First Published: 2023 July 18
I logged on this morning to see what my last post was, getting ready to have not written for about two weeks. I suppose that seventeen days is around two weeks, but it’s somehow far more disheartening to see that I last blogged my monthly reflection. Some of the time I feel less bad about missing.
From the 9-15, for instance I was at a conference.1 On the 16 and 17, I was in rural parts of the state doing UitP events.2 And before the 9-15, I was volunteering at a service trip from the 5-7.3
However, I still feel bad about missing the postings during all of those days. While I have the hazy blur of great times spent at all three of those events, that doesn’t have the same element of memory that remembering to log my days each day tends to bring. I also fell off of writing basically entirely.
At the start of the month, I was nearly three chapters ahead of writing. By the end of the first week of July, I was no chapters ahead. Since then, each chapter has been written scant hours and minutes before it needs to be posted, and I can see a clear decrease in quality as a result. There were no poems, no songs, and no new journal entries written during this time either.
I think that the lack of writing really is4 getting to me. I feel far less grounded without the structures I have intentionally installed in my life, and I think that writing is legitimately one of the bedrock ones somehow. So, I hope that as I continue this month and future months, I will remember that the future version of me is inordinately grateful for the writing I do, especially compared to how much effort it really is to write.
In terms of goals for the month:
Despite the fact that I’ve been home for a total of seven nights this month, which includes recovery crashes5, I have managed to improve the cleanliness of the home.
Well, I completely dropped the ball on blogging, but also all writing.
I’ll defend myself from6 accusations of not exercising, because I have been away from home. I did swim for the first time in ages last Monday, which was really fun. I need to get back into it.
While I haven’t gotten my sleep schedule back to that, partially it is again outside of my locus of control. When I’m at a conference that has pseudo-mandatory social time until eleven at night and nothing scheduled until half eight7, it’s hard to motivate myself to wake at six. I have been intentional about sleeping enough, though.
I was doing great on prayer during the first week of the month8. Since then, it’s been a bit more of a struggle, and this does remind me to be more intentional about it.
Though I didn’t get ahead, I’m still proud of myself for keeping up with the publishing schedule throughout all of the chaos I’ve endured. Now that life9 calms down, I think getting five chapters ahead is reasonable. Doing some quick math10, I need six new chapters to keep up with the publishing schedule. Being five chapters ahead plus publishing six means writing eleven. There are fourteen days11, so I should absolutely be able to get ahead. It means less than a chapter a day, and I know that there will be days that I can write two.12
Though poetry felt like a reasonable goal, I have fallen completely off of that train. Now that I’m going to be sleeping in my own bed again, though, I think it can come back.
Of all my goals, I think this is the one I’ve done best on. I’ve written three letters, though haven’t addressed the last two13. It’s a really nice morning hobby, and I think that I will absolutely be bringing it back.
Well, I suppose losing half the month would make my daily reflection more into a half-month’s reflection, so it makes sense that the goals took longer than expected.
682/140
Musing to come↩︎
Musing to come↩︎
Musing (likely) to come↩︎
was? since I’m actively writing self reflection right now↩︎
when you get home from an event a few hours before normal bed but sleep the rest of the day anyways↩︎
internal↩︎
a British construction I refuse to lose. For the non-Brits, half past eight↩︎
though going to a church camp makes finding time to pray easy↩︎
relatively↩︎
maths? fun fact: in my book I avoid using either term with hopes of hiding where I’m from. I’ve taken to mostly using the term calculations↩︎
twelve if we remove Sundays, which (see goal about prayer)↩︎
though today may be a zero chapter day, since I drive back from the northern part of my state just in time to start volunteering.↩︎
and might have forgotten who they were meant to be addressed to↩︎
First Published: 2023 July 1
I missed a day of writing, but such is the nature of life. I had fun with friends and volunteered, which is probably better. My goals last month with their status:
Accomplishments/Finite Tasks
I played and sang at a friends wedding!
My talk was written and performed
My instrument did not run, but it was not my fault finally.
Growth
I’m once more ashamed of my living conditions, but it’s a faster fix this time I’m sure
I blogged a fair amount! I also wrote a total of a little under thirty five thousand words. That’s fewer than May, which is a little surprising. Then again, I suppose that I did lose a few weeks of writing altogether.
