Vacation, Vacation, Vacation!

The word of the week is edification.

August 3 – Catchup

Life is going well.

For those of you haven't been keeping up to date on the blog, I am far happier these days than I have been for many years, professionally and personally.

Professionally, my job is a good balance of challenge and stress without necessitating overtime or me taking anything home with me after clocking out. No after-hours phone calls or evening work. It's been a wonderful experience and seems to keep getting better month-to-month in terms of the quality of people that I'm working with and the overall office environment.

Personally, I met a wonderful woman last year, who became close to me three months ago and since then we've been spending the majority of our free time together. Both of us are constantly surprised by all the different things that we find we have in common, every time we see each other. I never thought I would have this kind of connection with someone and it's a uniquely precious thing, indeed.

If you would've told me a year or even six months ago that I'd be feeling the way I do right now, I'm not sure I would have believed you. It's been an extraordinary change for me, though not one that I feel I am incapable of experiencing fully; quite the contrary.

I'm fully committed to enjoy my life as it is now and making it better every day.

August 4 – Writing Weekend, Weekday?

My job does have its upsides, more often than I give it credit for...

Today, for instance: it’s my EDO( Earned Day Off )so it meant that I had a four days off, the first long stretch in quite some time for me. While some people are tempted to take their EDO’s on Mondays or Fridays, I've been quite happy so far with having a Tuesday off every other week.

It's meant that I have a day where I can get around town to do what I need to do or just relax: it's my choice. Strange thing is, I don't sleep in anymore: having acclimated myself to getting up early for work, I do so even on my days off. I don't see this as a bad thing, it just means that when I'm not working I have to ensure I don't waste the morning, this time is fairly precious these days.

In combination with the holiday yesterday, I ended up with a four-day weekend which helped contribute to reducing my stress levels. I've been giving serious thought to finding a hammock, but given that I don't have anywhere to put it that's in any way private save hauling it to Beacon Hill Park, it's only a passing fancy for now.

Today’s EDO also meant that I could get a good chunk of writing done and I did, completing an entire chapter by late evening which was extraordinarily satisfying. As my game plan for the next few months is to try to complete at least two chapters a week on average, I am pleased that today was added to that total.

It was especially satisfying that I didn't have to summon the energy after working, either.

August 5 – Two Rooms and a Cubicle

What sort of spaces do you inhabit?

I've spoken on this topic before, where people need three spaces: work, home and somewhere in between – wherever that is. For me, that would be a room that's isolated enough from the outside world that I can write or relax in equal measure, but I don't have that where am right now.

What I do have is my work and my home. At work, I have my own corner workspace, probably the best I could hope for without having an actual office which I’d likely have to share with someone.

At home, I have my sleeping space and the living room, where I have my computers and entertainment devices. It’s a shared space though, so in addition to keeping it tidy I have to fairly frequently give it up to my sister’s use, which isn’t always convenient for us.

Hence the need for third place, which I've yet to establish. The SkyLounge is nice, but I have to bring everything I need with me and there's always the possibility of someone else climbing up those same stairs to try to enjoy the same solitude that I want to use – not ideal, that.

I've no real solution at this time, so while I'm thinking about it, I'll leave you with this: a virtual tour of the ISS in orbit around our planet. They really know how to make use of limited space!

August 6 – Scared of Smart?

Someone called me a genius today and I wasn't sure how to take it.

It was at my writing group and during the discussion, one of the regular members came right out and said that they considered me to be a genius. I was a little taken aback and I immediately downplayed the compliment, which in hindsight perhaps wasn't the best thing for me to do - from or them.

All my life, I've been told repeatedly how intelligent I am. I know I'm smart, real smart, but in ways different than people who can do logarithmic math in their head while chewing gum. 

I think is that I'm just not comfortable with people calling me a genius, which to me seems like an ego trip… and I don’t have an ego, or at least a palpable sense of pride without cause.

There are many quotes on genius out there, so many that it's hard to really wrap your brain around what the word really means. As I've shown above, for today's entry I've gone back to the Latin root where genius is associated with the creative spark. I think I'm pretty comfortable with that definition, as it doesn't posit a sort of hyper-intelligence but rather one that looks deeper into things to find associations that others miss and to express them creatively in new ways.

Add a sense of humility to it all and I think I'm good with that definition, for now.

