Sadly, I didn’t get to type in a lot of edits this week. Got through two sections of chapter 1 and that was me pushing through a lot of lethargy. All of the appointments and events didn’t help much either. So, what went wrong?
It all started last weekend with Pokemon Go-Fest, which was a lot of fun. It was two days of catching Pokemon and being in a huge group of people. There was excitement and conversations. Unfortunately, it was also REALLY hot and humid, which I thought I had handled with a hat and 3 bottles of water on day one. Since I had to stop earlier than other people, I tried to push through a little extra instead of resting. Made it 5.5 hours and began feeling dizzy. Had to retreat to my nearby car and rest in the air conditioning until I could go home. Went back out on Sunday with a better mindset, but I was still worn down pretty quickly. This became the theme of the week.
I will add that I had a block party to go to Saturday night, which wasn’t high activity, but I was outside. Throughout the week, I had work and that was high activity even though it was mostly indoors. The exception was Thursday when we spent the day at an amusement park, which was rough on my body. By the time I got home from that one, I was feeling like I was about to die. Of course, I had an appointment that evening too and had to drag myself there. The daily Pokemon Go outings were done at the mall or kept to 20 minutes just to do a few things. It still wore me down.
Let’s be honest. It’s clear I got heat exhaustion and wasn’t able to let my body fully recover. I’d like to say this weekend will be different, but I’m taking my son to mini-golf with two of his friends for his birthday. It’s next weekend, but I don’t have him then, so I’m celebrating it now. We’re going to do Pokemon Go at the mall and a park on the coast where there’s a breeze and lots of benches. If I feel too out of it, we’ll come home to play games instead. Don’t think I’ll be able to touch Darwin & the Avenging Elf until Wednesday if I’m lucky. Just so hard to focus even on typing in edits for more than 30 minutes when I’m drained.
The only progress I’m making is on the Lego Gotham City set because that’s easier to tinker with before bed. Not sure if I should be proud of this since it means I’m not getting anywhere with my writing. Finished the general notes for the thief group idea, so I’m letting that simmer. I really thought I’d be able to type in 243 pages of edits by this time and dive into Darwin & the Demon Game. Guess that’s going to be a post-Oswego trip project since I won’t be taking it with me. I think I’m just going to focus on the notebook stuff like ‘Phi Beta Files’ and maybe preparing the thief group one. I might take time to reorganize all of my ideas, which I haven’t touched in about 5 years. Let’s see which ones still possess a spark.
Emotionally, this week has been a real beating. Tempers have run high in a few arenas and I’m getting tired of bullshit. Too many people think I’m stupid and unaware of what’s going on, but I’ve just been shrugging it off because confrontation would cost me way too much. Hypocrisy is a pain to deal with because you can never get the hypocrite to realize what they are. (Pretty sure I know someone who will agree with me wholeheartedly in the comments since he’s said all of this almost verbatim.) Anyway, I’ve spent my life playing nice and keeping my head down to avoid messy situations. Yet, they still find me and stress me out, but with me being more defenseless. I’m always in a position where I can’t fight back because I’d lose something precious even if I won the ensuing battle. It just isn’t worth it.
Another source of emotional twitchiness is someone asking me what I could do to sell my books. I explained that I need money, connections, and time to properly promote. They asked why I couldn’t just go out and at least find the connections, but it doesn’t seem to work that way. Even if I could do that now, I wouldn’t have the money and time to do much more than talk shop. Lack of time definitely means I’m barely able to even writing something much less promote my books and those of other people. I said this feels like writing is a rich person’s hobby these days, which made my heart hurt because I didn’t say it as a joke. Maybe things will change down the road, but it certainly seems I’m never going to get anywhere since I have so much else to deal with. People say my time will come or I can publish more when I retire, but I have to live that long and have enough money to stop working. Jury is out on either one considering how brutal modern society seems to be.
This week is going to be fairly busy like before with appointments on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I’m going to be trying hard to type in at least a chapter section of edits on the nights I don’t have my son. Wednesday might see even more progress since the Pokemon Go event is only from 6-7 and I get home around 2:30. Next weekend is going to be shaky since that Saturday has a ‘big’ Pokemon Go event on Saturday, but I don’t think I have to be out there for more than an hour or two. Then, I have birthday time with my son on Sunday. I’ll type in edits around all of that and maybe I’ll get further than I expected.
Goals of the week?
- Recover from heat exhaustion.
- Birthday outings with my son.
- Type in as many edits for Darwin & the Avenging Elf as possible.
- Continue working on Lego Gotham City when too tired to edit.
- You know what . . . I’m organizing my story ideas this week. Found all of my old lists and the stuff I never put into notebooks is only the superheroes of Windemere stuff AND a bunch of stand alone things. I should be able to sort through the mess and reorganize. Anything I can’t remember will be junked.
- Get extra sleep and hydrate.
- Catch more Pokemon when possible.
Legends of Windemere 
Happy Birthday to your son, Charles. I’ve discovered as I’ve matured (we don’t say aged!) I am less able to handle high heat. I’ve had times like what you described, so have a care! I’m better with cold!
