*witters about anti-nano and money*

[spindizzy]

Ey up loves, I still exist! I am internally screaming more than I'd like and it's been perishing enough even inside the house that the heating has finally gone on, but I'm doing okay?

• I've gone back to trying to tidy the house and it's... Going...? I'm attempting to weed my bookshelves and tidy away all of my half-finished projects and hobbies, which is stressing me out, but I'm very slowly learning how to let go of books that I don't want and aren't going to read! I'm inflicting a lot of them on splend, and kinda aggressively post-iting things to remind me where they're going. I'm feeling kinda hopeful to be honest! I'm not expecting miracles (I'm expecting shame and guilt, to be honest), but it'd be nice to be able to fit all of my books into my room, at the very least.


• (I don't know why the internal screaming has ramped up, but I think it's probably because I'm actually keeping track of everything that I'm trying to do, and it turns out that that's TERRIFYING and I don't recommend it.)


• 4thewords is gearing up to their big Nano event! I'm planning to do an anti-nano variant, but I haven't picked which one yet. ... Yes I know it's the last day of October, let's just ignore that for a while. I'm trying not to let myself get too hyped about it anyway, because I know me and my ability to follow through so I don't want to do what I do EVERY year of go "YES, this is it, I will definitely write THIS story!" and immediately abandon it.


• captainraz, who is an organised human being, has worked out her bronze/silver/gold levels of anti-nano by averaging out the amount of words she wrote each month and using that as a midpoint, then setting a lower goal and a stretch goal. My current anti-nano plans are not that organised. They currently involve a list of stories that I've started (or want to start or do SOMETHING with), and maybe rolling dice against it to see what I get? I don't know. I have ideas and hopes, but lets face it, I ALWAYS have ideas and hopes, that's literally the problem.


• But anyway if someone wants to yell a fandom and/or some numbers and/or a story that I promised you four thousand years ago, or a specific anti-nano variant, I am open to suggestions! I definitely want to write some FICTION this month, considering that I've been prioritising on everything but that this year, but we'll see how it goes. What I've learned this year is that I CAN write 50,000 words in a month regularly, I'm just not good at remembering to write fiction instead of... Capslocking wildly? Making bullet-point lists? Writing things that AREN'T fiction, basically.


• (I am less than 20,000 words from my getyourwordsout goal! I AM SO CLOSE I CAN TASTE IT.)


• For the first time since about 2012, I finished a month NOT at the bottom of my overdraft, which is AMAZING. And relied entirely on my birthday present from the in-laws being money to get me out of my overdraft, HMRC finally giving me a proper tax code, and getting a 50p per hour pay rise. Not gonna knock it, I'm just utterly thrown by the idea of NOT losing £200 off my pay to cover the overdraft, and also CAPITALISM IS BULLSHIT AND GETTING STUCK IN A FINANCIAL HOLE THAT CAN ONLY BE TEMPORARILY ESCAPED IS A PAIN IN THE EVERYTHING.


• The incentive for staying out of the hole is that if I do, I can put money aside to go to Worldcon 2021 and meet some of my friends face-to-face for the first time! I promise nothing, because as we just established, I'm still learning how to money in a way that doesn't involve going "Oh god I'm in a hole, BETTER START DIGGING!" But I do want to be there, and I do want to meet anyone who's going or anyone who's likely to be in DC around August time 2021, because WHO KNOWS WHEN I WILL BE ABLE TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY AGAIN WHEN *GESTURES AT UK AND US POLITICS*


• Relatedly, I don't know what, if any, cons I'm doing next year. Nine Worlds is dead, and I'm going to miss it, but I think the con-going people I know are still trying to settle on what our new home con is going to be. I guess we'll see?


• A friend has pointed out that the Super Patron Endowment Fuck Yeah is a thing, and by all accounts it's legit? Like, actual people who can be vouched for and verified judging it, real publications reporting it like it's also real... I kinda want to go for it. It's stupid, this is probably an ID scam that ends with my kidneys in a box somewhere or awkward questions about money laundering or SOMETHING horrible, but... What if it is real? ... I say, like every sucker who's been scammed since the dawn of time, but also $50,000 is more than I've earned in the last five years put together..


• I am reading again! Very slowly and not what I'm meant to be reading, but I'm making a start! I was just like "Oh, it's fine, I read LOADS!" at the ADHD doctor's office, and now, nearly half a year later, I remembered that I read lots of graphic novels and manga, not prose. I don't know if I want to change anything based on this knowledge, but at least I have it and when I'm crying into my ereader because WHY WON'T YOU JUST READ THE THING YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO, I'll know the answer.


• captainraz sent me a link to a post where the take-away message seems to be "If bullying yourself was going to work, it would have done it by now," and now I feel both incredibly called-out and aware that I'm not doing as well at the not badmouthing myself thing as I want. Which is fine, I am fine, it's just that my brain is being difficult this week.


• The new 4thewords event seems like it's gonna be pretty cool? A meteor has crashed from space and there is SO MUCH new stuff to do! I'm simultaneously excited and scared, because oh god, that is a lot of stuff, and apparently I'm supposed to pick and choose the quests I complete instead of just going "Ah yes, it exists, get in my quest list."


• SPEAKING OF QUEST LISTS, Lex is buying me the game about the horrible goose AS I TYPE, and my friend Chris gave me twenty quid towards getting Fire Emblem: Three Houses so that he's got someone to shout about it with! He has sold it almost entirely on "One of the houses is led by a bisexual woman in armour" because he knows what I'm like.


• ... Apparently there was a time when Fire Emblem wasn't a dating sim, but that sounds fake.


• I've instituted a swear jar but for deadlines, but I haven't decided what the money from the jar should go to yet. I could put it into my Worldcon fund? The account restricts how many times you can withdraw money from it, so it's basically throwing money into a hole. I know one of my friends motivates herself to do things on pain of donating to UKIP (which she's never had to do, if you want proof of how motivating this is), but I don't think I'm ready to bet against my ADHD THAT much.

... So yeah, that's what I can think of right now. Stuff is happening! Stuff is going to happen! I am really hoping that my enthusiasm for things happening in the future will still apply when they get to the here and now!