August 7 – Beer Bleh

After work today, I went out to the Yates St. Taphouse to celebrate the end of a long week, having two pints with my sister over a nice meal.

Apparently that wasn’t a good idea.

By the time 8pm had rolled around, I’d managed to develop a headache, which was confusing to me. By all accounts, two beers shouldn’t have done a thing to me, but for whatever reason they combined with the weather change to make my head complain somewhat moderately. Not enough to derail me for the night, but enough to make it uncomfortable to do more than simple tasks and light reading. Frustrating but not debilitating, thankfully.

Over the last month, I’ve had more to drink on average than usual, so again that’s been somewhat confusing, in that I haven't felt any ill effects prior to today. Certainly not from two beers.

What it did do is convince me not to have anything to drink this week coming up. In addition to saving you money, it will ensure that I have a clear head as well as give my liver break from any sort of alcohol processing. What with all the weather changes we've been having this last month, it's probably a good idea.

You could say I'm trying to get 'ahead' of the game.

August 8 – Let The Vaykay Begin!

I woke up this morning and I was on vacation!

To be specific: I have 10 days of vacation time to enjoy, going back on the 19th of this month. Which is great, as I only have a three day workweek and then it's the weekend again…

I really do love my current job for this sort of thing: not having to slog through week after week, hoping for holidays that I don't have to work and too-short vacations that seem so incredibly far away.

Nope, I have to say I'm pretty happy with how things are set up right now. Especially as I making use of my vacation time to pursue the creation of my novel trilogy. I can't imagine sitting on my butt for an entire week doing nothing, though perhaps swinging in a hammock with a stack of unread books next to me does have a certain appeal to it.

Still, I'd rather be writing my own books at the moment.

This time next year, I hope that I'll be able to afford to go somewhere nice with my girlfriend. My first choice would be to head back out East to visit friends and family, as it's been a few years. Next might be somewhere like London or Paris, though I wouldn't mind seeing Australia and New Zealand to do the Lord Of The Rings Tour… g33ky, I know, but then so’s my girlfriend…

One thing I'm very happy about is that I'm not needing to escape. By that I mean that I don't need to use my vacation to ‘run far and fast’ away from my job in order to keep my sanity:

What I do I know right now is that I am extremely happy to be on vacation, where my time is my own to do with as I please. I'll be making the best use of it possible while still finding time to relax for a few hours every day…

After all, vacations are about enjoying yourself, right?

August 9 – B5 and My Book

Settling in for a few hours down at Moka House this afternoon, I managed to read a fair number of chapters from my second books first draft. I took the step of converting the document to an e-book, so that I can easily read it on my tablet or phone. This is important so that I can should familiarize myself with the entire set of chapters as I've written to date, to better dive back into the story I've created so far without having to carry awkward piles of papers around with me.

My girlfriend and I spent the evening watching a few episodes of Babylon 5. We're working our way through the DVD sets and this week were up to the second season, which is when the action really starts to get rolling. It's a shame that the DVD transfers have such terrible conversions for the CGI, but it's more than made up for by being able to watch it with someone who appreciates the show as much as I do. It makes each episode all the more special and they feel like new again.

One thing I will be doing on my vacation is resting up, physically. It's frustrating that both my arms and my legs hurt, though in different ways. My arms you probably already know about from years past, but the leg thing is really proving to be worrisome to me, as the muscles still hurt over a months now after riding my bike for an hour around town. This is on top of my right leg's knee tendon still being swollen on a regular basis, a year and a half after I injured it all running briefly one day.

What's frustrating is that I have to wait until September to find out if I have specialist appointment with a physiologist, who hopefully will be able to shed some light onto whatever the heck is going on. Until then, I'll be taking it easy, not riding my bike anywhere this summer and ensuring my walks are not so extended that I aggravate whatever is going on.

It's maddening to be afraid of hurting yourself just by doing everyday activities. Then again, if all I'm doing is working in an office daytime and writing otherwise, that's not too bad.

Tomorrow's Monday, not a holiday and yet I still get to do whatever I want while still getting paid for it. Such is the power and pleasure of vacation and I intend to make the most of it this week and part of next week, too. I have enough to occupy me all my waking hours for the next 10 days and while I don't plan on enjoy myself to exhaustion, I do plan on making the best use of my time off so that I can go back to work with the feeling of accomplishment when it's all said and done.

