Hello folks! I hope you are all doing well. How is the quarantine treating you? I’m on day 44 of “self-isolation” – well, sort of anyway. I did have to go into work a few days this week and will again next week, but other than that I haven’t gone anywhere else and most things are still shut down (so no bookstores or movie theatres or window-shopping in Midtown…)

Are you all handling things ok? Are you finding things to keep you occupied? Did you have some kind of income to keep you afloat, or did you lose your job because of the pandemic? It’s all very scary right now and we are all under a lot of stress. Some people are using this time to “better themselves” and others are taking care of their families and still others are just fighting to keep it together. Whatever you are doing, it is ALL GOOD. You are doing the best you can and that’s all anyone should expect of themselves or others in a time like this.

Don’t be too hard on yourself. This is something I have to remind myself as well as anyone else. I have had some really rough days, and some days that have been perfectly fine. That’s totally natural but sometimes we cannot help but feel like we’re not doing enough – even though we know logically that that’s totally silly.

I thought I would share a few things that I’ve been keeping busy with, and if you’d like to share what you’ve been up to, that would be great!

I am still participating in Camp Nanowrimo for the month of April, and doing surprisingly well. I mean, I’m not going to be writing 50k words like some people – I gave myself a SMALLER goal, just 20k words this time. But I have managed to keep up a daily writing streak ALL MONTH, which is the best I’ve done in YEARS, and I have written a little over 16k words so far, which is more than I have written (again) in YEARS. I am very happy about that. While I am in no way minimizing or trivializing the difficulties, tragedies, and death toll of this pandemic, I am trying to be grateful for the small things, and one of those things has been the luxury of free time I haven’t had in quite awhile.

I have also been reading a lot still. Not quite as much as I did the first couple weeks, but still. I finished Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex (book #7 of the series) last night (technically at 2:30am this morning). Unfortunately, because I am borrowing those audiobooks from the library, I now have to wait for the final book of the series to become available and the wait is KILLING ME. In the meantime, I have started the audiobook of The Wee Free Men (one of the Discworld books) by Terry Pratchett. This book will satisfy one of the categories in my “Storm the Castle” 2020 Reading Challenge (which much of my reading these days has not done). I am also slowly working through the nonfiction book The Queens of Animation by Nathalia Holt.

Speaking of my reading challenge, I have now completed 9 out of the 21 books on my challenge. When I finish the two books I’m currently reading, that will put me at 11 and I’ll be halfway through! In addition, when I finish the 8th Artemis Fowl book I will have officially finished the first series in the 2020 Finishing the Series Reading Challenge. And then I’ll move on to the next series (perhaps The Dresden Files, though that I might be TOO ambitious…)

I have also bought a computer game for the first time in, oh… 12 or 13 years… I bought the video game Gris when Steam was having a sale last week. I’ve never been a big gamer, but I did play a couple computer games back in the day and I thought it would be fun to pick it up again. I’m only 3 “chapters” into Gris so far, but I absolutely love it. It’s quiet and calming and the art (which was the main selling point for me, I admit) is absolutely GORGEOUS. I highly recommend it.

In addition, I am doing more cross-stitch work. I’m almost done with this robot design I got from the Etsy shop DianaWattersHandmade. She has great designs for reasonable prices, she ships quickly, and she’s really friendly as well!

Anyway, those are some of the things (besides work and house-cleaning) I’ve been doing to keep busy and calm. How about you guys? Found anything fun? Read anything good lately? Please do share! I’d love to hear about it!