One final hurdle
Image by @siora18
Heyo, lovely people. In the past few weeks, I found myself dreadfully confused. After all, I’ve set myself up with a pretty solid system, posting once fortnightly for the second and fourth weeks. But, of course, that proved problematic this past Friday as I thought, “It’s been two weeks, but it’s not the second Friday of the month. Did I error? I probably errored.”
Consider me Charis, ever the dummy dumm. Just in time for uni. Alas, early enough in this new system do I get snared by five Fridays in the one month. Go figure. Anyway, happy Saturday all, seeing as yesterday just wasn’t happening, and since we here…
What I’m Reading: The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln — Century Books) / The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas — Walker Books)
What I’m Watching: Presently, Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult (Starz) / Rurouni Kenshin: the Final/The Beginning (Netflix)
Goodness, I am tired. I’m not at the point of my six-month depressive episode yet (that’s usually a September-February shindig), and fingers crossed, it stays away long enough for me to reach this one final goal of mine. Still, I’ve had my first COVID vaccine and boi, did that take me out. It was all well and good until I made a chocolate cake, and then I was out for the three-day count. On the upside, partially vaccinated! I’d celebrate, but that would take effort.
Also, hey, Canberra’s in lockdown now, that capital city no one knows exist. I honestly think my tweet on the day best sums me up:
You can find that tweet in all its giffing glory here!
One fun thing that is happening is I’m still without any actual ability to track time, meaning I had to look to see if I complained about my major writing flamboodle, if you will. What’s a flamboodle, you ask? Well, in short, it’s me reaching 95 pages and realising I have to delete the past 80 of them as I had almost no momentum. They now exist in the beautiful folder aptly titled, ‘XXX. The folder with all the nothingness’. Some of it got repurposed — which is why you should never actually delete your progress, just refolder that bitch — but that was about… a week and a half, two weeks in? Anyway, now I’m living at nearly 190 pages, and all is going mostly well. Another character from the Arthurian mythos showed up semi-unannounced. Not only did they bring a cheese platter (which, to be fair, there were some of those stringers I nostalgically adore, so), but I can’t decide if they’re a side or main character yet. But, as I had to remind myself yesterday, don’t think about it. You can’t make corrections if you’ve got nothing to work with.
But hey, my baby is doing much better, it’s getting closer to the end of act one, and people are relatively happy right now.
That definitely isn’t a cause for concern; it’s not like I’m about to go on a literary killing spree or anything. Because, you know, who would do such a thing?
That said, a few of them flipping deserve it. After years of going back and forth with one idea, me making the call that these two characters won’t get together, and me FINALLY figuring out how to do that, they basically say, “Fuck you, we’re in love.” Now, I am the one in control, but when something has been slapping you in the face for actual years, you should probably take note of it.
In this case, yeah… fine… but also, fuck them. Thank you both for making my life easy.
But that’s not the hurdle. I mean, it was, one I entirely tripped over and subsequently faceplanted with, but I’m running up to this one. For as was stated above, I’m back at uni! And not only am I back (all online, I am living for not leaving the house), but it’s my final semester! After six long years, I am here, doing everything I can to make these final grades beautiful. Just… I want them to sing. Fitting that one of them requires a portfolio of my best work over the years, with the six assessments sharing an average score of 83.75. I genuinely have no interest in complaining about that number. That’s a nice number right there.
Meanwhile, I’m finally getting the chance to see The Green Knight! And seeing as my Merlin bloggering isn’t done yet, I imagine my next post will be a review of that film. I’ve heard that people who know the source material tend to enjoy it more; perhaps that’s my cue to actually finish the thing. So, here I was, roaming a secondhand bookstore when I found a paperback copy of it (previously living the eBook life). Naturally, I bought it, opening it up after I’d left and realised the entire thing is in a variant of English too old for me to understand. Well, at least it looks pretty on my bookshelf.
But holy moly, I never thought I’d actually get to see the film — I’ve been crying in Australian for months.
On a separate note, I think I’m going to try and use this weekend to finish The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. I’ve been reading it forever, meticulously sticky-noting my bubba whenever I come across a) something cool, b) something vaguely relevant, and c) something I should definitely be using for my manuscript. I’ve used at least three sticky notes [packs]. I am currently on my fourth [pack], with 44% left to go.
But anywhoosen. The world is thoroughly quiet on my end outside of this, though I have been further cheering myself up with Markiplier’s Getting Over It videos. They truly have been a warming experience. The real question is: will I lose this entire weekend to daydreaming about my book instead of writing it?
I mean, probably, but I can hope. But, at least we all have the new Billie Eilish album to enjoy. And with that, I shall see you all next fortnight!
— Charis.
