the trick is to keep breathing

because i am That Guy:

I took a lump out of my retirement savings to support myself while I try to write an actual book! then, a week later, i got hired! this is my life. I've been hired to work as a technical writer with a great local company that does all sorts of technical writing and instructional design work (something im VERY interested in), which is awesome, but the first contract they were going to give me unfortunately fell through. they are frantically looking for projects for me because the VP of Ops apparently wants me as an employee very badly (a great feeling after months of unemployment lbr) so i'm willing to wait it out, esp cause i have the lump now.

and because i'm a giant waste of an idiot, i've decided i'm still going to try to write the novel. for NaNoWriMo. while working and doing work words. and 2 Good Omens zines. and Patreon. and commissions. and my regular WIPs. and cleaning my house. and so on.

giant waste of an idiot.

ANYWAY. most of you have probably already seen this on my other social media but just in case you haven't, i have two polls out about my novel. mainly because i have too many fucking ideas and styles, so i'm letting the general populace help me narrow down for my first novel attempt.

i realize my FF writing is slim these days, MCU and GO being my main fandoms at the moment, but i'm still interested in Ye Olde Canons -- it's a matter of time, these days. so for those of you who know me from FF and such, your input is DEFINITELY appreciated, because you've seen sides of my work that my current fandoms haven't. :) <3

the first poll about the content of the novel is here

the second poll about the format of the novel is here

and since im still technically unemployed lemme toss the reminder that you can always find me, my sites, and my KoFi and Patreon here: https://sevdrag.carrd.co/

<3 <3 send me all the luck you can. as soon as i set up my NaNo page i'll post it here <3

been meaning to update just like ive been meaning to do a lot of thingslksdjgldkfjgdf

So here I am 20 days into NaNo and still banging it out like a champ. I’ve had two goose egg days so far, but I’ve had a lot of very productive days as well (esp thanks to lassarina!) and as of today I’m about to be only ~1200 words behind actual target. That’s ~32K of absolutely original fiction I’ve written this month and I’m on track to making it 50K.

The amount was never a question for me - last year, after quitting my job and signing up for the Winterhawk exchange, I wrote 57K in 10 days; that pretty much proved to me that NaNo wouldn’t be about the wordcount - but it was about the habit. Can I write every day on something? Can I write original stuff every day? Can I write it around all the other words I do, for pay and for fandom?

I mean, yeah, sure, looks like I can.

I’ll admit, I went into November with a changed mindset. Having realized I’d been out of industry work for a year absolutely hit me in the head with the what do you have to show for yourself rock, and it led me to a new sort of determination I haven’t seen in a while. NaNo - the act of doing something daily and tracking it - was really just a crutch to get me into new habits. And it’s working — somewhat.

I’ve been much better during the day about dedicating time to words. I can write over 5000 words in one day before my brain really starts to sink. I can switch between original and work and fanfiction as I need. And I’ve been writing (nearly) daily for 20 days now, which was the goal, so yay.

But - as my fucking dumb gay ass should have predicted - regiments and discipline come in steps. And when I’m spending time on original fiction to that degree every day plus my work words, plus fanfiction stuff, I still don’t have time to do much more than... keep up. I’ve made no real progress on unfucking the house; I can keep afloat, but that’s it. Any extras cleaning I’ve done over the last few weeks has been UNdone by days where i can’t get to thinks.

[And, also, crucially and critically: I am sick. I’m sick for the first time in MONTHS, possibly since LAST WINTER. It was a good run while it lasted, but I’ve now been sick for over ten days, sinus infection / flu / fever / cough / sore throat / runny nose / sneezing / aching / stuffed head / gross feeling / no willpower to do anything / naps every day and not the fun gratuitous kind. I do need to note this because it’s also robbed me of any extra energy I might have had for additional activities.] [I don’t mind because it wasn’t like I was ever going to get sick again in my life, and this really just proves that it was having me out of a crowded office situation with tons of people and their tons of germs that helped me stay as not-sick as I did for so long.] [ Plus I always get sick on November so it’s like oh, hey, you again?]

The key will be — December, I want to say, but December always sucks. Holidays take up a lot of space for me and my family - not just time, really, we only spend a couple days together, but the energy of preparation and gifting always becomes frantic and gross by the end - and I have another niece birthday visit coming up that’ll eat up a weekend. The key will be taking this daily motivation and hanging onto it through December, and into January, and letting it morph itself into something that encompasses more than writing.

Now that I have the daily habit, I want to do the same with drawing, to just doodle something daily and let myself practice at that. I need to set days and times aside for house projects and have them be priority — not let the specter of Nano Words or Work Words be more important (Nano is of course a fallacy i use to be lazy; work words are important cause they pay).

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this ramble. About four or five days in I had a real low period and almost decided to quit NaNo because it was interfering too much with the rest of my day and words and chore schedule and grumble I didn’t know what I was doing and I should be writing work and commissions anyway and such whining. Then I woke up on day like six or seven, my head clear, realized that had been An Episode, and just pushed on with the wording. 20 days and over 30K is a success for me on projects; it’s the maintenance, the daily bits.

I dunno. There was gonna be a point to all this but now I’m just talking about the process (but in the most BORING way POSSIBLE because i dont want to get INTO the PROCESS and now I’m just CAPSING at RANDOM)

Anyway. Still here, still writing, still having successes and failures big time. Still broke! Who knew!

