Well, April was a month.... In April, I worked just under 210 hours... with a grand total of 11 days where I worked shifts of more than 10 hours (and only 6 where I worked the standard 9-5 and actually remained within its 8 expected hours).
              Yeah, April was a LOT.

              And so was May. Between work things still being at a pretty high demand (not nearly as high as April, but all my student employees straight up ghosted me so days that should've been cake-walks turned into nightmares). Also, as a student myself, I also had school demands as the semester wrapped up.

              And then in June all of that hard-stopped so suddenly that I kind of just went reeling. There wasn't actually enough down time for a vacation, but there was a requirement to go to work and effectively very little to do there... Which resulted in a surprising-at-the-time (but really obvious in retrospect) burnout-fueled-lethargy and depressive period.
              Things did not go well.

              BUT.

              I have viable projects to work on now. And not exactly the right kind of motivation to make confidence rational, but enough to hope that I'll be able to actually make progress on some of them.

              One of the biggest things that has come up is the idea that I'm wrapping up my was-a-PhD-then-COVID-now-a-Masters program next summer. And I have no idea what to do after it. My current role has me locked in at my present position for another 4 years of potentially free-ish part-time schooling at a graduate level. I can probably finish another Masters in that time, or I can re-start the PhD I originally wanted and then stick around an extra year or two (or 4) if needed...
              I'm not really in a headspace to set myself any significant goals right now, but I am going to make figuring that out a priority. I've already got a few feelers out to professors and advisors about it, so I hope to have at least a better idea of the possibilities by the time I start drafting the post for the July wrap up.

              We'll see if I can manage it!
​

Anyway, this past month was almost evenly divided between work emails and school emails for the Astyle Anything Misc category (ignore the 2022 I just noticed in the name, I made it a repeat goal and didn't realize that I named it by year when I first set it up, it'll be fixed for March). And the rest of it was entirely new material for the Dal Segno Star Wars Story!
I'm SO excited about where that story is going and Year 1 of it's timeline is within 3 Episodes of wrapping up! And, startlingly, I'm actually in a good enough place of attention and focus that I think I'll be able to jump right into writing Year 2!
Goals wise, February more or less met the goals I'd set.
I finished out with 37k, so not quite 40, but still way above my minimum, and I got a chapter posted to Patreon and at least 5 to Ao3, so 10 points to Slytherin there. The rest of it wasn't quite up to what I'd hoped for, but I vastly underestimated the time commitment of my class this semester, so I'm not too worried about.
We're gonna keep it just as simple for March: 

• - 40k in newly drafted material, 50k as a reach goal.
• - 2 fanfic chapters posted to Ao3.
• - 1+ chapter fic posted to Patreon.

And hopefully, we'll be in an even better place by the end of it!

GOOD LUCK to you guys in whatever you're hoping for this month!

             Also, when making my outlook for November, I conveniently forgot about the existence of Finals Week, which put a huge damper on my writing productivity due to a massive load of research projects and presentations. And those last 4 days of nothing-ness were sick-days. I even called out from work due to the absolutely killer migraine I had... I barely left my bed for 3 days.
             Regardless of those seeming tripping points, however, I managed to have my 2nd best month this year so far (the best was August, and I only missed passing that by about 3k, so one more decent day of work without a headache or a pressing research project to take precedence). I got over the 40k line with my word count this month, which, in a normal year would be a slight disappointment, but in a year like this is absolutely glorious.

Goals-wise, I also did pretty good.
             I did not post any new chapters of the original fiction story I've been working on, but that's more because I've been forced to recall that, wow my first drafts are rough, and less because I don't have the material. I want to make the stuff I post here at least kinda decent before I subject you guys to it.
             I have chapters, and I'd like to get one or two posted in December, so I'll probably give them a quick edit and post them with notes and caveats so you guys can get a peak at my process in the next few weeks!
             I successfully posted 2 new chapters of fanfic, as I'd hoped I could when setting my November goals, and I even drafted a little bit more to extend my queue so I still have some material near-ready to post for December!

