First, I think I lost 7 ratings on Beginning of a Hero since I checked on Thursday.  I can’t be surprised since reviews and ratings vanish without any explanation.  Seems to be the nature of the beast for years.

So, I kind of met many of the goals of my week, but I kept them simple.  Most of them I couldn’t avoid no matter what went wrong.  Others failed because stuff definitely took a turn after Monday.  Biking didn’t happen after that day.  Writing didn’t happen and this weekend isn’t looking good.  Sleeping habits took a lot of blows because things kept happening.  I’m talking car alarms, coughing people at 1:20 AM, staying up a bit too late a few times, indigestion, and not being allowed to sleep beyond 5:30 until tomorrow.  So, I’m worn down.

There were several reasons for things going off the rails.  Some were fine because they were important.  A friend needed to talk and I needed that venting too.  Had to change things around for stuff involving my son.  He had appointments and Thursday night he had ASL Idol, which went until 9 PM.  That’s a show the school districts do where students perform songs using American Sign Language.  There was ‘Be Prepared’, ‘Let It Go’, ‘Best of Both Worlds’, some stuff from Hamilton, a song first translated from one language to English then ASL, and a bunch of Taylor Swift.  There was more, but those are the ones that came to my head.  Lots of fun, but I was already reaching the end of my energy, so this took the last of it.

Work was busy too because we now have only a week and a half before Spring Break.  I did get those Easter Eggs colored on Monday since I had to take off for my son’s IEP meeting.  I’ll put a picture of them on the April 8th post since I had to immediately hide them from prying eyes and hands.  Anyway, I had a lot to do at work, including a Friday field trip with the Life Skills kids to a bowling tournament.  They all did great and one seems to have a high level of skill with claw machines.  I’m still surprised I had enough energy left to write this post before I went to bed.

Sadly, my work week isn’t really over.  I was asked and I agreed to go with the school’s robotics team to the final day of a tournament.  The person who has been going all week can’t do it, so I’m going instead.  No idea what I’m doing, but I’m there to help and, I guess, be a cheerleader.  This means I wake up 5:30 AM to get myself ready and to the school.  I probably won’t be done until 5 PM, which will be followed by grabbing dinner on the way home.  So, what does this mean?

My goal of writing 2 chapters of Darwin & the Demon Game this weekend isn’t going to happen.  If I’m too tired to do any writing tonight then I’ll probably only get 2/3’s of chapter 11 done.  I’ll try to use a weeknight to get that one done, but I won’t be able to tackle the book again until evening of April 12th.  This means I probably won’t finish the book until mid-May.  I was hoping for late April, but I guess this is good enough.  I’ll use the rest of the school year to tackle the outline for Darwin & the Beast Collector and ‘Phi Beta Files’.  Managed to design one character for that second thing.  Guess that’s some progress.

I’m also going to need to put some time aside for Do I Need to Use a Dragon? posts, which will be in June and July.  I’m going to be doing teasers in June on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  Just small sections of entries.  The thing that I can’t figure out is what to do once I release the book on July 4th.  Do I keep the teasers going through all of July?  They might be losing attention at that point.  I’m wondering if letting June be the teaser month will allow me to only do July teasers on Tuesday and use the other weekdays to discuss writing the book.  I’ve got time to think up 12-14 posts that can work off that concept.  Means I really only have to worry a ton about August.  At least these advance posts give me something to write during weeks that I can’t get to the books.

Another thing that wore me down this week was dealing with a handful of people who just irked me.  I’m being nice here.  I had a few moments where I was getting sick of humanity because of some treatment.  Not only how I’ve been treated, but a few friends too.  Feel like I should make it clear that none of this work related too.  Crazy stuff ended up happening where I was faced with egotism, narcissism, guilt-tripping, cruelty, and plain ‘are you serious? stuff.  I can’t go into some of the wildest things here since it took me a few days to sort them out.  That’s a big reason I couldn’t do any writing during the week beyond Monday.  Just really needed to step back and consider how I deal with certain personality types.  Maybe I’m too nice or a glutton for punishment until I start snapping at everything like a rabid dog.  Either way, I need to use this weekend to refocus my energies and I think seeing an exciting robot competition will be a good start.  I’ve already been warned not to bring up BattleBots since this isn’t like that.

So, goals of the week?

1. Write 1 chapter of Darwin & the Demon Game.
2. Help son with homework since I know it’s coming.
3. Alter my son’s Soul King Brook costume so that the wig doesn’t make him itch that much.
4. Finish the June blog posts.
5.  Watch more ‘Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?’, which is still an odd title for this anime series.
6. Get back into the biking habit starting with 20-25 minutes tomorrow.
7. Sleep!
8. Avoid getting into pointless arguments or drawn into drama.
9. Tinker with ‘Phi Beta Files’ if possible.
10. Pick a father/son movie for next weekend.  Maybe go to see ‘Dungeons & Dragons’?
11. Enjoy the robotics tournament.