Belated Pancake Day

As always, I struggled to get out of bed this morning at 7 am. But some how I managed it. With all this moaning, you would think I lived a hard life with each day a struggle against the world just to eek out my survival.

But no, it’s just me moaning because I am not a morning person.

It was bitterly cold outside, and I wondered if the car was going to start. The car said it was -17 C outside.

Standing on the train platform was very uncomfortable, but luckily, I had packed my neck gaiter, new insulated leather gloves, and my trusty toque.

I caught a sightly earlier train than expected and there was standing room only by the next stop. I managed to snag a seat upstairs and just sat with my eyes closed in a mindless state for the entirety of the ride.

The walk to work was quieter than usual, due to the cold or the earlier train I could not tell and also freezing cold. I was ready for the inside temperatures by the time I arrived at the studio. I immediately made myself a steaming hot cortado. The studio has a decent espresso machine. I just needed to heat some milk in the microwave and I was off to the races.

I made a green tea in an insulated cup as well, which should be rady to drink by the time I got settled in.

The studio was quiet; only one other team member was in the studio that I could see at that point, and after a cheery greeting, I settled down to my desk. I updated my copy of Photoshop to the newest version and got out my notebook to write down all the things I needed to get done today and the rest of the week.

There were lots of back and forths today with the other departments on teams as we sorted out our needs and wants.

I took care of requesting a monitor riser for my desk and set up the camera for the inevitable Teams calls scheduled and unscheduled for the day.

By the time I did all that, my supervisor arrived, and the day kicked off with more work and more discussing what needed to happen. Another team member joined the fight on our side, and we welcomed the extra fire power.

I started on making a library of assets that our painters could use to make their paintings. WE generally make a library of trees, clouds, bushes, flowers, logs, and anything we think will be used again in the future. But someone has to make that library first. We didn’t have many assets already built and approved it had as much done as I could.

At 10 am the company made us pancakes with maple syrup and whipped cream. There was a choice of plain, blueberry, and chocolate chip. They were really good pancakes and I would have been pleased to get them if I were in a restaurant. There was some orange juice and fresh fruit to be had as well, so I indulged in a glass and then went up for a second helping of pancakes.

After a late breakfast, I got back to painting a background that when finished, should supply is with more assets to reuse, giving us more variations of trees and bushes etc.

A bunch of people from our crew were in Ottawa today, meeting with the client and visiting the Ottawa team members. That meant the studio was still quiet even with the free pancakes going around.

By lunchtime my supervisor and I decided we needed some fresh air. Everyone in the studio mentioned they were feeling tired and didn’t sleep well last night, an unusual amount of people. Katie, my supervisor wanted to make some avocado toast, so we walked to the No Frill Grocery store so she could be the ingredients. I had brough a tuna bowl thing with corn and vegetables from home, but I did eye all the lovely baked goods in the store, somehow managing to resist the temptation. A belly full of pancakes may have assisted my will power.

The temperature outside was a little warmer, making the walk pleasant. The fresh air and exercise helped me feel much better. When we returned, I decided to eat at my desk and get some work done. Things always feel too slow at the start of a project, and my desire to accomplish something was front and center. I put on my earbuds and jammed out to some of Tom Petty’s greatest hits. Music is the best for getting work done quickly when painting.

At the end of the day, I was ready to call it. I got a reasonable amount of work done all things considered, so I shut down for the day and packed my backpack.

Outside, it had cooled down again to a bitter cold, not as bad as the morning, but you could tell it was only going to get colder. I decided to walk to the station instead of hopping on one of the warm streetcars to get some exercise. I haven’t been getting my walks in recently because we’ve had one o’clock meetings on many of our workdays, and that’s cutting it too close.

I boarded the 5:30 train and went up to the top level. There were plenty of seats tonight and I even managed to get a row to myself. This meant I could get some writing in on the way home without feeling uncomfortable. I managed about a thousand words or so before I had to pack the laptop back up, ready for departure.

My loving wife had dinner just about ready for us by the time I walked in the door. She’d made seasoned haddock filets with mixed vegetables. It was tasty and healthy and a nice treat to come home to.

I’ll admit, exhaustion hit me as soon as I arrived home. So, I headed up stairs and we watched the premiere episode of the second season ‘Paradise’. I was curious how the writers would continue the story this season. They introduced a new character and show her perspective of living through the events that happen before season one.