             Additionally, I have done some work on the potential Podcast/YouTube thingy, but wow is that more labor intensive than really viable for Finals Period...
             I may have something solid to post in December, but that's a reach-goal.

For December, my goals are simple:
             - 30k in newly drafted material, 50k as a reach goal.
             - 2 fanfic chapters posted to Ao3.
             - 1+ chapter original fic posted with notes to Patreon.
             - Symposium Paper draft* (more info to come).
             - Master's Capstone Project Outline* (also more to come).
             - 3 media reviews.We'll see what happens, but that all seems moderately doable to me.


I hope you guys all have some fun things planned out for the Holiday season and that all your goals get met!

GOOD LUCK!

          So. September's big backslide resolved into a solidly successful October. I rounded out the month with 25,055 new words written, but it's about 3k more than I got in June, which is when I started to feel like my recovery was at a positive turning point in rebuilding after my absolute collapse at the end of last year. I'd had that little relapse in May, but I'd gotten through it and was getting better.
          September was a combination relapse / huge world event distraction issue, so I felt alright with where I was despite the keen awareness that it could, at any moment, tip into something worse. And the start of October was terrifyingly close to that Bad Ending tipping point. I'd gotten my homework in, which gave me a decent buffer in terms of word count, but I'd only managed by the skin of my teeth and hadn't written so much as an email without direct supervision and dire necessity prompting it... So, I was worried.
          But I kept trying.
          Getting up, going to work, doing the readings for class, writing the essays, and sending the emails...
          And then something happened to prompt me to go on a musical research bender: I had a comparative cultures / effects of Imperialism assignment from class, and had to work 2 very different events that weren't so different after all.           Did you know that Irish / Scottish reels (both the music itself and the practical function of the dances within communities) bear a startling resemblance to the music and dance-functions of communities across the Hindustani regions of the Near-East and Asia? Because I didn't, but now I do and for two solid weeks I got to investigate that, the reasons behind it, and the practical takeaways of it.

          While that was happening, Halloween was approaching.

          I LOVE Halloween.

          The freedom to dress up extravagantly for days on end with exactly ZERO negative consequences hitting within the Establishment system? Bloody BRILLIANT.
         AND I got a day off, a legitimate day when no work, school, or family obligations (or disagreements) tainted my mood or impinged my activities. Which happened to, almost magically, coincide with a party being thrown my one of my dearest friends. 
          I was listening to MUSIC again, and I got to play in COSTUME again, AND I had time enough to rest and breathe that I had the energy to go be SOCIAL.
          And then, while driving out to the middle of nowhere farmland VA where my friend lives, I had a spooky playlist going on Spotify. I'd only managed to make myself do it because it was misty and the leaves were gorgeous and I was on twisty roads and all dressed up like a glittery, magical pirate... and that deserved a suitable soundtrack, but I hadn't personally curated one in years and listening to an old playlist would just make me sad about the present state of my life... So, Spotify.
          And one of the songs in that list was Paranoid by Palaye Royale... 
          And that changed everything.
          It's been a long damn time since I've gotten hooked on a new band. Too fucking long...
          ​But now I am and it's magical and, GUYS, I've got a STORY to work on now, and original fiction story that might actually go somewhere. It's only been 3 days yet in November and I've already written as much, in that story alone, as I had during the entirety of September across all my projects.

              I'm in the best place, mentally, than I've been in a helluva long time, and that is something to celebrate.
          For November, I've got a project investigation on the evolution of Sub-Cultures in relation to the forces of reification and resistance to the Ideological State Apparatus and I'm using the rise of "Glitter Punk" (and Emerson Barrett of Palaye Royale's 'Glitter Slut Pirate' schtick) and my focal point / main case study.
              I've also got that original fic project that I'm working on and WILL be posting chapters of up here for Patrons Only. And there's the Star Wars fanfics that I will also be posting at least 2 new chapters of for readers on Ao3.
              Hopefully, I'll also be posting a new one for Patrons here, but Patrons are already so far ahead of Ao3 that I'm not sure that's plausible just yet.
              Additionally, I'll be doing some work on a new Podcast / YouTube thingy! I'm not quite sure I'll be able to record / edit enough to actually post anything in November,  but I'll almost certainly be able to post something solid by mid-December (for Patrons, at least).