Exercise was intermittent
Sleep was intermittent
I didn’t make enough time for sleep
I’m a little under three chapters ahead
I wrote a song!
I wrote three letters to friends, though only mailed two.
Looking forward, I would like to:
Make my home clean again and invite a friend over. I have actual time in it this month, so that should be easier.
Continue blogging/find a way to do it during my conference. I know I won’t have time for it next Thursday, because I’m volunteering.
I’d like to exercise more. Ideally daily, but
Once again, I’d like to develop a sleep schedule that gives me enough and gets me up early (6am)
I’d like to make more time for prayer, or at least be more intentional about my prayer
I absolutely need to get five chapters ahead, if only because I want to start monetizing.
Doing some sort of poetry each day seems like a doable goal, if not a low bar.
I would like to get through my stack of letters1
That seems like a doable set of goals. Today I get to give a talk in a state park again, which I’m beyond excited about.
including the two new ones I need to add↩︎
First Published: 2023 June 29
It’s been a little more than a year since the last time I blogged about crocheting. When I last wrote it, I was in the habit of making hats1. I don’t actually know if I have made any hats since the one I blogged about here. I did make a few bags with a new stitch that I learned, which was really fun, though shockingly slow to build up.2
But, as is so often true of my hobbies, I fell out of the habit of crocheting for a while. Somehow, the algorithms that serve me content seemed to think that I wanted to get back into crocheting, though. In particular, there’s a pattern going around right now that’s apparently viral. It mostly just looks like strawberries.3
So, after four years of crocheting4, I finally made a pot holder. I think that’s generally recommended to be among the first projects people start on, but I’ve never been particularly good at following conventional ordering for learning skills. The strawberry stitch builds into a pot holder really nicely, since it’s a completely linear project. It’s a four row pattern that then loops. Odd rows are in red, and even are in green.5
The first row is single crochet three, double crochet five stitches into the fourth, repeat that until you have three stitches left, then single crochet three. For a foundation, the site I found the pattern on recommended doing a row of single crochet with 4N-1 total stitches where N is the number of strawberries you want. The second row is single crochet in each single crochet, then single crochet the five stitches together and add a chain and slip stitch for sizing.6 Row three is single crochet one, double crochet five into one, single crochet three, repeat the second and third steps until the end, which is single crochet one. Fourth row is identical to second row.
The overall pattern makes a nice offset set of strawberry shapes, though I would like to explore with different number of stitches in the strawberries or separating them. That’s for another time, though. It also built up a little thinner than I would have liked, so I think I’ll need to sew a cotton sleeve to the other end for thickness.
Once more, I did not make the progress I wanted to on my home.
I hope not to break my blogging streak tomorrow, but that will mean that I need to write before playing DnD with friends.
Air quality is returning to breathable, though it hasn’t yet. After this I will stretch, since I haven’t hit my daily goal yet.
I slept terribly last night, so slept in.
Today I listened to less CCCiaY, though I will do a bedtime rosary.
I wrote a little under two chapters today, which was fun. Interestingly, I was able to write one chapter basically straight through in under forty7minutes, and then while writing the second noticed that it was late.8
Three days have passed without poetry.
I wrote and mailed a letter this morning! It was really fun! I also took the advice of a book I’m reading and lit a candle while I wrote. It did make it far more fun.
537/155
a hat-bit, if you will↩︎
the stitch was solomon’s knot, which I feel like should be very fast, since it’s such a loose weave.↩︎
or, as one group mate phrased it, tomatoes. I hope that he’s unique in believing that↩︎
wow that’s way too big of a number. I did not graduate that many years (not doxxing myself right now) ago, that’s so fake↩︎
and wow I do not know how to effectively switch colors.↩︎
as it turns out, when you crochet together, you’re apparently supposed to pick up each stitch individually, yarn over and replace, and only then take them all off. So, instead of the hook having five red loops, it has six green. It took me far too long to realize that.↩︎
which should really have a u↩︎
and got jump scared by a music video playing in full screen and my app crashing (thankfully right after I saved to another program)↩︎
First Published: 2022 June 28
Tonight I went to my first cocktails and catechesis in a while. More or less, it’s a happy half hour followed by around an hour of discussion about the content in the past few weeks of the CCCiaY. This week’s topic was Baptism and Confirmation.
