Sherlock Holmes: 60 for 60

I have officially finished two books within a single week. You may clap uwu

Legitimately, I haven't been on a roll like this for months, I am so happy. Making decent progress in my brick of a book too, though I'm a little behind where I want to be. I'll catch up tomorrow. I may just prioritize this one for the next couple of days, Idk. It's just that the end of the year feels like it's coming up fast and I've still got twenty books to go to hit my goal. To think, I believed back in January that I'd easily finish ahead... I guess we'll see!

Speaking of goals, I don't think I've mentioned it at all but I've finally, for the first time in years, managed to stick to an exercise routine for over a month. I'm actually making gains, which is more than I can say for myself since... jeeze, since the first time I got covid. My arms are still kinda squishy at rest but I noticed today that my biceps are actually more visible when I move them, not just when I flex. Exciting!

And speaking of... Okay, I don't actually have a good segue here. Just wanted to mention that I finished the cancer charity blanket squares from one of the mini-skeins. Would've probably done both but it took me a long time to pick a pattern. I actually got three squares, not two, out of the one skein! Two of them are basic granny squares and the third is a lacy square that I free-handed. The plan for tomorrow is to repeat that for the second skein. I should have just a little yarn left over from each of them and I think I'll make a couple little flower motifs to send along. Idk if they'll be of use for the project but I figure they can't hurt. Worst case, they don't get used for it, which is the same thing that would happen if I didn't make them.

I've been rewatcing Beast Wars while I work. I mean, I was actually already rewatching Beast Wars before this but today, I had it on while I worked. This is the first time in a long time that I'm watching the full series again and I've been really enjoying it. Which I expected, of course, but there was an anxious little voice in the back of my head telling me that I might have outgrown it too much to enjoy it anymore. And, sure, there's a lot that I see now that I didn't as a kid or a slightly older kid or even as a younger adult. There's a lot that doesn't hold up, in terms of writing and production. But there is still so much there to appreciate and enjoy. The biggest problem I'm running into is the loneliness, lol. I'm sure I've said this before but I'm a very social watcher. I like to talk to people about what I'm watching. But, of course, no one is watching with me. Alas. Maybe I can crawl into the fandom tags on Tumblr when I'm done and beg people to talk to me, lol.

Icy cold take coming through: I hate spambots.

Any kind of spambot, really, but my hatred today has been ignited by spambots that pollute fandom spaces. I barely check my fanfiction.net alerts anymore because they've overrun the place. If you've not been there in a minute, this may be shocking, on account of it's incredibly ridiculous. But, nonetheless, it's true! I and others I know who still have accounts there have been inundated with floods of poorly-written, cookie cutter gushing over our work and offers to "collaborate" on art pieces and comics based on it. Or "commission offers" as if legitimate artists frequently reach out to fanfic writers to find clients. This gushing frequently has nothing to do with the works themselves, as if they weren't obviously enough fake. I think my favorites overall are the ones that send DMs saying they loved my story. Which story? Y'know, mine! 9__9

I'm more or less used to having to clear out at least a couple dozen of these when I check my FFN account messages. Doesn't stop them from being annoying, of course, but I don't have enough hope to be disappointed anymore, at least. I'm not used to dealing with these among my scant AO3 comments, on the other hand. So when someone commented on a fic asking if they could share a thought, I was excited at the idea of talking to someone about the fandom or the characters or the rarepair it featured. And I was only a little bit wary when they asked if I wanted to talk off-site. Wouldn't be the first time I exchanged Skype or Discord or something with someone I met there, though I wasn't fully prepared, based on bad past experiences, to do so willy-nilly this time. So, I asked what it was they wanted to take off-site and they came back saying only that they wanted to discuss an illustration and that's when the disappointment slapped me in the face. I double-checked, saw that they were a new, empty account and blocked. Ugh.

