New Year's Peeve,

 I used to love New Year's Eve, but I have to admit that there are a few things about it that just get on my nerves. It's not the fireworks, because I do actually kind of love that we celebrate the idea of the world making it around the sun again by filling the sky with pretty lights; I just wish they didn't scare the shih out of my dog when they happened, because she turns into a total basket case and I don't like to see her scared. Or more scared than she is of the world on a daily basis, the poor kid. It's not even the drinking. I love that it's such a celebration and people get a bit drunk and a bit daft and in the morning, there's all these different places where people do a dip in the FREEZING COLD sea (or lakes where there is no beach close) and it tends to be for charities. I love having a Prosecco (or six) and feeling in the spirit of it. 

But mother of God, I hate the new year, new me bollox, because things do not change that quickly. The previously mentioned fireworks and drinking mean I will be staying at my mum's so the dogs can feel a bit of solidarity in their terror, so I won't be waking up in the same house I live in all year, but some time during New Year's Day I'll come back and all of the same laundry that's sitting waiting to be done will be sat here, and everything will be just as I left it. For a few years, I spent New Year's Eve doing SO MUCH cleaning because it felt imperative to start the New Year with a clean slate, or if not, at least a pristinely clean flat. It didn't matter that everything would be everywhere again in a few days time because cleaning means tidying and tidying means moving things and moving things means I can't find anything, because it was all about New Year. 

One year, I can't remember if it was before I went to university or after at this stage, but it was probably a couple of years after, I chose to do Veganuary and I regretted my life choices by the middle of the month because there was so much that I just couldn't eat and I threw a few wobblers about why I was doing it. I stuck to oat milk in coffee and tea for a long while afterwards (I'm not sure I made it a full year, but it was a while) until I struggled to get my hands on the one I liked, went back to 'normal' milk for a bit and then tried to just switch back straight onto oat milk and couldn't cope with the taste of it. Honestly, one of the big reasons people "fail" Veganuary is it's too much, too soon and it's too strict. I'm not specifically saying I'm going to try and use less animal products next year, because I'm not really a big resolutions person, but I've been vegetarian for over nearly 18 years and whilst I have oscillated between being pescatarian (still eating fish) and vegetarian (no meat, no sea meat, nothing) with occasional steps into veganism which I have never intended to be permanent, I have always tried to be more aware of the impact of what I eat, drink and consume in general, and *surprisingly* that's going to continue in the New Year. I'm interested to see the new plant based products that all the supermarkets are going to come out with and I'm really interested to see which ones make it past February before being discontinued.

In a similar way to Veganuary, I understand why people do RED January (Run Every Day) but it feels like the same sort of thing to me: too much, too fast. I know from experience that if you want to improve with running you need to commit to it and commit hard, but at the same time, you need to give your body time to rest, especially if you're not stepping up from your previous running and you're actually just starting afresh. I briefly considered thinking about RED January, but I've done it before, and it did not go well. My knees didn't thank me for it and I don't need to do anything to make them worse. Also, when I think about it, I'm not a hundred percent sure I WANT to get back into running. It was never something I did for the love of it, but I did love the community of park run and I loved pushing myself at the end of park run to sprint the last bit. I loved the sprinting, I was just crap at it. I didn't love the number of times I needed to find a tree to 'slightly' spew up under, because I pushed myself a bit too hard. One thing I do want to do - though I wasn't waiting for the New Year to do it - is go back to spending more time outside. With events of this year being what they have been, I've spent all together too much time inside which hasn't been good for my head and hasn't been good for my health either. I'm still not going to go running every day though, because that is a recipe for disaster (for me, at least).

Sadly, that brings me to my next peeve: the gym. Honestly, I haven't been to a gym for a long while and part of that is not having felt comfortable in one for a number of reasons, and partly it's because I really liked my old guy and pool situation and the pools around here are cold. I did briefly flirt with the idea of getting into wild swimming this year, and yes, I realise that's even colder, and that's the reason I didn't do it. Cold makes me hurt. Cold causes pain for me. I don't know why, I don't really care why, I just deal with it, but it does mean I struggle a bit with swimming. I quite like it even though I panic in the water sometimes, and even though I'm slow. But as soon as New Year rolls around, everyone starts going to the gym and swimming and things, and it annoyed me the few years I was training for half marathons and such, because suddenly there were more people around and it was harder to get to the equipment I needed, and things got broken more often. It's highly unlikely that I'm going to be going back to the gym in the next few weeks, but I am probably going to see all the New Year, New Me crowd on Facebook and Instagram and by the middle of the month, or if not, by March, suddenly the gym selfies stop and life "returns to normal".

