:

Spoiler

    

 

It's a pretty thing isn't it  

 

The official on-sale date was 10 May. Amazon didn't actually start showing the book as in-stock until late evening on the 11th, and now the deep dark mysteries of book distribution are signaling "Available to ship in 1-2 days" and a sale price rather higher than the cost from the publisher I'd *like* to think that's because the sales have been so wonderful, but I know better It's just a weirdness of their system, probably similar to the one one that caused them to simultaneously announce both "Publication date May 1" and "This title has not yet been released" for eleven straight days (shrug) When I complained to the publisher the best they could come up with was "Amazon algorithms are weird."

 

If a fairly specialized academic tome on Tolkien and wilderness is something you think you might be interested in, you can find it on Amazon or Bookshop.org (both affiliate links), directly from the publisher here, or wherever you get your books. It's a pretty expensive book, though, so you might be better off sending the link to your library and asking them to buy it 

 

Considering the ridiculous price and shit royalty structure of academic publishing this book isn't likely to have any impact whatever on my finances -- but that's not really the point, and I'm OK with it because I'M AN AUTHOR and it is SO COOL and I am unspeakably excited

 

 

Ahem. Anyway

 

Hope everyone else is having a great challenge! I