It was a great time, though more sparsely attended than I remember. Between that and leaving work late, though, I didn’t end up doing the writing I wanted to today.
I made arguably negative progress.
Blogging streak day four! wow!
Air quality got somehow even worse, so I took another day off of exercise. I did walk a friend home, though, so I’m counting that
I got up at six! Wow! Starting a streak just in time to end it.
I listened to a lot of CCCiaY today. Once more, bedtime rosary is the plan
I wrote none chapters today.1 I’m still two ahead, though, which is really nice.2
Two days of no sonnets
Two days of no letters. I think tomorrow morning is a great time to write one though.
176/11
First Published: 2023 June 27
It’s been a little less than a year since the last time I mused about lemon wine, and it seems like an appropriate time to do so again. Last year I apparently made a single batch of lemon wine before writing the musing. I ended up making one or two others, which was really fun.
This year, the recipe has changed slightly. As before, I cooked approximately eight pounds of sugar in water. This time, though, instead of lemon juice, I used pure citric acid.1 I also took a note from my second batch last year and didn’t add the lemon juice to my must.
There are a few reasons I think that’s a good idea, most of which revolve around the fact that my yeast can’t metabolize citric acid and I don’t really want it to metabolize the ascorbic acid.2 The other flavoring oils shouldn’t be digestible, and again, I would like them to remain. Also, adding lemon juice drastically drops the pH of the solution,3 and I don’t want to stress my yeast out.
It’s really strange to me how many flavor notes fermented sugar water has even without other additives. I don’t think I really believed that different yeasts actually produced ester profiles before this. The fermentation seems to be stalling out a little bit, but I’m hopeful that it won’t be true in the morning. If it is, I’ll do my usual lifehack of sprinkling a small amount of yeast nutrient to get rid of all the dissolved carbon dioxide4
It looks like I’ve historically used three quarts of lemon juice, which still seems like an appropriate amount. Anyways, I’m excited to see how this batch comes out. I think I’m going to do something that I’ve thought about since I started making lemon wine5, and dry hop it. I’ll go into more detail about what dry hopping is when that becomes relevant.
I got an air filter and set it up.6
Blogging streak day three
Air quality got even worse, so I took a day off of exercise
I slept with my window open last night, and didn’t realize the air quality was going to suffer so much. As a result, I slept poorly and in.
I listened to a lot of CCCiaY and prayed the chaplet of St. Michael the Archangel over breakfast. As yesterday, I’ll also do a rosary in bed.
I wrote two chapters today! That technically means that I’m three ahead. As soon as tomorrow’s chapter posts, though, it’ll be back to two ahead. Still exciting!
Wrote a sonnet last night! Will not write one tonight because wow time flew.
Didn’t write a letter. Should consider doing that tomorrow morning.
449/53
because I own that now.↩︎
since that’s vitamin c and anything to make my life healthier is great↩︎
shockingly↩︎
similar effect to sprinkling sugar in coke or any other carbonated drink. Small particles mean lots of nucleation sites, means bubbles go away↩︎
my 21st birthday officer↩︎
because wow the air quality is terrible↩︎
First Published: 2023 June 26
Huh I hadn’t even realized that my last post on writing was less than two months ago. It was a very short post, more so1 about my lack of writing for the day than anything else. Today, I want to talk about a few writing things I’ve learned or rediscovered lately.
First, I found a new workflow for writing my book. I am easily motivated by numbers going up2, so I had taken to writing my3 chapters in an online word counter, which updated the character counts basically any time that I stopped typing for half a second. Someone at the conference I went to was horrified by that workflow, so I spent a few days using TeXShop’s built in word counter, which was slightly less nice. Today, though, an online source recommended StimuWrite, which is basically just weaponizing the dopamine bursts of using the internet as a way to make you write more efficiently. The features I love most about it are the pleasant4 moving backgrounds it lets you set, and the fact that there’s a fun little progress bar that tells you how far through your goal you are. It does mean that my workflow now looks like writing the goal, copying it into my document, changing the word goal, and deleting the text in StimuWrite, but that’s the nature of the beast I suppose.
