I know, I know, I’m a few months behind in these monthly reports, but Q2 was a bus fire under the Prudential*, so let’s all cut one another some slack, all right? This is the 28th week for the year, or we’re roughly 54% of the way through the year. Here’s where I’m at for my 2020 goals.
Read 20 books in 2020: According to goodreads.com, I’ve put away 11 books so far, or 55% of the way toward my goal. This puts me slightly ahead of schedule. Since I’m working from home and trying to get exercise, I’ve taken to listen to audio books during my afternoon walks, and that’s allowed me to catch up here. I’m still in the middle of a few books (cough, Obsidio), but I’ve been able to put away Head On, The Jennifer Morgue, and World War Z in the last month alone. If I keep up this pace, I should be able to actually meet this goal for the first time since, well 2018, but that was the first time for the five years before that! So, yay me.
Write 38 Posts in 2020: This marks my 9th post for the year, putting me at 23% complete. Barring a writing spat later in the year, this isn’t trending well. I’ll keep at it.
Get back on Schedule for Togahan #4: Nope. I’m still incorporating beta reader feedback at a snail’s pace, and am still waiting on one or two folks. This puts me about 280 days behind schedule. The upside is that one of my beta readers is my former copy editor, Nancy, and she did me the honor of flagging several hundred errant commas and other stuff anyway, so hopefully that will save me some copy editing later in the schedule.
Record the first chapter for A Togahan’s Tale: Still a goal. Still haven’t started it. I have to record some audio for my day job however, so I hope to get a synergy bonus and get going recording that first chapter. I tell you though, listening to books has been great research in this, because I’m listening to all the different readers’ techniques (how much they change voice, tone, accent; where they pause and put emphasis, etc.) so I hope I’m channeling a lot of that information subconsciously.
Walk 5+ miles Every Day: Comparing with April’s report:
| April | July | |
| Days | 65 | 188 |
| Successes | 53 | 155 |
| % Success | 82% | 82% |
| Average daily miles | 5.61 | 5.72 |
| Total miles | 624.73 | 1074.83 |
Wow, it’s been 120 days since I last reported this. My success has remained flat, although my average daily miles has crept up a little. I missed my goal several days through March, and a bit of April, so I’m still trying to recover from that, but I’ve remained consistently at above 5 miles for a daily average, so that’s a solid B+/A- at this point, I’d say.
I’ll keep at it, and in another month or two, hopefully have something better to report.
-Pete
* Fun Story – This would have been in the mid-2000’s, I was living just outside of Boston with my wife (then fiancée) and we were headed into downtown to meet some friends for dinner. Before we got to exit 22 (the one in the tunnel under the Prudential center), traffic crawled to a stop. We saw smoke coming out of the tunnel. One fire truck came through behind us, but then folks pulled back in and we were packed so tight there was nowhere to go when the second fire truck came up. Those guys had to go around get into the tunnel going the wrong way on the westbound lane just so they could put out the fire.
People got out of their cars. I called my sister while I was standing in the middle of the Mass Pike. Some folks got out lawn chairs, others walked up the exit to Bertucci’s and came back later carrying pizzas. My wife hiked up the ramp to meet her friends while I waited with the car for the next three hours. Apparently the bus (one of those $10 NY-to-Boston jobs) burned so badly, they had to wait to reopen the lanes until structural engineers could get in there and inspect the tunnel’s superstructure to make sure the steel hadn’t been compromised. Nobody was hurt, thankfully.