The past week has been busy. I have been working on many projects. I will talk about what I’m working on and I will be practicing writing my French in the following entry. I am also going to talk about some new apps I am trying out, or using more.

In the past week, I have been working on my French and writing. I am past 50k words on my final draft of the story I’m trying to finish. I have a feeling it’s going to end up being a lot longer than I want it to be, but I’m having trouble cutting events because this story is based on true events. I also did some world-building last night of the WIP I will be working on most likely for NanoWriMo.The final draft WIP is mature YA, while the other is dystopian fiction. Tonight I recorded some audio for my upcoming YouTube videos. I’m going to practice my French now by talking about my week a little.

Cette semaine était bonne. Je suis resté à la maison mais je suis sorti dans mon jardin. Je n’aime pas le soleil, donc je ne suis pas restée longtemps dehors.J'ai fait quelques dessins et j'ai même lu mon livre. J'ai mangé du chocolat en écrivant et c'était très sympa. Fête du Travail, mon mari avait un jour de congé, alors nous avons rattrapé le ménage. J'ai terminé numéro un de ma ligue compétitive Duolingo. J'ai un chat allongé sur mes bras pendant que je tape ce blog.Il y a eu un bel événement astronomique fin août. C'était une super lune bleue. Je l'ai aimé.

I have been drinking a lot of tea recently. I am still a diet soda addict but the tea has been a nice change. Usually on the weekend my brother-in-law comes over to visit and he brings a very nice high-quality loose-leaf matcha tea with him, he makes me a cup with honey and citrus and it is delightful! I also like black-orange tea and chai as well and I love making London Fog. My mother-in-law has her own bee hives so I know it is ethically sourced. I also eat the eggs she gets from her rescue chickens, She does nothing to make them lay, they just lay about an egg or two a day per bird, so she usually has many eggs. Again it feels nice knowing that the chickens are treated well and not filled with antibiotics and other drugs. Those cute little babies live like royalty, she keeps building them really amazing coops! We are going out to her home to visit her and other family soon, so I am excited to meet her new rescue rooster, John Snow.

I have been using two new apps recently, Notion and Duolingo. I like both of them very much. Technically I have used Duolingo before, but that was back in 2016 I think and I was using it for Japanese back then. I think it’s a great way to start learning, and it’s a lot of fun. But I am doing other things to supplement learning the language, which I think I mentioned in my last blog.

Notion is completely new for me, and I LOVE it. I thought it was more similar to Obsidian, which I use to organize my research or thoughts. But it turns out Obsidian and Notion are both good for different things. I have been using Notion in place of paper to-do lists, and to organize my online sources. I have also been using it to organize all my documents for returning to college. It is easy to use and I really like the nesting features of it, as well as how much you can customize. I am obsessed with writing, and I even love to make lists. My youngest sister and I used to make lists to pass the time. We both were enablers in our list of obsessions. Notion is the perfect place to store all my lists. I still write on paper but I’m using my paper planner less now. This is kind of sad because I love my paper planner, it’s beautiful and was a gift from a pen pal I have who is so wonderful. But I am trying to buy fewer paper and plastic products, so, in the long run, this might be a good thing.

Another fun thing is I have accomplished a dream I have had since I was fifteen or sixteen. I have made a zine and I’m getting the physical copies next Friday! I have always been inspired by zines from the nineties, and I have always wanted to make my own. So I made one! The theme of the zine is the stars and wires. I will be selling physical and digital copies on this site! I’ll definitely keep this space updated with a release time, but right now I’m aiming for mid-October. I have made little books and booklets before, but never a true zine. This one is mostly poems and digital collages, but the next one I’m planning will have a more physical collage and a less polished feel. I’m really excited. I was most eager to tell my husband because he had a crush on the main character Kale from a show called, Our Hero he used to watch when he was younger. He called her his “Canadian girlfriend”. (This is before we were dating and I found it amusing and used to tease him about it) It’s a Canadian show about a girl who has adventures and writes Zines about her life. It’s a Canadian show, but I think he caught it in re-runs here in the States. So I was eager to tell him I was becoming the Zine girlfriend he dreamed about LOLOLOL.

I released a new Chapter of my Substack exclusive novel Innocence and Fear. you can read it at my Substack. The link is in my social links, or you can click on the image below. In this chapter, we meet a few new characters, and some strange things are noticed.

I have been drawing a little in my very limited free time, and I think I’m going to do the Mabs Drawloween weekly challenge. I don’t have time to do a prompt every day, I simply have too many projects for that. But I think one rough drawing a week is manageable. I am so looking forward to October for many reasons. I have not gotten any pumpkin spice things yet. It doesn’t feel like autumn yet where I live, so I want to have the whole experience of pumpkin spice on a crisp autumn day. We did have some apple-spiced donuts this weekend. We stayed up too late all of the long weekend and ate many delicious foods.

I think that is about it for this week. I think the next week will have more interesting things to talk about, and I am hoping for more announcements of projects I want to release!

Be Well,

Aisling