Still Here

It’s been quite the two weeks. I moved and went on vacation and… well, I guess that’s it. But seriously, those are two really time-consuming things!

The move went as well as could be expected. Thanks to my amazing family and friends it wasn’t quite the disaster I was expecting, but when is moving ever exactly easy? For days afterward I was drained and lazy.

Vacation was exactly what I needed. I read book after book, ate more delicious food than I should have, and recharged my batteries. I’ve been going on the same vacation a few times a year for my entire life. The people change, and maybe we’ll do things in a different order, but mostly it’s the same. We go the same places, go through the same routines. Maybe for some people it would be boring, but for me it’s incredibly satisfying and peaceful. It’s comforting to stand on the same boardwalk I’ve been going to for 25 years and think that I’ve done this every year, and every year I’ve had different problems, but by the next year they hardly matter. In the larger pictures of my life, this one year doesn’t matter.

The tide comes in, the tide goes out.

Now that I’m back, I’m ready to make a fresh start. I let everything slack this past month, but now it’s time to get back to work! Today I started eating healthy and exercising again, and let me tell you, that month off did not do my any favors! I’ve gained back weight and exercising was a real challenge. I’m excited to push myself, and hopefully see progress.

It’s also time to push myself back into writing. I’m hoping to have the outline for Book 2 finished in a few weeks, and I’ve got a number of other small projects that I’m working on.

It’s good to be back!

Something is better than nothing

Despite the chaos and stress that comes with being in the middle of moving, I’m still managing to get a decent amount of writing done. I feel like it might be my brain’s way of keeping me from going completely nuts. Instead of freaking out about how much is left to pack and how hazy the future is, I can work towards something that feels attainable and substantial. I don’t know where or when I’ll get a job. I don’t know where or when we’ll be moving again. I don’t know what will happen, but I do know that I can keep working at my goals. Maybe I’ll never get a full time job in a library, maybe I’ll never get my book published, but if I focus on that I’ll never do anything. My motto for the past few years has been that something is better than nothing. A part time job is better than no job, and writing a sentence is better than writing nothing. Any act, no matter how small, counts for something.

So I write pieces of stories, outlines for books, and blog posts. Maybe it will come to nothing, but it makes me feel just a little bit better.

 

 

A time of change

This is a weird time of endings for me. On Wednesday I finished the second draft of my novel. Today I had my last day of work. In two weeks I’ll be moving, and I honestly have no idea what my life is going to look like 6 months from now.

It’s scary, exciting, stressful, and hopefully wonderful.

I’m hoping that one day I  will look back this as a time of great change, great growth, and great creativity.

On the writing front, I’m torn between starting to work on the second Cooper sisters book or the idea I mentioned a few weeks ago. I’m equally excited about them, and I keep going back and forth between them. One thing I know for sure about my next project is that I want an outline. The Cooper Sisters (I really need a better name, don’t I?) was a NaNoWriMo book that I wrote completely on the fly. I had no outline, no idea of where the story was going. I really feel like I’ll write faster and better if I know what I’m aiming for. Whichever I end up going with, I know it will be a fun and interesting project.