I don’t think that I’m particularly more efficient with this tool, though its explicit lack of a spell checker does mean that I rewrite words far less often while actually typing. I think that it does certainly help me to keep writing when I’m halfway through a sprint, though. Looking down at the bar that is sixty percent filled5 and watching it slowly tick up as I write a few more words is really motivating to me for some obvious reason.
But, not all is roses and sunshine in the realm of my writing. I realized that I haven’t really written any sonnets in ages. I know that sonnets are like (insert metaphor here). The first time I write a sonnet, even just after taking a break6, it’s very difficult. If I keep it up for a few weeks, though, it becomes almost as easy as just transcribing a sonnet.
Back in the realm of sunlight and flowers, I wrote a letter to a friend today! I apparently fit nineteen words on almost every line7, which is a strange number, especially since it was reproduced on more than half of the lines.
Once more leaving the realm of daytime and flora,8 I would like to journal more. In part, I think it makes me more thoughtful. In part, a book I’m reading recommends it. In part, someone I look up to a lot does it daily. Between those three parts, it seems like something I might benefit from doing, especially since I already have topics in mind.
Looking back at that last paragraph, I’m reminded of why I started this blog. It was to be a digital diary, in part fulfilling course requirements. However, the reflecting I do here is far different than the reflecting I do in my private journal. I don’t want to say that it’s sanitized.9
Anyways, I’m glad to have at least a little bit of time to start returning to normalcy before my life goes crazy again.10 I need to write up a character for a DnD one shot I’ll be playing with friends this weekend.11
I quantum cleaned.12 In particular, I dug out the blanket that I’ve been nominally working on since 2019.
I blogged today and even yesterday. Wow, look at me, setting up a streak.
The air quality was bad today, so I did an online pilates class. That was really fun, though absolutely killer. I also learned that my entire body is far less flexible than I remember.13
I did, in fact, sleep in today. Tomorrow I will regain my historical sleeping goal, though, I hope at least.
After this, I’ll do a rosary as I get ready for bed.
I did finish today’s chapter last night, and I wrote tomorrow’s chapter today. If I can just write four more extra chapters by Friday, I get to my goal.14
None music today.
I’ve addressed another four letters, and I even wrote15 and posted one today! That means that I’m officially one third through this monthly goal.
732/235
which I will always think should be spelled moreso↩︎
as should be obvious, given the genre I write in↩︎
uncompiled LaTeXbecause I am a monster↩︎
which I always think should be spelled pleasent for some reason↩︎
yes I am aware that sixty is more than half, but I like to round and it’s my ’blog so I’ll do as I please↩︎
read: of multiple years↩︎
known because I’m absolutely counting these words in my daily word goals↩︎
which I would like to alliterate, so optionally, read as daylight and daisies↩︎
but it absolutely is, I have no other way to end that sentence↩︎
oh that’s next Wednesday. Crud. I legitimately need to be two chapters ahead by next Wednesday, because I will be unable to write from the fifth to the seventh. Being ahead enough for the following week would be ideal, though unlikely.↩︎
my first ever paladin!↩︎
read: I did the smallest notable amount↩︎
which is already not particularly flexible↩︎
back of the envelope math suggests I need two chapters for the actual week and I want five extra, so that means seven chapters by Friday (or Sunday, since the number of chapters I post over the weekend is none [but that’s not the goal, now is it?]). That’s basically two a days for the next four days, which somehow feels both very doable and impossibly difficult, as all goals should.↩︎
as mentioned↩︎
First Published: 2023 June 25
So I’ve been absent another week and a half or so. In my defense, I was watching someone graduate, and then at a conference. In my offense,1 I could have made time for this. Anyways, in the interest of not doxxing my family2 I won’t be talking about the graduation here3. Instead, I’d like to talk about a conference I went to last week.
Despite being the most important conference that my group goes to,4 the conference is nearly unheard of. Even my friend who goes to the university that hosted it didn’t know it was happening. But, it was a great time to bond with my group, reconnect with old friends,5 meet new friends, and, of course, listen to a ton of incredible research talks. I also gave a talk, but it was far from incredible.
I did a bit of cleaning.