**blog edited AGAIN for silly voice-recognition-induced errors on Aug.11th 9:55am PST. Sheesh!

Sounds, Smashings and Symphonies

The word of the week is symphony.

July 27 – Rockin’ Relationships

My girlfriend continues to astound me.

Now, I'm not coming at this from the position of a lovestruck paramour, but rather from someone who's been searching an extraordinarily long time and not finding what he's been looking for – until now.

For some folks, a relationship is a series of moves, shifting towards a center point determined by areas of mutual interest. By shades and degrees, two people grow closer.

For my girlfriend and I, it's been like two superconducting magnets switched on and smashing together at lightspeed. That's about as simple an explanation I can come up with right now.

For me, it’s been a revelationary experience every time I converse with her, in that she's always right there with me topically. I don't have to backtrack, explain or find a way to meet her halfway on a point where we can have some sort of common understanding… it’s just not necessary, ever.

That's so incredibly rare for me that I'm still trying to get my mind around it.

I'm not trying to say that I get bored with talking with people; not at all. Rather, I rarely have the opportunity to stretch myself mentally in conversations that are of interest to me: to date, I’ve never met someone who not only can keep up with me but can pull me along towards topics that we both find fascinating.

I think that's why we've spent so much time together of late: there's some sort of exponential and logarithmic progression to our conversations, in that they keep branching out again and again to cover areas that we both find we have common interests in, or want to explore further.

It’s also why I pinch myself on occasion, just to check that I'm not still dreaming.

July 28 – Still Pebblin’

My new Pebble Time smart watch has been amazing.

I have to confess, I don't think I'm getting my full use of it quite yet. I've mainly been using it for controlling the music on my way to and from work or while I'm going around town on foot. It's secondary use has been for seeing my notifications, including text messages that I can respond to by voice - that's been pretty cool and raised a few eyebrows of passersby who have seen me talking into my watch… possibly questioning my sanity as well, but that's neither here nor there.

The LCARS interface, using Okudagrams

A recent update this month has allowed some more customization of the watch, including a much-needed ability to adjust the timing of backlight, which at the standard 3 seconds was far too short to actually read any information before went out again. Similar tweaks are made to other aspects of the OS, which alleviated some of my minor frustrations with the watch out of the box.

In the main, my Pebble Time has done exactly what I thought it would for me: allowed me to keep my phone in my pocket and not have to unlock the thing every time I get a notification or want to reply to a message. It also means that I don't have to look down at a device while avoiding things like lamppost or traffic intersections; I can keep my I'm the road and so stay safer while walking.

I'm excited to see what else I can find to do with my Pebble Time as I continue to use it this year.

July 29 – Okudagrams

Some things are ahead of their time.

Take, for instance, the graphical displays from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The displays were a generational( pardon the pun ) leap ahead of the old scifi standard of blinking lights and buttons by the score built into control panels. Instead of dozens of man-hours of work to create a single control panel with all sorts of expensive custom wiring, ST: TNG had simple flat-glass panels lit from behind showing elegant data displays and controls, called the LCARS interface.

Brilliant, in many senses of the word.

When I first saw the designs of ST:TNG, I was hooked. I hunted down a copy of the ST: TNG Technical Manual and pored over its schematics of the Enterprise. I purchased a copy of the ST:TNG Interactive Technial Manual just to experience the tour, with all its Okudagrams:

I really like the interface. It's clean, simple and lends itself to a broad range of configurations based on tasks, to the point where one hopes that it will still eventually make it into a usable OS interface for things like Android tablets. There’s already one for the PC and I even have LCARS on my Pebble smart watch, which looks great.

There was a tribute this week to Okudagrams, marking the 30^th anniversary of their appearance, which I didn't know goes all the way back to Star Trek: The Motion Picture where they appeared in rudimentary form as background displays. Even then, they were visually striking.

Long may they be with us!

July 30 – Costume Brainwave!

What the heck do I want to be for Halloween this year?

About three months away now and as I don't like repeating myself, the question has come up in my brain several times already this year.

An Alien? Colonial Marine? Q scary creature? How about a robot?

In browsing the Internet today, I stumbled across this costume, which blew my mind:

The best part about the costume is that it's made of cardboard, so that's the cost is relatively low overall in terms of materials - labor is of course the most time-consuming thing. The second best part is that there is a complete set of plans over at Instructables.com, including how to scale it according to your size. While I'd love to build a 12 foot tall version of Soundwave, I'm certain my technical skills aren't up to the task – yet. Nor do I have a workspace where I can build it easily.