              My writing goals for the month are nebulous in terms of word count.

         I'm already at the level I'd set as my minimum, but I'm still very wary of putting the pressure of too-high expectations on myself...
              Still, I'm gonna set the bar pretty high and say that my previous default of at least 50k in newly drafted work is gonna be my minimum.
              My reach-goal is 75k.
              Which would have felt absurd to me even a week and a half ago, but now feels entirely doable.
              We are edging into Holiday Season, which is always hard, so we'll have to see what happens but I'm hopeful. SO hopeful. So much more hopeful than I've been in... well, really since I even started actively plugging this Patreon account at all...

              I hope you guys are doing alright and I want to say a sincere and heart felt THANK YOU for sticking with me through this stretch of low points and pitifully inadequate content creation.
              I want you to know will be personally thanking all of you by email in the coming days! Because you mean SO freaking much to me.
              You have no idea how significant it has been to my mental state to think that there are people out there who believe in me enough to actually spend money on asserting that I'm worth supporting, regardless of how nominal the contribution might seem.
              It has meant the WORLD to me.

              So, THANK YOU. For everything.

              And I hope that your November goes even better than mine has gone thus far!
              ​<3 <3 <3 

           Okay. So. June did not go as planned, but it didn't go badly.
         It kind of looks like it went badly from the chart, but that's actually fairly misleading in this case. A BIG part of what makes my word count so low this month has been the fact that I've honed my ability to copy-paste / modify slightly so that my form-letters of job-application type correspondence is hyper-efficient.

          It's true, that I didn't hit 30k, as I'd hoped to, and it's certainly not slanted more towards the creative side than not like I'd been aiming for, but it's not actually as bad as I thought when I first looked at the summary.
            For July, I'm gonna keep things simple again.
           30k main goal, 40k in reach, ~50% creative, and at least 1 query letter / 20 job-contact communications (either new apps or follow ups or some such in-between).

           Nothing overly complicated, and all very plausible. 
           Nothing too specific, everything still serving as a contribution to progress.

          We'll have to see where the summer goes!

GOOD LUCK!!

            Well... the world certainly took a turn there didn't it? Both in terms of tragedies out in the wider world and complications in my own life at home, this was a month.
           Not all of what happened to distract me from my theoretical 'goals' was bad, however. I do have a few potentially really exciting things in the pipeline, career-wise, some of which  may be posted here as soon as I get clearance to do so (assuming the project gets the green-light I'm waiting on). 
             The main thing that distracted me, however, was my final paper for my Fairy Tales class, and that paper almost certainly will be going up here in the next few days. It was nearly 30 pages on the Taxnomic Effect of Corpse Embalming on the Pop Culture Vampire, via its Influence on the New England Vampire Panic (i.e. from about the 18th Century). Seriously. I got to research the pants of that nonsense and then had a captive audience to present my findings to... God, I love Grad School sometimes.

                Anywho... aside from my paper, all I did was admin stuff related to job-hunting and securing funding for my next-semester of research. And like 10 minutes of add-a-scene-to-say-I-wrote in one of my ongoing Star Wars fics...
Basically, that means that none of my goals from last month got accomplished. I technically did make it over the 15k line in total word count, but that's not even up to my emergency fallback word goal. This is the first month in 2022 where I didn't make it over the 20k line and I am genuinely disappointed in myself for that.
           Still, if the thing I spent time on instead pans out the way I hope it will, I'll be able to get over that disappointment pretty quickly. I'm hoping I'll have an answer on it soon, but it might have to wait for confirmation one way or the other for another month or so...
               Which means that I still should put down some goals for June 2022 in writing.

