The word of
the week is tangible.
July 31 –
Head-hurty?
I
unintentionally pained my head while writing these last few weeks...
It's been
interesting trying to get a workable writing set up here at home. I don't have
an office space that I can use with a desk and chair, and writing on the love
seat in the front living room has become uncomfortable for long periods because
I don't quite fit: my legs are about 6 inches too long. I'm certainly not going
to sit with my legs propped up like I did before either, as that caused many other
issues.
What I HAVE been doing to write for the last few weeks is sitting upright on my bed, with
my back propped up against a wall kilos and my laptop across my legs. This was
comfortable and seem to work well for sound isolation, as I was able to close
myself off in my bedroom along with my Zik headphones to get some editing done.
What I didn't
realize is that I was also stretching the tendons along my neck and back,
and today I really felt the results. The top of my head became painful and
sensitive, to the point where it felt like someone was pressing down on top of
my head continuously unless I lay down flat. While it wasn't so bad yesterday
morning, it was painful to sleep and today I had to use ice packs every hour
just to be comfortable while at work; frustrating.
After looking
into the matter online tonight, and discovering that my bed 'workspace' was
likely to cause, I decided to change my setup to this:
 |
| It's awkward but cheap, and it's working for now. 20 chapters to go! |
While it's
not ideal, I can still stand for an hour or so at a time, and take short breaks
even then to sit down or do other things to give my muscles some relief. My
head was already feeling better by the end of the evening tonight, so it looks
like I was right about my posture on the bed affecting my neck and head.
One way or
another, I'm going to finish this edit in the next few weeks!
Aug 1 – Have
Time, Will Book?
You know what
I really miss? Reading.
With
everything I've got on my plate currently, not to mention all the things that
have been going on in my life this year, a few things had to go and one of
those was the time for reading regularly each week.
It wasn't a
conscious decision at first, but it's been one rather that crept up on me. I
used to read every night before bed, sometimes for hours until well after
midnight before turning out the light. But in the last five years, this has gone
by the wayside as I've become more sensitive to brighter lights at night, to
where anything like a regular reading light is painful to me after 9 PM: I
can't do it any more. Besides, the light would just keep me up later, as I'm usually asleep well before 11:30pm most nights and waking up around 6am: meh.
Since this
was the only time I had to spare, my reading habit fell by the wayside.
However, the birthday gift of my new Kindle Paperwhite with a soft backlight a
few weeks ago has meant that I've been able to read every night before bed,
though my selection is limited to only the ebooks I have. There's close to a hundred books on my shelves that I haven't read yet, and it bothers me that I probably
won't get to them until 2018, given that I still have to get my business off
the ground as well and complete the second half of my second novel... darn it.
Still, being
able to read at night again is a significant improvement, and I'm complementing
it with bringing my girlfriends old Kindle with my everywhere I go, so I can
sneak in a few chapters here and there. I'm justifying this by loading her
Kindle with books about writing, with all sorts of advice about the craft as
well as the business side of things. This is all to make the most efficient use
of my time, especially when I'm on the bus or otherwise waiting for something.
Unfortunately, it appears I'm too late to use the Shelfie service, which shut down suddenly in early 2017 after three years of operation in Vancouver, BC. The service was an
excellent one for bibliophiles: you took a picture of your bookshelf, and their
technology matched up your physical book copies with e-books available from
their catalog of over 2100 publishers, most of which were free!
Aug 2 – Kiki's
Delivery Service
Tonight was
anime Wednesday!
Once a month
this year, the Cineplex theater over at Tillicum has been showing animated
films by Hayao Miyazaki! It's extremely rare to see any sort of Anime film in the
theater, and doubly so for anything by Studio Ghibili, Miyazaki's famous
company.
Tonight's
feature was Kiki's Delivery Service, among the best anime films made to date and a true delight to watch. My girlfriend and I traveled under the
smoke-filled skies, arriving eagerly at the theater to get excellent seats in
the middle rows. The theater was mostly full, attesting to the excellence of
the film being shown and was even introduced by a local radio host whose specialty
is critiquing films.
The
particular copy we saw was digitally remastered, with incredibly immersive
sound and subtitles, so that the original audio was preserved. While I already own a
Blu-ray copy of the movie, it was a wonderful experience to watch on the big
screen, since the details were so luscious and a delight to the eye.
The film
series continues over the next two months, with Castle In The Sky, Princess
Monanoke and Howl's Moving Castle all playing bigger-than life in
the theaters. Of the three, I think that Princess Monanoke would be the
one I want to see the most, as I think it's the most beautiful Miyazaki film
and one very open to interpretation by the audience.
Can we have more
films like these on the big screen, please?
Aug 3 – Heat
and Smoke
It's a little
smokey around here this week.
