October Sweeps - Day 272

It's the day before Halloween, and I just stayed at the cabin.  There was so much left to do to get this place cleaned up (my sister's family is coming on the weekend), and each day has been a few degrees warmer than the last.  

Do you remember how George Lucas used to endlessly tinker with his Star Wars trilogy (this is, of course, in the days before he became Saint George, which occurred for Star Wars fans the day Disney put out their own Star Wars films [even worse, it probably started with THE LAST JEDI--the only great one in the modern era]), because, as he put it, he always found little bits that didn't fit with his vision, or please him, or areas where he wished he could add something new?  Well, even though I was as bothered by this as the loudest Sequel-hater out there, I actually understand.

Every time I sit down to record a chapter of one of my books/stories, I find things to change.  And when I'm editing the audio, I find things I'm not happy with.  And just now, I wrote a few new lines for a chapter that's already edited and recorded--done, essentially--because I can't help but tinker with it myself.  Why didn't I have the father do or say anything in the first dozen chapters of the book?  Why didn't I mentioned what was going on with Brent and the bullies from school until the revelation that something happened to them comes in the midpoint of the story (originally, that was the ending of the first book, right there, with that little discovery).  Why does Brielle go from having a friend named Glorioso to Kassidee to Gianna and then back to Gloriosa (only with an a now instead of an o)?  Doesn't she have any friends with normal names?  

And most importantly, why does a book with supernatural elements focus ONLY on the banal, trivial elements of Brielle's life, instead of the whole reason I wrote the book in the first place?*

Push-ups Today: 83
Push-ups In October: 2068

Well, it's time to go.  Not technically--I still have two hours before the sun starts to get low in the sky--but enough is enough.  I ran out of things to edit, so I grabbed a short story I recorded but never edited and got through that by noon.  I finished another Outcast episode and jotted down my goals for November.  I sat down to finish recording the HP Lovecraft story I started the other night (and fell asleep a single page into), and guess what?  I fell asleep after four pages.  Then I grabbed another story by a more recent author, and recorded it, just for fun, and got through it fine (I might put it out as a bonus for New Year's), and went back to Lovecraft, only to fall asleep halfway through the page.

So, I closed my book, turned off the recorder, and closed my eyes, figuring I'd give myself a nap I had not earned . . .

. . . and I couldn't go to sleep.

Isn't that unfair?  That when I was trying not to, I couldn't keep sleep away, and when I surrendered to it, I was wide awake?  So, I started packing things up, feeling that familiar melancholy (the last day of summer vacation feeling**), and realizing that despite my two days of unboxing and burning, there was far too much junk lying around to load back into my car, that it would take an hour or more to do so, despite it taking half that to get it unloaded.

So, I ended up piling it all in a corner down in the cellar, leaving it for next week, so that I could enjoy having a clean car for a single week (I have to get it worked on anyway, and had postponed that action because it looked like a homeless persona and a chimpanzee were living in it).  We'll see how that works out.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In October: 4473

Words Today: 616
Words In October: 30,527

*It was inspired by a bad dream I had, in 2017 or so, where I was savvy enough to turn on my phone and record the details of before I went back to sleep.  Otherwise, I probably never would've written it.  And it was the horror movie stuff I was dreaming about, not childhood jealousy and teenaged romance.

**I knew a guy who was a Mormon missionary they sent to South America, and they had to knock on doors and preach to strangers every day except for one, which they called P-days (pretty sure P stood for Preparation or Pass or Personal days), and on that day, they could write letters, take pictures, sleep, do their laundry, go shopping, or see the sights.  He told me how precious every hour of the P-days were, and how he didn't even want to take a nap for fear of wasting them.  He said they were the best days . . . except that about ninety minutes before the P-day ended--they only had until afternoon, and then it was time to preach again--this sense of sadness and frustration would come over him, the bitter knowledge that his free time had come to an end, and now, he couldn't enjoy the last hour, knowing that it was all over.  He said that happened every single week for the two years he was down there, and it was difficult for me to get my head around.  But now it doesn't seem so hard to understand.