the trick is to keep breathing

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)

So I’ve been trying to get! My! Shit! Together! and it’s going about as well as you might think.

I’m functionally broke until 01 May, so I’ve spent a lot of time looking for online word jobs. Got two in my pocket; neither one is sustainable long-term, but any cash is good right now. Still working on commissions, even though it doesn’t look like it; I’m constantly writing these days while trying to avoid The Burnout.

Had the realization the other day that I took this break not so I could flail around doing piecemeal writing on the internet, but so that I could actually recover and get my house back and lose weight and stuff. So I’m trying to stick chunks of that work into the schedule as well. (I swear I’m going to try to swim today! Where by try i mean “try to make myself go to the pool”; i never forget how to swim.) That’s hard too, since then it takes up time where my brain is like you should be writing but. Hey. W h a t e v e r.

I’ve been having fun, though, too. Crown Royal and I have been hiking every weekend; we did a bit over 4 miles this weekend, and my asthma hates hills, but it was nice. Did a drinking-night rewatch of Winter Soldier last night with a handful of friends from my accidental MCU Discord, which was freaking hilarious. Lots of capslock, ranting, and swooning. It isn’t all stress.

Sometimes i wonder how i can be such a fuckin waste of space all the time lol

The first Christmas with the baby was beautiful. Hectic and crazy and not really relaxing, but refreshing in a way. I got up work-time Monday morning and drove in to Pittsburgh to pick up Gramma, then drove up to Buffalo to the tune of a Spotify Christmas station which worked for the most part but occasionally wondered if what we really wanted to be listening to was the Electric Slide.

Jim and Mar and Jos were already up there. This was the crazy hectic part: Josie's ~10 weeks; Gramma's 90; and I'm not sure which of them cried and wet themselves more. Both needed intense help. I love my little niece to pieces and am always happy to pick her up and bounce and BOOP her and walk her around, and I adore my gramma and am willing to help her stand and walk or carry on a conversation. The two overlaid upon each other occasionally makes it hard to breathe.

That's the refreshing part, though: there's something about being surrounded by these people you love so hard it hurts, and even in the middle of the chaos when all you want is a nap you know for a fact that you'd do anything for any one of them. I'm continuously amazed at how much I love a niece who has only been in my life for three short months. Jos has a great smile. I hear that's how babies survive.

Christmas Day was a gratuitously decadent celebration of gifts and ribbons and glitter.

I'm back in the Feymarch because I had to work yesterday. As often happens at this time of year I'm incredibly pensive about my life - more so this year since it's been so dramatic. I want to write about it, but not yet, so instead I'm going to play Final Fantasy Tactics until noon with no regrets.