Another quick one

October has been a fast month, with some big changes.

Read on for my monthly recap, where I take a look at the areas of my life that are important to me, that I’m working on or trying to improve.

Reading

I finished a huge number of books this month!! Nine!!! A lot of them were quite short, but I also managed to knock off a few long timers too.

Finished

• The Cruel Prince by Holly Black. I finished it, but I won’t be reading any more. It was standard YA fantasy.
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C S Lewis. Finally finished this one. It was fine for an old-timey kids fantasy book.
• Getting Things Done by David Allen. This was a self-help type book about productivity. I like that it breaks things down into very specific actions, and I like a lot of the ideas in there. I already do some of them so it wasn’t completely ground breaking, but I enjoyed it and picked up a few things.
• The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris. I hate to word it like this, but it was a standard concentration camp book. Finding love amidst the horrors. Based on a true story, but apparently that was a little controversial.
• Hell House by Richard Matheson. A decent horror story. I hated how the narrator read the women, made them seem even more pathetic than they were written.
• Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. I’ve had this listed previously as the Gormenghast Trilogy, but I’ve decided to break it up into three separate books. I’m still not sure how I feel about this one. It was a struggle to read, but it was enjoyable. I will read the next two, but I’ll take a break first.
• After the Quake by Haruki Murakami. A collection of short stories. I don’t really like short stories, but these were cool. Murakami can be a bit weird about how he writes women, but besides that I have enjoyed the Murakami I’ve read. I’ll be reading more, for sure.
• The Silver Chair by CS Lewis. The next in the Narnia books. I don’t know why I’m pushing myself to finish these, but for some reason I feel like I have to. More of the same. Definitely starting to see why people complain about it just being a thinly veiled Christian allegory.
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. A book about dying. It was sad, but it also felt very performative.

In progress

• Winter’s Heart by Robert Jordan. Still no progress.
• Do Hard Things by Steve Magness. Still waiting on my hold.
• This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J Levitin. Still chipping away at this one slowly. So much interesting stuff in here though, I love it.
• Wizard and Glass by Stephen King. Allowed myself one more chapter. Another chapter and I’ll be ready for a new podcast episode.
• The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers. Almost done with this one. WIll be interested to read some analysis of the second half. I really enjoyed the shorts in the first half, but it lost me after that.
• Katabasis by RF Kuang. Getting stuck into this one properly now. About 100 pages in and I’m really enjoying it. Can’t wait to see where it goes.
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain. I’m not liking this one much at all. The main character is such an arrogant jerk.
• They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. About an hour in and it’s ok so far. I hope some of the questions I have are going to get answered.

Health

I’ve been better at maintaining the health tracker, especially since I’ve stopped logging food. It won’t give as good data, but I still think it’s valuable.

No change to my weight still, but I’ve only been so so with exercise.

I think the initial joy I felt from the increased fibre has worn off. I’ve not been as consistent, but then neither has my pooping. I’m still a high fibre convert though.

Have still been missing a lot of training, but I’ve been running a bit more.

S got sick almost two weeks ago and it was a pretty rough cold. I think he had been holding it off from when I was sick at the end of last month but he was still performing so couldn’t afford to get sick. Once he stopped, I think it hit him hard. I caught a little bit of it, but not enough to make me miss parkrun or work.

I went to Caroline Bay parkrun as planned and got the PB that I was aiming for! 35m 06s. I went back to try and see what my best ever PB was. I had in my head that it was 33m something, but I might have got that, while on a longer run. The best I could find for 5k was 34m 14s. So I think beating that is actually achievable.

S is on a fitness kick now too. It started before he got sick and then he was bummed that illness interrupted him so soon. So he will be pushing me to train more, which is a good thing, I guess. I’m just not super pumped about it at the moment. Running sounds good to me, but not so much structured training with other people.

Mental health feels pretty good, but have had a few mornings recently where I really don’t want to get out of bed. I’m looking forward to the christmas break.

I may have bitten off more than I can chew in regards to writing commitments, but I’ll do my best to power through them.

Writing

I’ve had a couple of rejections from all the short story submissions I’ve made. I’m not upset about that at all, it’s exactly what I expected. I was hoping to get more feedback on my monthly short story from the prompt, but I’ve only had one comment from a stranger. My usual readers haven’t commented at all. Could be that they haven’t read it for whatever reason, but of course my brain is saying it’s because they hated it and don’t have anything nice to comment. Despite that, I still feel confident that it’s a good story, and I’m looking forward to seeing what feedback I get from the writers group, and secretly hoping to win the comp.

I was also accepted to write an article for an online newsletter that will pay. I have to get that written in the next week.

I haven’t yet written this month’s prompt, which is also due in a week.

Book of Stitches

I’m still dilly-dallying on starting a new big project. But this month there has been the themes for next year's guild conference exhibitions and colour challenge announced. There are three that I want to enter. So I now have to work on getting them planned and completed by mid next year.

I’m still thinking about the diploma, but I also found out there’s a study grant I can apply for. That application is due May next year, so I need to find some classes I can request to use the funds for. RSN is the obvious one, but I have no idea how much the grant actually is so I don’t know how much to apply for.

I listened to some marketing stuff about Etsy and got some ideas for how to better do Etsy. I made a couple of small changes, but I don’t know if it’s enough to see a difference.

This month’s (last month’s) stats are:

Views: 168 (167)

Visits: 90 (90)

Sales: 6 (3)

I published my first post on my stitching blog to resounding silence. As expected, I haven’t promoted it anywhere at all. I’ll try and get another post up on it in November.

Finances

Did Aus taxes. Took money out of savings to pay off remaining HECS debt. I am officially debt free. It feels strange to have a few dollars left at the end of the week and not be immediately shuffling them to the credit card or other repayments. I might be able to start some actual savings now!

But just to set up back again first, we received notice that our lease is not being renewed and we have 90 days to move out. We started looking straight away and actually managed to secure somewhere within a week. So mid next month we are moving. The bond at the new place is a little higher than what we’ll get back so we’ll lose some money there. We’ll pay for movers, so that will be a big cost. And there will be incidental expenses as well, like packing boxes, etc.

Have not moved on sorting Japan pension refund, will wait until we have moved to the new address now.

Last month's goals:

• Submit story to the writing comp DONE
• Get a PB at Caroline Bay parkrun DONE
• Publish cross stitch guide on stitching blog DONE
• Start a new embroidery project X

Next month's goals:

• Move house