I blogged today! Planning to again tomorrow
I did a 5K today.6 That wasn’t fun, but it was probably healthy for me
I am still in recovery mode from the conference, and so I have slept in the past two days and will likely sleep in tomorrow.
I did a rosary during the 5K.7
I’m more ahead on the book than I have been for the past week or so.8
I added another verse to the dumb song between the last posting of this blog. Now it feels like a complete song, because I don’t personally always love bridges.
I’ve given up on posting9 the first letter I wrote. I did get a bulk pack of blank cards, though. I’ve addressed them to the people I’ve made a mental or verbal commitment to send mail to, in hopes that it will inspire me to write the letters.10
290/249
that seems like the wrong phrasing, but it is a nice antonym here↩︎
which I may have done in the past, but now seems like as good of a time as any to try having a bit of CS literacy,↩︎
even though I’m nearly positive everyone who has or will read this blog will know who graduated from where and when↩︎
a feeling that seems to be shared among a number of people↩︎
read: people I met last year at this conference and then forgot about for a calendar year↩︎
though i did need to walk for parts of it↩︎
which does remind me of a joke. the short version is two priests smoke together. One asks if it’s ok to smoke while you pray, and is told no. The other asks if it’s ok to pray while smoking and is obviously told yes. Moral of the joke: make sure prayer is what you add to other activities, rather than vice versa. (or I suppose, find ways to sanctify anything you do, etc)↩︎
i.e. I’m not writing the chapter an hour before it’s posted. I don’t really want to finish it before going to bed, but I know I’ll be grateful tomorrow if I do it today.↩︎
read last musing for a rant about this word in the footnotes↩︎
read (I wonder if there’s a meaning behind when I use read versus i.e.): I’m hoping it lowers the activation barrier enough that I am actually able to do so.↩︎
First Published: 2023 June 14
About eighteen months ago I wrote a post about having1 the energy to do the things that I want and need to do. Since then, I have been trying to figure out what leads me to feeling better and worse and being more and less productive. Thankfully, feeling better is generally well correlated for me with being productive.
One trend that I was positive that I had noticed was that I am far more productive when I am well rested. Yesterday, I was all set to write a whole blog post about how the sleep that I had yet to catch up on was going to make it so I had no way to catch up on my writing. But, I had other tasks that I needed to do.2
So, I set timers and started writing my book during the breaks that I had between timed activities. I almost effortlessly wrote the entire chapter, which made my planned post obsolete. Instead, I got to write about the reason I hadn’t been posting, which was nice. While getting a theory disproven is less than the best feeling, it was a nice thing to learn. Looking back on the times that I am more or less productive, it seems like sleep is important, though not for the reason that I had initially believed.
I still find a correlation with sleep and productivity, though I think that there is an important intermediate step or two. One thing that forces productivity in me is the lack of ability to do something else. Of course, I mean that entirely in the subjective sense. Last night, there was nothing stopping me from sitting and reading a book or watching YouTube.3 However, the fact that I knew that I needed to write a book and revise a presentation meant that I was able to write. When I’m more tired, I think that I’m more able to remember that deadlines I set are fake and only affect me.
Another, though fairly well linked issue is that I often lose track of time. I’ll look up from an activity and hours will have passed. Even tonight is no exception. I sat down and it was a little after five. Looking up again, it’s now nearly eight. Where the hours went, I’m not totally sure. However, I do find that my ability to keep track of time is improved with sleep.
So, between those two issues, I still do see why I am more productive when well rested, for all that I don’t know if they’re quite as absolute as I thought. Since this musing is a little shorter than I want, let’s talk about the predecessing4 post about mental space. I find it interesting that I continually look at scheduling my life as a potential solution. Intellectually, it very well could be, but I have such an aversion to scheduling myself that I don’t know if it will be probable for me without changing something major about my life.
I mused about the time sink that is YouTube5. I believed that I was actively lacking energy more, which I don’t know if is true. I did say that I need to eat more, because I was exhausted. More and more, I find that I become exhausted feeling when I don’t have enough water. I think that was certainly true of me while writing that post.
All in all, I think it’s nice that I can make myself work by lying to myself and saying that I need to. I wish that there were better ways for me to do so, but I don’t know how to find them.
