# Preface Date: January 31, 2026 I've made it through the first two weeks of classes! And it feel like everything is wonky all of a sudden. Because on top of a lot of personal changes, I'm also working on a Letter of Motivation, to convince a graduate school that I'm a good student. But here's the problem. I've always felt like I don't know what I'm doing with my life. The only sure-fire thing has been that I want to write stories. Fiction, Non-Fiction, comics. But like not anything that anyone ever goes, "yeah, that pays well AND is fulfilling." And I'm thinking of going into teaching maybe. And ever time I think I'm getting somewhere, someone keeps throwing in a damn good question. The latest one was: What kind of teaching? As in, what sort of subject? And I'm determined to figure ***some***thing out. In the meantime, this was a non-fiction-heavy week. Mostly full of homework and staring at tomatoes. All of this culminated in 2,873 words. I'll talk about the January total in the conclusion. # Part 1: Non-Fiction ### 1.1 College 2.0 (what I can share, anyway) So the long and short of it is: I've started a Critical Thinking class and Creative Writing class. ### 1.2 Critical Thinking For this class we're going over this book called ***Thinking For Yourself***. And the basis of it is: observation. Now that may seem obvious to some folks, but it's getting me to really sit and focus on what's in front of me and asking what my internal process is. Case in point, we had to bring in a piece of non-toxic fruit or vegetable. And after a discussion in class we sat for 30 minutes and wrote down notes about what we observed. I might publish this on Substack at some point. But right now I'm polishing up a little essay. Observation HW word count: 726 micro-essay word count: 802 ### 1.3 Creative Writing I don't know how much of this class I'll be able to share. Because once we start getting into sharing our works, things are going to get personal. Personal in the way that we're sharing feedback and learning how to give constructive feedback. Right now we're discussing a bit of The Artist's Way, especially talking about free writes (brain dumps if ya nasty) and other writers' thoughts on the writing process. Homework word count: 271 ### 1.4 Letter of Motivation I decided to seek help for this. I've never done one before. And I didn't want to just copy random examples on the internet. So I spoke with someone whomst gave me an entire page of pointers. Later on I was able to free write a first session (not done yet, but it was a start before I was swimming in thoughts and had to stop there) while compiling notes from class. ### 1.5 Substack I have NO idea if I'll publish this. But I had a weird experience where someone set up a table that advertised "bible study and christian books" and they've done this every day I'm on campus for two weeks. I have some problems with this kind of thing, especially as an ex-Christian. So I had to type a few of my feelings about this. For now it'll just be me getting my emotions out. However, this feels like a good question: Why do we allow evangelizing on campuses? word count: 381 # Conclusion I'm trying an experiment where I keep track of all my word totals. Even schoolwork. But it also includes Fiction, Non-Fiction, and all the sub-genres I can adequately keep track of. Why? Because I'm constantly worrying that I'm not writing enough. And I'm determined to show myself that I objectively am writing enough. And writing a lot. January 2026 has produced a lot of counted words, but it's not including the hundreds of words I'm handwriting in my diaries. I have a regular one and a creative diary. Both are similar in concept to The Artist's Way that we're currently discussing in my Creative Writing class. So for the last 5 weeks I've steadily built up to 10,196 words. You can see the breakdown below. We'll see how the next month goes, and then we'll see how everything adds up at the end of the year. The last couple of months in 2025 felt like a warmup. But now that I've started school, we're seeing what I can do now. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next week! The below table is mostly for myself. But if you, like me, enjoy seeing numbers go up in any capacity, then this may be for you as well. It's meant to be an encouragement to keep on writing. I tally up all the different categories of writing that I contribute to. I keep track of them monthly. | Word Type | Monthly Totals | | --------------------- | -------------- | | Project Castro | | | Project Moonshadow | 1,112 | | Flash Fiction Fridays | 1,865 | | Non-Fiction | 2,531 | | Short Story | 1,617 | | TTRPG | 1,301 | | College 2.0 | 2,492 | | Grand Total | **11299** |