Currently on art: Post-Tribble Month 2021, Q3 2021 stats

Hi everyone!

It’s been a good while since my last Currently on art update, so it’s once again time for a new one! I was supposed to get this done at the beginning of the month, but my coursework pile decided to collapse on me and I couldn’t find the time before.

So, what’s been up recently? Not so much, aside from Tribble Month and a deepening swamp of coursework. I got my second COVID jab last month – got a fever and a headache, but fortunately they both went away in a day, although they did throw a major wrench into my studies that week – and I’ve got a couple of COVID scares (fortunately, the first scare turned out not to be COVID while the other one I’m still waiting on since I don’t know if I was near the person who tested positive and was at my university’s library at the same time as I was).

It’s been quite a hectic and work-filled month, these last few weeks. I actually wrote a multi-paragraph rant about how my life is currently a chaotic mess where I’m scraping by with the necessary deadlines while neglecting the rest of the things I should get done. I decided to delete that rant, though, since I figured this post is better off without it. In summary, though, the universe has thrown a wrench at most of the plans I’ve made this autumn and partly because of that my schedule, work-life balance and the pile of coursework that shouldn’t be notably bigger than it was last spring are a complete mess. I’ve had a good deal of anxiety about getting stuff done in time and my web coding project is currently standing still and I’m running late on my personal schedules for the independent online courses I’ve taken. And my city’s bad COVID situation and the university turning towards more and more contact teaching despite of multiple exposures on campus during this period aren’t really putting my mind at ease. I’m not worrying about getting sick now that I’ve got my vaccines – although considering how a low fever and a headache put me to the bottom of the bed, it wouldn’t do me any favors right now – but rather what getting quarantined in this situation might do to my mental health. The last time I had to quarantine, I got mild case of cabin fever but this time it could easily be even worse.

So yeah… I can’t say the later half of this quarter has been as kind to me as I’d hoped. Although, if there is one upside to it, it’s the fact that after three years of university studies, I was finally able to pick up Japanese. My vocabulary is very weak currently since most of my efforts have gone to learning grammar and hiraganas, but now that I’ve got an okay-ish grasp on the hiraganas, I can concentrate more on the vocabulary.

I’d say that’s enough about the mess that is my studying life right now. Hopefully by the next Currently on art update or at the very least the next statistic post, I can look back on this and say that things turned out all right and all that jazz. Now, however, onto Tribble Month!

So, Tribble Month. We got the whole month’s prompts aside from most of the challenges on day 1, and I figured I’d try to make it a continuing string of stories, no exceptions, while cycling point of views at each challenge. Well, I definitely did do that. The result, however… at this time, I feel that it fell very flat and is probably quite jumbled at best. I jumped into it without much planning (partly because the unknown challenges dictated a lot about the direction) and ended up running out of steam somewhere in the latter half of the month, which in turn led to a decline in effort spent on the daily stories and thus a decline in quality. I don’t know, maybe it is actually at the very least passable, but in the wake of a flash fiction exhaustion it doesn’t feel that way at all.

I usually don’t put memes on my posts, but this time I’ll make an exception since this one fits how I feel about Tribble Month right now:

Do I regret taking part in TM? Not at all. Do I regret pushing all the way to the end instead of forfeiting? Nah, I would’ve been mad at myself if I had forfeited. Do I want to touch flash fiction (in terms of writing it myself) for another event anytime soon? Hell no. I need a long, long break – especially since who knows when The Gauntlet 2022 comes up! I know I planned to have extempore flash fiction weeks with unused prompts and challenges from FFM 2021, but that’ll have to wait until I’ve recovered from all this flashing and have more time for writing from my studies anyway.

In case you’re interested in statistics, here are the statistics for Tribble Month 2021:

And because that’s not enough, here are the Q3 2021 stats!

Well, now what? I won’t be doing much on the creative side aside from a multilingual creative writing course I’m on during this semester since I need to focus on getting my courses done, but I will probably release some of the stuff I’ll do for my courses at some point.

Now, let’s see how things are going with my projects, as per my project widget:

• Exceptional Jedi: Chapter 1 of Paths is in progress. All writing is at 1939 days. Jedova’s reference has seen quite little progress. I need to make a comic about Valentine Clanker and lots of other drawings. I’ve been creating data on Scrivener to build a wiki of sorts there so that I can flesh things out for writing, although it hasn’t been progressing at all for a good while since I haven’t had much inspiration with EJ. Revising is still in a standtill.
• The Fate’s Way: Chapter 51 is in writing. This project has seen a good chunk of progress recently. I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. I’ve revised chapters 19-23 but for now the revising process in on a standstill. I do hope to revise the Christmas special at the very least before Christmas.
• Off-DA projects: I started to work on a web coding project but I haven’t gotten far yet due to not having the time and energy.
• Greenfield: I haven’t edited this much since everything else has taken most of my time and energy. I’m currently working on editing chapter 3. Read more about the project here.
• Lyokostar: On an indefinite hiatus. References need to be done.
• A Wandering Aura: I haven’t worked on this at all for a long while since I haven’t found the time and enough interest for it.
• Gaming: Habitica, Duolingo, Pokemon GO and Pokémon Masters EX keep on going. I also managed to get my hands on a copy of Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon and I’ve been playing it a lot ever since. I’ve gotten through the story already.
• Other stuff: I’ve started to work on my FFM 2021 collection, but it’ll be a while before I’ll get it out. Hopefully I’ll get it done before Christmas, though. Reading is mostly still in a standstill on the book side, although I did read a bit of Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to The Force.
• Personal life: COVID is still going on, as usual, and I’ve got my second COVID jab. My schedules and all are currently a mess, as discussed above, but I’ll have to manage.

That’s all for now Thanks for reading, take care, keep wearing masks and get vaccinated if you haven’t been already!