Hello, all! Yes, we are doing two posts in one week, but I didn't want to drag out 2024 wrapup too long. So, next week will have my reading roundups for 2024, and this week, let's take a look at December's Doings!
Writing!
- Writing in December did not go as planned, by which I mean that it hardly went at all. The first half of the month, all my energy was consumed by my grad school class; the second half of the month, all my energy was consumed by work and Christmas.
- I did get a little writing done, but most of it was snippets of either Project Kingfisher character backstory or just-for-fun stuff. I managed a little bit more worldbuilding planning for Project Kingfisher, but not enough to start the book. I also started my DOSA Files story, but not in time to finish it before the deadline. (I do want to keep working on it, though, in hopes that Heidi does another anthology.)
- D&D writing has basically not happened at all; however, D&D sessions also haven't happened, so that's not a problem. Yet.
- I really should not plan on writing during the holidays, and I don't know why I deluded myself into thinking it would happen.
Reading!
- Reading, unlike writing, continued to go well in December and featured the usual mix of holiday-specific and non-holiday-specific reads. On the holiday side, we have three delightful rereads: A Superhero for Christmas, Christmas in Talesend, and my Christmas Eve treat, Twelve Days of Faerie Christmas. All of these were delightful, but Twelve Days was especially so.
- In non-holidays reads, I finished the Time Echoes trilogy by reading Fatal Convergence, which surprised me by having some substantial differences from the original version. To be honest, I'm not sure I love the changes — I can see why the Davis made those choices, and they still make for a good story, but I liked the way things originally happened too.
- On the other hand, two books I liked with no qualifications were What Comes of Attending the Commoners' Ball and Rescuing a Supervillain, both of which were absolutely delightful. Commoners' Ball was already on my to-read list, but it got bumped up in priority after multiple authors and the entirety of the W.R. Gingell Discord fan server raved about it. I'm so glad I read it; it's such a fun romp with two excellent, practical protagonists whose lives get upended by others' promises. Rescuing a Supervillain, on the other hand, is the latest of H.L. Burke's Superhero Romance Project series, featuring a cat-shifter thief on the run and a hero who's working through some trauma, and it's just such a sweet story of love and healing. I absolutely recommend it.
- My one other new read was Dogsbody, a Diana Wynne Jones book that had been on my to-read list for some time. That one was ok — it's a cool concept, and I liked the worldbuilding, but it's not my favorite DWJ by a long shot. I'm glad I finally read it, but I don't think I'll reread it particularly soon.
Watching & Playing!
- Amazingly, my friends and I managed to actually finish watching Yona of the Dawn before the end of 2024! I think that's the fastest I've gotten through any show since freshman year of college, honestly. (We haven't watched the untranslated extra episodes, but we're through the main show.)
- Overall, I really enjoyed watching Yona — the characters are excellent in terms of how they're portrayed, how they grow over the course of the story, and how their dynamics with one another play out. I'm particularly impressed with Yona's arc specifically and with the villain, who could so easily be a hero who I'd root for and even fangirl over were the story told from a different perspective.
- I do have to correct my prediction of last month, however, because Jaeha is absolutely, positively, without a doubt, my favorite of the dragons (and possibly also my favorite character in general). He appeared onscreen, and my immediate, out-loud reaction was "Oh, I like him." I don't think anyone should be surprised by that, though; he's very similar to some of my other favorite characters, and he's just fun in terms of personality. (And a little scandalous, yes. But that also describes some of my favorite characters.) Shin-Ah, the blue dragon, remains my second-favorite dragon, and I also still love Yun, Hak, and Yona herself . . . there's a lot of good characters; I'm going to have to read the manga so I don't have to say goodbye to them!
- I also watched some Christmas movies, but not as many as usual. Rewatches were A Christmas Carol, the original Grinch, and Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown; the one new Christmas movie I watched was We're No Angels, which was funny, but not a new favorite.
- Other than that, I have been playing some Star Rail and quite a bit of Genshin! That said, most of my Genshin time has been in service of building characters, as I finally got to pull on the limited banners (after saving for one in particular since I started the game), got some very good new characters (including the one I was specifically hoping for and several others I really wanted!), and then realized that I had virtually nothing with which to get them up to the level of the characters I already had (whoops). That's still been fun — I've done a lot of exploring, which has been nice — but I'm looking forward to getting back to story soon.
Life!
- The dominant themes for December were, unsurprisingly, Christmas and my grad school class.
