Archives for November 2018

I didn’t sleep well and woke up stupid early like 5 or so. Tried writing and failed. Felt really awful because of no writing.

Got up to a kitchen piled high with dirty dishes because I hadn’t washed any the day before. Since I had promised my husband to do them before going to sleep – and yes, I broke that promise – I washed them right after my breakfast, when the boy was getting ready for school. I immediately felt better because instead of whining about not writing I had done something tangible.

My husband showed up a little late while I was busy preparing the podcast. He wasn’t feeling well, now he is getting that cold I had before. We talked quite a bit. I did more dishes and packed a birthday present. Then I went to the post office to mail it and ran some errands. I’m rather proud that I managed to not buy chocolate bars for myself both at the big grocery store and at the health food store two days in a row.

I’m trying to get back to eating less sugar and no snacks. I’m still eating dark chocolate after lunch every day but would like to skip dinner again most days and not eat all the cheese late at night. Just so I don’t end up fat again.

My husband was late for making lunch because he had a friend over and they had a rather emotional conversation. Friends are more important than lunch on time, and also the boy didn’t have to return to school and none of us started teaching before four so that was okay. Lunch was very good:

Then I took a long-is break and then I recorded the podcast. Right in the middle I couldn’t hear myself anymore all of a sudden. Turned out that  the amp my husband had tried to repair blew the main fuse for the annex. Oops.

A few minutes later I could return to recording. Another slightly incident in a slightly weird day.

All morning I had been thinking about NaNoWriMo. I could still win if I managed to write 4,000 words per day every day until the end of the month. But that would be somewhat brutal. And I had failed to make me write two days in a row again. And it was starting to affect my sleep. And I felt that I didn’t have the time, energy and headspace for other things in my life like the new book cover design course and the revamp of the music teaching website.

Sitting around paralyzed because I feel under pressure doesn’t help anyone. It’s interesting, though, that my reaction to pressure and stress is usually to be paralyzed. I just opt out.

So I decided to give up on NaNo this time. That is a pretty big decision for me, so far I have won every time that I did it. But. First of all what I really need is a process that allows me to write a steady stream of books that are as good as I can make them. I thought NaNo would help but with me being sick and then not getting back into the groove it didn’t. I was hoping for that ‘mad dash to the end‘-energy that I love but as I said – I couldn’t make myself do it.

So I’m stepping back. I’m telling myself that it’s okay to not write for a few days. And to not finish the book until the end of the month. That I’m allowed to read and to watch Star Trek and to do a design class instead.

And I felt better in an instant. It’s not often that I’m actually stressed but this time NaNo was stressing me out. I think even more so than last year which was rather insane as well. I don’t need insane in my life, especially not of my own making. I’ll just get back to writing soon and go at a sustainable pace, whatever that will be.

I taught all my students including the boy, I skipped dinner, I watched a bit more of my new course and I went to bed early. Luxury!

Today there will be cleaning and frozen pizza and quite a bit of work on getting the podcast ready for publishing. Since I recorded in two parts I will have to splice them together which is a bit tricky for the video.

I will teach lots of students and then I will watch some Star Trek with the boy. And look forward to a very low-key weekend. Maybe with some pressure-free writing.

Woke up a few minutes before the alarm. I’m taking that as a sign that I slept enough. Also, my Fitbit tells me I slept an hour longer than usual. I fell asleep last night, sitting in bed before I had brushed my teeth. I got up again an hour later to get ready for bed. I don’t recommend this.

No writing in the morning. I really didn’t want to right away, and my husband had announced that he’d get up earlier than usual. And then he didn’t because now he has the cold that felled me last week. Poor thing.

The boy didn’t have to go to school but didn’t sleep in too bad. And when I asked him he agreed to help me with the mastic grocery run.

It was really cold outside so I was rather happy about the hat I made that fits under my bike helmet.

We went and bought all the groceries. Still forgot some things but the list was long. And it was nice to have the boy with me. I’m really not used to do this with anybody else, though.

Then I helped to make lunch, Indian this time, rice and dal and chicken with spinach. Yummy:

Sorry for the blurry photo.

Then I dealt with a lot of laundry and took a shower and it was time to teach. First student didn’t show, probably due to the holiday, second was on time, third a little late.

I had planned to write between students but as usual I couldn’t. Switching between teaching and creative writing is hard and I can only do it sometimes.

Then I ate dinner with the boy, he took a shower which meant no washing of dishes and then it was almost time for the monthly webinar with Orna Ross.

After that I still had to deal with the dishes.

Today there will be the recording of the podcast, quite a bit of teaching and as much writing as I can cram in. But the that was what I had planned to do yesterday as well. Meh.

Woke up a few minutes before the alarm. Only rolled out of bed ten minutes too late to make breakfast on time, ahem. I’m still immersing myself in romance novels. Well, this morning I started a paranormal mystery. (It’s called „Dark, Witch & Creamy“ and I really like it.)

I started doing the dishes right after meditating because I had made the double mistake of making an optician’s appointment at ten and not washing up the night before. My husband was slightly confused when he showed up to make his breakfast and saw me doing dishes.

