Today was a sick day for me. I started feeling unwell last night and made it an early one, but still felt like crap once I did get up. I was sorely tempted to go into work anyway, but I think I made the right call in staying home. I feel better now and won’t be risking passing it on to anyone else tomorrow now.

I had intended to do some writing, treating it like a snow day. Much like those recent snow days, however, I didn’t do any writing today either. I did manage to finish a book, however: The Love of Summer, by Sarah Thompson. It was a very neat story, and I posted a short review on Goodreads about it, if you’re curious. Definitely a good read for those who love romance or LGBT fic in general.

Other than that, I’ve carted around a notepad and pen to jot down notes and ideas for my WIP, and a few other things that I’ve thought about lately. I’ve written absolutely nothing for any of that, but I did carry it around and burned a few calories at least, I guess?

I do have Ideas, at least, and there are some deadlines coming up, so here’s hoping that helps me buckle down and start writing.

I looked to see when I last posted on here before starting this, and did a double-take when I saw it was the 19th. What even is time, I wondered. Then I remembered while it’s dated the 19th, or Sunday, I started it late Saturday and posted it after midnight. So it’s technically not two days ago, but it was. Or something.

Anyway.

Time has been weirder than usual these last few days, thanks to Snowmageddon 2020, which continued last night and into today. We finally managed to carve a snowy path (see picture) down to our cars and cleared them out, and we both got to leave our property for the first time since Thursday evening. I also cleared out our dryer vent, and we’re doing our first load of laundry now as I type. Exciting times.

I read somewhere that snow days are a great time to catch up on your writing, and that is excellent advice. Advice I did not heed, granted, but excellent nonetheless. I’d like to say I didn’t get much done because I was shovelling all the time, or because we had no power, but neither are true (thankfully in the latter instance). The reason was when I wasn’t shovelling (I did do some, after all), I was either relaxing / recovering or playing video games, which I suppose counts as relaxing.

So was it a relaxing weekend? Hell no. Even though we only went approximately 17.5 hours without power (Friday 3:30pm to Saturday 9:00am) it was still stressful, especially as our pipes seemingly froze yesterday, though they’re fine now. Phew. We weren’t able to shovel ourselves out straight away because I am not in shape and there was a lot, so having that hanging over our heads until this morning sucked. I’m grateful that I had a snow day today so that I could carve out our vent and finish the driveway, not to mention making a grocery run in the afternoon.

The topic of writing did come up, however, and I imposed a new deadline on myself. I did have one in mind, but I’ve said it outloud (or in chat, shh), and now I’m posting it here, so I have to stick to it. That’s how these things work, right? It’s for a secret project and I’ve said I’d get it done by the end of the month, and now it’s out and into the universe so it’ll take care of itself. Yes.

I’m kidding. Mostly.

I do work better with a deadline, however. It may be a little short to say I’ll complete it by  January 31st, but for me the closer I am to said deadline to harder I work. It’s a problem, yes, but at least I’m self-aware enough to address it. Or attempt to, at any rate. It’s how I shovel out my own snowy path, only replace ‘snow’ with ‘word.’ Word-y path.

How do you write best? Do you need a deadline looming in the near-distance to drive you onward, or do you need a regimented schedule to write X amount of words per day to keep on track? Is it something else entirely? Feel free to discuss if you’d like.

Either way, here’s hoping we both can start writing in some way, shape, or form, and that it’ll snowball from there.

So, we got a bit of snow last night. Ok, technically Friday night into Saturday morning, as I’m writing this after midnight on Sunday morning, but still. It’s a lot.

We’re mostly dug out, just need to finish the front walkway tomorrow, and hopefully our neighbour will plow out our driveway too. This picture is pre-snowplow on our road, but we’re very fortunate in that both our cars aren’t buried. They’re hardly touched at all, actually, while some of my friends in the city can’t find theirs. They’re literally buried under mounds of snow.

On the not-so-lucky front, we were one of the many who lost power, from 3:30pm Friday until about 9:00am Saturday morning. It made for a long, boring night, but the worst was waking up around 4:30am and feeling how cold it was in here. I normally like it cool, but any part of me I move outside of the covers was so cold it almost hurt, wow. Very grateful that NL Power worked so diligently to get things back on by the time we got up.

Today felt extra long as well, since the cold got us up early, albeit just in time for the power to come back on. We waited for the plow to come by, then shovelled out most of the way around the house before calling it quits. No wind, which is amazing after the gales that blew last night into the wee hours, but man, was it cold.

Tonight has been relaxing, and I actually tempted fate by playing some PC games. I picked up the new Dragonball Z: Kakarot game, even thought I’ve never watched a single episode of the show, but it’s fun. I also dove back into Heroes of the Storm after seeing some interesting news about it on Twitter. Now I’m off to bed and about to read some more of The Priory of the Orange Tree, which is great so far, by the by.

Hope everyone’s having a good weekend, and that you’re dug out and your power’s still on if you’re in NL like me!

Wow, that was weird to type.

Anyway, Happy New Year to everyone. No matter how good (or bad) 2019 was to you, here’s hoping 2020 is much better to you and yours.

Last year was pretty good to me overall. There were highs and lows, like any year, but I’m going to focus on the positive in order to get 2020 started off on the right foot. So, with that said, here’s my 2019 in (brief) review:

• Writing-wise, I had a short story published in Dystopia from the Rock and Flights from the Rock, both from Engen Books, and a 100 word drabble in Apocalypse from Black Hare Press. It was also revealed that I’ll have another two 100 word drabbles in Black Hare Press’s upcoming collections this year, one in Love and one in Hate. And, last but not least, I managed to place third in a sci-fi writing contest hosted by WANL. So it was a pretty great year in that regard, and more that I can’t announce just yet for 2020.
• Reading-wise, I fell short of my goal of reading 25 books for the third straight year. I came close, finishing 6 in December and the 20th and last on New Year’s Eve (Sanctuary by Tanith Frost, if you’re curious), and I’m hoping to carry that momentum forward into this year.
• I played more guitar in 2019 than the previous year, though I didn’t use the Gretsch as much as I should have. Still, I’ve rediscovered my fondness of the instrument, even if I don’t play at the same level or frequency, and I hope to keep that up as well.
• On top of reading more and digging into older books I’ve bought, I made an earnest attempt to get through my way-too-deep collection of unwatched movies and unplayed video games as well. I’d like to think I made a decent dent into both, but I’m ashamed to admit how much more of each remain. I’m probably not alone in that (right?) but at least I’m trying to limit myself. We’ll see if 2020 continues that trend or if I dig myself deeper.
• Last, but not least, my wife nudged me into joining a D&D group with her in the city. I own a TON of the older books (they’re staring at me from a foot or so away as I type, mainly several unused 4th edition books), but she found a group looking to play the newest 5th edition in its own homebrew setting and we decided to give it a shot. I’m very glad we did, not only because we made some great new friends there, but because I’ve finally had a chance to really play the game after years of bad attempts and incidents, hah. Too many to get into here, but suffice it to say it was great to finally get a chance to play.

Those are the broad strokes of my 2019. There were other bright spots – our annual trip down south, seeing my father-in-law and his sister-in-law in July, getting to enjoy a trip to Boston with one of my best friends – but those are more specific, I suppose.

What I’m hoping to do, and what I’ve almost positively said here before, is to be better about blogging and talking about things like that in real time, or much closer to it. I’m not going to be so blindly ambitious to say I’ll do it every day, but I think once a week may be more do-able, so let’s go with that.

On that note, I think it’s time to go and get started on my 2020 reading challenge. Here’s to an outstanding year for us all.