the trick is to keep breathing

no, this is not the post about job search depression. not yet.

I participate in Get Your Words Out every year as something that motivates me to make words, much like NaNoWriMo -- it isn't necessarily about "winning" either, but it's about having a reason to track words, which then becomes having a reason to write. In 2020 or 2021, I forget which, I managed to write somewhere near 350,000 words. What a fuckin' banger. A lot of it was Old Vines, and some of it was work words, and all of it was fun as hell.

The thing I noticed at the end of the year, however, was that my writing was just inconsistent -- I was carrying myself towards that goal with days where I wrote 5000, 7000 words in one day, and then not writing for the next 4 days in a row. So if I could get my ASS to the COMPUTER to do the THING, i usually could get a significant number of words done. So let's focus on that, sez my brain, and we'll be a super-writer.

2022 Sev said well, hey, there's a habit pledge for GYWO, so: I took it, with the rather extreme idea of writing 240 days out of the year. that's like 4-5 days a week. But hey! It isn't wordcount! Although I still fucking decided I was going to try to write 300,000 words. just 300K. Not 350K. lol. I'm stupid.

Then at the beginning of 2022 I lost my content writing job - more like, they hired someone full-time and let all the contractors go without warning, yes, I'm still mad - and therefore lost one of the major impetus for me actually sitting down at the computer to write. Plus, I'd been counting work words as part of the yearly target -- which I think is fuckin fair when you write for a living, yeah?, so.

And then as I realized other work had also dried up and I was going to have to start major job hunting - and then the experience of that job hunting - there was a depression zone where I absolutely dried up on words. Like, nearly completely. Most of my WIPs just kind of hung in space, and I had to start an entirely new Good Omens fic (forth the fifth) to have anything going on, and THEN it was only a super-hyperfixation on Detroit: Become Human that really pulled me out of the wordslump and back into writing things. Getting back to the WIPs has been challenging.

And with my new job, there aren't wordcounts I can tally towards anything -- I'm writing and editing at the same time, and sometimes working on things like how the fuck do we cite this and a surprising amount of meetings, and the moral of this story is that I'm unlikely to make either my formal or informal GYWO target this year -- which again, I don't do it for the win, but boy howdy did I misjudge this year.

And what have I learnt about my writing process this year? Since that was the entire point of trying a new target and a new approach? Well, fuck, I'm not sure I've learnt anything, except that it's more fun to write when people are directly cheering you on, which isn't anything new. As of today I've written about 150K, and 135 days out of the year. I am 69 days behind where I should be and there are like. Idk. 70 days left in the year? So obviously I'm not gonna make it lol.

Anyway this has been a long ramble about things that are only important in my head, with no real conclusion. Clearly I am a professional! And I need to get back to actual work!

Stay tuned for NaNoWriMo, where I try to get my 3 FTH fics out in a month while still updating at least 3 WIPs! oh my god, why am i like this? I'm so stupid?

Talk to me about your 2022 writing (or creating in general, if you're a creator but not a writer!). How did you do. How dumb am I. It is a mystery!

• Last night I took an epsom salt bath. I did some research that said epsom salt baths work for arthritis pain - the magnesium can penetrate the pores and help with inflammation. SO I went and picked up some epsom salts from Rite Aid (plain, along with a lavender variation and some other salts I found for aches and pains - with eucalyptus and spearmint?) and ran some hot water and I spent about 45 mins reading TIME magazine in the tub with the jets on and off as needed, and I do feel better today. Could be coincidence, but I'll take it. My neck is still stiff, but the rest of me feels a lot more mobile. And less grate-y and grind-y.


• Last week I went to pick up my new glasses - mine are four years old and I'm finally starting to get vision headaches from the slightly-expired prescription - but they were wrong. All weekend I felt like my depth-of-field was off in my left eye -- turns out the axis of the astigmatism was 3-4 degrees off. (ASTM for lenses is 2 degrees I guess? That's great, when my vision is so bad that I'm sensitive to the actual margin of error?) So the glasses went back in to be fixed.
  In slightly better vision news, in the last two years it turns out that one awesome line of contact lenses has been extended into my prescription range - yeah technology! - so it's now possible for me to get good-quality contacts (that will correct my vision over 80%) that I can wear all day without feeling like there is sand gauging out my eyes. They're even rated to sleep in. For up to a week. That's right, I can wear them to a con weekend and not have to worry. Thank fuck. Too bad I can't contacts at work, but it will still be convenient to have for the summer. So as soon as we figure out my script, I'll be buying a million of those.
  I realize I'm quite lucky that my eyes can be (mostly) corrected and my vision is (mostly) functional. It's just hard to feel lucky staring down this $500 bill when I still don't have a new pair of glasses.


• Spent the weekend declaring war on my lawn. I accidentally killed half of it trying to smoke out garlic mustard (Weed & Feed works great on the parts of my lawn that are actually grass; turns out there are a lot of weeds that look like grass but ain't grass, and that's how I murdered half of my front yard) and so I spent Monday mowing, re-treating the yard one last time to just get this shit over with, and tossing Grass Seed For Dummies everywhere. I also threw giant handfuls of "wildflower seed mix" on parts of my yard to cover up the fact that I don't give two epic shits about gardening right now. I actually love gardening and flowers but that is a hobby to be adopted at some future date, preferably when I am not exhausted, grumpy, and still unpacking.


• STILL NO NEWS ON THE JOB


• Our birdfeeders are finally kicking off - it's like finch city on the one, and the tufted titmice really like the second one -- much to the everlasting joy of the neighborhood troll cat, who has already caught one of my chipmunks and has spent time staring up at the feeder like it's some epic cat buffet. GTFO. You're cute but if I can't pet you I don't want to feed you.


• I am so broke. Like godsbefucked broke. Note I am saying broke - I am not poor; I've been poor; this is not poor - what I am is broke. Buying a house costs a lot. Taking care of the house costs a lot. JFC I want my savings cushion back. Looking at my net cash is giving me spasms.


• I'm so not here mentally. I should have taken vacation this week.

• The 4.3 mile run was a hill run. It was a very rainy day and I had to run on the treadmill, so I did increasing hills over each mile, all the way up to 6%. 6% incline on a treadmill while running a 10:00-10:30 mile is pretty freaking hard. I was really sweaty and tired when this was over. I hated it, but I feel good about having done it because it was so hard.


• The 5.7 mi run was a 'negative split' run, where each mile is done faster than the last. I started off really pretty slow - still tired from the hills, and also this was an outdoor run on a course that has a lot of natural hills too - but each mile was about 15 seconds faster than the last one. The last 0.5 miles of this run was done super fast (for me!), up to an 8:00/mile pace. Exhausting.


• The 10 mile run sucked. I just worked too hard on other stuff this week, and also I had to bump it up a day because of Easter. It was terrible, I was slow, and it was really painful. The end.

• Recover from last week's grossness


• Easy, medium pace (~10:00 mile) 4-6 mile runs, x2


• Easy, slow pace 12 mile run


• Total mileage goal: 22-24 miles