Graffiti in the morning

The State of Affairs

I’ve been running 25k per week for a few weeks now, with a 10k long run included.
I’ve started doing daily push-ups for the past week (30 per day). I still need to get back to doing strength exercises.
I’ve been reading a lot more and writing a lot more. After a bit of a slump, I decided to give the Streaks app a chance. It’s been helping keeping me on track so far.
My second draft has been going in some ways better than expected, in others worse. I hated rewriting my university papers, and I thought that rewriting a 120K word novel would be a pain, but for some reason it isn’t a hassle at all. The first four chapters were simple fixes, but I hit a giant plot hole that I hadn’t noticed once I reached chapter 5. I trashed chapter 5 and chapter 6 completely, writing them from scratch (on the bright side they’re much shorter and better now), and it looks like chapter 7 is going to have to undergo the same treatment. Writing a novel is a process, and I’ve learned a few things about writing since I started, which means that scenes that I wrote almost two years (!) ago just don’t work right now. At least I’m enjoying the process so far, though it is a rather lonely one.
Gratuitous photo of a gorgeous Tel Aviv summer sunset from yesterday’s 7k:

Sunrise over the Tel Aviv port.

Lonely park bench near the river seeking tired old couple to keep it company. Idyllic view guaranteed.

Started out early in the morning, but not early enough — the heat was already pretty intense in the parts of the trail that weren’t in the shade.

The sea was pretty stormy, and surfers and kayaks were out in force. It looks much windier than it was, though.

Families of ducks were also out, grazing in the heat. I met them later on, swimming together.

Little egret fishing on the Yarkon riverbed.

Boats on the river, lazing in the sun.

Three fishermen — man, little egret, night heron.

Little egrets fighting over fish in low tide.

10k done — hot and humid summer run. As usual, I didn’t feel like waking up early and going for a run, let alone a 10k, but I’m glad that I did.

I’m working on the second draft of my first novel (so far in Chapter 3 of 22), and outlining and discovery writing my second novel. Scrivener has been a blast for this too, allowing me to manage my characters and references to them without resorting to another tool (I’ll try to do a post about that later on).
I meant to give The Rook another try (I got annoyed with it after 30 pages during my first go), but due to a lot of upheaval at work, I started reading Linchpin instead.
Two of my co-workers (two of the best), are leaving: one to go abroad, and the other one to a different department. That’s made me rethink my future at work, whether I need to move as well and pick up a new area of expertise or not. After a lot of anxious soul searching I realized what I’d forgotten in all this mess — my dream isn’t to work in tech, it’s to be a writer. My day job is what allows me to write while keeping a roof over my head, nothing more, and every minute that I invest in it is a minute in which I’m not writing. This whole ordeal just made me want to double down on writing even more.
I’ve got a busy month and a half in July and August, and then things will settle down a bit more. My updates here may be sporadic as a consequence, as I prioritize my writing and running instead.