I’m going to friends instead
I blogged yesterday AND today!
I walked a fair amount today, which was nice.
I slept in the past few days, but I’m hoping to wake up early tomorrow.
I’ll do a rosary when I finish this post and the chapter for the day
I’m debatably on schedule to slightly ahead of where I need to be.6
I wrote a dumb song yesterday! It has two verses and a chorus. I’m debating whether it needs more verses, but I also don’t want to beat a dead horse in the song.
I still have yet to post the letter7
722/101
or more accurately, lacking↩︎
primarily laundry, since I am about to disappear from school for a while.↩︎
which I should decide whether I’m going to treat as a proper noun or not.↩︎
which my dictionary doesn’t believe is a word interestingly enough↩︎
which I spelled Youtube, annoyingly↩︎
I’ve started writing the chapter to post on Friday. If I don’t keep writing, though, I will not have a chapter on Friday.↩︎
which I think might be a british-slang way to phrase it. I don’t know if I’ve heard my friends say post a letter. I think that the American might be mail a letter? I should look that up at some point↩︎
First Published: 2023 June 13
Well, it’s been almost a week since my last blog post. Instead of excuses, I think I’ll make what has become a rarity amongst my blog posts1 and give a quick recap of where I’ve been.
Last Friday, I woke up at 2 am to start a four hour drive to an airport. From there, I traveled across the country to go to a friend’s wedding. While I could have made time during that day, I did not have the mental energy to do so. It ended up being more packed of a day than I expected, though I should have expected more, given that there was a rehearsal dinner and wedding. The rehearsal dinner was held overlooking a beautiful gorge with a fantastic waterfall.2
What I’m assured was six hours of sleep later, I woke to Saturday. On that day, two of my dear friends got married. It was a lovely ceremony and day. I don’t know what the bride did to get ready, but the groom spent much of his morning in prayer with his groomsmen.3 At the wedding, I had been asked to sing and I volunteered4 to play the bagpipes.
After the wedding, I had a wonderful time at the reception, meeting the newlyweds’ friends and family and dancing.5 It ended two or so hours later than expected, and the groomsmen6 spent some time that night bonding without the groom.
In the morning, even more sleep deprived, I went to Mass with some of the bridal party who were still in the town. The Parish was hosting a pancake breakfast, so I went to that with some friends who met the bride and groom at a similar time.7 Following that, I rode the two hours back to the airport with one of the bridesmaids and her partner. That was a really fun car ride! We bonded over a love of fantasy and other things.8 I taught them “my cows,” which is truly the pinnacle of car games.
At the airport, I ran into another friend who was at the wedding. We were scheduled to take the same flight back. As it was ready to board, though, we were told that it was delayed for seven hours.
Three hours later, after waiting through the entire line to die, we went to ask for a meal voucher. Instead, we were given hotel rooms and new flights. I was scheduled to fly out yesterday,9 and he was scheduled for today. Thankfully, we were able to reschedule to the same flight.
We carpooled in a Lyft to the hotel,10 ate dinner,11 and went to sleep. In the morning, I realized it was Monday, rushed to finish the chapter of my web serial, posted it, and ate breakfast. Back at the airport, I ran into the newlyweds, wished them congratulations, and saw that there was a flight boarding to my destination.
Thankfully, they were willing and able to seat my friend and I on this earlier flight, and we made it back a full three hours earlier than expected, which was great. On the downside, I’m now exhausted and missed the only full day of lab work I had the chance for this week.12 Still, I’m far too glad with the fact that I was able to share my music with my friends at their wedding to mind.
Friends coming over is on indefinite hold
Took a five day hiatus from blogging
Danced so much that my entire body was sore for two days
Woke up at six most of the days in the interim, for all that I did not want to.
The groom and wedding made prayer easy, but I really fell off of it when the air travel got delayed.
I fell technically a little behind, and posted a too short chapter. I’m almost finished with tomorrow’s though, which is nice. I’m hopeful I can get Friday’s cleared out by the end of tomorrow.
