Musings & Thoughts for Sunday, September 10, 2023, or: Weekend Update, Part the Second

Afternoon, Sunday, September 10, 2023, Lithia, Florida

Greetings and salutations, everyone.

I am starting this post unusually late in the day; here in the Tampa Bay Area (TBA) it’s just past 1 PM Eastern Daylight Time as I begin writing my 1,256^th blog post on A Certain Point of View, Too. I had one of those weird nights when I sleep well for a time, wake up before sunrise, and then struggle to get back to sleep because, hey, who wants to be up at five in the morning – on a Sunday?

Happily, I did manage to get back to sleep and woke up – again and finally – sometime after 9 AM. This is rare for me, but I must admit that it took me forever to get drowsy after that 5 AM wakeup, so I have no idea how much actual sleep I got this morning.

Anyway, right now it is quite hot and muggy outside. The temperature in my neighborhood is currently 91°F/33°C under mostly sunny skies. With humidity at 49% and the wind barely blowing from the northeast at 1 MPH/2 KMH, the feels-like temperature is 95°F/35°C. And since we are already past noon, we’ve reached the forecast high of 91°F/33°C, and we should have mostly clear skies for the rest of the afternoon.

Well, you know what mostly sunny skies and a heat index of 95°F/35°C mean for me, so I’ll just say it’s going to be yet another stay indoors afternoon for me.

The only other weather-related bit of news I’ll share before moving on to the next topic is that I’m no longer worried about Hurricane Lee hitting Florida or, for that matter, most of the U.S. East Coast. It looks like Lee will continue to head west-northwest until Wednesday, then turn almost due north by Thursday.

There’s always a small chance that the computer models are wrong and that Lee may make landfall in the U.S., perhaps in the Northeast, but I am confident that this won’t happen.

Weekend Update, Part the Second

My Saturday – the second one for September 2023 – went about as well as possible under my present circumstances. It was quiet, unremarkable, and neither great nor dismal.  

As I suspected, I did not end up working on my novel yesterday. Part of me wanted to, if only to make up for the days during which I wasn’t able – for various reasons – to add new material to Scene Three in Chapter 11. After all, the longer I’m stuck and don’t move forward with the writing, the longer it will take to finish and publish Reunion: Coda, especially if I want it on its Amazon product page by the Christmas/Hannukah holiday season in December.

Maybe if I had worked on the manuscript in the early afternoon instead of yesterday’s blog post, I might have added another 200-300 words to it; I have discovered that when I start writing after 2 PM, both my energy levels and enthusiasm for work – which is what writing books for publication is, no matter how some people think of writing – begins to dissipate. If I’m already working on something after noon – such as I am doing now – and “in the zone,” if you will, I have no issues with the time-of-day thing. Once I’m fully committed to writing – as was the case with TEMPUS FUGIT: REMEMBERING CHERYL T- 50 YEARS LATER, PART THE THIRD last November – I can work well into the night, even past midnight even if need be. The caveat, though, is that I must get going before 2 PM or else I’ll freeze up and can’t produce decent, readable copy unless I am feeling particularly creative or excessively happy/energetic, which is a rare occurrence these days.

So, yesterday was, whether I liked it or not, a day off from being a first-time novelist. I felt somewhat bad about it, but I reckon my brain just knows its limits and balks when I try to push myself to work when I really need some downtime.

What did I do yesterday, then?

Well, I didn’t spend too much time gaming; Regiments, my current go-to war game, takes between one and two hours to play – I have to pause it frequently, especially when a Skirmish is getting complicated because the AI opponent’s defenses are a “tough nut to crack” and inflicting heavy casualties on my forces, or when the enemy is about to launch a counterattack (the game simulates how commanders on the field get sketchy intel reports advising them that enemy radio comms indicate possible attacks but don’t say precisely where). Even a 30-minute Skirmish ends up lasting an hour because of these, “Wait, let me sit back and look at the situation before I send my forces to battle” pauses.

I didn’t feel like doing that, so the only gaming I did was to play Solitaire (I like the Klondike and Spider variants) and the Facebook Fantasy Moguls CBS Sports Football Manage game I’ve been playing for years now. Those games are not as interesting as Regiments, but they’re less time-consuming.

I also listened to music, read a little bit here and there, and watched one episode of Star Trek: Picard – The Final Season.

Like I said – my Saturday was neither exciting nor boring. Just an ordinary one in my current milieu.

As for today?

Well, it’s already past 2 PM – fast typist, I am not – so I already know that novel-writing is Out, taking it easy is, by default, In.  

And since I really don’t have much else to add to this narrative, I’ll close for now. Until next time, my friends, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.