(It will always be a shame that ppl at tumblr cant see my brilliant DW tags; i use IFTTT to cross post, but i haven’t yet found one that will swipe up all of my DW tags and include them on the tumbles)

alatefeline left me some prompts and i’ve Already told y’all the story of the fucking faucet so that will count a s my rant for plumbing. Let’s get this

And today instead of RANTING i’m Going to tell you a hilarious story about my brother and food coloring so buckle up chucklefucks

SOOOOOoooo backstory: my brother and I grew up reading a lot of Calvin & Hobbes cause my gramma and grandpa had a bunch of the (books? Collections?) things, and we’d read and re read them the way you do when you get bored at your grandparents’ house. Right

So one day we’re eating dinner and mum has made like, meatloaf and mashed potatoes i think? And shes serving everybody and out of nowhere my brother says, “Can you make my mashed potatoes green?”

Cue mum: “Wha” ????

My brother: “You know how in Calvin & Hobbes their dinner is always green mush on a plate. I want mine to look like green mush on a plate like Calvin & Hobbes.”

And so my mum says, “Well, we can add some food coloring if you want, but it’s going to look very gross. You have to promise you’re going to eat it.”

Bro: “Well duh, it’s still mashed potatoes, I just want them green”

So mum gets the food coloring and they proceed to dye my brother’s serving of mashed potatoes a terrible looking green and he’s loving it like the lil dork he is and dad and i are just kind of peanut gallery eating meatloaf in the background or something idk.

Dinner’s served. And after about two fucking bites, my brother says, “I don’t think I can eat this.”

Mum: “It’s still mashed potatoes. They’re just green. You literally asked for this”

Bro: “yeah but its gross”

Mum: “we literally just talked about this”

Bro: “yeah but its gross”

So yeah even after ACKNOWLEDGING THAT THEY WERE STILL FUCKING MASHED POTATOES, and ADDING THE FOOD COLORING HIMSELF, it turns out my bro couldn’t eat the green mush on a plate. We threw it out and he got new normal colored mashed potatoes and we laughed at him for, well, the rest of his life i guess

And the moral of this story is: green eggs and ham is a bad sell, but regular eggs and ham is delicious. NEXT

who doesn't like lists. if you don't like lists you are at the wrong journal.

I've made a "Words and Workouts" pact with justira. Our goals are low, but meaningful: 1500 words per week; 3 workouts per week. We will have lovely charts to share. I mean to stick to this - both of them. Here are some thoughts...

• So, I am in fact wordsing again. The shameful part is that it's Harry Potter fic. HP is like my shame comfort fandom - when I am ill, I browse AO3 and look for fics with high kudos and pairings that I like, no fucking regrets. I was ill for like 93% of last week which meant I read a lot of trash. I am now writing HP trash. I don't even give a fuck. It's words and I will have fun, even if HP fandom is beyond the grave.
• If I can get moving again with the writing, I want to work on original stuff this year, but I also want to get back to dabbling in fandom - prompt memes and the like. I miss the sense of connection that comes with fannish writing. Hang me.
• Right now my workout goals are more about consistency than actual workouts. I want to focus on swimming first - that's my best and favorite sport, and why not do a workout that I actually enjoy? After that, I'd like to go back to yoga, then running and biking. Of course there's weightlifting and punching the bag in there too - I'll make a plan once I've shown that I can stick to 3x/wk for more than, say, one wk.

My other lofty goals for 2016 include:

• Start fucking going to bed on time. I want to get up earlier in the mornings but (a) I am so lazy and (b) I tend to sulk about my life late at night and stay up until, say, 01:00 in a snit of because I can which doesn't work so well when you want to get up at 06:00. If I could get my arse in bed between 22:00-23:00 I could get up earlier and either get to work earlier (to leave earlier) or have some time in the morning just for me. Either one sounds better than the usual snooze-button-festival party-of-one I have going on in my bed for an hour and a half every goddamn morning. That's such a waste of time.
• Half hour of chores every night. This is hard to keep up with because of fibro - some days I come home and crawl into bed and get up 4 hours later to eat a pop tart before returning to blankets. However, this leads to having to spend all of a weekend day catching up on chores that have slipped (dishes, laundry, mail/bills) which is equally exhausting. 30mins is reasonable on all but the worst evenings and should allow me to have more relaxing time on weekends, which is good for fibro.
• Learn to chill about work. I will never not be platonically married to this place or this job, but getting stressed leads to high interaction costs leads to overstimulation leads to me being too exhausted to fucking blink. I'm already working to set this year up as an improvement - more support, more help, less projects overall - so I need to keep to that course.
• Empty my life. I have too much going on, and too many things taking up space (physical and mental). It's time to clean it out.

More specific goals will have to wait until I have brains to deal with them.

So despite the ridiculous number of emails blowin' up mah phone today, this has seriously been one of the busiest AND most productive days I've had in, probably, 5 weeks.

I wrote two reports. I organized some stuff. I cleaned out the gremlins growing in my reactor after shutdown. I was "approved" to spend $5K on shit for my lab. i ran a batch. I answered important emails.

I'm never going to another meeting again.