Double Time
Damn. Spooky season is almost at an end. That went by so fast.
On the one hand, I'm glad time is moving quickly because it means the things I don't like don't last. On the other, everything I want to cherish is speeding by just as quickly. I expected this month to last a good long while, but it's ending this Friday. Which means that were right about to hit November-December, which means that 2027 is right around the corner. For a while, I've been making some plans for next year to sort of push some things out of my way and out of my mind, but the fact that it's almost next year has really made it clear that I'm going to have to deal with all those things very soon. I'm only two months away from having to edit all of my stories and update the visual look of this site. Those are some big fish to fry. In addition to all the updates, I'm going to list out some goals I have for the end of the year. I'll try to keep them reasonable and within my capabilities, which might mean that they won't be all that much.
Encyclopedia
I've finally fixed the sidebar. Hallelujah. That was pissing me off since I made it, so that feels really good. I kept trying to make it sticky to no avail, and just yesterday I discovered the reason it wasn't working was a stupid little overflow property on the scanlines. Phew. I just hope that deleting that property won't cause any errors of its own.
My goals for the end of the year with the Encyclopedia are: (1) post the Divine conflicts article; (2) post either the Imperiatorium OR the Finite Omniverse article, have to commit to finishing one of those; (3) provide a simple illustration for True Reality; (4) and make some more efforts to make it look better. The last one includes adding the hover tooltip function (which will be easy) and replacing the "back to Encyclopedia" link with a small version of the logo on the sidebar. Those seem pretty doable.
Site General
I don't believe I did anything that important for the site over the course of this week. I don't have any goals either, since making the site look good will be my overarching 2027 goal.
Writings
This is the big one, obviously. First, I need to rewrite and fix typos for all the blurbs because those aren't great right now. Most important though are the stories. After planning Viking Burial out, I realized that no matter what I do, it's going to be a long one. Not absurdly long, but definitely the longest out of all the stories I've posted thus far. (We'll say 12,000-18,000 words?) Since it's twice as long as normal, I think it's perfectly fine to take twice as long to finish it. So I'm shooting for end of November as the due date. I'm splitting it into six micro-chapters of about 2,000 words each, and I'm done with one and a half so far... yeah, writing's been slow, but I'm making progress. I'm starting to get consistent with an hour of writing in the evenings at the cost of a healthy sleep schedule.
Once I finish Viking Burial, I need to finish one more story in December. I'm not sure yet what I'll do but for my own sake I'll make it a short one. I hope I can also post the next three chapters of Eternal City before the year ends, which would include finishing up the chapter I'm currently working on and then uploading the ones I already have written. There's one I might rewrite because it highkey sucks.
I'm feeling more confident with writing in a way. In the past, I've been kind of apologetic about the stuff I've written. Like I'll say that something sucks as a sort of defense mechanism in case someone happens not to like it. I'm not responsible for the mistakes my child makes if I've already disowned it, right? I can join in with the finger pointing and say, I agree! I knew that one was a rotten apple! First of all, that's not fair to my child. Second of all, this is an issue every artist faces and trying to protect myself like this doesn't mean that everybody will somehow like everything I wrote. That's just not how it works. I'm a little more okay with that now.
Life
I have a nasty habit of immediately spending some of my meager payday money on some show with the intent of watching it gradually over time, only to binge watch it to the end in the course of a day or two. The latest subject of this wildly irresponsible financial practice was the anime Lazarus (and also this movie called The Raid... it was on sale ok?) . I'd say it was pretty good, even though I expected more of a twist at the ending than I got. But that expectation also prompted a little bit of self reflection. Why is it that saving the entire human race is an unsatisfactory resolution for me? Do I really have such a cynical view of humanity that saving civilization doesn't seem worth my time? If so, then that's an incredibly unproductive and miserable viewpoint to have. That our species is basically good is out of the question, but surely we aren't evil enough to justify extinction. As tempting as it is to hold such a view, it's clear that it doesn't get us anywhere. Those are really the only thoughts I can articulate at the moment so yeah. For my next endeavor, I'm considering Ninja Kamui, another Adult Swim anime.
I also finally finished The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King. That was also pretty decent, although I liked The Gunslinger better. The Gunslinger is definitely a top ten book, and while this one was good, it wasn't that good. I've started The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti because I felt obligated to read it after finding out it existed. So far, I think it's well written and in some ways accurate to reality, but again, this kind of pessimissm is unpopular for a reason- it doesn't get anything useful done. I need to update my Enjoying section on the home page. I haven't done that yet because I only just finished the King book and I'm also still listening to the Ear album (plus I've been forgetting to). I don't know what it is about that album, but I literally cannot stop listening to it. It's like they took some feeling that I didn't even know existed and compressed it into listenable form. If the passage of time had a sound, then this album would capture it perfectly. Would recommend.
That's all I've got. See you later, and go listen to the Ear album.
