Winter Time, Hobby Time
Update 33 17-23 January 2022
I mentioned last week that I’m really getting back into cooking and I will admit that its starting to try to creep into my time management. I was a little bad this week.
Writing did get done, and I will admit my low numbers and my meager forward progress. But at the same time, I still moved forward and also, I’ve been having fun.
Winter is a bad time for me, last year and the previous year I talked about Seasonal Affect Disorder. Basically, in late Autumn until March or April I battle with depression, sadness, and general withdraw. The previous four years I had school to help me through the worse of it, though even that was hard.
Winter SAD
It happens. The darkness, the cold. The last few years (2017-2019) I worked through it and even made advancements. 2020 was tough because of Covid, but at the same time I didn’t have any symptoms of SAD because I was finishing my thesis novel for my degree. I was having a great time with revision and getting the novel ready for my final.
Now this year I am months past graduation and we’re in the second year of covid and I’m finally starting to really miss people. Usually, I don’t mind being alone all the time. I prefer the silence and my own company. And yet, I’m finally after two years starting to really need more contact.
As such, this winter has been tough, but no where near as bad the past.
The thing is, every January I start something up to keep me going through the winter. I’ll build some models, I’ll paint a bunch of minis, I’ll buy and start building Lego again. This year, I want to cook and take back a portion of the kitchen for myself.
Cooking
I promise only a couple paragraphs on this and then I’ll get back to the word count and the writing journal.
I grew up cooking all the time, in high school I lived with my grandfather and I used to cook dinner every night. It was a lot of fun and I always wanted to take it further.
I also have a love of food. I watch cooking shows, travel and eating shows, etc. I’m on YouTube everyday watching my favorites, Mikey Chen, TJ Lee, Mark Weins and Sonny… (though I admit I prefer Sonny’s older videos as he currently tries to eat the most extreme or gross things… I prefer street food and wandering around cities trying things out). So, I can’t really travel, and even if I could I wouldn’t during a pandemic.
I admit, I am obsessed with Asian cooking. I want to try so many dishes, and I have so many plans. This week, I went to my local Asian Grocery and bought a bunch of supplies. Sauces, rice cakes, spices, etc. I used up one of my main writing days to hang out in the store and start looking up recipes and such. Either way, I had a heck of a good time doing it. And as I write this, I have my first batch of chili crisp/hot oil cooling on my counter. I have plans to make Korean Tteobeokki for lunch (even though I did forget the fish cakes).
I bought a new knife… a nakiri, it’s very nice. I even bought a whetstone and plan to sharpen every knife in the kitchen. Now that I said that… I realize that sharpening knives will also cut into some of my writing time. And you know what, that’s ok.
Writing Time, Words
I’m still making progress and I have a bunch of stuff to work on. This last half of the book is very sketchy in the outline. That means while I have a framework, and even a chart in front of me… this is the very much pantsed portion of the manuscript. I keep changing little things and that has ripples in the following chapters.
Anyway, despite my taking a day off to go shopping and order a bunch of things from Amazon, I did get in two writing sessions this week and made it more than halfway to my goal for the week.
I managed 3948 words and the manuscript is sitting at 145,791 words. I am partially into chapter 33. Also, I’m just having a good time with it. If it weren’t for the fact that I have to side work… and I’m using up my time to cook, I would spend all day writing on my days off. I’m seriously tempted to go back to the old days where I would spend 8+ hours writing in a day…
Except that when I did that in the past I would skip eating, drinking, or even using the bathroom and my back and the rest of my body started to break down and hurt a lot. I’m older and wiser and I just can’t do that to myself any more.
Other things… Outro
I don’t know what else to talk about. I always wonder what parts of these posts have your interest. Last week I had a ton of people stop in and give a read, it was a little surprising. I have no idea what made that happen.
I could talk about gaming. My monthly Curse of Strahd game is going to finally meet after skipping two whole months. That’s nice. My Saturday game is starting to have some issues, mostly with the DM wanting to go back to revolving games. That said I might be into a second Curse of Strahd game that happens on Saturdays. I’m not too enthused to be in two of them… but I like gaming with my friends so that’s a thing.
Anyways, I hope you’re all getting in the words, or doing whatever keeps you moving forward. Progress is always the answer. Even if its only a little at a time. Every day strive to be better than the last.
