March 31st, 2021 – 917

~ Sam Shuttleworth

There’s nothing quite like a blog written with hours to spare until the end of the calendar day on the last day of the month. I know 1K isn’t bound to calendar days, opting instead for my own personal wake/sleep cycle – vital if I ever do long distance travel I realised the other day, as if I need to cram in a 2K day on jetlag – but this blog is a pre-midnight ritual. It’s always nice to bank it as such, especially when I can do so after hitting target. What makes today all the sweeter is I hit target on my lunch break. I just waited until the end of the working day to write this entry because I was in a good rhythm at work.

Now before you think it’s all sunshine and rainbows, I had a ghastly night. The saliva ducts you have on the inside of your cheeks, below the cheekbones, are a part of your mouth you might never have noticed if you’re not used to having stress-ulscers or similar ailments. I am used to them, and even bad inflammations I can shrug off because I’ve had this all my life, there comes a point you just get used to it. And yet, even I was howling in pain last night when those ducts started to flare as if I’d just attacked them with a staple gun. I’m not kidding, the mere thought is making me shudder. That cost me the possible full night of sleep I could have gotten.

That’s one reason today is so satisfying. That’s the kind of minor inconvenience that – when you’re recovering from an extreme low like I dunno, 2020/2021 – can push you right back in. But I got up today, worked hard, took phone calls and solved problems, wrote on my break, planned my day for tomorrow and now wrote this blog post all before 5pm. That’s a good feeling. Life is still stressful – always will be on some level, that’s life – but I dunno for a while now, I’ve felt I have a fighting chance of getting back to normal? That when I’ve said ‘it won’t always be like this’, I might have been right. Usual caveat, it’s too early to be sure and it’s gonna take a while to get back on my feet, but, man it’s nice to have hope.

Published by Sam Shuttleworth

I’m Sam, and I live to write. I spent most of the first 8 years of my adulthood trying to balance writing with a large amount of crap in my personal life, until towards the end of 2018 I threw everything out and started afresh with just my writing. I built the new me around one goal: I have to write at least 1,000 words a day. I called this goal 1K, and it changed my life. So long as I write a thousand words a day, the day is a success, and atop that I've managed over time to build the life I wanted all those years. My greatest flaws as a writer is I still use too many adjectives, adverbs, connectives as openers, accidental passive voice and I don't force my work down people's throats enough on pain of extreme and unusual torture. My greatest strength is I know my greatest flaws and I'm working on them.