               Like my goals for May, I'm being very cautious. All I'm aiming for is 30k, hoping for 40k, with more than half of the word-count leaning towards the creative side of things. (I'd like another query letter to go out, but I need a couple more job apps so as long as I get those, the lack of a query isn't a deal-breaker on calling the month a success.)
We'll just have to see what happens...

             GOOD LUCK to all of you in your endeavors! 
​
             And, as always, feel free to drop me a line about anything YOU GUYS are working on!

January was a month full to bursting of time-heavy demands on me and my meager reserves of energy and attention. I am in the process of transitioning to a new role at one of my jobs and also of shifting course within my COVID de-railed academic career, so I've been hella busy (in a GOOD way, something way better than any other sort of busy, over-worked-ness that I've been subjected to in the last few years.)
That said, I still managed to get within a negligible distance of my word-count goal for this month. With respect to the fact that I am still recovering my creative groove after the past summer's burnout, I aimed for simply not backsliding. I've been slowly getting back to the 50k a month I usually produce, but in small spurts (ie, 5k in October, 15k in November, and 24k in December). So my goal this month was 25k

Not great, certainly, but also not too bad.

I have plenty of room to improve, but I'm trying not to beat myself up about anything here because I'm still doing better than last month and since progress is not a destination but a trajectory, and as my current trajectory is still pointing in the right direction, this month is a success. It's important for me to keep focused on that part of it.

And to start looking forward towards a brighter future, because next month is full of particularly amazing promise.
It's more exciting for me in the immediate future than it can be for you, but I am embarking on the production of a short-vlog sort of new content! It's part of a semester project and will be posted on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, but only after I post it here, of course. It's hopefully going to be part opinionated media-review and part informative cultural/historical analysis, and I'm very excited about its potential!

I probably won't finish scripting / filming / editing any of it until at least March... but I'll likely start up with posting in-production pics and teasers almost immediately after I get the pitch approved by my professor!

Aside from that, I'll almost certainly be able to finish up with posting the Multiverse Mishap story (both the BatFam version and the SPN one). And I should even be able to gear up for posting a brand new story, but that's a secondary goal and won't be at all plausible until at least three weeks yet...

So, LOTS of stuff in the pipeline and it's all really exciting!
But, as always, we'll just have to see how things play out.
In sincerely hope it goes well, so me, and for whatever you guys have on all your plates at the moment!

GOOD LUCK, EVERYONE!!

Honestly, while 2020 was a raging dumpster fire of a YA dystopian novel that hit everyone hard, 2021 turned out to be the personally tragic and gut-wrenching set-up found in the first 5~10 minutes of a classic Disney movie. I can only hope that 2022 turns out to follow through on the rest of the movie and the theoretically inevitable (but deeply implausible) happy ending...
2020 was a literal disaster, and involved a significant number of personal setbacks, but I still managed to accomplish things on a personal level.
2021 was basically abject failure on a majority of counts and it was so particularly awful that I can own up to that without embarrassment or shame or anything but weariness.

Here's my 2021 summary report:
​

      Yup, that's right, I pretty much didn't finish anything at all. Technically, I've finished the draft for both sides of the SPN/BatBros Multiverse Mishap story, but I haven't been able to get the remaining chapters prepped for posting yet. Nor have I got a new story situated to begin posting at a reasonable moment post-completion of Multiverse Mishap...           Soooo, yeah, I don't quite count that as finished.
       And everything after July is just an aberration of personal collapse.
      I DID get 3 months with over 75k written, and 6 months with over 50k, so I do count the first half of the year as not-horrifically offensive, even if I didn't managed to get anything wrapped up. Progress isn't only measured in finished projects, after all, it IS really more of a trend-line trajectory than any kind of destination, so I didn't get much finished but I still got stuff done. If I hadn't collapsed into a black hole of awful, I'd probably be able to count that a win and even with my backslide, I'm still walking away from a year where I do have something worthwhile to show for my labors.