I'm still not sure, as I wouldn't mind going around as a Colonial Marine from Aliens. Those guys are all about looking like they could kick butt any day of the year at a moment’s notice.

Soundwave, though… he carries a small army around inside his chest. That’s pretty badass too.

July 31 – Smashing Stupidity!

Well, #$$@%!

Due to my klutziness, I managed to break an expensive piece of hardware today after work. I have only myself to blame, along with a sudden case of butterfingers.

It was a fairly stressful day and I was rushing about tonight in order to get things done before my writing time arrived after dinner. As my sister was using the main computer for her work, I perform some tasks on my laptop and when I was done I brought it back to the living room to charge it before dinner, as I always do in order to maintain the battery properly.

As I was moving to place the laptop down beside a table and connect the charger, it slipped in my grip and hit the table corner-first with a solid whack.

Unfortunately, my Samsung S3 phone was in the way. The result:

Farewell, old friend... it was fun.

This is a fine example of a million-to-one accident where nothing I could of done would have prevented damage to the phone. Even if had I chosen to get a tempered glass screen for my S3, the spot where the laptop corner impacted would have been outside the protection of the glass and still managed to shatter the underlay of the S3 screen beneath it. It's bad enough that the local repair shops are all quoting over $200 to fix it. So again: #$@! $%@!!!!!

The most frustrating part?

I still have 2 more payments left to go in my 3-year contract on the phone.  #$@%!!!!!

August 1 – Bionic Earbuds?

I heard something intriguing today.

As some of you may know, I'm the proud owner of a pair of Parrot Zik headphones that have active sound-canceling which tune out much of the noisy world going past my apartment's front windows. They're not perfect, but they do get rid of most of droning loud noises.

What's the next step?

It could very well be the new technology that Doppler Labs is creating, meant to live inside a pair of earbuds and allow you to literally to the world around you to your liking.

 

While they look kind of dorky at the moment, the concept behind the earbuds is sound: you can turn the base up or down in real time at a concert, adjust the pitch so you can hear the singer better or even tune out a crying baby at a restaurant. The possibilities are staggering and I hope that they managed to get the prototypes functioning well enough to consider commercial product release.

It's the next step in tuning out life's annoyances while still being able to hear what’s important.

August 2 – Splash and Shakespeare

Today was a double feature.

In the afternoon, my girlfriend and I, along with several of her friends, attended the Shakespeare By The Sea performance of The Tempest. It was being held down at Ogden Point, where all of Victoria’s cruise ships dock, on a lovely floating stage-barge set off to the side of all the busy-ness.

The performance itself was splendid! All of the actors brought their full game to the characters, easily enveloping the audience in their performances while staying true to the nuanced lines of play. It was a friendly, engaging performance made all the better by the splendid weather, with the backdrop of the placid waters inside the breakwater adding the perfect touch to the play which takes place on an island. Afterwards, the small group of us found a shady spot inside the lower eating area of a nearby café, where we discussed all sorts of fascinating topics regarding media, personal informative choice, ignorance and factual checking all rolled into one. Some great thoughts there, indeed.

A little before 10 PM, my girlfriend and I headed out to the fireworks down at Victoria Harbour, to catch the tail end of today's Symphony splash. The celebrations concluded with a rousing rendition of the 1812 overture set to the exploding fireworks in the sky – spectacular!

At least, that’s what WOULD have happened if I hadn’t screwed up the timing. 

The concert listing said it was going to end at 10pm, so I planned on meeting my girlfriend near the Parliamentary Buildings 15 minutes before that, plenty of time for the show to start. Only as I was locking my door to leave, my ears picked up the unmistakable sound of explosions in the air in the distance. Trotting to the street corner, I espied the night all glow in the direction of the harbor and cursed my over intelligent guess as to when we should have met up there.

The funny part is, this is the third big firework show that we've missed seeing together. We've probably set some kind of minor record somewhere, but all I can do is laugh.

And be early for the next show we see. Really, really early.

Thanks to my current job, not only do I get a 3-day long weekend but I also get this coming Tuesday off for total of four days, thanks to my choice of EDO( earned day off ). I'll be using the time to write, as always and I hope that my Muse will cooperate by being in fine form for the day.

