Friday Check-in: Week 21 – Short Story Rabbit Hole, ctd. + Shame

 

What am I doing with my life. What did I do that was cool this week. I tweeted a [mediocre] parody of Hamilton’s 10 Duel Commandments on the #Pie4Ham hashtag.

The other night I finally watched [and had a lot of emotions over] Bakemono no Ko, the latest movie by one of my favorite directors / studios (who also did Wolf Children: Ame & Yuki, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and Summer Wars). Someday, I should blog fangirling about my love for these movies, but such passion will not fit in the context of this particular blog post.

The short story rabbit hole doesn’t seem to have a bottom, guys. I’m really just doing that. I don’t even know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Green Star Reads for this week:

Oh my god I read nothing apart from some short stories. Eight short stories. God. Let me just vow, here and now, this is the week I start reading again. Meaning I’ll be finishing Raven King, by Maggie Stiefvater. And *CHOKES*.

• Soundtrack of the Week: The Wolf Children: Ame & Yuki soundtrack, plus the Zankyou no Terror soundtrack and a dash of Hamilton to top things off.
• Go-to method of procrastination: Um. Too much napping? A little more anime than last week, but still not a ton. Um…new Steven Universe episodes.

Sticker Check-in

CURRENT KEY

1. Silver – 1/2 hr revision(WEEK TOTAL:  15 & 1/2 hrs)
2. Red – draft 500 new words (WEEK TOTAL: 6,500 words)
3. Green – read 100 pages (WEEK TOTAL: 0 pages)
4. Gold – 1/2 hr studying Japanese (WEEK TOTAL:  0 hrs)
5. Blue – blog post (WEEK TOTAL: 2, but only on a technicality: last week’s post was late)
6. NOT PICTURED – I’m tracking exercise and adult-like responsibilities in a separate baby-sized calendar also courtesy of Easter Seals.(WEEK TOTAL FOR EXERCISE: 2 times).
7. TOTAL STICKERS: 46

Points of Note:

• Ignore where the blue line starts. I forgot that last week I posted on Saturday. All stickers on the 21st counted toward this week.

• Now I thought I sucked at productivity this week–yet my sticker total is higher than any of the weeks I caught up on with my last post. Proving that I know nothing, productivity is a lie, but so is self-doubt screaming “WHY DON’T YOU DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR LIFE?” Because I am doing things. It only feels like I’m failing. I guess.
• Next week: ALL THE READING. I will regain some balance, not only working on short stories.

On Wednesday I help my sister move to her new dwelling, so at the very least hopefully I can get some reading done in the car. Alternatively, I will get nothing done that day. We’ll see.

Oh, and my 22nd birthday’s on Thursday. O _ O

Thanks for reading,

Allison

Friday Check-in: Weeks 17-20 – I Missed These Blog Posts…Literally. + Graduation

I’m surprised I actually lasted through most of April before missing a weekly recap on this blog. And in my defense, it’s been a big couple of weeks. In brief:

• Last post, I mentioned a banquet for the English Department graduates at my college. No one cried over the nearness of graduation, but we did eat creme brulee shaped like bird nests from a table decorated with white bird cages, folded paper swans, and pretty much a literal tree as a centerpiece. I maintain that none of us–profs or students–were fancy enough for such a set-up, and most of the banquet was spent giggling, joking, and trying not to spill food on our fancy programs and cards from the English faculty. Each student got a speech of praise delivered by one of the profs, and it was all very touching. I also stayed on campus an extra night, got to see the play Rabbithole performed by the Theatre department, and caught up with lots of friends. It was a good trip, after several visits where I felt weirdly out of place (having been off campus so long).
• One missed blog post led into more, and before I knew it, I was graduating. I’m pretty sure it’s for real this time (unlike in Dec., when I found I was missing four credits). My name was on all the lists. I got my honor cords for graduating and a medallion for being an honors scholar. I walked across the stage, they handed me my diploma cover, and some guy whooped from the crowd. No idea who. I didn’t even hear anything past my name, not even the “summa cum laude.” I assume it was a classmate I know, but your guess (and my family’s speculation) is as good as mine. So. I’m graduated. Weird, weird feeling. Next, I just  have to find a job and a dwelling and some consistency in my life.

  

  Bonus Mulders: 2/3 of my siblings.