Here's the breakdown of how focused I stayed each month:

                It's not an excessive amount of work, at least not in terms of accomplishing the main, normal goals, but (as evidenced by the tacked on extra goal) I am also quite sure that I'll be posting a lot of new words as being part of the [Star Wars] Not a Kid semi-story, so hopefully I'll get at least one piece of that sorted out well enough to being posting it as a current project on Ao3... We'll just have to see what happens.
                ​So, hopefully, we'll see something happen that shifts things towards a brighter future. But if not, I've at least got a handle on myself enough to know I tried... (It's really difficult not to feel like a lazy piece of shit when like 80% of my day often involves sitting on a couch, and then just a short bit of shift work... but I absolutely cannot focus on anything like a job app after a shift at one of my jobs... ADHD brain says when the shift is over the day is over... even if I get out of work at like 11am, which means to compensate and actually get shit done with my days I've been waking up at like 2am on the regular...).

              We'll have to see how it all works out.
              I hope you guys have a great July, a FANTASTIC 4th of July Weekend, and as always, if you think of anything you'd like me to write about, just drop me a line and I'll work it into the schedule post haste!

GOOD LUCK, Y'ALL!

          It was an odd month, not least because of how my A/C died on me... We honestly think it was sabotage... We had a couple of people come out to give estimates on getting it replaced soon-ish (because it was old and would need replacing soon so we wanted a ballpark on its cost), but it was working fine after 2/4 people checked it out and then the 3rd guy left and immediately it crapped out... And dude #3's company called us 26 times in the next 30 hours...). ​

            I'm actually really excited it because I like at lot of the formatting possibilities better than what Patreon offers and I can link certain posts through Patreon to ensure that they remain Early Access or Patron Only. No real changes will be seen in my posting schedule here, but I do think the website will be able to help me get more exposure. ^_^
        Anywho, I wasn't really able to meet... well any of my May goals writing goals outside of word count, but technically I did send my query letters, make my job apps, and post my chapters / reviews on time (thank goodness for prewriting and substantial queues!)
            But all that aside, I've got high hopes for June:

           Unfortunately, the Sun & Stars story has caught up to me in terms of being a little too difficult to research / write on any kind of schedule and since the BatFamily story is both easier to write and receives more audience enthusiasm... I'm transferring my focus to Multiverse Mishap. It'll likely be a best-choice option even if it currently feels like giving up. (I always hate leaving WIPs as WIPs, but sometimes it's inevitable).
           We'll see what happens, but I've got a very good outlook for it!
           I hope you guys have a wonderful June!

GOOD LUCK!

