So it has been an incredibly long time since I so much as looked at a personal writing project for any length of time. (This blog post is divided into three sections, Mundane and Writing and This Blog – Skim for the color you’re really here for, if you want to skip around.)
Mundane
The last 5 months have been an incredibly chaotic time – and while I did take part of NaNoWriMo it was with a much smaller goal than I’d originally planned, and with a lot more free time than expected. Though, while I had free time galore, I didn’t have any sort of true freedom. As at the beginning of NaNoWriMo 2017, my company laid off all of my department, choosing instead to have that service taken over by a company that specialized in that sort of thing. The change over took place about two weeks before our last days at the desk, and I 100% question the strength of that decision – we got to watch disasters go down in real time and get chewed out by customers for the change.
I spent most of November job hunting so much that I was running out of new job postings on several websites and in the end it was a “who you know” situation that tipped me off to a fantastic job being posted in early December. I applied, got interviewed and would likely have gotten hired on the spot had it not been for my connection. Either way, I was still hired that day, and I’ve been working full time since. (Well, except for the flu week, but I think I’m forgiven for that.)
I’ve been with the company for a little over 3 months now, and I’m enjoying the new reality of being in the lower middle class, which no one in my immediate family has been since before my 19th birthday. (My mother’s pink slip was issued on my birthday, which is how I can so precisely pinpoint that.)
I’m also enjoying the fact that given my competence level at my job, I’m already up for a bit of a promotion like thing. (From mere content writer + product additions specialist to social media manager + content writer.) The downside is that I’ve somehow set the bar so high that we’re having trouble finding a second content writer that’s capable of playing in excel files and handling a lot of technical details, as well as writing some fantastic articles. (Let me tell you, we’ve seen some janky English in our hunt.)
I’m also learning a great deal about SEO and being a better writer for non-fiction things, and even slowly learning some code.
My mundane life is finally looking like it’s worth something, and I’m glad.
I’m also in the process of moving right now, which makes life even more chaotic. Especially since they’re doing construction on my commute and it can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to get from my home to the office. Trying to come home and pack for a couple of hours is utterly exhausting – on top of the fact that I’m already exhausted from working all day.
My mental health? It’s holding for now, since with my layoff, I lost health insurance, and the American health care marketplace failed me. (I technically had insurance, but never got an insurance card, so could never use it. I paid nearly $700 for that insurance and couldn’t use it at all.) Thankfully, the company I now work for offers health insurance and I’ll have the ability to sign up for it sometime in the next week or so.
Writing
And finally, onwards to my writing…. What you’ve either skipped everything between the last mention of my writing and now to read, or you’ve stuck around this long to read.
I haven’t been doing a whole lot of personal writing these last few months. I either was too stressed out about how I was going to pay the bills, or I’ve been exhausted and haven’t felt like writing.
I haven’t put the pen down, though, and I’d like to try and get something out this year. Whether or not I’ll be able to do this is currently beyond my knowledge. I’m going to try.
I’m having to adapt my writing times to be quite different from what I’m used to, as I’ve gotten a significant other and we’re working on living together. My needs and wishes when it comes to my writing life don’t always line up with his needs and wishes, and I’m hoping we can find a balance once there’s less travel time between home and work. Otherwise, I fear our carpooling idea will never be more than two days a week, as I’ll end up going to Starbucks or Panera Bread to write for an hour or two at least twice a week after work.
I have this awful suspicion that my writing time will actually be 5:30-6am Monday through Friday. But, that is better than nothing at all.
I hope that I’ll get back some of my serious typing speed and will be able to add at least a thousand words per day to my various personal writing projects. 1k per day should allow me the opportunity to get one or two through the beta and editing stages, and possibly all the way through to the published stage. I don’t know which of my stories I might put more pressure on to finish, I’ve got so many – though I do hope to get something that’s at least 20,000-50,000 words from the O’Mally’s Station universe out this year. That way I’ll get a tiny check from Amazon for a few months.
I might be able to get one of my steampunk stories out too, it’s just a matter of seeing what I’m capable of, and hopefully, being able to avoid the pitfalls of the combination of mental disorders I have.
Most of my other creative pursuits will probably fall on the weekends – as with our rental home, we’re getting an absolutely fantastic crafting space. It’ll be big enough for us to each have two work tables, as well as two chests of drawer-like things, my sewing desk, a bookcase, my big round chair, and I hope to be able to put my red chest into the room as well. (The little red chest was always used as a footrest with the big round chair until I needed it in another room and couldn’t also move the chair into the other room.)
If you’re wondering: I’ve been known to sew, crochet, knit, and paint. I also sometimes do calligraphy. I’ve occasionally dabbled in jewelry making, and hope to pick up chainmaille making. And yes, I did say “most of my other creative pursuits” would be there, which leads to the notion that there are others. I also do some minor graphic design, and I’m learning how to code with Laravel and PHP, so I can make my websites better than ever. Those pursuits and that computer will be in the office/library with my enormous collection of books, more bookcases than people realize I own and an infinite collection of coffee mugs. (Which I think I’ve just realized I collect.)
As for this blog?
I’ve had this domain registered since 2006-2007, (I can’t remember which, to be honest), and I have no intentions of letting it go anytime soon. Yes, the history is not that old, I couldn’t afford hosting for a couple of years, at one point I just flat out nuked the blog, and at one point my original domain registrar was all but holding the domain hostage. I’m with GoDaddy for all my website needs now and am much happier.
Everyone says to find your niche to make your blog work well, but to be honest, with my ADHD – that’s exceedingly difficult. I can’t choose just one topic to focus on, or even two or three. So this blog will never have a particular niche, and I’m fine with that. Besides, I’m managing to stay hyper-focused on the niche with my mundane work writing, so I think even if the ADHD meds worked well enough to rein me in and leave my creativity intact, I don’t know that I’d have any focus left to put AScribedWorld into a niche.
What I can tell you, is this: I’m going to try to make sure that there’s at least one new blog post per month and that maybe they’ll even have a pretty picture or two. Probably not having pictures with this one, as it’s rather bloody hard to get my internet to behave at the house right now. I’m not sure if it’s the mothership computer, if it’s me, or if it’s actually the provider because both my phone and the mothership have a bloody tonne of issues staying connected to the outside world via wifi. And yet loremaster, my iPad, the iPod touch, the tv, and both the PlayStation 3 and 4 don’t seem to have the same issues.
I’m hoping to document my learning new things, and hopefully share whatever tips and tricks I learn along the way.
(also, bless wordpress for letting me schedule this blasted thing, ’cause I would have 100% forgotten to post it today.)