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(Your 3 messages ended up in spam for some reason.)
I’m terrible with any temperature extreme. Got really bad after my first bout with Covid in 2022. The second and third bout didn’t help, but that first one is definitely when I noticed becoming more susceptible to temp extremes.
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THe birthday outings should be fun. Hope the week goes well.
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Thanks. Fingers crossed as usual.
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😁
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Do hope you recover well, the heat has been brutal here; I can completely understand how it affects everything, all that you mentioned, and for me personally that I actually want to be out, doing things, but being out at the moment is just harmful. It sucks cause it started being like this as soon as summer school vacation hit. I sadly also get the hypocrisy and ‘playing sheep to keep the peace’ part, I try to turn the frustration of it into art,
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It started getting really hot here around the end of school. I’m going to try to get better, but July is always a crazy bust month.
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For starters, Happy Birthday to your son. I hope the birthday stuff goes very well. Yeah, the heat certainly hasn’t helped even where I’m at. Then again, I was outdoors during my vacation at a music festival and it got to the 90s for a couple of days. That feeling of playing nice is unfortunately relatable and I had bad moments of people pleasing when I was younger. I can only imagine how frustrating it would be with publishing and releasing new books especially since I’ve been interested in returning to writing fiction. Society and the market has been changing rapidly. That’s not even counting the AI-generated writing aspect.
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The birthday outing went well. Just a little mini-golf and pizza. His actually birthday is next Sunday, but he’s already claiming to be 15. Says next week isn’t necessary. Kid will change his tune about wanting to get older once he hits his 30’s.
The AI-generated stuff didn’t even come to my mind, but it should have. That entire trend worries me about the future of art.
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That’s good about the birthday celebrations. Nothing wrong with mini golf. Yeah, I’m sure he’ll be feeling different about getting older once he reaches that age.
It is concerning. I experimented with AI short stories and I was shocked at how coherent it was, no grammatical errors, and it got accurate when I was messing around to see what a Hikaru no Go AI fanfic short story would look like with a prompt I came up with. The novel-length stuff is scary from what I’ve heard even though I wouldn’t use an AI program to write a whole novel in a matter of minutes. As someone who does film editing, I was very concerned when Sora was announced!
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I heard the name Sora, but don’t know what it does. With writing, I remember someone way back made a children’s book with AI over a weekend. Sold really well. Maybe that was a sign. Kind of messed up that the first industry AI is being used to take over is art. The products come from human emotion and imagination. Now, a bodiless entity will do it.
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Sora is a brand new AI program where the user can type in prompts for the AI to make a movie with what they want to happen, aesthetics, characters, etc. I believe it’s still in the beta stage, but it’s insane how it comes out with Hollywood quality CGI movies and scenes with just some basic prompts. When I was at an off-site conference for work, one of the presentations was about AI and the speaker brought this up. I was the only one who heard of Sora in that room. Even though I’m not a fan of this director, when Tyler Perry saw the Sora demo and preview, he scrapped a multi-million dollar addition/renovation to his studio because of how that program will drastically make parts of filmmaking skills irrelevant. I’m sure he’s not the only one who realized that given how many editing and cinematography jobs could be rendered null and void when this becomes widespread.
That is so crazy how someone sold a lot with an AI-generated children’s book, but I’m not surprised with the current technological zeitgeist. Even some sites right now have a required notice letting creators know they have to mention if they used any AI or not when they made something (Vimeo is one example when it comes to video content creation as I’ve noticed on my channel). AI is sadly not going away, but people need to be responsible using it.
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Sounds like Sora is going to make a lot people unemployed. AI is going to do that to many industries. Getting nervous about the results. Societal collapse maybe, but part of me is looking forward to that. Seems AI-made products are a popular gimmick and selling point.
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I decided a few years ago that I’m doing this for me. Nothing sells well without the promo, and any time and money for that has to take second place to everyday life. Still, someone finds and enjoys the books when I release them. Keep moving forward even if it’s baby steps.
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A young adulthood (15-38) of wanting to write for others and be recognized isn’t easy to shake. I spent most of my life working towards being a struggling or recognized author, so it’s a core personality part that is no longer relevant. It’s made worse by learning how a handful of people worked behind my back to get me to fail. Even though some thought they were doing it for my own good, they trashed a life-long dream and I can’t see any way to try again. The industry is harsher and I barely have time to rest much less write even during ‘summer vacation’.
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FWIW, Lego before bed sounds like a good strategy. It lets your mind relax so you get to sleep more easily.
For the career anxiety, I feel you brother.
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It’s been somewhat helpful. Once I lay down, my brain goes into panic mode.
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That is a sad possibility with Sora when it comes to video production and even animation since it’s CGI-based visuals anyway. Even the brand new computers have built in AI like what Google and Apple just came out with. With societal collapse due to AI, you just reminded me of Project 86’s Omni concept albums which involve a dystopia set in the 2040s where AI gets merged with some humans with disastrous results as a company is lead by an autocratic inventor. AI-made stuff as a marketing gimmick just seems weird.
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All of that sounds scary.
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Very much so.
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