I guess my big gripe with everything about New Year is tied up in this idea of what I have always loved about the holiday. It's this idea of starting the year as you mean to go on. I have always wanted to spend it with the person I'm in a relationship with, seeing, whatever terms people are using these days that I struggle to understand, because I want to start the year as I mean to go on; being with them. I guess if I were to take that to it's extreme I should be at least tipsy all year (another thing I don't really understand is giving up all alcohol through January and then binge drinking all the way into August, but I did try Dry January once and made it to pretty close to my birthday before realising that I actually like having a drink and that form of self limiting just didn't feel good anymore). Given I have no intention of spending the whole year vegan or running every day, I would rather start the New Year being realistic, both about who I am and what I can do to change the things I don't like this year. 

This year is different because I have my ADHD diagnosis and one of the biggest things with that is realising that there are reasons why things like Dry Jan/RED Jan/Veganuary don't work for me (or work for a little while and then I get bored). This year, 2023, I have spent some good time trying to come to understand myself better, and that's something I'm planning on carrying on. I mean, even if I didn't plan on it, it's something that happens to us all anyway, but I want to intentionally try and understand myself better, so I can try and make things easier for myself, be more the person I want to be and feel less hemmed in by the things I struggle with. 2024 is already shaping up to be a good year, with Green Day tickets already booked, heading back to Red Rose 20 years after I went as a child (Christ, that makes me feel old) and The BIG Finish - Mr Big's final world tour, which I'm sure I will be a total weeping mess after, but I am thankful for one thing with it - at least I know it's coming. There are plenty of times that people don't know that the last time they see a favourite band live will be the last time, so I am so very thankful for that. 

By the way, none of this is to disrespect anyone who does Dry Jan/ Red Jan/ Veganuary. I appreciate that not everyone feels the same way that I do towards it and many people find all of them helpful in some way or other. I guess many people's livers do thank them for Dry January after the excesses of Christmas and New Year all in the space of just over a week, it's just something I am peeved at from my own perspective because for me they don't work.

I hope everyone enjoys New Year's Eve and doesn't feel too sore on New Year's Day, and I hope one of the things I do in the New Year is start pressing 'publish' on a few more blogs, rather than leaving everything sitting in drafts. Again. 

Rugby Again,

 By the point I'm brining myself to write about this the news has been out for a while and a few people have had the chance to weigh in on it, and it's getting on my nerves. 

What happened? 

Owen Farrell finally took a step back from the England squad and honestly, I was so excited when it happened, and then I read an article about it, and I got kind of annoyed about it. 

Why did the article get on my nerves? 

Because everything is saying that he's stepping back for his and his family's mental health and whilst I think that's a good reason to step back and I think it's great to hear sports personalities choosing to speak openly about mental health issues and I also think that some of the comments online were ridiculous I also think that sometimes the vitriol and the response to it clouds over the issues which started that in the first place. 

During the early run up to the World Cup, Owen Farrell did something really stupid that he's been penalised for already this year, and due to the nature of what it was it put another person's safety and health at risk. There was, understandably, a lot of frustration about that, and not just from me. His absence wasn't the reason England didn't get through to the final, and actually they played amazingly well without him, and yet he's still treated as the be all and end all, and that gets on my nerves personally, because it means other good players in the squad either don't get a look in or they get played out of position and then don't perform the way that they would in their normal position. 

A lot of that got blamed on Farrell, and that's not really fair because a lot of it was the coach. Farrell got a lot of abuse, including online and also with people booing him at a match. Whilst I absolutely can't say I would have been cheering for him if I was there - because I wouldn't - I think booing someone is a bit of an extreme reaction in this sort of sport. Let's face it, it's not a panto, so it's really not acceptable. It's also not fair to be making threats or personal attacks. You can criticise people for their bad actions without condemning them as a whole person. I'm a very big believer in the idea that we're not wholly bad or good. 

That being sad, it does grate a little that this pause to his international career and the reasoning given for the break is painting him as something of a wrong martyr and that's not a narrative I have a lot of time for. I don't feel like he ever really owned his actions and his mistake, the ban that he was given was done under duress because it had initially been dropped and there was a lot of outrage because of it, and rightly so, but now this narrative is about online trolls (which is important) and it seems to be getting away from us talking about red cards for high tackles (which should be red carded) and the way that these rules seem to disproportionately affect tier 2 teams. Sadly people aren't talking about the two things, and the issues for tier 2 teams never got the attention that it deserved and now most people seem to have moved on completely. 