- Advent and Christmas materials — and the need to work ahead because I was taking time off around Christmas — kept me very busy at work. We had a few unexpected hiccups (including some communication problems and issues with deadlines, neither of which were my fault), but everything got done on time, and pretty much everything turned out quite well. I'm very pleased with the promo piece I made to hand out at the Christmas Eve services, and I also really like the overall Advent/Christmas visual theme I had this year!
- Wrapping up my grad school class also went fairly well; I was a bit stressed about whether or not my final project would actually fit what the professor was expecting, but thankfully, he liked my analysis. The final exam also went reasonably well . . . especially considering that some of the questions had to do with parts of the book that we were never assigned in class. (Thankfully, the exam was open-book, and I knew the rest of the material well enough that I had time to hastily find the info on the unfamiliar topics.)
- In the middle of all that, my D&D group started our new campaign! We've only had two sessions so far, but it's been fun. I think the new characters have some interesting dynamics, and I look forward to seeing where the storyline goes. I am happy with my character, Breena, a gnome warlock, so far — while I haven't gotten to test out many of her abilities, as a character I think she's fun.
- The payoff for all my stress earlier in the month was that I took the week of Christmas and most of the week of New Year's off from work, which was lovely, albeit busier than I intended it to be. I did quite a bit of baking and made two new recipes: pecan dainties, which are basically candied pecans in cookie form, and potato candy, which is a rolled candy made with peanut butter, a little bit of mashed potato, and quite a lot of powdered sugar. It is delicious, and I want to make it again (and try to do it better next time; I think I used too much peanut butter). I also tried a new sourdough roll recipe for Christmas day, one that allows for an overnight rise (which meant I could make the rolls Christmas Eve and bake them Christmas day).
- My sister came home for Christmas week, and getting to see her was lovely. We got to hang out, chat, and play plenty of board games, both on our own and with various friends (either over the internet or in person). We also visited my grandpa briefly the weekend after Christmas, which was nice — I haven't been up to see him in several months.
- As for Christmas itself, we had a very nice holiday. Our church had its Christmas Eve service on both Sunday and Christmas Eve proper, so we actually went to the church where I work on Christmas Eve. It was quite lovely to experience that service for myself and for my family to see where I work and some of what I've done and meet several of the people I work with. Then we had a fairly chill Christmas day in which we didn't get around to actually opening gifts until almost noon . . . which, to be honest, is pretty in character for us. People seemed to like what I gave them, which was good, and I got some gifts I'm pretty happy about. We ended up with an accidental theme of everyone but my dad receiving kitchen stuff in their stocking, which was funny.
- And, of course, we finished up the year by celebrating New Year's Eve with our Bible study. As always, that was a fun time; I loved getting to see some people who've left the area but are back for the holidays, and there was plenty of good food and conversation.
- Then we took the Christmas tree down on January 1, and the holidays are officially over. After all that, going back to work on January 2 was . . . rough. Hopefully next week will be better.
January Plans
- January should return us to the usual routine — work, grad school, and writing. I'm hoping that work will quiet down in the next couple months after the hecticness of Stewardship and holidays, but there have also been rumors of trying to change things with the livestream, so we'll see what happens.
- I have accidentally left grad school registration for this semester until the very last minute (in my defense, I thought I had another week), so I don't know for sure which class I'll be taking next — I have a required class that will probably be difficult and frustrating, though it may also be occasionally interesting, and I have an elective that should be pretty chill but I'm not especially excited about, and I'm not sure (as of writing this post) which one I'm doing first and which I'm doing second.
- As for writing: I plan to use most of January for continued planning on Project Kingfisher, additional work on my unfinished DOSA Files story (in hopes that I can have it ready and waiting if there's another opportunity), and D&D writing (since we will hopefully be getting back to regular sessions soon). If the timing works out, I'll also start drafting Project Kingfisher this month — though it might be the very end of the month. Additionally, as I mentioned in my last post, I will be wrapping things up on Dreams and Dragons so I can retire that blog.
- I talked about my reading goals in my 2024 recap/2025 goals post, and I hope to get a good start on those in January. I have a stack of Peter Wimsey library books that need to be read, so that might be a good place to start . . . Plus I intend to start reading the Yona manga where the anime left off.
- And, of course, I am very excited for the start of a new storyline in Star Rail! This one sounds like it's going to be absolutely epic. (It also sounds like it will potentially tear my heart out and rip it into pieces with feels, but y'know. Isn't that what a lot of great stories do?)
How was your December? Any plans for January? Did you make any resolutions or goals for the new year? If you did Christmas baking/sweet-making, what was your favorite thing you made? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!