I am so far behind... T_T

Waaaaay back at the beginning of the month, we went back to Castlewood Canyon, wanting to see the rest of the "Cave" trail, which had been closed earlier in the season for nesting turkey vultures. The turkey vulture nesting was definitely a success, judging by how many of them we saw!


As always... Bella!


And we got to see a couple deer! I know that we have just... so many deer, but I'm still always happy to see them. This one was obviously young, still with little fawn spots, though it was most of the way grown.

Sixteen more pictures:

Wandering up the short stretch of road between the parking lot and the trailhead, there were some milkweed that were absolutely COVERED in aphids. But they also had lots of happy ladybugs having a massive buffet, haha.


Looking up from lower on the trail.


The rock wall that was roughly where the trail was closed off last time. I like being able to see the space behind the front "section" of the rock.

We were able to continue on, now that the nesting closures have been lifted.

It wasn't... quite as impressive as hoped. Still didn't find the alleged caves, haha. The cliffs are really pretty, though.


Unfortunately the sun was at just the worst angle for all of these pictures looking up at the cliff, haha. But I liked the dramatic dead tree and the tall bit of the rock.


Again with the sun making it look like a dream sequence.




Turkey vulture!


Something was drilling into this fallen log, ha.

As we were heading back, Alex looked over to the side, and...


The little deer! Mostly grown, just a little small, but still with white fawn spots! So cute. (Yes, this is almost the same picture as above the cut.)


And a second deer, nearby the first.

Bella was very excited to see the deer. (I think I've mentioned before, but she does enjoy "watching" TV sometimes, especially animal programs. There was a wildlife rehab show we used to watch sometimes, and her favorites to watch were seals and deer, haha.) She doesn't seem to want to chase them or anything, just wants to go see them, ha.


That second deer, staring back at Bella. It didn't seem overly concerned.


Speaking of successful turkey vulture nesting... Not sure how easy it is to see, but aaaaall those little black specks in the sky are vultures. SO MANY.


A fairly nice chunk of a shed snake skin. Probably a bull snake... but not nearly as impressive as the one my mom found last weekend!


Another ladybug on milkweed.


A very impressively active wasp nest over the bathrooms, ha.


Bumblebee on a sunflower!

Still more trails to explore, but glad we got to do the rest of the sort of "horseshoe" of this trail, and glad we had a chance to get out for the day.

Honduran white bats, sticker by the Atomic Pixies.

This was a long week (despite being a short work week for me) and a rough one. The shooting at Evergreen High School ("minor" as it was, considering, and how awful is that?) impacted me more than I expected, having interacted with the two named students. I didn't know them well, by any stretch, but it still hit me hard. The endless discourse around Charlie Kirk's death has also been completely exhausting. The stuff from early in the week - more back and forth getting the AC fixed, a walk in a neighboring city to see an uncommon bird - seems like it was way longer ago now. We had a model show to end the week, which was tiring but a nice break. Having a long weekend was a good thing.

Goals for the week:

• I did finish reading The Dead Take the A Train
• I started reading Tidal Creatures
• I did not finish (or even work on) the WIP intro
• We did finish the model show prep, even if it was last-minute
• We went to the model show on Saturday
• I stopped by mom's earlier in the week to collect caterpillars, and Saturday to drop Bella off
• I went to the bank
• I ordered birthday gifts for Taylor, though they aren't supposed to arrive until day-of :/
• We got a bit of outdoor time
• I did write up my September writing goals
• We paid rent, finally getting an accurate amount
• I still haven't put my laundry away
• I did go buy fruit flies
• I didn't work on my reading page

Tracked habits:

• Work - 4/7 - I took Saturday off
• Household Maintenance - 7/7
• Physical Activity - 2/7
• Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 1/7 - over 500 words
• Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
• Meta Work - 3/7
• Personal Writing - 5/7
• Other Creative Things - 2/7
• Reading - 7/7 - I finished The Dead Take the A Train, and started Tidal Creatures, I also caught up on Dracula Daily/Re: Dracula, Alex and I read more of Duma Key, and I started reading a short story called Swelter
• Attention to Media - 6/7 - Sunday we watched the Ravens game (which was good for the first three and a half quarters), then watched two episodes of The Paper; Monday we watched two eps of The Paper, and then an ep of Great British Bake Off, then a documentary I don't remember; Tuesday I caught up on Re: Dracula, we watched a couple eps of Dateline, then finished the last couple eps of The Paper; Wednesday I listened to Re: Dracula and we had news coverage in the background; Thursday had some documentaries in the background; Friday watched Great British Bake Off, and then The Most Hated Man on the Internet
• Video Games - 0/7
• Social Interaction - 4/7

(I've got way too much to catch up on.)

A couple weeks ago, we wanted to get out and do something, but also got a late start on the day. We headed to the local greenbelt, since it's reasonably close and we haven't been there in a while.


A very cute bumblebee.


