#203 - Breakfast and Seneca

We slept in until ten AM and would have slept longer were it not for the breakfast plans, we had made with our friends. Robyn and I hadn’t seen them since before Christmas and it was nice to catch up.

Back home we did some things around the house, then watched the rest of the “Detective Harry Hole,” on Netflix. Then I went down to the kitchen to whip up a batch of Chicken Ruby for our Sunday night dinner. The chicken had marinated overnight, but I still had the labour-intensive task of making the Makhani sauce from scratch. But boy was it worth the hour and a half I spent doing that. So tasty and we have enough leftover for another meal.

I watched some YouTube videos while Robyn did some things for the kiddo who is flying out to Halifax early tomorrow morning to go visit his sister and celebrate his birthday by wandering around town. Something he started doing a few years ago and has now become his birthday tradition.

I managed to get some reading done today as well. A story by one of my writing teachers that he mentioned in the Advanced Settings Class. A story called “Playing in the Streets,” that he used to illustrate the connectedness of character to setting. The setting is the character, and the character is the setting. It’s a weird thing to say, but once you start to understand writing and storytelling it starts to make sense.

I’ll end my night by finishing off that story and then I will continue watching the classes on Monday night, hopefully with a fuller understanding of what he was talking about.

With the kiddo gone to Halifax for the week, it will be a quiet week for the two of us and a test run at being empty nesters. I’m sure we will both enjoy the lack of daily requests and needs that the kiddo can manifest in a day. It’s unlikely that we will run out of milk in the middle of the night either and wake up expecting to have a nice cup of tea only to face a bitter disappointment.

I see some of the publishers and retailers of online books are trying to mitigate the onslaught of AI slop. Mostly because it is costing them money. Places like Barnes and Noble have limited indie authors to 100 books or less. Even D2D may charge a monthly or yearly fee for books that don’t sell. It seems so authors are getting upset by this and even though no on likes a price increase, something must be done to stop all these computer-generated books from flooding the already flooded market.

And as some people have already stated, these are the first measures being deployed against a problem that no one has the answers to yet. Time will tell how this all settles out, but for now I think it is the correct thing to do for a large company like Amazon or Barnes and Noble to make it to costly for AI booksellers to list so many items every day. Charging for it will decimate the non-human creators and keep them from that market. If there’s no money in it than why would they bother.

As I struggle to learn the art of storytelling the idea of AI’s replacing this very human art form rides for free in the back of my mind. I still believe that humans will seek out stories written by other humans, that the computer mind will never truly satisfy the needs that a good story supplies us with.

I won’t be throwing my hands up in surrender anytime soon. Half the fun of this journey is all the learning and self discovery.

And yet, did I get all that writing done that I wanted to? No. I chose recuperation instead. I finally feel like I am back to normal and will be tackling my assignment early this week instead of leaving to the end. But I have said that before.

And I want to get some thoughts down on the sci-fi story I wrote last week for my assignment as well. I think it will make for what I am calling a great practice novel.

I need the word count anyway.

I have managed to put myself in a three thousand words a day situation for the remainder of the month again. Writing long blog posts is losing its charm, and it gets a bit tedious trying to think of things that may or may not be interesting even to me.

And I have talked before about my desire to make the majority of my writing fiction as opposed to blog posts. And to maybe have some of the post resemble articles. My mentor does this all the time, usually regarding the business of writing and copyright. Some from other disciplines and thoughts about how that might translate into the writing world.

So, I need to have these fiction projects going to keep me on pace. And I have to remember I am trying to become a fiction writer, not a blogger.

Tomorrow I am going to set myself a challenge to write this blog but also write at least 500 words of fiction. I am choosing a low number count for fiction because I am more likely to do it if the cost seems low. I may write 2000 words as a result.

It’s a plan. It’s going into my day planner with a little checkbox beside it. Maybe run that as a streak. Write fiction every day. No word count minimum; just start by showing up to do it.

Right now, it’s always easier to jump on this here blog and get typing.

I think this will help get me to where I want to end up.

It’s decided then, tomorrow I start my fiction streak.

The time is right to add another streak.

In other news, my back is on the mend. Two days of not sitting at a desk chair or Got Train seat seems to have helped. I also did some stretches and was as careful as I could getting myself out of chairs, the bed, or making too fast movements.

One thing that has worked for me in the past, is sleeping on the floor. No mattress, no cushions, just a pillow and a blanket. It seems counterintuitive, but it works. I thought the discomfort of a hard floor would make me feel worse, but it was the opposite. The last time I did it I sprang to my feet feeling energized.

I watched a similar idea about sitting too much in chairs on YouTube today. It was a video from a young guy in his twenties who was already starting to feel old and stiff. He decided to start sitting on the floor, squatting and using chairs as little as possible. This led to him designing a desk that was usable at floor height, chair height and standing height, so he could vary his posture throughout the day. And it seemed to work well for him. He feels more limber and spritelier that he did before.

Maybe we humans weren’t meant to be comfortable all the time.

That statement is probably true for so many areas of life. And of course, discomfort is relative. What I can withstand may be much less than what you consider possible.

I think it was Seneca who would once a year put on rough spun clothes and go without food or washing. To put himself in the worst possible position and experience what it would be like. This freed up his mind from worry because he knew what the worst-case scenario would be like for him and he had survived it.

Those Greek guys were a smart bunch. Every time we go looking for answers about life and it’s greater meaning they seemed to have already mined those depths.

If Seneca were around today his catch phrase would be, “Been there, done that!”

Except in Greek, of course.

Ἐκεῖ ἦν, τοῦτο ἐποίησα!

Well…it’s coming up on eleven PM and I am getting tired. I have an idea of what the work week has in store for me, so I better get some shuteye while I can.

Good night all and until tomorrow.