Reporting to you from what is hopefully, tentatively, maybe the beginnings of the other side of an insomnia episode worse than any I've had probably in the last ten years. So yeah, that's been super not fun, and it's been going for weeks now. I had legitimately reached the point of migraines, generally bodily falling apart, and alarming mental health dips. But I managed to get An Acceptable Amount Of Sleep last night, so we'll see how this goes.
Basically, this whole thing has been my brain not subtly informing me that some stuff needed to change in my life and that the way I was going was not sustainable. Message received, but like...could we work out a less painful delivery system, maybe??? Anyway, I'm taking steps to get my shit sorted, which is uncomfortable and I Don't Wanna etc., but as has been made abundantly clear to me recently: SHIT'S GOTTA CHANGE. My autistic ass deeply resents change and as such I am HIGHLY resistant, but well. A few weeks of straight up not sleeping can tend to beat one into submission.
Mom and I had two of my brothers over last week, which was the first time we've had guests in...Awhile(TM). It was amidst an insomnia migraine haze for me, but otherwise it was quite nice.
On the media front, I finally finished reading Thrawn Ascendancy: Lesser Evil and now I don't know what to do with my life. These books have been so important to me, especially considering that the Ascendancy Trilogy has exclusively been released during The Age of Covid. Genuinely the best thing to come out of Star Wars as a property changing hands has been new Thrawn books. This permutation of the titular character is not only a vast improvement over the original Legends version, but also these six books have been some of Timothy Zahn's best work (that I have read) to date.
All that said, Lesser Evil ended up being...not quite a letdown, but not as good as I might have hoped for. Which is not to say that it was bad. But I do feel that it's overly long for the actual story told and included some side plots that ultimately weren't necessary, as evidenced by the fact that they never truly resolved or went anywhere (spoilers: Thrawn's long lost sister is found, but not by him, and he never finds out about it, so like...what was the point?). But, man, did that ending have me in my feelings. And now, ridiculously, I have the urge to reread the first (new canon) Thrawn book, even though I had reread it to prepare for Lesser Evil in the first place.
To try to fill the gaping hole in my life left by my favorite blue man, I'm giving Oaths of Legacy by Emily Skrutskie a second chance. I loved the first book, Bonds of Brass, a truly inordinate amount, which probably resulted in my being overly harsh to Oaths when I first tried to read it. But now I think I've got enough distance, so I'm enjoying the second attempt. The sequel is less obviously Finn/Poe Star Wars fanfic than the first book, but the universe and its world building still remains thinly veiled just barely not SW. None of which is a criticism. On the contrary, for me, those are selling points.
On the writing side of things, I've finished the sixth draft of the first act of Novel 1 and have begun work on act two. This draft is taking a lot more time than previous ones, but I don't see any point in not being thorough at this stage, so I'm trying to keep calm about it and not freak out about how much time it's taking. Typically, I work ridiculously fast, so actually my pace right now is probably more reasonable/normal, but to me it feels glacial.
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