The Corpse Brigadier

Summer has been about as dead as I could have wished for, despite all my supposed resolutions to work on my horrifying skeleton of a dissertation again. I have--to my credit--started to get in the habit of powering down all of my Internet devices once a week such that I make myself get through a monograph, which at the very least gives me a sense that I'm doing something like research even if I live in dread of editing any of my quote unquote "chapters." All things considered, I'm doing remarkably well for somebody who had to weather plague, familial obligations, and loss of income this year. I've also tried to pick up my copy of Aurora Floyd as of late, as I figure a sensation novel is one of the best means to remind myself I actually like reading nineteenth-century books, even if I am completely stupid and am not writing on Braddon.

In the meantime, I have returned to my passion for making retro websites with very clunky code, and I've created two over the past month or so: one (Finally Fantastic) that just houses a massive collection of links to (mostly) archived JRPG fansites and one (hope abandons me.) that is a webshrine to my fave, painstakingly made with the finest of 00s aesthetic devices. I've also been steadily writing exchange fic, finally finishing up my nearly 20K of Challenge on the Big Bridge melodrama, preparing to teach mandatory technical writing for engineers, and baking a lot of (sadly not very photograph-worthy) bread.

I'm feeling simultaneously apprehensive and optimistic about the rest of this year. We'll see how things go once I'm back in the classroom.