Accio went MIA again. Woops.

I love you all, I do. I’ve just been really, really busy! My last post was what? The 4th of July? Let me check my Bujo. Yes, because I’d had the post all written and just clicked post as I was running out the door to one of my best friend’s kid’s birthday party. That was an interesting week. I somehow wound up watching only one kid for only two work shifts, so I was back and forth out with friends. Take the vacations where you get them! The next week I wound up out quite a bit as well, when I wasn’t I was playing catch up and working on other projects. The week after I was focused on other other projects.

So lets play catch up on Accio’s life!

Project 1

SteemMonsters!!!

If you don’t yet know about Steemonsters you should follow @steemmonsters, visit the website and hop on the discord it’s buckets of fun for real. I’m not going to say too much in this post about the super awesome cards, or the super awesome pending game play, or any of that I’m just going to talk about the part that’s been keeping me busy: The super awesome writing contest!

The first round we were split into teams by color. Each color, Red, Green, Blue, White and Black had a few different teams. Gold just had the one, the team I’m on. The challenge was for the teams to create a document outlining, well, everything for a continent. The landscape, the animals, the people, the cultures, the lore, right down to how they insult each other, it was awesome! The teams on each color were competing with only their color for the best suited document to be chosen as winner and move on to the next round.

The winners and instructions for the second round were announced on July 13th and honestly has been taking up most of my brain space since. For the second round the winners were charged with arranging their information and readying it all to be made into the Steem Monsters campaign setting book! Part of this was all of the teams collaborating together to make sure that everything fits well… we don’t want five continents saying they were doing their own thing in 706 and one continent saying they were at war with the world! We want it niiiice and smooooth.

There has been a ton of work put into this, and besides being just plain fun it’s brought people together. I’m in contact and getting to know fellow Steem Creatures that I may not have otherwise and I’m super happy about that. I give all the respect and thanks in the world to founders @Aggroed and @yabapmatt for creating this incredible little universe for us all to share. I’m grateful to be involved and if YOU want to be involved there is a multitude of ways to do so! Even if you don’t have money for cards it’s okay!

The only money I’ve spent on cards for myself is 5 USD equivalent for a starter pack so that I could get the booster packs to give away. They are frequently announcing contests over at @steemmonsters… they have running fan art contests (not just drawings and paintings, I'm pretty sure anything you consider to be art is eligible! You sew a Gold Dragon plushie? Draw a picture? Make a Mischievous Mermaid inspired cake? Tattoo the Screaming Banshee on someone? Sculpt a Clay Golem out of clay? Enter!) and card fantasy writing contests with booster packs as prizes. A ton of people do personal giveaways too! Most of my cards including my legendary Spirit of the Forest came from the @MrViquez give aways, and I won two packs just yesterday from @Carrieallen. I myself have given out some packs before my little hiatus.

There’s musicians, voice acting, fan fiction, fan fiction readings, an entire buy/sell/trade market on site, there are endless applications and ways for you to get involved for the fun, and to earn packs for free! Hop on the discord tell them what ya like and you’ll be pointed in the right direction, none of the monsters there bite, except maybe me. ;)

Pretty sure a cosplay culture is emerging too, I know I’ve been thinking about a Mischievous Mermaid cosplay… I have the hair for it…

So, there’s that and…

Project 2

University

^{source see what I did there? Monsters, University... haha I'm lame.}

I’ve mentioned in many previous posts that I plan on going back to school. We’ll I don’t want to go to community college. I want to go to a high rated University. Damn me. I never took my SAT or ACT, so I’ve figured out when the tests are… September and October… So I’ve begun to study for those, considering It’s been over a decade since I graced the halls of my highschool and I slept my way to a 3.85 GPA in culinary school, I’ve really got some studying to do. I don’t want the math portion to bring down my over all scores. I figure with decent test scores, and that 3.85 GPA from culinary, and awesome essay outlining my nonconventional story about overcoming adversity and maybe some volunteering at the local history museum and I should be able to get in just fine.

Once I’m in though it needs to be paid for. Again I’ve said before that this account is to cover education costs, came in handy when I needed to pull out some SBD to cover the costs of the first test registration and study book, but we want as little cost as possible… I do have a daughter to raise as well after all. So I’ve begun to search scholarships, there's a million billion of them to sort through, compile as prospects, and apply for.