I enjoyed the episode and it reminded me of the ‘Long, Long Time’ episode of ‘The Last of Us’, the one starring Nick Offerman. It wasn’t on the same level as the Offerman episode, but it was well written.

By the end of the episode, they managed to tie in the events from the end of season one in a pleasing way. I think this show will do well if they continue on this path.

We also watched the opening monologue of ‘The Daily Show’. John Stewart was the host, always my favourite host, and he went on about all the silliness that Trump has been up to this week, contradicting himself and acting like a crazy person.  I hope Americans get there country back soon before its too late.

I was talking to some co-workers today at lunch and I mentioned that I liked to eat cheese before bed because it gave me really wonderful dreams. I told them it was better than any drug they could ever take and cheaper and legal. Everyone looked at me like I had two heads. Is this not a thing everyone does? I am I the only person who has amazingly vivid dairy dreams? I’m talking riding in the back of a dolphin who is flying in the air towards a pink sunset dream. Or flying like you have the powers of Superman? Anybody? Well, I feel sorry for anyone that can’t have uplifting cheese dreams.

My stepson’s best friend is over tonight. They just walked by our bedroom, and I heard the friend say, “I have tension between my eyebrows.”

And he replied, “Maybe you need an eyebrow massage.”

“Wait! Is that really a thing? Do you know how to give an eyebrow massage?”

This was all said in a very serious tone. Those two crack us up.

And as a bonus they baked us some chocolate chip cookies, and my wife made me a tea to go with it. She even made it in my Smart Heated Mug. isn’t life just a peach some days? I am truly a lucky man.

I’ve completed my forty third day of playing chess everyday streak challenge. Say that three times. And this is the fifty-fifth consecutive day of writing in the 2026-words per day challenge. It’s nearing the end of the month, so I have to actually write about 3150 words per day. So far, I have been able to achieve that quota for the last week or so.

Boy, I wish I had knuckled down hard at the beginning of the month instead of having all this pressure on the back end. I’ll probably whinge about this every month until the end of the year. It’s either just human nature or my nature that makes me procrastinate like this.

One thing that is helping is writing earlier in the day, when on the train or right after supper. Getting 500-1000 words down early takes a lot of the pressure away and I quit eenjoy writing when “it’s not my actual writing time”. Getting 900 plus words written on the train ride home tonight felt amazing. Imagine if I had been able to do the same thing while on my way to work as well. That would have left me with about 1000 words left to write for the day which I would have done in two or three sessions aiming for about 300-500 words each time.

There is definitely something to this idea of writing in multiple session throughout the day that appeals to me.

Even now, it’s around 10 pm and I am already halfway to my daily word count goal. In the recent past I would wait until around 11pm and then go down to the writing cave until two or three in the morning. And that was all well and good while I was laid off from work, but completely unsustainable when I have a 9 to 5. And I have to make sure I protect how productive I am at work. I can’t let the writing be the cause of my day work suffering.

My professionalism would never allow me to do that. And my family is counting on me to bring home a paycheck not to mention what getting fired would do to my sense of self. So far, I have never been fired from any job I have held, and I don’t plan to be unless I win the millions of course! And then it would be just for the fun of it. A new experience.

I haven’t had a chance to read my new copy of ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ as of yet. By the time I finish my writing for the day it’s too late at night. And then there is the eye fatigue, after staring at a screen all day at work. Those of you who read this blog, (Crickets), know I almost always talk about all the shows we are watching and what I think about them. Stop watching so much television and YouTube I hear you saying. True, but sometimes it is easier on the eyes to put on the tv.

I have my writing computer set to dark mode to reduce eyestrain as much as possible and I find my eyes seem to like it that way. Sometimes I even set the text colour to green to emulate the old WordStar writing program used on monochrome CRT displays.

The green light was thought to be easier on the eyes and consumed less power than other colors. The green light is less jarring than pure white to my eyes anyways and that’s goof enough for me.

Demented Donnie is giving his Sate of the Union address tonight. There should be plenty of comedy gold for the comedians to mine after this one. Doubtless, there will be plenty of online clips showing the highlights of this car crash. I can even imagine what unhinged things he’ll say this time around other than: It’s Joe Bidens fault, no one has ever seen something this good, and everything bad is Democrats and everything good is Trumpy Trump. Blah blah blah.

