Life Update #1 // November is Coming

How? How is it almost NaNoWriMo already? Of course, NaNoWriMo is awesome, and I can’t wait. But how so soon? TELL ME. I’m still having trouble realizing it’s only a few days away. I’m not prepared.

*takes deep breath* I am calm.

It occurs to me that I never updated you on my last NaNoWriMo and how it went. I mean that not in an “it just occurred to me” way, but more of a “this occurs to me on a regular basis and I have already drafted multiple posts as a result and then failed to publish them” way. Since work on my current main project is reaching a period of semi-burnout, which I would like to keep as brief as possible, I figure it’s time to take a break and tend to my sorely-neglected blog. There are so many posts and updates I want to finish and share with you. My Out of Coffee, Out of Mind drafts folder is starting to feel like a diary of sad dead ends.

Before we discuss this coming NaNoWriMo, let’s deal with the previous one, since that’s what’s been bugging me the most. Last I spoke with you on the subject, I had plans to write a ton of words, albeit not as many as I have in NaNoWriMos past. In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t succeed. Or rather, I hit 50,000 words, so in all respects, I did win NaNoWriMo. *throws confetti* I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. I am not trying to be down on myself for the number of words I wrote. There is nothing wrong with 50K, and those who write only 50K are still winners in every respect. But for me, it was a sad achievement because I have done better in the past. I was used to overachieving, I enjoyed it, and I had looked forward to doing it again.

Last November was hard. It was sandwiched between difficult months. On one end, I was struggling with the leftover brain fog from my last bout with an eating disorder, and on the other hand, I was fighting another relapse. Almost as soon as November began, I realized that I was too close to a complete mental burnout to try anything more than the minimum needed to win. In comparison with what I have done before, it felt like I barely participated. When I saw all my fellow overachievers from years past going pedal to the metal, I’ll admit, I did cry a little. I had been part of something that meant a great deal to me, and I had lost that, even if it was only temporary. There was this huge gap between what I wanted to create and what I was able to create. The muse just wasn’t there; my vocabulary felt stunted, my attention span limited. It was like a bruise that I didn’t want to poke. So that month, taking care of myself meant taking a step back and only writing what I needed to keep up my winner’s streak.

That’s not to say I didn’t love what I was writing. Over the course of the month, I fleshed out several ideas, drafted a bunch of blog posts, wrote some poetry, and ultimately, did whatever I could to get the creative juices flowing. I didn’t finish a novel, or even come close. That would have been asking too much of my brain, especially given the story ideas I had chosen. My biggest triumph that month, aside from choosing to take care of myself, was drafting the beginnings of a story that, while emotionally difficult to write, felt more rewarding and more promising than anything I had worked on in a while. Funny thing is, it came to me while I was watching a video on poisonous mushrooms, and it came all at once, in a deafening rush. Even though I have yet to tack down the nitty gritty details, I have all the bones of the thing—I found its skeleton, hidden in the back of my mind, complete and tangible. Actually writing it was surprisingly difficult, given the existing framework, like moving sand with tweezers, but it was difficult in a “I am trying to paint what I am seeing and I am trying to paint it well” way, and less of a “I don’t know what to paint” way. I picked it up yesterday, fleshed out more ideas, got excited and bought a writing journal for it. Every time I touch it, I get an electrical shock.

As for what I’ll be doing this November, I’m not sure. Naturally, I know that I’ll try for at least 50,000 words. Over the course of the last month or so, I have developed a routine where I try to read for an hour each day at a coffee shop. During November, and the days leading up to it, I plan to turn that reading time into additional writing time. Since I’m working forty hours a week now, I don’t know if I will have as much time to overachieve as I have had in the past, and I don’t know if it would be healthy for me to try just yet. This has been a hard year. So I don’t know if I’m going to attempt more than 100,000 words.

With regards to what I’m going to write, I don’t know. I have several options. I might cheat this NaNoWriMo and edit an existing project instead of drafting a new one—I have several novels I’m trying to polish, and I’m not excited about setting them aside completely for a whole month, although it might be good for me to take a vacation from them. I could also pull out my trunked novel and, for nostalgia’s sake, give it a complete revamp. Last November’s promising story is still begging to be finished, so that’s a possibility. There’s another novel I really want to work on as well, one that’s begging for a complete fresh start, beginning with a new rough draft. Those are my options, I think. I have so many balls in the air already, I don’t want to add any more just yet.

But I doubt I will know for sure until November first.

