Sigh ...

Well, I figured it was about time to do the little dance that I do nearly every year around the beginning of fall: am I going to participate in NaNoWriMo or not? Seriously, it's an annual ritual, and each time, I always regret whichever decision I actually made, even if I've rationalized it to the nth. Last year, I opted out and instead completed the Mass Effect challenge, which was fun, sure, but I felt like BTVS' Spike watching through a window vampires eat their Thanksgiving human after the chip was placed in his head. The year before that, I did actually participate but only got a little over 6000 words into it before giving up, but I was going through a very deep depression at the time, so finding the emotional energy to do anything except breathe and occasionally getting out of bed was nearly impossible. I'm actually surprised I was able to write anything, let alone 6442 words, so in a way, I guess that was an accomplishment in and of itself. In 2012, I got much closer to reaching the goal of 50,000 words - I got a little over 35,200 - which made me feel kind of like a failure since I'd been able to be A Winner the previous year. 

And so that brings us to 2015, the year in which I will, again, join my fellow NaNoWrimers (this is now my term for them) to the race to the finish*. I've been talking about my new project, Paradiso, for a while now, and I figure it's time to go ahead and just do it. I'll be doing a lot of preparation over the next month, which is a new approach for me. My strategy for tackling NaNo is pretty much the pantser way: just go for it and hope for the best. But with Paradiso, I actually have to do some research (looking into history, physics, terraforming, cybernetics, and that's just the beginning), and although The Legion** has some pretty complex web-weaving, Paradiso is much more concise and is considerably less "epic," in the sense that I don't believe it will develop into anything further than a novel instead of being told over five novella arcs. 

So wish me luck! And if you are doing NaNo, please feel free to click HERE to go to my profile page and add me as a buddy. We can all use a little camaraderie during the month of November, can't we? 

* I'm still going to complete my Reboot challenge, which I'll post about later on in October. 

** I actually moved a lot of what was on my old website, A Million More to Go, into a new tab on this blog, and a lot more is to come over the next few months there. 

New(ish) Experience for Me

Back in college, I had a panic attack just as I parked my car in the lot in front of where I worked. I'd never experienced one before - and didn't realize what was going on until my boss mentioned it - so I forced myself to get up and walk into the building, where I was lead to the break room and allowed to let it pass before opening the store. Other than my body going into shock after catching on fire*, I never experienced another one.

Until yesterday.

... On Mental Illness

A few years ago, I took Abnormal Psychology and had a damn blast. The final project (that also doubled as our final exam) was to pick a character or historical person and diagnose them with the various disorders I had learned about over the semester, complete with DSM codes, and because I am a giant dork, I picked Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker. I literally had two pages of disorders and whatnot, and even my professor was like, "Wow, you were incredibly thorough with this. Even more than I requested." Mental illness fascinates me in so many ways, but it wasn't until a few years later that I found myself trying to diagnose my own mental health.

Life with Pets: Flea Baths - A One-Act Play

Back in the quaint little awful place known as Small Town, TN, JUJU sits in her living room, scratching at her legs and swatting at phantom bitey creatures, while ZOLA occasionally jumps and barks at her own ass. BITSY sits high in the former window now kitty ledge that leads into Juju's office, biting at her tail, and BINA's and KITKAT's bodies twitch with every itch, having given up on ever being bite-free. 

It is the Great Flea Infestation of 2012. 

So last month ...

How can it already be September? The last eight months have been a sort of bizarre blur of happiness, insanity, sadness, frustration, inspiration, and a whole bunch of other emotions that I can't even remember.