On a brighter note, I see they have made a Spider Noir live action movie starring Nicholas Cage. Now, I’m not a big Cage fan, but if there was ever a role written just for him, its Spider Noir. I thought it was cool that they are releasing it in two ways. One is the regular movie, and the second option is two watch it in black and white. Brilliant idea.

I thought Cage did a great job voice Spider Noir in the animated film “The Spider-verse”. Looking forward to seeing what he does with the role when it gets released.

Its about time I got around to reading my own novella with the working title, “The Oyster War”. I feel enough time has passed that I could read it with fresh eyes. I suspect I will need to add in more detail of the sensory kinds as well as character emotion, opinions and more setting details.

There are certain scenes I felt I rushed to get through when I was writing them. Some of that stems from being tired and trying to achieve my word count goals and some from deficiencies in my writing skill.

With my mentor I have learned a few things about what those deficiencies are and it will be interesting to see if I can spot them in my own work. It’s a lot harder to see the problems in your own writing than it is to see it in another’s.

I’ll be searching for information flow issues as well as depth issues. Two interconnected things that draw the reader into your story and keeps them interested in reading late into the night. All things I have studied and taken courses to learn and get better at. With all the learning I have done over the years, one thing has always been true; you can know a thing, but to understand takes time and usually there is an aha moment. A moment where everything clicks into place. Maybe someone explains something to you in a different way, or you see something from a different discipline that you can correlate with your own.

I remember the parachute deployment designer for the NASA mars rover mission that figured out a way to fold the lander’s parachute to save space from his hobby of origami, the art of folding paper.

I am hoping I will that kind of enlightenment when I redo my mentor assignment this week. Going through it again, with the notes and explanations from her can only get me further along the path I hope to traverse. And I want to succeed so that we can move on to other deficiencies, and more advanced areas of writing. And I don’t want to waste her time either. I want to be a good student and go on to have a career in this field.

One thing I said I was going to do last week was submit my sales copy for my novella to my sales copy instructor. I never got around to writing the copy. I, as usual, was exhausted and didn’t feel I could give it my full attention. Sometimes you have to pick your battles even if it means missing out on a great opportunity to have an experienced writer evaluate your work for the sole purposes of helping you sell more of your own books.

Hopefully, I will get another opportunity somewhere down the road when and if they do another semima/ course on the subject. For now, my focus has to be on creating engaging and memorable characters and stories. Getting better at craft has to supersede the sales and production aspects of being a writer for the time being.

I did compare some of my self-published short stories and a collection to what he was saying in the class. I think based on what he was saying I can make plenty of improvements when I create my next published book or novella.

But I don’t want to create beautiful books with compelling sales copy and a crappy story. People would request refunds and post terrible reviews, and I would likely lose them as readers forever. I’m not one of those writer’s that believes your book needs to be perfect before it goes out, but I would like to make sure I am putting out the best product I can make. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that I haven’t been at this for very long. I am still what my instructor calls a “Baby Writer”. Someone lacking in experience and often coming into things with myths about writing. Another reason I am focusing on word count is it means I am getting in my daily practice every day.

I’m sure everyone has heard about the 10,000 hours hypothesis, where it is said it takes that long to master any skill. Hence all these late nights and the courses and the mentorship as well as all the reading!

If I look back at where I started in November of 2022, I think I have come a long way. My progress is something to be proud of. My first short story was written for the CBC Literary Competition. I think it took me over two months to write a 2000 word story.

My second attempt was a writing assignment at the end of a class about spaceships as characters. I wrote that in a week. That broke a lot of myths and self-imposed beliefs I’ll tell you. And then the next story I wrote in a weekend. The next in workday, maybe 8-10 hours. And eventually I was writing them in 3-6 hours, one a week. Writing 52 stories in a year blew away more preconceived limitations I had harboured.

And now I have written the longest single piece at over 26,000 words. Writing that novella gives me the confidence to write a full-length novel. All those short stories tell me I can write a chapter a day.

I believe that writing my first novel will teach me I can write six or more of them a year. What will writing six novels a year teach me?

I hope to find out. But maybe that will be what my 2027 looks like with any luck and lots of consistent hard work.

Tomorrow, I get to work from home. No train rides or getting up early. My stepson and his college mates are filming a documentary in our living room tomorrow night at around 5:30, right about when I finish work for the day.

A perfect time to get some writing in, and I am hoping will be well rested.

Once again I have rambled on for far too long. Even these blog posts are a from of practice.

But enough is enough for one day. I am excited to get to bed before 12 am for a change.

Nite all!