Wonderfully Lethargic (sense the sarcasm?)

As I'm sure you are all painfully aware, I don't write short works. My blog posts, my stories, my CHAPTERS, are all long. Very long. Incredibly, "set aside at least 15minutes" long.

So, it would make sense that it also takes me a long time to write all of that, correct?

Normally, I get started on these blog posts at about 8am, and I USUALLY get my update written and edited for a noon publishing. However, as you have witnessed, sometimes those four hours still isn't enough time. I'm still late to publish. I just have so much to say; so much going on. I need to get it all out, and refine it, and edit it; polish it. Sometimes I need five hours, or even an insane six!

Today? Today I didn't even open Blogger until 10:30 this morning. Today, I didn't think I even needed to get started then.

Because I have nothing really to tell you this past week. I don't know what it is, if I'm feeling burnt out after my pathetic show at April's Camp NaNo, if the weather not knowing what it's doing got me sick, or if I'm just feeling overwhelmed by life in general right now. But this week I've been... lethargic? I guess that's the best way to describe it.

One night I even came home from work and passed out on the couch for darn near three hours. Ya know, because my job - which includes me sitting at my desk virtually doing nothing most of the day - is sooooo exhausting.

Last Tuesday evening, Hubby and I met up with Skarabrae-stone so we could watch "Avengers: Endgame" together. It was an exciting emotional rollercoaster of a movie, and it's been fun randomly checking in with Ska and a few of my other friends, just chatting briefly about the movie or sending Endgame memes to each other. But I'm not as obsessively focused on the movie as most seem to be.

In fact, I believe Hubby was right: we watched Endgame and Game of Thrones out of order. Episode 3 of the final season of GoT aired on April 28th. We went to watch Endgame on April 30th. Out of the two, the GoT episode was more intense and emotionally charged. Not to say that Endgame WASN'T, but I feel it would have been more impactful if we watched it opening night, and then amped up the emotional manipulation by watching the GoT episode. Even so, once the episode was done it was all but out of my mind for the rest of the week.

Apparently I just couldn't be bothered with lingering thoughts of anything.

Normally, since I still don't get a flood of comments/reviews in on my stories or blog, I can usually respond to everyone who commented. I generally do so within a day of seeing the review/comment. I actually take pride in taking that time to reply to my readers; build a relationship with them.

Responding to readers' comments is how Ali Luke and I became friends; she took the time to reply to each of my comments on her blog. It's also how I became such good friends with Taurus Pixie as I put in the effort to respond to each of her lovely reviews. I've also become friends with a couple of other readers, such as TLOS21, Nkemmer777 and ChubbyUnicornMama, after taking the time to respond to their reviews. That extra step in communication opened the doorway for more non-story related conversations.

It's one of the things I'm determined to keep up for as long as I can: responding to reviews/comments/fan mail.

And yet, despite "I Was Thinking of You" doing so well, and getting such lovely reviews - which I'll talk about in a little bit - I still have eight reviews sitting in my inbox, waiting for me to respond. They're glowing reviews, or at least positive ones, that I should be happy to reply to, and yet, I haven't. Pixie has also finished reading "Prescription for Love" and reviewed the last four chapters of that, and I haven't responded to her either, despite having warm fuzzy feels.

TLOS21 noticed that we haven't really chatted while I was "away at camp" and messaged me to see how I was doing. While I've mentally written responses to her and to those twelve reviews, I just get sleepy whenever I attempt to actually write any of them. My eyes are getting heavy just writing this, to be honest.

Two fanfic stories that I follow - "Chat Vert" by Pixie, obviously, I talked about that last week, and "When Duty and Desire Meet" by MidnightStarlightWrites and edendaphne - both updated yesterday. I was so excited to see both updates. It had been months since the latest WDDM update - I actually had to re-read the previous chapter to remind myself what happened - and it was equally exciting to see that Pixie's writers block was gone.

And yet, I didn't read either update yesterday. Mostly because I knew I didn't have the energy to write a proper review once I was finished. Sooooo, I read and commented on both this morning instead of working on this blog post.

This has been my life this week....