• Another weird, weird feeling. The Friday I left for graduation things, I learned a high school classmate had passed away in a car accident. Hours after I walked across the stage, I started getting Facebook messages from my other classmates (almost none of whom I have kept in contact with). We all chipped in for flowers and a card. On Monday, the majority of our class [from a small school] went to Kassidy’s visitation and met later to reconnect. Good to see people. Horrible circumstances. I’m still not sure it’s really sunken in.

And that’s most of what’s been going on in the life of Allison Mulder.

Green Star Reads for the past few weeks:

I finished reading SCHAUM’S QUICK GUIDE TO WRITING GREAT SHORT STORIES,  but I’m still not finished with THE GIRL FROM EVERYWHERE, by Heidi Heilig, which, oh my god self, you haven’t been blogging for the last 3-4 weeks so why the heck haven’t you been reading more? I’m also–still–only about 100 pages into THE RAVEN KING, by Maggie Stiefvater, one of my all-time favorite writers. It’s the conclusion to the series. I’m kind of dying, but I just can’t sprint through books by favorite authors. I am so scared for it ending, which is probably the whole reason I’ve slacked so much on reading novels lately.

I have been reading a lot of short stories lately. I thought about listing them here, but like, I’ve read 28 since I actually started keeping track of them on May 10. In truth, reading and writing stories is basically all of my productivity from the last few weeks. No blogging, no novel-reading, very little Japanese dabbling–I haven’t even been keeping up with anime or Netflix, you guys. It’s been weird, but a good feeling. I’m motivated, I’m working (even if it’s just to procrastinate other things), and most of this surge is probably because of joining Codex, a forum for neo-pro writers (several ways to qualify, including my way: having at least one pro-sale). Everyone is more knowledgeable and talented than me, and it’s glorious there.

I haven’t actually calculated my sticker totals in the last few weeks, so with just a little further ado…

• Soundtrack of the Week: Um, Brooke Waggoner? A random Steampunk playlist from Spotify? Other things I’ve stumbled onto? Plus currently, soundtrack of Interstellar.
• Go-to method of procrastination: Codex. Reading short stories. Writing short stories (at least five new since my last blog post, plus revision on a host of others). Podcasts (Alice Isn’t Dead and Welcome to Night Vale).

Sticker Check-in

CURRENT KEY FOR WEEKS 17 – 18- 19 – 20

1. Blue | Silver – 1/2 hr revision (WEEK TOTALS:  4 – 10.5 – 6 – 9 hrs)
2. Silver | Red – draft 500 new words (WEEK TOTALS: 3k – 7k – 12k – 7.5k words)
3. Green – read 100 pages (WEEK TOTALS: 300 – 100 – 300 – 0 pages)
4. Gold – 1/2 hr studying Japanese (WEEK TOTALS:  4 – 3 – .5 – 0 hrs)
5. Red | Blue – blog post (WEEK TOTALS: 1 – 0- 0 – 0)
6. NOT PICTURED – I’m tracking exercise and adult-like responsibilities in a separate baby-sized calendar also courtesy of Easter Seals. (WEEK TOTAL FOR EXERCISE: 2? – 3? – 0 – 2 times).
7. TOTAL STICKERS: 26 – 42 – 40 – 31

Points of Note:

• My weekly numbers have been higher before, but this is pretty good considering it is almost all short story work. Now I just need to…find balance.
• I completely forgot to mark down exercise, so those numbers are approximations based on the step-count records on my phone. Luckily, work-out days are huge spikes compared to my sluggishness on…all…the other…days. *cough*

Hopefully I’m back to blogging regularly now. I have missed these check-ins.

Like, literally, I missed them, as in yesterday I thought about how I’d have to catch up when Friday hit, and then a few hours after midnight I realized IT WAS FRIDAY AND I MISSED ANOTHER ONE. UGH.

Anyway.

Thanks for reading,

Allison

P.S. Due to parental influence I have always felt considerably weird about promoting fundraisers, so I don’t do this often at all, but my best friend and critique partner and all-around wonderful person K.T. Simpson is having a number of troubles at the moment. Some of them involve money. If you could help take the edge off the hard-to-solve problems by contributing to payment for these easier-to-solve problems, it would mean a lot. Thanks! ❤