I declare Buy Nothing June a resounding success. Actually I declare June in general a resounding success.

I gave away 18 boxes of books and cleared a whole bookcase, which I can now sell. I made US$600 selling other stuff I didn’t need and got some mechanical work done on my mom’s car with the cash. I wrote eleven blog posts. I cleaned out my garage and threw a ton of crap into the skip my condo hired. I wrote 13,500 words. Although I had 30K as my goal, a lot of days were editing, which is a bunch of important work but no added word count, so I won’t beat myself up over that. I released two books, both of which dropped like stones into the cold, green depths, but that’s not the point. I laughed with Vivian when we were doing Blur and said it would take 4,000 KU borrows to recoup the cost of the illustrations (which is, as expected, 3,999 more KU borrows than we got) but that it didn’t matter. What matters is finishing a project. Making something and saying, “There, it’s done, I did that.” And then moving on to the next project (also filed under “Things I wish I had learned when I was 18.”)

I do have some stuff I want to buy; and most pressing is Roman blinds for my study to keep the heat in. I’m writing there now and it’s 43F inside and my shoulders are hunched over despite both the layers I’m wearing and my own generous inbuilt insulation. But I’m not planning to get much else, not even the books I want. I’ve made little progress on the ones I’m reading now. I’ve read only 60 books so far this year, down from 200-ish in previous years. This is a good thing: my time is going into writing instead.

Goals for July:

• Finish the draft of the Lisa Henry & M. Caspian book we’ve been working on for too long, and send to a beta reader.
• Write the 2 x short stories I committed to for the Goodreads Bring Out Your Kink event.

I’m excited as hell about this month. It’s a nice way to feel.