What really gets me about these, I think, aside from the obvious, is that I have had actual, real people who were interested in expanding on my work before. Several of my femslash drabbles have been translated into French; another has been translated into Chinese; a longer EEnE one-shot has been translated into Spanish. Someone asked permission to translate something into Russian and another someone for permission to do a podfic of something else. Neither of those people got around to doing those things but they were real people and they asked. As for artwork specifically, someone once did an illustration for that same EEnE fic that was translated and I only found out when I stumbled across it in the fandom tags on Tumblr because they were too shy to tag me. Someone else once wrote a fic based on a post I made. And, I mean, I know it's not just me. All the time, I see translations, illustrations, fics inspired by fics, by fanart, by discussion posts and idle questions. Heck, I did a short fic once inspired by fanart. I did another-- maybe two others-- based on posts I saw. Fandom is community and plenty of fanwork is collaborative, one way or another. Of course people do commission artists for illustrations of their fics-- I've done that too-- and maybe even for fics to accompany their art, Idk. But real people aren't out here, as a general rule, offering to let you give them money in exchange for ~collaborating. And it really sticks in my teeth that the people behind these bots are sending them out to do this like it's the way fandom works.

I received my Republic of Yarnia monthly subscription package that includes the mini-skeins to make squares for the raffle blanket I told you guys about. At the same time as I received last month's subscription package, no less. I was just on the verge of convincing myself that I had already received that package and misplaced it somewhere, lol. Gotta love the state of US postal services and imports right now...

Anyway, I'm going to start my squares this weekend. My immediate intention was to combine the two colorways I received but the completed blanket is intended to have a gradient look, so that's out. No special patterns immediately come to mind for a single-color square but I know a few exist that would be nice. Each mini-skein should make at least two squares of the proper size, assuming I don't pick something that goes through a lot of yarn-- which, obviously, I don't intend to. I might do one basic granny square and one more creative square of each color. Just gonna have to keep gauge in mind, whatever I do, so that they can be properly attached to each other.

Finished the book I was reading last night. I can't remember the last time I finished a book in two days that wasn't, like, a hundred, hundred-fifty pages or something. Feeling pretty good about that, ngl, especially after the last couple months were very barren as far as reading goes. I've now finished thirty-one books and I've got two more I'm reading now. One is a bit of a brick and will probably take me the month, not least because I'm juggling books, but the other is of similar size and layout to the one I finished last night. Not that that guarantees anything, natch, but I'm hopeful I can keep this momentum going.

Writing is going decently the past few days, too, though I'm still struggling to finish anything. Seems that break I took helped! Reading is probably helping, too, tbh. Got the brain juices going, y'know? Aaand sleeping properly is probably not hurting. On that note, g'night, everybody!

I successfully put myself to bed at a decent time last night, slept pretty well and woke up pretty easily this morning. Didn't feel as rested as I'd expected on first waking but I felt alright once I was out of bed. Got some stuff done before work, too, and in the process cemented that I much prefer that to doing household tasks at night before bed. It's all a matter of being able to consistently do so, I suppose. I'm aiming to get to sleep soon, keep my momentum going.

What'll decide it for me, though, is really whether I finish the book I'm reading in a decent amount of time. There isn't a lot of it left to go but there isn't a lot of time left before I'd best be closing my eyes. And if it gets to the time I wanted to be asleep but I still have book left, I'm close enough that I'm gonna finish it. Which is all well and good except I can feel that point of no return coming upon me. The "sleep now or you're not sleeping" point. Bit of a gamble. The logical, responsible thing to do is probably close the book now and finish it in the morning. On the other hand, how am I meant to sleep if I put it down right on the cusp of the climax?

Today was a pretty decent get-stuff-done day. Y'know, relative to the way I've been feeling. Which is still a step in the right direction, so I'll take it. Did some chores, did some reading, did some crochet-- even did some writing!

I'd actually kinda like to stay up and do some more while I'm on a roll but I borked my sleeping schedule just before the weekend and I'm trying to wrestle it back into shape. I got to bed at an alright time last night but I can feel myself coming to the point now where I either sleep soon or don't sleep for another few hours.

Got the living room furniture all moved around. As annoying as it is to have had to do it, the new arrangement does look pretty nice. The only real problem is that we don't have a good place for our craft cubbies anymore. We're gonna have to move them either into the hallway or the guest room. Which is also pretty annoying but not the worst, I guess.