Project 3

My Job; The Purple Minions

^source

I’ve still got the kids to take care of and the house to at least try to keep up on. Dinners to make and butts to wipe. Endless piles of laundry to be folded and put away, floors to be swept only for me to dump the dust pan and turn around to see more crap all over them, toys to pick up, dishes to wash. I have started searching for and applying for “real jobs” because once they’re all in school (except the youngest who’s daycare is paid for whether he stays home with me or not) that time needs to be put towards making that money. I’ll have a year before starting classes to try to save and get myself situated however it is that I decide I need to be situated. Speaking of I need to go fold laundry and sweep the floors and change out the dishwasher and thaw beef now…

… okay back. I tricked the Fives into matching socks by telling them that I just didn’t know if they were good enough at games to play this matchy game and win the ice cream (which was the planned bedtime snack anyway) prize. I love my brain sometimes. Even if they don’t get all of them, or even many of them, its less of the 5,000 socks I have to match and it keeps them busy for at least a few minutes. I’ve also got some other household/family duties to maintain, such as scheduling and going to appointments, registering Rose for kindergarten, making birthday party decorations (we have one just about every week in the summer), actually spending time with the kids, so on and so forth.

Smaller Projects

Project 4

My Best Self

^{@seer took this wonderful picture, she's great with a camera, check her out}

An overall focus on my spiritual, mental, and physical health. I do have a tendency to isolate myself, so it is a project for me to make sure that I socialize, exercise, yoga to keep my back from impeding on my life, eat right, make time for Reiki sessions, possibly sign up for therapy just because I like having an objective third party to talk to sometimes, that kind of thing. I have been presented an opportunity to practically learn about the Sikh religion and a new addition to this is practically learning about Buddhism, I’ve read books of course but by this I mean going to group chants, engaging, speaking with people who actively follow the path and even on Saturday meeting a monk from Japan. I feel that this is a valuable experience and more than worth putting the time and effort into. I was gifted prayer beads last week, aren’t they pretty?

Project 5

@Accio

Though I haven’t been posting, and probably won’t be posting much if at all through August I haven’t been ignoring my account completely. I have been spending some time thinking about and restructuring my blog plan, looking into other bot free ways of promotion and such. I am still dedicated to keeping this account as bot free and organic as I can. I’ve been putting thought and stuff into more active involvement is curation communities, and looking for other projects where I feel my presence can be beneficial and my efforts rewarded (not necessarily monetarily). The posts that I did about creating a life planner, where with you I revamped mine, added with how very busy I’ve gotten (which doesn’t seem like it well let up for oh about ten years) has sparked in me the realization that I’m in need of an entire life overhaul which Steemit is a part of. Oh, gotta go cook dinner…. Aaand back.

Project 6

Operation Homestead

^{not sure what image to use here, so please, enjoy this picture of space princess Rose}

Basic personality aside, it is essential for me as a single parent about to embark on a long arduous journey for a PhD to cut cost and be as efficient, and self sufficient, as possible. I’ve always wanted to homestead, and began plans for it at the last place I lived… So, I’m researching a bunch on what I can do now, what I can do in the city, to be as homesteady as possible. Making my own soaps to use and trade for fresh eggs and goats milk, small composts for city gardening my most utilized growables of manageable size such as herbs, peppers, and tomatoes, foraging for not commonly eaten eatables like dandelion greens, baby ferns, stinging nettles (don’t really trust myself with mushrooms), making sure I know the best ways to utilize all of my meat sources, canning, jarring, freezing… It’s all very important to me.

Project 7

Mystery Project

^source

If I told you I’d have to kill you, and I don’t want to do that, I like you. ;)

So you see my brain and my time are very full up! I am doing my very best to balance the scales by working out and implementing a smooth running system to encompass all of my thingies. I’m giving myself until September 1st to iron it all out, because while I will still be very busy the kids will at least be in school. I’m hoping to get a job working from 6am to 2pm so that I have an hour of quiet daily to be able to sit down and write my posts because as it stands with everything else going on and the kiddos it takes me two hours minimum to write a draft for s short post, and just as much time on editing, images, and formatting and currently I just don’t have it. So, if on days like today where I have something to write and I manage to squeeze it in, I will gladly but I can not as of yet make any promises.

Until next time Steem Creatures... <3

^{(pretty Mischievous Mermaid dividers source , pretty Mermaid sans Mischievous dividers source , Pretty Mischevious Mermaid Avatar source anything else not directly sourced or mentioned credit moi @accio)}