Smoke from
the massive wildfires afflicting the interior of the province of BC has been
drifting westward, and it's reached Vancouver Island this week, as you can see(
and I'm glad that I have a HEPA air filter running in my apartment ):
 |
| BC needs to butt out, big time this summer... |
Victoria is the red dot,
and we've been under air quality warnings for the last few days. There's a hint
of smoke in the air, but nothing grossly excessive, which I believe we have the ocean
breezes here to thank for. It's much better here than in places like Kelowna
and Princeton BC though, as they're wildfires this size:
While the particulate
levels haven't been excessive( 5 on a scale of 10, with 10 being considered
harmful to human health with long exposure )it has turned the sky a light orange color and shifted the sun's brightness levels in the morning
and evening. The picture below is my favorite of nearly two dozen, and reminds me of when I was
driving in the USA in 2015 with my girlfriend in the same phenomenon was
happening, turning the sunsets a brilliant orange through the hazy air:
 |
| Photo by Kyle Slavin on Instagram |
Aug 4 –
Winner, Again!
I won
something: a book!
My friend
Bob, who runs the amazing book review website Beauty In Ruins, ran a contest
this week for the latest copy of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, part of the
Gunslinger series and also being released this week as movie, starring Idris
Elba.
Go me!
I'll confess
that I've not read any of the gunslinger series, which for a while was rather a
rare duck on bookshelves for years until the initial stories were released as a full novel in
1988. I've read glowing reviews of the series, many of which laud it as King's
best work and I'm eager to find the time to truly appreciate it when I can in the near future. In the meantime, go check out Bob's blog: he's a
busy guy who really knows how to do great reviews, with an affinity for horror
and fantasy:
How ironic
that I mention I don't have time to read, and I win a free book... ha!
Aug 5 – BIG BOOM
is not Better!
Today was a
war-film day.
After a
much-needed massage( my neck was a taut mess! )my girlfriend picked me
up and we went to go see Christopher Nolan's latest film, Dunkirk, in
IMAX.
It was
gorgeous, with sweeping vistas and a well-considered color palette layered atop
multiple story threads that tied together the plot of the less-than-two-hour film.
There was a lack of gore and violence for violence sake, which I appreciated as
the tale of Dunkirk is one of bloody victory snatched from the jaws of defeat,
not attrition through aggression. I will say that the film had some excellent
moments, enough so that I was willing to forgive the artistic license of visual cleanliness, The real Dunkirk was a mess, a shambles of wrecked vehicles,
abandoned gear and sunken ships, all strewn about with thousands of dead
soldiers who didn't make it home:
My positive
impression of the film was colored by the insane audio being pumped out of the
IMAX system - IT WAS TOO LOUD BY FAR! Even with earplugs, too
many times the bass was blasting so badly that it shook my seat... and the
theatre wasn't a 'D-Box' equipped one, either! Such unnecessary decibels
detracted from the experience for me instead of enhancing.
While it was
nice sitting in the air-conditioned theater, we didn't really need to cool off
as the temperatures today were significantly less sweltering. It was especially
noticeable at night: all this week since Tuesday, I needed to run a fan in my
room to keep myself cool enough to sleep, but I didn't need to tonight. Temperatures
dropped to about 14°C overnight, compared to the mid-20s since the end of July:
much cooler and it wasn't for the still-poor air quality, I would've left my
window open.
All things
considered, I'm glad that I'm living in a basement apartment this week. The
only direct sunlight hitting the place is in the late afternoon, so temperatures
are usually moderate unless it's extremely humid( and I have a dehumidifier
I can use in that case )so it's rarely uncomfortable to be at home on even
the hottest days.
Which in
Victoria, since we're right next the ocean, isn't really saying much!
Aug 6 –
Health and How Far?
Here's a
double update for you two-day:
Health-wise,
I'm feeling significantly better. For most of this week, I was able to sit
upright to work with minimal or no discomfort, not needing any of the regular
chair adjustments / extra padding to position myself 'just right' hour to hour
- yes! I fully credit the five deep-tissue massage sessions I've had with
getting me back on track: they've released the massive pent-up tension I'd been keeping in my abdominal area. This has had the added benefit of
normalizing my digestion again, to where I can eat full meals without any
issue, though I am taking small doses of digestive aids with each one due to my
lack of a gallbladder, which helps. I've even started getting hungry again, right
when I should thanks to my extremely regular mealtimes - also a great sign of
normalcy!
Novel-wise,
the editing is going very well! I've been at it full-tilt for the last three
weeks, managing anywhere from half to a full chapter a day and I'm expecting to
get the halfway mark by the end of the day tomorrow! This is really exciting, as
I'm seeing the book in my head what I want it to be on the page in front of,
sentence by sentence. As well, I've incorporated dozens of additional notes
culled from e-mails I sent to myself over the last two years and already the
story reads far more smoothly than it did before with all the little details
supporting it strongly.
Since it's a
long weekend( and a three-day work week for me coming up! )I'm spending
as much time of the day as possible editing, which is as it should be. Getting
my mind inside the story and pulling the ladder in after me is the only way to
keep the narrative flowing inside my head; all else is secondary right now.
All for this week: next week, much of the same, but with additional style!
One thing I
forgot to mention is that my weight seems to have stabilized in the last two
weeks. I'm now up to 152 pounds and holding, which I think is a decent weight
for someone who's not regularly working out. Later in the year I'm looking to
start some serious training, in addition to the light flexibility stretches
that I've been doing for the last month to get my body used to moving around
more often. Now that I've had excellent success with massage therapy, I want to
keep my body limber and start in on the next level of fitness.
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