![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
All Projects Go
Jun. 17th, 2025 09:00 amI'm still in the phase of "settling into a retirement rhythm" and working on good habits, but it's feeling more settled now. Less of the background radiation of anxiety now that the money stuff is in place. I even looked at my "special expenditures" projection and decided to get a hotel room for BayCon after all. (Commuting is cheaper than a room, but more exhausting, and it was going to make participating in the first online WSFS business meeting very complicated.) It's probably too late to try to pick up a roommate, though.
The "activity category tracking" spreadsheet is being useful, not only as a gamified incentive to Get Things Done, but as a reminder not to get too focused on any one topic. I'm up to 13 categories and generally do something in 5-9 of them on any given day. But it's ok to take days off when I'm down to 2 or 3, and it's fun (but not required) to hit all 13, which I've done twice. The most regular activities are exercise, working on the Lesbian Historic Motif Project (overlaps 3 categories: reading, writing, and promotion), reading for fun, housework, yardwork, and somewhat surprisingly, socializing (though having a calendar full of conferences and conventions has helped with that). The categories I've hit least are "do art" (which is primarily being checked off when I do embroidery during zoom meetings) and "do music" (which should be easier to check off since currently it's limited to "play through one etude on the flute and stop when my chin cramps up").
To the extent that I have a template for the day (for days when I have nothing else on the calendar), it ideally goes something like this:
* work on fiction over breakfast
* post the current LHMP blog and publicize it
* bike ride
* mid-ride, stop at a coffee shop and do some reading/note-taking for the LHMP
* on returning home, before showering, do yard work
* relax a bit with some fun reading (lunch optional)
* do some Medieval Welsh translation
* housework/household-organization
* write up the day's LHMP notes (alternately, work on the next podcast script)
* play music
* dinner & tv
* work on some sort of data organization project with tv in the background
If I hit all those, that only leaves "do art" and "socialize". Socializing is largely dependent on things outside the formal structure.
Mind you, I rarely actually do all of the above on a given day. But having a default template makes it more likely that I'll come close.
I'm making good progress on the current fiction project: the Skinsingers collection. I have one more specialized proofreading pass to do, then I need to decide whether I think it needs an outside proofreader as well. After that, I'll start working on learning the D2D system. I should search around to see if someone has come up with some handy templates for "this is the standard front/back matter for different types of books." Mostly I'm looking at books I have on my shelves. But then there are e-book specific questions like "in a print book, the publication history of the stories in the collection generally come next to the copyright page, but in an e-book the practice seems to be to put most extraneous matter at the end." Can I format the two differently? Do I want to, or do I want consistency?
The plan is to launch at Worldcon, but have it ready enough in advance to get some pre-publicity out. Though I'm not planning a significant publicity campaign for this "test book," just a chance to limber up the muscles.
The "activity category tracking" spreadsheet is being useful, not only as a gamified incentive to Get Things Done, but as a reminder not to get too focused on any one topic. I'm up to 13 categories and generally do something in 5-9 of them on any given day. But it's ok to take days off when I'm down to 2 or 3, and it's fun (but not required) to hit all 13, which I've done twice. The most regular activities are exercise, working on the Lesbian Historic Motif Project (overlaps 3 categories: reading, writing, and promotion), reading for fun, housework, yardwork, and somewhat surprisingly, socializing (though having a calendar full of conferences and conventions has helped with that). The categories I've hit least are "do art" (which is primarily being checked off when I do embroidery during zoom meetings) and "do music" (which should be easier to check off since currently it's limited to "play through one etude on the flute and stop when my chin cramps up").
To the extent that I have a template for the day (for days when I have nothing else on the calendar), it ideally goes something like this:
* work on fiction over breakfast
* post the current LHMP blog and publicize it
* bike ride
* mid-ride, stop at a coffee shop and do some reading/note-taking for the LHMP
* on returning home, before showering, do yard work
* relax a bit with some fun reading (lunch optional)
* do some Medieval Welsh translation
* housework/household-organization
* write up the day's LHMP notes (alternately, work on the next podcast script)
* play music
* dinner & tv
* work on some sort of data organization project with tv in the background
If I hit all those, that only leaves "do art" and "socialize". Socializing is largely dependent on things outside the formal structure.
Mind you, I rarely actually do all of the above on a given day. But having a default template makes it more likely that I'll come close.
I'm making good progress on the current fiction project: the Skinsingers collection. I have one more specialized proofreading pass to do, then I need to decide whether I think it needs an outside proofreader as well. After that, I'll start working on learning the D2D system. I should search around to see if someone has come up with some handy templates for "this is the standard front/back matter for different types of books." Mostly I'm looking at books I have on my shelves. But then there are e-book specific questions like "in a print book, the publication history of the stories in the collection generally come next to the copyright page, but in an e-book the practice seems to be to put most extraneous matter at the end." Can I format the two differently? Do I want to, or do I want consistency?
The plan is to launch at Worldcon, but have it ready enough in advance to get some pre-publicity out. Though I'm not planning a significant publicity campaign for this "test book," just a chance to limber up the muscles.
