The Daily Report 

Well, August is almost over. At several points before, during, and after WorldCon, I considered making a post explaining that it had been a difficult month (seasonal heat, plus scrambling for/being at/recovering from WorldCon) and that I’m basically giving myself a mulligan on it, but I never actually found the wherewithal to do so.

My plan to start my year of awesome was like most of my plans: spur of the moment and hatched in the spring, when days are getting longer and brighter but the summer heat hasn’t hatched. The timing meant that July and August were months 2 and 3 of my plan. This was such a terrible idea that it wasn’t even August before I decided that next year I’m officially scheduling and announcing light duty/sabbatical during those hottest two months, but I also felt like I needed to power through and do it anyway.

So here we are at the end of August and I have not clearly articulated my situations or intentions, and for that, I apologize. I am back in the saddle after a solid week off, post-con. I may yet cross a few more items off my to-do list in the next three days. But I may not hit all of my monthly writing goals for August.

I will certainly not hit my personal zine/newsletter goals, and in fact, it may be time to re-evaluate those because my initial vision is just not coming together at all. One theme that got hammered at the writerly panels I visited at WorldCon was something that I struggle with, even as an self-declared experimental writer and publisher: if something’s not working, stop doing it.

So I’m going to be re-evaluating that. Honestly, I think August might have gone better if I hadn’t spent so much time spinning my wheels on this and trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Anyway, I don’t want to dwell too long on what’s been going wrong when I have been having such an objectively awesome time.

Financial Status

A little strained. Our transportation and food costs for the con went over the few hundred dollars I had allotted from the fundraiser; something I definitely saw coming but was too stressed to really do anything about. Our generally improved and improving financial outlooks gave us some padding to eat into, but the padding’s awfully thin and needs replacing, and we need to buy groceries in the meantime. If you’ve enjoyed my (Alfie Award-winning!) writing and commentary over the years, now’s a good time to chip in through PayPal or Square Cash.

The State of the Me

Navigating the convention and traveling left me with a lot of phsyical problems that exacerbate my fatigue (heat exhaustion, dehydration, borked sleep schedule and nutritional regimen, etc.), as well as some genuine injuries to my feet and lower legs, the least of which were blisters on each heel right at the tendon. After a solid week of rest, including a day and a half of actual bed rest, the still painful remnants of the blisters are all that remains of these issues.

Plans For Today

Back to work day. I’m basically going to open up a window and start writing whatever wants to be written. Even if I’m taking a pass on my goals for the month, I’m still going to try to fulfill as much of them as I can, ending this month well in order to start the next one with a head of steam.