Advice, Arrows and Amigas

The word of the week is prodigious.

July 20 – Whither Summer?

The summer is going by very fast.

July is almost done and August will soon be here, though from the cool weather that's moved in the last week, you'd think that July was already over. No complaints though; it was far too hot previously and most everyone here on the Island is glad to see the rain this week.

It does make you wonder where the time goes, though.

Back when I didn't have a job, my days were still pretty full. I wrote, I thought, I searched for jobs and I took time to relax each day so as not to stress out about my lack of employment or other things that were affecting my life at the time. Each day was passed in its own time and for the most part, aside from the stress, I felt that I put in as much as I've gotten out of every day gone.

Right now things are full again, but in quite different ways. Having someone special in my life to care about means that I have to really think on how I'm spending my time. Priorities being what they are, along with my rather busy day job of late, I'm finding I'm lacking energy in the evenings to do much creatively and that's really been bothering me. To the point where my shoulders are all knotted up with stress and that's just compounding the issue. At least I can recognize it now, having spent years unconsciously stressing and not recognizing the physical signs.

There is no cure for it save conscious decision: to step up and make the best use of my time every day. Just like when I was completely unsure of the future of years ago and couldn't see myself in the position I am now: prepared to move into an even better phase of my life, one step at a time.

I just have to keep taking those steps, every day.

July 21 – Trek Décor Extremis

If I owned a house, I sometimes wonder what it would look like inside.

After all, a man's home is his castle, as the saying goes and if I was a homeowner, I would have complete say over what the interior of my house would be. Maybe it would look like this guy’s place:

Steve Nighteagle has converted the interior of his Colorado cabin into the home of every Star Trek fans dreams. While it's a little much for a place that I would want to spend all my spare time in as a house, I still am agog at how complete the conversion is: it's only one step down from full-size starship interiors direct from any one of the films or television series.

My preference would be to build sets from Babylon 5, naturally, but those tended to be for the most part fairly light on cool gadgetry to please the eye. To be honest, I wouldn't build anything unless I want in a fairly huge amount of money, a which case I would have standing sets built from many of my favorite shows, including some cartoons - that's what being filthy rich is for right -  living your dreams? Being able to walk the decks, corridors and rooms of places that exist only in fiction would certainly qualify as one of my dreams and worth spending some of my money on, should it come to that.

In the meantime, I can live vicariously through the realized dreams of people like Steve.

July 22 – Slinging Arrows?

Don’t have any dodgeball leagues in your area? Is paintball too expensive?

Why not try archery tag?

My ears perked up this week when a few friends mentioned they were going to be playing at a new local gaming place called Clash Of Arrows. I used to be an archer, back in my university days( I still have my bow and arrows! )but haven’t had either the transportation or the scratch to join a local archery club, all of which meet well outside Victoria proper:

Clash of Arrows is located close to downtown, which places it within an easy cycle or bus ride. Two teams of archers take turns shooting well-padded arrows at each other, or at targets, trying to score points for a win. It looks like safe, fast-paced fun demanding a good deal of archery skilly, so I think that next time my friends are going, I will ‘tag’ along.

Sadly, they won’t let me bring my own bow.

July 23 – Amiga At 30

Has it really been 30 years?

The Amiga computer came out 30 years ago today, a machine that I far preferred to any PC of the time and still think of fondly for all that it was capable of. Imagine owning a machine that could play stereo sound as rich as an orchestra in an age when most personal computers could barely string two beeps together of different tones, or whose graphics consisted of a fantastic range of colors by the thousands compared to a limited few dozen other systems of the time.

If you're not familiar with the Amiga, it's worth your time to at least have a look at what the future looks like 30 years ago. I still have my Amiga and haul it out from time to time, though it's so sadly out of date that I can't do much more than browse nostalgically through the programs that I used to use and marvel at how elegant they still are in the usability and function. Here's a25th anniversary video by the celebrated Amiga enthusiast Eric Schwartz:

Incredibly, a good number of the games I used to enjoy on the Amiga had made their way over to Android, including classics like Battle Squadron and Another World. Dedicated developers have made software that was originally designed for the Amiga available now for android through programs like Amiga Forever, meaning lifelong fans like myself can still enjoy the classics on modern hardware like phones or tablets with minimal fuss.

Long live the Amiga!