The Post Where I Get Melodramatic

Two weeks ago, I remembered why it is that I love writing, after so long of forgetting why it is that I like living. Maybe it was the smell of autumn in the air, or the pumpkin spice latte in my hand (decaf, because my body can no longer tolerate caffeine, but I’m trying to look on the bright side). Maybe it was that I turned a corner in battling dehydration; there are fewer moments where I stand dead-eyed, fishing for language in an empty stream. 

I want to open the windows and clean all the oxygen in this house, even though it will let the chill into my bones. We have lightbulbs that need replacing, and my clutter has become more cluttered because I haven’t had the energy to do, do, do. Yesterday I made a list of goals, and it was ambitious. Today I had plans and even hopes because I am excited (oh so tentatively) to exist. I am accomplishing things again. 

There is still a spider crawling around inside my skull, trying to spin cobwebs over my eardrums so I will only hear its voice telling me nothing is worth it. But for the past month and a half, it has held so little power over me. I will take anything for a win. 

Do you know how many posts I have drafted in an effort to bring you one, just one? I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count them out for you. Somewhere along the line, my vocal chords became barbed wire—it hurts to speak my mind. That does not mean I will be silent. Most days I want to crawl into some deep, dark cave and just be thought for a while. That does not mean I will set up camp there. 

For a time I had stopped reading and writing, because my attention span was so badly diminished, and with it, my ability to care and invest. I’m back, though. Slowly but surely I am leaving the darkness of starvation that told me it was light, and yes, I have miles more to go. Eight times out of ten, I still disapprove of my reflection. The difference is that now I don’t think that silhouette warrants a death sentence. Two months ago, I gained five pounds of muscle weight through eating more and exercising well, and the world didn’t stop spinning—didn’t even hiccup. 

Sometimes I think I was a better person when I was heavier; I think I cared more and did more and felt more. When I stopped eating, I think I carved more from my frame than just fat and muscle. 

What matters is, I’m trying. I’m pulling myself out of bed and bucking against the urge to numb it all, to do anything but think. I’m finding it’s scarier now that I’m leaving the woods than it was when I wasn’t out yet. I’m looking over my shoulder at what was chasing me, and I have no words to describe how ugly it is. 

In times of war, POWs have been starved as a means of torture, to whittle them down to the barest outlines of themselves. It is one of the cruelest acts of hatred a human being can commit against another. 

I treated my body like a prisoner of war. 

There are days I can’t stand to be alone with myself because I’m scared that I will do it again, scared that next time I won’t be able to stop. I don’t want to live there anymore. For so long I felt like I was failing at recovery, because even when I was trying to get better I was still losing weight. But inch by inch, I’m getting my life back, and I’m not letting go.

C'est moi

Therapy and The Walking Dead

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me… You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…” Psalm 23:4-5

Recently, I started catching up on The Walking Dead. I still have a little over a season to go, but I’m getting there. When I first started watching over a year ago, I quite enjoyed season 1, but then I got bogged down on season 2. While I’m not generally squeamish, the violence in the show bothered me more than it has in others (this probably has something to do with the fact that I don’t like the idea of getting eaten alive), but the curious thing is that lately, as I’ve been struggling with anorexia, I’ve found myself gravitating to TWD more and more. And it occured to me that there is a specific reason why I find comfort in the misadventures of Rick Grimes and his group. 

At its core, The Walking Dead is very much about food. Oh sure, it’s also about trying not to get torn apart by walkers or murdered by crazy people, but the group braves the most danger just in order to eat. On its own, starvation is a scary concept; compound that with facing a horrible fate just to prevent it, and you’ve got a fairly accurate picture of what’s going on in my head right now (although the fates Rick and I fear are different). 

I have found it easier to eat while watching TWD, because it’s helpful to pretend that the only anxiety that could exist about eating food would be the idea of becoming food yourself, which is not a struggle I have ever had to face in real life (nor do I ever hope to). So on one level, I can appreciate the comfort and safety I have in being able to observe fictional anxieties about eating while knowing I don’t have to share those fears. If the walkers aren’t real, then eating can be a pleasurable activity rather than a necessary evil. The separation between fictonal food fear and real life food fear is not complete, and The Walking Dead will not solve all of my problems. But little things like this have been assisting me in my attempts at recovery, and for that, I am extremely grateful. 

What about you, my little coffee beans? What are some ways that TV shows (or any form of entertainment) have helped you overcome various struggles? What are some other benefits to enjoying fiction?