You set up plans, expect things to go one way, and even write them out so you can see it all in front of you.

Then life happens.

In a quick summary of events: it looks like we’re moving and it looks like it’s happening this summer.

The featured image is my Bullet Journal Habit Tracker/Skill Grid. I said I would always be honest with what I did for the last month. These systems are meant to learn, to grow, and to see where you were and where you’ve come from.

Basically, I need to spend more time with the cats.

Which is fair. When most of your day is occupied with running after three year olds who have learned to say, “No,” to your face, then maybe what you need in your life is a little cat time. I actually think that would be a good mellow form of meditative play. The boys work me up, and I already have anger management issues, so I think a sound strategy to prevent me from getting into a shouting match with a toddler is to play with my cat.

Parenting.

Project Update

Surprise! It’s a quick project update. Since May was spent looking at houses and then talking about said houses until the late hours of the night, my work rate did not hit the goals. Basically:

Project NESS, middle grade contemporary fantasy: this was supposed to be done by now. I had the deadline for finishing up the 5th draft and the pitch document for May 31, so I could start sending it out to agents as soon as June started. But May happened, and while I’m over halfway through the 5th draft and have started a lot of parts of the pitch document, it’s not done yet. Might have to move it to June 30.

Project GREY, middle grade science-fiction: still waiting to hear back from a full manuscript request. Typical time of return is 6-9 months, from what I’ve seen on Twitter, but still need to keep pitching and keep moving. I’ve received 24 rejections, still have three other agents I’m waiting to hear back from, and I’ve only pitched two agents in the last two months. Home buying or not, this needs to change.

And that’s really it. Nothing else on the docket right now. Though, I want to change that. My MasterClass with Brian Michael Bendis and Taki Soma is constantly inspiring me to do comics work again (and I have two books I want to start writing), so those might materialize. BIANCA is most likely the next thing to take shape, but until I finish NESS I need to focus all my energy and time on this one thing.

Speaking of, better get to work.

Thanks for reading,

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Contact: robertmichaelacosta@gmail.com