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Month: February 2025

Status Report (26 February 2025)

Status Report (26 February 2025)

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Some of you may be aware that I’m employed by the US federal government. As you can imagine, it’s been chaos in the office for weeks now. Rather exciting, going into the office every day, not knowing if this is the day you’ll be ordered to do something blatantly illegal . . . or just arbitrarily fired. Fortunately, I’m on the glide path to retiring from federal service as of mid-May, but that’s also taking up a lot of my attention and emotional investment right now.

As a result – part scheduling adjustments, part just not having the emotional budget to keep up – my creative plans for February are kind of out the window at this point.

One new item is that my muse, fickle creature that she is, has got me writing fan-fiction again for the first time in many years. Earlier this month I managed to knock out a 9,000-word novelette for Star Trek: Lower Decks. What can I say, now that the show is over, I wanted more . . . and maybe a little hopium is what I personally need right now.

So I’m probably not going to hit my planned marks by the end of February. However, I’m hoping to have at least one Human Destiny star system writeup finished shortly. That first bit of fan-fiction will be going up on my Ko-fi as well, as a freebie for all visitors – that’s going to be the usual pattern if and when I write more. With any luck, I’ll be able to keep ahead of other tasks and get those projects knocked out by the first few days in March. Then we’ll see what seems appropriate for next month.

The good news, creatively speaking, is that in no more than two-and-a-half months, I’m going to be a retiree. More time to write, at least!

Planning for February 2025

Planning for February 2025

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Well. January of 2025 was certainly not a dull month. Not going to discuss my opinions about what’s been going on here. I certainly have opinions, as my family can attest from dinner-table conversation, but that’s not generally what I use this blog for.

What I can say is that I’m about to undertake a pretty big life event, after which (roughly mid-May of this year) I may suddenly have a lot more time and attention to give to my creative work. So even this dark cloud might have a silver lining to offer.

For now, though, I’m going to be pushing forward with the usual projects.

In January I got caught up with my university courses, so I’m coming into February in good shape there. I got two star-system writeups drafted for the Atlas of the Human Protectorate last month, and I plan to continue working on those. I also intend to spend some time in February starting to assemble the next draft of the Human Destiny RPG sourcebook. I’ll probably start with the revised character design rules.

Here’s the list for February:

  • Produce the writeups for two star systems for the Atlas of the Human Protectorate, post as a freebie for high tiers on Ko-fi
  • Start work on revisions to the Human Destiny setting bible and core RPG rules, specifically to write the new character design rules
  • Start (or resume) work on at least one new Human Destiny story
  • Continue to collect and rewrite existing material for posting to Ko-fi

The first two items are this month’s hard-and-fast objectives. The main wild card this month is that my employer has abruptly cut off all possibility of telework, which means I don’t have as much flexibility in my schedule now and I’m having to spend more time in the office. I’m not expecting that to make all that big a change, though – I got used to teleworking after the pandemic, and I was probably more productive that way, but I’m not having too much trouble adjusting to the new (old) way of doing things.