A few people on my friends page have been doing sunshine_revival  and I decided I might give it a go, too, even if we are already halfway through the month. They're already up to Challenge 4 but I'm just going to jump in here. 

Journaling: What is making you smile these days? Create a top 10 list of anything you want to talk about.

1. human-made art. The number of people I know who see no issue using various AI things is shrinking and I am sad and tired over it. There's a young non-binary artist on TikTok whom Edy and I are supporting with commissions when we can because they and their partner are trying to get back on their feet after some rough times, and while some of their pieces are better than others, they are all hand drawn by the artist and it's lovely seeing the progress shots, and coming up with new prompts is fun, too. 

Here's their ko-fi if anyone's interested. 

2. all the books. I've already finished five books for July and I have next week off work. Plus I'm already ahead on my reading goal for this year. I stopped setting reading goals because GoodReads is always like 'You're five books behind!" but now I'm using StoryGraph and you can turn that off on there and it just has a progress bar. My goal is 70 books and I've already read 47. I'm a little over 100 pages from the end of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes but I think I'm going to need to take a break for a couple of days. It's a bit of a slog and the MC is so (intentionally) unlikeable. I've got The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches from the library which sounds like a perfect palate cleanse.  

3. on that note, the readathon I'm doing this month. It's called Sunrise on the Readathon and obviously inspired by The Hunger Games and Sunrise on the Reaping specifically, and I don't think I am emotionally prepared for the next two weeks. The teams are based on Zodiac signs and I am Team Leo. We've lost two tributes already and I suspect we will probably lose at least one this week! 😭I did not think I would get so emotionally invested. 

4. it's cold! Which sucks because cold, but also, Canberra can be very aesthetic in the winter (also another link with less fog - that's about the extent of the snow we get each year). None of the photos are mine. 

5. Disney cruise! We have put a deposit on one! It's wildly expensive. But I have come around to it, regardless. We will be on board for New Year's, so that will be fun. I watched a video tour of the ship, and it sounds like there's heaps to do during the day, movies and trivia and that sort of stuff, but also drawing classes and other Disney-specific things. And of course character meet and greets. 

6. writing. Writing project is going well, I'm on track to reach my goal of 20k for the month early. Then I need to do some more plotting because while I have a two-sentence summary of what I want to happen for the rest of the book, I need to work out the specifics. 

7. dreams. like the ones we have at night. I miss having fun ones. I used to remember a lot more of my dreams but now I only seem to remember the bad ones. I had one the other night that was clearly the Hunger Games stuff getting into my subconscious, and I was so upset by it then I had to turn and cuddle into my partner and have a cry. 

... okay, I know the thing says ten things, but it is after 9pm and I've been writing this instead of getting my fiction writing goal down for the night, so I might leave it there! See you on the next challenge!

 eta. 8. capybaras exist. how good is that. I follow an artist who is drawing capybaras in various situations for a 100 days of drawing challenge and it's making me happy. Also there's a video somewhere of a pelican trying to eat a capybara and the capybara is supremely unbothered and it's beautiful. Like at most it's like 'Do you mind?" 

Okay, really gone this time!