           It has been a long time since I updated this website. I vanished into the ether with extremely little warning or any belated notice and for that I sincerely apologize. Life is an extremely unpredictable river to ford and sometimes we just get swept away with the current.
           I have spent the last few years trying to gain a footing in various avenues into the media industry and I am not too proud to say that I've been met with more failure than success. Between a disheartening lack of genuine career prospects, a critical change in the landscape of my priorities, and a health-crises in my Family that has caused both significant financial distress and emotional strife, I simply didn't have it in me to maintain a website of any sort.
           Even when my personal life began to calm down, my professional life was... unpleasant. It had stabilized enough for me to suffer through in silence, but it wasn't a good situation. So while I had finally come to a sort of equilibrium, I still was in no shape to be working on any kind of unpaid passion project that required time and effort and research, no matter how professional the tone I created for it. To escape my woes, I began writing Fanfiction under the name PrettyMissKitty on Ao3. My work received tremendous praise, right from the start. The Fanfiction was almost effortless to write and easy to post with some regularity. It was enough industry and praise to keep the demons of depression at bay, and it motivated me in both my less than exhilarating retail work and my writing (ranging from my original fiction and fanfiction to factual dissertations on the state of media and culture as we know it today).
        Things had begun to calm down and I was on the cusp of something great. I had a job offer from the Smithsonian and I was literally ~2 weeks away from giving my notice to my retail position when COVID struck. The offer from the Smithsonian evaporated with the department's budget. The retail position laid me off. The side-gig of tutoring I had scrounged for nearly dried up as well... It was not a good time.
           At the suggestion of a reader who deeply enjoyed my work and knew of my financial struggle, I created a Patreon account. With this account's paid membership services, especially in wake of 2020's mass layoffs (of which, I was a victim for the better part of the year), I've been able to subsidize an effort to return to school in pursuit of a masters and hopefully a PhD and the endeavor has made an astounding difference in my outlook for the better.
           So now, I'm back here and delighted to be so.
           I am now able to return to the upkeep of this website as part of my coursework, or at least validate the effort I would like to put into the upkeep as being tangentially related to my coursework, so I will definitely be updating this site on a very regular basis. It will be maintained in combination with my Patreon and, as such, there will be a Members Only section with special updates and material from my original fiction projects (which I will hopefully be getting set up and open to Patrons within the next week).
           That said, I would still like to work on this site as a passion project and allow the public to make use of the majority of material I create. Reviews will go up early for Patron-Only Access, as will new chapters of Fanfiction and new editorials, but 75% of what I produce will be openly available for anyone to peruse. This includes my Parental Aide commentaries and resources on how to understand what's happening inside your kids' brains as they grow and interact with media. It also includes commentaries on cultural engineering and how to make use of it to create a more equitable society with all members of a community developing a mutual investment to maintain it, be it on the scale of a single family, a neighborhood, an institution like an art museum or a university, or on the scale of states and nations and our new, globalizing world..
           I have three main goals for this site:
                      - Create a professional online presence to support my developing writing career.
                      - Educate the public from my perspective as a PhD candidate to create an informed community.
                      - Facilitate a vehicle for creating a Consulting business in concert with my volunteer speaking.

           My goals may change, but for now, I think they suit my ability to commit time and effort while still allowing for flexibility in following up on career opportunities.

           ​I have four categories of content-creations project relevant to discuss here, all of which I hope will be things that I can discuss in greater detail in the near future.

           These goals essentially mirror my goals as listed on Patreon with each new month. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with these projects and ensure that my posting schedule remains in sync on both sites!
           Wish me luck! And I look forward to building something new with you!

          Over the past few months, I've been sitting at home, wallowing in the fact that I am suddenly being swept away into the grown-up world with no maps or guidebooks to speak of. Actually that's totally not true. I've been thoroughly enjoying my post-grad period of unemployment. While it has been stressful for me to set out on the adventure of a lifetime, I've been waiting to embark of this journey for a long time now. I've been diligent in my applications and thorough in my networking endeavors and my efforts seem to be paying off. I can almost taste the sweetness of full-time employment in my beloved music industry and will continue to pursue every lead I can dig up until I secure my dream job. It's been a great few months.

           This past weekend was my formal commencement ceremony. I walked across the stage on Ball Circle and it sunk in that I'm done with college. I may go back for an MBA or something in the future, but for now, I've finished with the thing that has made up my entire life so far: school. I'm in the 'real' world now and I honestly feel like I can make it here. I'm gonna get into the music industry, it's just a matter of time. I have something big in June to look forward to and I'll be moving to a new city soon. I have a lot that I still have to do, but I've actually come pretty far.

           I'm still living off my parents. And my student loans are looming on the horizon, but I'm doing okay. I have a plan, I know where I'm going and I know how to get there. Maybe I'm not sprinting up the ladder of success just yet, but Music has always been an industry of "hurry up and wait". I'll get where I'm going soon enough, and I will definitely be getting there. I'm already well on my way.

I just graduated from the University of Mary Washington!
That means I need to get a new system set up for recording how my career goes and publishing all the epic projects that come with it. That would be what's happening here!

If you were looking for the other page with all my pre-graduation projects, that can be found HERE. I'll be getting this page spiffed up with news as soon as there's cool news to share. ^_~