PS - just to show how far and how fast hardware is developing, someone managed to run the original Half-Life on a WATCH!!! It’s even playable, though at that sort of screen size, you have to wonder who would bother other than those who simply want to see it running in the first place. That's the sort of challenge that keeps fans of older systems going, whose dedication and ingenuity I have to salute!

July 24 – R.J. Sawyer

More than a decade ago, I attended the 61st World Science Fiction Convention in Toronto in 2003.

There, I had the pleasure of seeing many fantasy and science fiction authors in person, garnering a wealth of experience that helped me to decide that I wanted to be numbered among their ranks someday. Terry Pratchett was there, along with Neil Gaiman, who read his memorable Hugo-award-winning short story “A Study in Emerald” to a mesmerized crowd that included yours truly.

One of the attending authors was Robert J Sawyer, author of almost 2 dozen novels, including Far-Seer, a stunning novel about sentient dinosaur-like aliens living on the moon of a gas giant. I've always liked Mr. Sawyer for his willingness to share his experiences as a Canadian author with other writers with the noble goal of helping everyone to understand how the business works.

In the most recent ( and excellent! )interview from SmallPrintMagazine.com, Robert J Sawyer gives some incredibly useful advice to amateur authors such as myself, hoping to make a living as writers in the speculative fiction field. Nuggets such as this one give me hope that I can turn my hard work into a living to carry me along year-to-year as I write my way through my life:

This is the sort of advice that you just couldn't get even 10 years ago without actually speaking to an author who had found success. Even more frustrating is that every writer can find success in a different way and with the landscape changing constantly given the proliferation of self-publishing and e-books, there's tons of new information that you have to sort through all the time for the few gems that might be useful to your particular situation.

Having somebody like Robert J Sawyer spell it out advice simply and make it easy to find on the Internet eases the uncertainty in finding my own success. I hope that I have the chance to express that to people like him in the future, once I have my feet firmly set on my own personal path.

July 25 – Alternative Toons

Since its Saturday today, let's talk cartoons!

Back in the 90’s, MTV’s Liquid Television was a strange, wonderful place, full of odd cartoon series like The Head and Aeon Flux. They were both fun and unsettling to watch, being unlike anything else on TV at the time.

The Maxx was another regular series on Liquid Television that fit that description, in spades:

The series is worth watching, as it deals with some serious issues while doing so with gorgeous animation and trippy plotlines. You can read about it here, but honestly, just watch it – I’m planning on revisiting it soon, when I can just sit down and do a rare binge-viewing of it.

To The Maxx!

July 26 – Thunder!

The clouds rolled in today – boy, did they ever!

A sun-and-cloud morning turned into an even cloudier lunchtime, with angry thunderheads moving in across the Island. It started to rain and in parts of the South Island, it poured, complete with hail:

Despite what you might think, this is a good thing. Vancouver Island dries out in the summer, with dead-brown lawns and tinder-dry trees everywhere, it’s been so dry for so long( Canada Day fireworks were cancelled in many parts of the Island )that rain like this is a welcome relief. I was actually awakened from an impromptu afternoon nap by a crash of thunder, which sounded like someone dropping a huge load of scrap metal onto the road a few blocks away – whoa!

Overall, the last week’s been rather tiring, as we switched over to a new phone system at work late last week. Oh and has many wonderful features and promises to make our job easier, the last two weeks have been fraught with bugs on top of getting used to the new system - nothing unexpected, really but it still means things have been doubly difficult on a daily basis when dealing with our usual issues related to regular operations. It also didn't help that the phone system went down completely on two separate instances, but hopefully those are the only major bugs we will have to face from this point onwards. There is much potential in the new system that I hope to see in full development soon.

In addition to being tired, the muscles in my legs have been rather painful for the last month for no particular reason. I've only ridden my bike twice and in both cases, my legs have felt like I've severely strained the muscles, which is baffling as I wasn't riding hard at any point. I've been taking it easy, to the point where I haven't trusted myself to bend my legs while bearing my full weight at any point without support, due to the way they've felt. I'll have to be sure to stretch from now on you for any bike rides, which boggles my mind. Hopefully that alleviates the issue.

This week coming up, I'm going to be writing every single night. My Muse has been unhappy with me lately as I've been unable to fully immerse myself in my fictional worlds so that I can write from that complete point of view. If I can't do that for a few hours every night, then my writing will not be nearly at the level that it needs to be in order for me to be happy with the end results.