I want to write a dumb song so started writing a new song.13
I have another name on the list of potential people to send a letter to!14
684/159
honestly, it may have always been a rarity↩︎
that in retrospect, I should have taken photos of. I should have taken a lot of photos this past weekend and took as far as I can tell (almost) none↩︎
and me, who was tagging along↩︎
or was asked, or threatened, depending on which subjective history you listen to↩︎
I got to teach a shocking number of people country swing which was really fun for all that I absolutely should not be trusted to teach.↩︎
and me↩︎
and therefore in the same town.↩︎
I cannot remember↩︎
via another airport, adding a full twenty four hours to my ETa back home↩︎
with an interesting driver↩︎
at an Olive Garden, where we managed to pay the bill with the meal vouchers↩︎
because today was a group big picture planning meeting, tomorrow we have practice talks, and I leave again on Thursday.↩︎
procrastination who?↩︎
which was originally phrased as an overly hyphenated phrase instead↩︎
First Published: 2023 June 8
For as much as the books I read tend to fall into the categories of: recommended to me, read already, closely related to a book recommended to me,1 I do also read other books. It’s sometimes hard to find books that don’t fit into one of those categories, but that’s just because I am surrounded by a number of book-lovers with distinct tastes and have a very low bar for what counts as closely related. That being said, I’m usually glad when I do.
A few weeks ago, I went to the library to check out a copy of Art Spiegelman’s Maus.2 While I was there, I walked by the table of new arrivals.3 I saw a book called “After the Dragons,” by Cynthia Zhang, and decided to give it a read.
It’s squarely in the realm of Magic Realism4, which is a genre that I think more people need to be exposed to. Magic Realism is subtly different than Urban Fantasy, though the distinction is important. In Urban Fantasy, Magic is at least on some level hidden from the average person, or was.5 Some popular examples of Urban Fantasy are the Harry Potter series, Lilo and Stitch,6 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, and Dracula.
Magic Realism, by contrast, is where we have our existing society, but Magic is just there. I keep seeing claims that it originated in South America, but I’ve seen plenty of examples of it in Russian literature. As an example, I would argue that Kafka’s Metamorphisis is one, though there are newer ones for sure. Disney’s Encanto or Turning Red would also be clear examples of the genre. I would also argue that Frankenstein fits better into this genre. A lot of Stephen King’s works fit here as well.
Anyways, four hundred words of exposition later, After the Dragons takes place in China, where dragons are slowly going extinct due to man-made pollution.7 We follow a Chinese-American here on a study-abroad equivalent8 who slowly falls in love with a Chinese man who has a degenerative illness. Dragons are how the two meet and bond, as the student wants to study them, and the Chinese man takes care of feral dragons that he finds on the streets.
It was a quick read, but an enjoyable one. There were some lines in the book that screamed propaganda to me, but I’ve been told I’m overly sensitive to that. Because the book was so short, though, I felt like there were a lot of portions that I would have preferred be fleshed out more. I would still recommend someone read it, though I wouldn’t read it again without a real9 reason.
Immediate edit: Whoops! I published this before realizing I didn’t do my daily reflection.
Minimal progress towards friends coming over, though I’m ok with that right now.
Wrote a blog post about one of the books I’ve read!10
Did not exercise, but actively chose to do so
Slept in again, though I am waking up well before six tomorrow.11
I’m about to go pray a rosary.
I’m now about a third to a half of a chapter ahead! That’s technically progress, though I would love if there was more.
After my rosary, if I still have energy, I’ll work on the song a touch.
I forgot to post the letter yesterday, but I’ve started drafting the next one in my head!
564/176
so by the same author, stocked next to each other, someone says “oh that’s like such and such”, etc.↩︎
Review should come at some point but I think I need to digest my feelings around it more because I don’t want that review to be rambled.↩︎
or something. I’m not totally sure what the label was for the book display. What’s important is that there was a display.↩︎
which I had remembered as fantastic realism for some reason↩︎
in a number of books, the idea that Magic stops being hidden is a plot point.↩︎
which I found on TVTropes, and am incredibly proud that I managed to avoid getting sucked into↩︎
Magic Realism often uses the fantastic as a metaphor. As far as metaphors go, this one was not hard to understand.↩︎
he’s a visiting researcher for the summer, but that’s close enough in my mind↩︎
read: someone asks to read it with me or makes it clear that they would consider their life better for me rereading it↩︎
this one↩︎
which is arguably less healthy↩︎