Monthly Archives: May 2025

Turning around, but not yet moving

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Another month, another fortnightly post missed. But, while the stats don’t show it yet, I am getting closer to some of these goals. I’m also coming out of a period of higher-than-usual stress at work, which should bring some improvement.

In the past two fortnights, I have:

  • Got to Sleep at about 1:25 on average, for about 7 hours, 5 minutes’ worth of sleep a night.
  • Made ten things:
    • Three scenes of writing, on three different topics,
    • Two evenings of work on my budget (one of then things that’s been making good progress),
    • Two evenings of D&D prep
    • Organising an overdue appointment for my car,
    • Indexing a notebook,
    • And some work on a project for a forum I’m in.
  • And I again finished two books:
    • The Electric State, by Simon Stålenhag, which was pleasantly creepy and gave me plenty to think about,
    • and Wrong Answers Only, by Tobias Madden. This had a solid ending, but it took me far longer than I expected to get into it — though that may just be because I’m far away from the target demographic.

Again, only one D&D session this month. That game saw the party fleeing in the face of the monster. When they return, though, they will be better prepared…

Sleeping Furiously is Not Very Effective

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A mock-up of a fake Magic The Gathering card, titled "Furious Sleep". The card is an Enchantment - Aura, with cost 1 generic and 1 Green mana. It has five lines of rules text: * Enchant creature you control. * Devoid. Armies you control are colourless. * When Furious Sleep enters the battlefield, tap enchanted creature. * Whenever enchanted creature is untapped, tap it. If you do, amass Eldrazi Spawn 1. * Sacrifice Furious Sleep and an Army: untap enchanted creature.
A colourless green idea

The past five weeks have been a busy time at work, and in various other ways as well. The public holidays, unfortunately, don’t seem to have helped.

In the past two full fortnights (i.e. the remainder of April), I have:

  • Got to sleep at 1:30 on average, for 7 hours, 10 minutes’ worth of sleep. I’m struggling furiously, but it’s not very effective …
    Maybe I shouldn’t have brought a Magic card to a game of Pokemon.
  • Made only twelve things (6 per fortnight):
    • Five scenes of writing, on my main WIP and various smaller distractions.
    • Three evenings of budget work. The data entry is done; now comes the hard part.
    • Two evenings of D&D prep.
    • One chunk of an epic poem,
    • And one idea for a Magic card, shown above.
  • And I finished two books:
    • Wharfies: The History of the Waterside Workers’ Federation, by Margo Beasley. This was interesting reading, both for details of how the industry worked early on, and for being a broader overview of Australian history than I’d previously had. It’s also the second thing I’ve read recently that mentioned Billy Hughes, whom I probably need to read up on further.
    • The Priory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon. This was fantastic — I’d forgotten how much I enjoy high fantasy — but I really wish I could have spent longer in the world. I will probably need to track down the sequel.

D&D continues, but slowly; we’ve only played one session in the past month. That was a daring raid on the villain’s lair, and ended on a cliffhanger. A monster, woken furious from sleep, now challenges the party…