Then I went to the optician to have him look at my newest test lens. Turns out that one is great but the other one, the one that he declared fine last time, isn’t. I did tell him that everything looks blurry through it but apparently I could see well enough to drive – weird. So. He ordered a new test lens. My patience is starting to run out. On the bright side everybody in that shop now knows me by name…

On my way back home I went to the bakery and the health food store. Forgot to buy ibuprofen, though. I fully expected to go out again and do the really massive supermarket run that I need to but then decided not to. There is enough food in the house for all of us until lunch today.

My procrastination turned out to be a good thing because the boy came home at 11.30 instead of at 2 but had to go back to school by 1, so we had lunch early:

Pancakes with spinach and parmesan. My husband would have liked to add feta, alas that needs to be bought at the store first. The boy ate his with jam instead.

Then I taught some students and in between I wrote some words. Found out that the monthly webinar was re-scheduled to tonight, so I had the evening free. For writing. And reading. Mostly reading to be honest.

I also had dinner with the boy in front of TV watching Star Trek. Which was fun:

First pretzel in ages. And my husband joined us for the second half of ‚Deep Space Nine‘ which was rather nice.

Today there will be – the epic grocery run with the bike and the trailer, a little teaching (schools are closed but everything else isn’t; so we’re teaching but often students don’t show up), and the webinar. And I need to prepare the podcast. I think I’m feeling good enough to record tomorrow.

I woke up just before the alarm and then wasn’t all that keen to leave the bed because it was really cold. There was even a sprinkling of snow on the lawn and the hedge. Streets were clear, though.

Spent some reading time researching books to read and downloading free romance novels. Then my husband showed up, lit a fire in the wood stove for the first time this season and I spent two hours re-knitting the first sleeve on my cardigan. Sleeve cap is finished and I started the part of the sleeve where I don’t need to pay as much attention.

No run and no grocery shopping even though we are dangerously low on cheese again.

We had pasta e fagioli for lunch again:

Then I tried making myself write while reading romance and eating chocolate. It would have felt much better to just get it over with but we all knew that before…

The I taught one student. The second one canceled because she didn’t feel well and the third one just didn’t show up for no apparent reason. Weird.

Then the boy and I watched ‚Doctor Who‘! Which is always fun. And then I had to help the boy finding a photo of a musician to print out for art class at school. I did introduce him to Amanda Palmer and he actually liked her music. As I had thought he would. Finding a picture of her is pretty easy but getting our printer to print it out properly turned out much harder.

And then I finally managed to write a little.

Today there will be an appointment at the optician’s because of my new test lens that I didn’t test properly because I was sick, and I really need to go grocery shopping were basically out of everything and so I need to take the bike and brave the big store that’s further away, and then I will teach all the students.

And then there’s the monthly webinar with Orna Ross in the evening.

I woke up just before the alarm. No writing but I knew if I didn’t get myself back to the novel that day things would be dire.

My plan for the writing involved yoga and writing.

I knitted on my sweater during my husband’s breakfast and while I first had the feeling the sleeve would never end I was then very happy to see that I had only eight rounds left before the ribbing. Then I tried the sweater on. And found something strange. You need to know that this sweater has different instructions for right and left sleeves and the one I was knitting was the right one. When I tried it on I was slightly confused. Then I looked up that it was indeed the right sleeve that I had been knitting. Let me show you a picture:

Do you see it?

The sleeve is on the right when you look at it from this perspective but the right sleeve – should be on the other side. I briefly thought about finishing the sleeve, putting another right one on the actual right side and see if it would be noticeable but then I realized it would be bugging me forever. And about three (maybe four) hours of knitting are not worth being bugged forever.

I’m happy to say that the sweater seems to fit so far and that picking the stitches up for the sleeve the, um, fourth time is much easier than the first. Or second. (The trick was to pick up five stitches for every six rows, by the way; and the pattern is Stockbridge by Ysolda Teague).

Then I found that we were totally out of beer that I like to drink (we only had two kinds left, one that doesn’t agree with me – even though it tastes great – and the other one does slightly weird things to my digestion as well. So I decided to swap yoga for a walk to the gas station at the other end of town so I could buy beer. And chocolate bars. Of course.

There was goulash for lunch:

Then I spent some time seriously procrastinating about writing yet again. And the boy really didn’t feel like doing his massive homework. He had German homework that all in all took about six hours to do. So we both sat down at the kitchen table with a pomodoro timer and did a kind of ‚write-in‘:

I managed about 3,000 words. Good but not quite good enough. I need to write about 3,500 words per day until the end of the month. My speed is down to 1,500 to 1,700 words per hour with the editing as I go that I’m doing at the moment, so that’s about 1 1/2 hours of writing per day.

Tough. But not impossible.

We ate dinner in front of TV and only watched one episode of ‚Deep Space Nine‘ (the episode was ‚Past Tense 2‘ from season three). We really enjoyed that one. The boy then decided that he wanted to watch another one but I was adamant. He still needed to take a shower, do his Latin homework and study for an economics test. (Yes, he really should have done more on Friday and Saturday; I should have written something on those days too – we’re working on it.)

I wrote some more words and did a huge pile of dishes. With all the procrastination and the writing I had completely forgotten to do the lunch dishes, ahem.

Today there will be – more writing, some teaching, no run. I might go for a walk because no exercise at all is no fun but I don’t think I’m back to running form again.

Most important will be the writing.