My other favorite insect from the day: a really big moth hanging out on a tree. :)

Eleven more pictures, including more insects and spiders:

One of the road bridges over the greenbelt path has some pretty mosaics.


Another of the mosaics.

(There are two more mosaics on the other side of the bridge, but someone was sitting there, haha.)


Crossing the creek.


There were many big, impressive spider webs along the path! With big, impressive spiders in them! I didn't realize until after looking at the picture that this one had a snack. :)


Not a spider, but a daddy longlegs! This one was almost orangey in color, which was neat.


These beetles were just face-first, going to town in the flowers. It was very funny. I believe these are "bumble flower beetles."


Some huge carpenter ants!


Some lovely little sweet peas in the overgrown/abandoned garden area behind some of the apartments.


Hollyhocks have definitely been having A Year! I saw them all over Santa Fe, and in a ton of gardens this year, and even a bunch of landscaping. This one is also in the abandoned garden.


A very charming little duck swam over just as it started raining.


I'm really not a fan of the influx of Japanese beetles that we've started having each year. They're terribly destructive. However, this one was very interesting - almost pink on the front segment instead of the usual green color!

It was also a two snake day, which was delightful! I didn't get good pictures of either of them, but Alex spotted one pretty large garter snake, which I got to see as it headed into the underbrush. Then I was leaning down to look at a little spider that scuttled across the sidewalk... and wound up pointing directly at a tiny baby garter snake that had been just at the edge of the path. Very tiny and cute!

It was a lovely day out. We got caught in a tiny drizzle, but not bad. It was pretty humid (especially for here!) so we were all a bit sticky by the end.

This year hasn't been great in terms of writing. While I've hit my wordcount goal for the year (75k words), almost none of that has been fiction writing. That went from continual frustration to an apathy that was almost worse, where I just didn't care about it at all any more.

Then I had an atypically strong reaction to some caffeine, and decided to try setting up a pen name that's not connected to the rest of my real life or online presence. It was a very enjoyable (if short) burst of enthusiastic hyperfocus, and while that level of excitement didn't last, at least some amount of interest has remained.

My goals for August were:
- get an intro blurb done for that pen name
- do some assessing and prioritizing of ideas
- finish that section of the snowflake outline for my WFM fic
- possibly finish the current chapter of that WIP

And how did I do?
- I did get the intro blurb done!
- I did at least start prioritizing the various ideas, narrowing it down to five that I want to really consider working on
- I did not finish that outline (but plan to possibly work that more into a scheduled thing)
- I also did not finish the WIP chapter (but plan to instead give in to the desire to do the re-plot and rewrite of that particular story, which is one of the five I mentioned.)

I'm feeling pretty decent right now, at least emotionally, in regards to writing. I haven't really made a lot of forward progress on the writing itself, but I'm hoping to build up at least a little bit of a "framework" that will make it easier to move forward without burning out. That might be wishful thinking, but I'm trying! I at least don't feel like I want to avoid it entirely, so that's progress, haha. I really do have to figure out the next step stuff, though, and make sure I'm not just using other tasks as procrastination.

I've tentatively poked around on accounts set up both on DW and on tumblr... but it's kind of a "resounding crickets" sort of situation. I wasn't expecting otherwise, but I also don't entirely want to be shouting into the void. I'm seeing a lot of other people also seeming to shout into the void, and not a lot of interaction happening, though with obvious exceptions. I don't expect (or even want!) a ton of instant interaction, but I'd like to lay the groundwork to connect with the types of writers I vibe with once I have things worth sharing.
I think it's likely that Bluesky is going to be a more active place to look for community, but I also am not good at using Bluesky, lol. I never enjoyed (or got to the point of really "getting" twitter even before it was a Nazi bar, so I feel like I'm lacking a base level of experience to just jump into Bluesky. But it's time to try and get used to it, I suppose!

My goals for September:
- Start looking at Bluesky. Figure out what hashtags seem active and relevant, see if there are particular accounts or hashtags or feeds that writer-types seem to congregate around. (I started off by following a bunch of the authors I read and like... but that's obviously not a peer group, ha.)
Regrettably, I also probably have to figure out what kinds of things to post. And then I have to do it. :( Ew.
- I need to figure out my WIP next steps. (Possibly start with making intros for the WIPs I'm hoping to work on? Start with an outline? Do a preliminary intro, then outline, then revise the intro? What kinds of outline do I want to do? Give snowflake another try, or look for a different method?)
- Pick one of the WIPs to actually start with.
- Start putting together some collections of images for future use in moodboards and things like that. I want some sort of visual I can attach to posts about my stories, but am not a good enough artist to illustrate things myself, am too broke at this point to commission art, and am definitely not ever going to use AI for it, so... moodboards it is, ha. But I want to get a repository of images (via sources that allow them to be used) for that. This I hope to be an ongoing "when I have spare time" thing that will hopefully be enjoyable, too.

We'll see how it goes!