I feel like this entry is the equivalent of an acquaintance asking me how I am doing and me saying something longer in response than just "Fine." But here we are. Below are some updates about what I've been up to during my blog break. Spoiler: I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted to.
Writing
The whole purpose for the break was for me to finish up a better draft of the sequel to Beatrice. I did make a lot of progress, but I'm pretty sure it's still terrible. If any of you ever write a book, you'll understand that the process makes you feel very much like a hormone-soaked teenager where you oscillate between joy, despair, and indifference all in the same 10-minute period.
For example: I posted a quote from the revision on Instagram a few weeks ago. At the time I thought it was HILARIOUS. I now look back on it and consider myself the biggest goober of all goobers for posting the stupidest quote from the book. That is my emotional state.
That being said, I'm hoping to polish up the Prologue to post on my Medium blog in the next month or two. This not only affords me the opportunity of sharing it, but it is also way easier than writing a new blog post for my Medium blog. Cheers to laziness.
Old Books
During the past month, I've also read a few books from previous centuries. (That sentence sounds absurdly pretentious, but I'm leaving it in.)
Mansfield Park – This is a Jane Austen novel. I told my friend I'd read it with her, and regret immediately followed. I have read Austen and enjoy her, but I'm not even joking when I say the dry professor writing the introduction to the edition I read was like "Yeah… this is known as Austen's 'boring' one." It was said in a more academic style, but… woof… Fanny Price is a snooze, and the back cover sells it as a story about a marital affair… But *spoiler alert* that marital affair happens on page 425 of 450. You really have to care about a bunch of twenty-somethings putting on a play in an estate house to connect with it. That being said, though, the book does have lots of those brilliant Austenian flourishes that mark her work – Mrs. Norris and Lady Bertram are hilarious, and some of the lines are hysterical.
Tom Jones – I had absolutely no idea what this book was about for the longest time. It's really hard to describe, though. It's… literally about a life, the life of one dude. I'm only 150 pages into it, but it's wonderful: funny, insightful, and fast-paced. It's one of those books that keeps you reading from one chapter to the next, and I have been shocked at the number of characters introduced that die or vanish; it's a more domestic, soap-operay Game of Thrones. I may lose steam at some point, but, for right now, it's a blast to read.
A Little Bit of Horror
My buddy was a miracle-working-gem and helped me get a PS5 this summer. Because of his benevolence, I got to play through Resident Evil 8: Village during July, too. I like slightly scary things, and this was perfect, a blend of jump scares with campy, over-the-top villains. Tbh, the last Resident Evil game was far too scary, and I couldn't get through it until Ernesto sat by me (not even lying). This one was a fun thrill ride with a lot of great moments, the pinnacle being an all-puzzle sequence in an old house full of scary, vintage toys. So. Satisfyingly. Scary.
*I also want to know that I exclusively played this game during daylight hours. I am that big of a goober-wimp.
The White Lotus
There have been some great shows over the past year, but I loved this one. The tone is odd, which is perfectly illustrated by Jennifer Coolidge's performance which teeters on the brink of hilarious, uncomfortable, and tragic. Somehow this shows rides that fine line throughout, dealing with privilege, racism, appropriation, wealth, and success. This is further captured by the show's theme song, which incorporates elements of lush, island sounds with sonic undertones of dread, sex, and violence. I am not easily impressed by anything, but this show was a wonderful surprise. (Yes, that is another pretentious sentence I'm leaving in.)
Music
I also went to a real, live concert. Weezer, Fall Out Boy, and Green Day played at Wrigley and my friends and I went. I'd never seen Weezer, but they were great; Fall Out Boy is just my fave, so I will biasedly say they were the best; Green Day's Billy Joe Armstrong is awesome, though. He can somehow get 40,000 people to vibe together. That is charisma.
The highlight of the entire show, however, was the high school girl who sat next to us. Fall Out Boy did a weird video sequence for their show. The sound was terrible, so we had no idea what it was about except some sort of forest was involved? No idea. Anyway, my friends and I were laughing about it and the high school girl was NOT having it.
"Well," she said, "if you're Fall Out Boy and have put together one of the greatest video albums of the century, then you can do whatever you want."
She was very intense, and I was very supportive of her fandom.
Montana
Along with consuming media, I also did stuff! Ernesto and I went to Montana for a wedding, and it was amazing. We stayed at a tiny cabin, which I was sure would result in one of us getting murdered; perhaps from each other, as the bed creaked and screamed every time you took a breath in it. The wedding was phenomenal, Glacier National Park gorgeous, and simply getting outside of Chicago was 10/10. Being in the mountains and seeing endless blue sky and towering green trees made me realize that I'm really not a city person – not only for the scenery, but the lower temperatures made my frosty Northern European DNA feel right at home.
That's a bit of the catch up from the last two months. Some progress, some fun, some scares, and some good experiences. Overall, I'd say it was pretty great. Now I just have to buckle down and finish that book draft – summon all my lazy-goober-wimp powers and get'er done.