Well, if March was the great rebuilding, and April the triumphant rise, then May has been the first month of the next campaign, and one I am by no means a given to win. The goal now is simple: get back to where I was. I have gotten past the worst of the 2019-2021 demons I think, but this is going to be the hardest stretch, because I now have to try and get back to the stability in my head I had in the months before the general election. That is, not an easy feat to put it bluntly. Two therapists lined up, one CBT, one dietition-CBT, and my arsenal of knowledge on my own responses to wellness techniques are the best resources I could ask for. I have no idea if they’re enough.

May was, not a failure by any measure. 36,500 words is a great final total and I am not complaining about an extra 5,500 words on top of target at all, but my fatigue is now getting worse not better, and my routines are proving hard to solitify as a result. I’ll be in the office tomorrow, but I have no doubt I’ll be shattered. I have to figure this out. I don’t want to limp into day 1,000.

Oh look I’m posting early tonight! Pre midnight and everything, woo! Yeah, by single digit minutes I imagine by the time I finish this, but you know what? That’s a win, it’s an improvement, and I will accept that. I’m still feeling a bit bleugh, but it’s a bank holiday tomorrow so no harm in that. MAL is, interesting right now. I think I may have found the story I want to tell, though I still want to do the flashcards. Actually I just realised writing this what I need are drywipe flashcards and magnets. How did I not realise this before? Ok be right back.

Actually no, two points: first, need to finish the post; second, I should explain my reasoning. I still find paper discomforting, but that’s not the main reason for once. Reusabiliy means I can keep using the same ones over and over and never ‘run out’, and it also means I can tweak details without redoing a whole card. Only other way to do that would be in pencil, which is harder to read at a distance. Pencils also cause the paper problem to be worse for me.

Ok good talk.

I’m actually posting this at gone-1am, because tonight I was hosting until quite late. Now we’re able to have up to two households indoors, we took advantage and had a day of boardgames and socialising, and honestly it was such a welcome change. And I love hosting, so it was super pleasent to do so. Writing went well, and today was a resounding success. Pity about the late night but, well it’s actually earlier than yesterday so…

This week was bad, but hey, a three day weekend and I get to spend a lot of time with friends over it. I’m actually staying up to play some Phasmophobia tonight which will be a lot of fun. I’m not in a bad way all in all, but I do need to try and keep my head above water from here on out. Three days to rest, come back fighting. It’s gonna be ok. As for MAL, well, I need to do the cue cards. I’ll keep repeating that here until I shame my way into doing it.

This week knocked me on my back, that’s for sure. Combination of my old weakness for large routine changes that hits my mood like a sledgehammer – even if said change is good – and of course my oldest nemesis: bad sleep. Late nights, and waking on time to be at my desk early every day has been, no good. Ok some good; not sleeping in is always good, I want to be professional after all. Annoyingly as I have been working from home most of this week after getting run down, I keep hitting the odd technical difficulty, which are a pain to untangle when firing on all cylanders; I’m a ways off of that.

MAL is in a strange state. The novel feels alive and thriving, but the pieces are scattered. People usually complain that they follow all the good practice and the story just doesn’t spark. This novel has the spark, but my half asleep dopey brain has events from Bad Guys Close In happening almost in the first act. No idea if I already said this or not, but I need to get 40 cue cards, write scenes in pencil on each, define their purpose, conflicts and how they fit the theme/premise, and then write that book. But, if I do end up only doing that in the rewrite, it’s not the end of the world.

I hope so much that next week, pre-5pm target comes back. Only been a week since that petered out again and boy, I miss it more than I realised I would. In time. Gotta patiently rebuild.

I think, I’m just burning out again. That is not reassuring in the slightest. I’m gonna go crash in bed once I finish this, but I can’t keep living on the edge. Pre-5pm target, it’s doable, and to be blunt, the only way to live.

This week is, not going to plan. Again. See if March was the beginning of recovery, and April was the turning o the tide, May has thusfar been the receding of the tide. Yes the waters returned, and yes they’ve not vanished again, but they’re not as close as I’d like. I also realise writing this, just how much I miss sitting on the seafront and watching the waves pull to and fro. That is the kind of wellness experience I could do with at the moment, but I will settle for easing myself back into the office with a touch more care.

See, while I do not like working from home – at all – I have jumped from barely any walking to 10K a day out of nowhere, and I suspect this is one reason why my mood melted. Yes, exercise is a natural mood booster, and yes walking isn’t over exertion for most people, but I’m not exactly ‘most people’. Whatever it is that causes my fatigue, physical or mental, I added to my burnout by racing back. That’s ok, I can correct for it, and in time it will feel natural to go in every day just like it used to. I just, rushed it a bit.

So that’s a less than subtle segue into MAL, but I do feel I am rushing it. I keep saying ‘let’s take a step back and look at the plot’, but in between work and crashing at home and target I’ve not made time to do so. Moreover, as much as I’d like to decree I shall ‘do better’, I don’t think it’s feasable to take that step back. After all, where would the time come from? I like my main story every day chain and have no intention of breaking it, so should I wait until I have a first draft? Plenty of writers would say I should, because pre-planning is a drug to be used in moderation and the rewrite should be extensive anyway.

I have, at least, written one good scene today. Honestly the quality of my prose has been on a decline for a while now, so it’s a relief to be able to say as much. But, well I finished 1,300 words – yay – eleven minutes ago – boo. I need to get target earlier again…

Tired. Ill. Stressed. And yes, it’s long past 5pm. But hey, after how I felt most of today – run down enough that I worked from home just in case of lurgey, but thankfully it’s just me burning out – I hit target early enough for an early night. So Imma go do that now. On one brighter note though, this got released today, so I am in good spirits:

It’s the little things. Been looking forward to this card for a long, long time.

Technically it was yesterday. But today is the 30 day mark, and as an average month rounds to 30 – if only just – this is the last 30 days of the first 1K of 1K. That is a weird thought. It only gets stranger still given that, assuming that restrictions lift as planned, just under half of the whole of 1K has been under the shadow of covid. Hellava midpoint if I were to break up the story into beats, which, well the idea has occured to me. After all, in a bizarre twist the 1,000 days of 1K assuming no dramatic upset in the home stretch fits the Save the Cat story beats perfectly. It’s just too bad I do not want to write that book I guess.

Speaking of books that aren’t looking great, MAL. Out the gate, this was a strong one, and the premise still works, but I’m lost. I’m writing scenes but I have no real idea what this book is about or what I’m trying to evoke in the reader’s heart. So I need to try and take a few steps to correct that, starting with some furious log line writing. That’s probably going to be my alongside-work task tomorrow, and one for me to sleep on tonight. I just hope I actually sleep tonight. Not a great track record of that lately.

Sleep schedule has seen better days, but today was besides that a good one. I rested, I spent time with family, yeah all round, it was nice. Writing seems to be creeping later again, but I think I can correct that to closer towards the afternoon tomorrow. As for the story itself, I mean eh, it needs more focus. I need to actually take a step back and decide what I want it to Be. There’s a few plausible paths and I need to just pick one. The others can stay but I need the ‘what’s it about’.