I'm not used to this kind of "meh" attitude and lack of energy. It HAS been annoyingly rainy this past week, and we HAVE been rushing through the last of the obviously-too-big-for-just-the-two-of-us Easter ham. Perhaps some sunshine and a new protein this week will be the reset I need. That, and I don't have to work three days in a row with a co-worker I constantly butt heads with. We just clash for who knows what reason. My other co-worker took a mini-vacation this past weekend, so it was just me and the co-worker I don't exactly get along with, which probably added to my funk this past week.

With some new protein, sunshine, and less stress at work, I'm hoping to be back to my normal self.

I still find it so odd that I was in such a funk this past week, though. Especially with such lovely reviews just sitting in my email for me to re-read whenever I want. I mean, check these out.

• Ah, my heart
• Very nicely done. Perfect gift for Taurus pixie. I really enjoyed the Luka and Mari moments, And I am almost wholeheartedly a Adrien/Mari fan. The writing is descriptive and brought me quickly. Thanks for a great read.
• ...Now I just really wanna watch that fictional movie :P
• This was very sweet, thank you
• This was super cute! Love it!
• THIS FIC IS SO VALID I HOPE YOU'RE HAVING A GOOD DAY

Side note, the "movie" that one review referenced was the romcom the girls were all watching in the story. It was such a pain to come up with a good concept on the fly. I'm terrible at that, actually. For those who either haven't read IWTOY yet, or forgot the movie they watched, here's the DVD cover summary Alya read to the group:

Gareth has always been a loner, and he was convinced that it was by choice. Then he met Julia, an independent motocross racer in town for a tournament. Suddenly, Gareth realizes he's not as happy to be a lone wolf as he once thought, and he tries desperately to make Julia part of his life. Problem is, she's been burnt before, and has become a bit of a loner-by-design herself, only relying on her skeleton pit crew for both racing and emotional support. Is it even possible for Gareth to convince Julia to take down her protective wall? Or will he be forced to learn to live without her again once the tournament is through, and she moves on to the next town?

So, uh, thanks, Reviewer, for thinking that plot was good enough to want to watch.... It actually validates the amount of time I spent trying to come up with it. I thought it was one of the low-points of that short story, so I'm glad my "low" was still enticing.

Anyway, I think the cream of the crop of the reviews for this story that I got this week was over on AO3.

I'm in tears. this was heart-rendingly beautiful. sometimes lukanette is written like some kind of consolation or pettiness, but this is the real deal. it was so romantic! i got dokis fo days.

on a real note, this reminded me of the only person I ever truly loved and how meeting them helped me get over my years-long schoolyard crush on someone else. that's how I feel about lukanette i guess; that Marinette isn't "moving on" from loving Adrien bc she has yet to have that chance, but she has the chance to love Luka bc he's interested in her.
-that's not to say anything about the canon, but it's an important distinction in this ship for me.

lmao look at me rambling and preaching away over this! thank you for writing this, i absolutely adore it!

I....
Aside from maybe Pixie, I don't know if I've ever evoked emotion like THAT before! At least, not enough for someone to let me know that I did! Not that articulately, at least...

So, thanks to that reviewer as well. I consider this a big win, and a bit of a milestone.

And I haven't even touched upon the four reviews of PFL that Pixie left me.

It was a good week for reviews. I even had a few faves of IWTOY over on DeviantArt, and you KNOW people generally don't bother going there for fanfiction!

So why didn't that energize me like it normally does? Why didn't that spark me to write more content for these lovely people? Why didn't I even take my netbook out of my work bag this whole week? Or open a word doc on my laptop while I was home? Why wasn't I motivated at all?????

I went to bed nearly each night this past week, mentally yelling at myself for not working on my writing any further. I was determined to at least attempt to figure some things out as I was nodding off. I know I need to shift some things around from Chapter 3 to one of my later "closing Act II" chapters. In fact, I now realize I need to almost completely revamp the opening of the 3rd chapter. The close of it could virtually be a chapter in and of itself, but the lead-in desperately needs to be reworked.

I am also now wondering the "validity" of my opening villain for the story, which may be why I haven't been able to properly figure out a way to take them down.

So... YAY! More edits before I even finish writing the thing. I hope if I can motivate myself to work on these tweaks this week I can get myself back on track.

Oh, and look at that... only a couple minutes late with my update this week. Guess I really didn't need more than those 90minutes to write this after all...

Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books
by Bryan Lee O'Malley