I'm glad England will be having a new captain though I am disappointed about the really limited number of names that have been put about as the new captain names (especially given that George Ford isn't being mentioned) and there seems to have been less discussion around who the new 10 will be, and to me that's more important given the importance of the kicker in the game.

What Happens Now?

As NaNoWriMo23 comes to a close, I'm realising how weird it is that I've spent the month writing, but without recording it on the NaNo site and actually it was only when it was 'over' and I had finished the fifty thousand words that NaNo requires that I actually started writing the sequel I have been trying to write for a long time and it was probably the best thing I've tried to write for a long time. I thought it was going to be harder to let go of the whole of NaNo if that was what it came to, but what I have realised in the last few days has been that even though this has been the last fourteen years of my life, if it no longer fits it's okay to put it down and focus on the things which do. It's not like I'm resigning my typewriter to the scrap pile or trying to figure out being happy without writing (never works, or not for long anyway) or even like I'm giving up on something that puts on its boots only to kick them square up my butt to get me writing - metaphorically, of course.

Whilst saying goodbye to NaNoWriMo is not a certainty at the moment - it's going to depend on a few things - I definitely don't feel as distraught as I would have expected to and whilst that's strange, it is a very welcome thing. Although I did manage to let go of some things with NaNoWriMo what I will say is that this blog was typed during the mad dash before midnight which happens to have been my favourite part of NaNo each year and has been the sort of thing that was either the mad sprint to finish or the period where I tried to write enough to mirror what I had done on the first day (nailed it, just saying) and I have previously had a bottle of Prosecco in the house so that I could pop the cork and have a glass at midnight to celebrate it's over. I'm tempted to do that now, but at the same time I think I should leave it until the finish of the draft of the sequel. (Though I have a few bottles so there's nothing to stop me from having a glass tonight and then a glass from another bottle when the draft is finished. It would have to be different bottles because it's not going to be done in the next few days!)

Anyway, yes, NaNoWriMo is over and I am glad that the pressure is off of the whole thing, but at the same time, I can't wait for a conclusion to the whole thing to happen. The whole thing really does feel like a sword of Damacles over the head of the organisation, the community, and the whole damn thing. I hate it because it doesn't feel real and it doesn't feel like something that ever should have happened (obviously) and, in the strange way that NaNoWriMo counts things, we've not even quite reached 25 years for the organisation. If all we ever get to be is an organisation who had an amazing idea and wanted to bring together writers young and old, I hope the legacy looks like what we wanted it to, but if it doesn't, I hope that those of us who remember the best parts of it are able to look back and remember the best of it fondly. I know there are a lot of things that I will remember fondly, particularly getting to meet Chris Baty and discussing everything from the start of NaNoWriMo to his trip to Brighton and London, the trip to San Francisco and getting to meet some of the other Over Achievers in person and so many Municipal Liaisons, and most especially the train trip. And only in part because of getting to cuddle a puppy husky who was only about six weeks old and the most gorgeous little thing I had ever seen (to date, because I hadn't met Chai then.) And of course there will always be the write ins at KRO in Manchester before I left, my first year at university when the Manchester group called me and shouted 'We love you, Charlie' down the phone when my heart was breaking from missing home so much and I couldn't get the train back to Manchester to spend all of my time with them or to attend all of the events that the region were throwing. There were all of those All Night Lock Ins - the good, the bad and the online - train trips to Oxford, Cambridge and Brighton and then also the NaNoRillas where we explored more of London that some of us ever did alone. These memories might end up being all that is left, but if they are, then I guess it is a pretty great legacy. 

I guess the question is then, if I wrote this the night of the 30th November into 1st December, why has it taken me until now to post, because clearly I'm not doing what I was doing at the end of October where I was writing a few blogs in one day and scheduling them to go up one per day? Well, the answer is because a few things have still been hitting the fan with NaNoWriMo that are making me question whether what I have already done to step back are enough or whether I need to follow suit from what a few people (many of whom are former MLs or other long time supporters of the organisation) have already made the decision to do and make the decision to delete my account entirely. One of the things that makes me really reluctant to do that is that I don't want to lose the data and I have a really bad history with losing data, particularly when it is emotionally valuable to me. I also can't imagine getting to November next year and NOT going through all of my NaNoWriMo rituals and spending at least the first few days of the month seeing what taking things to the extremes can do (trying to write 50K in the least time possible is definitely taking things to the extremes) and taking it as an opportunity - if I need it - to recommit myself to writing when I've fallen off of the wagon a bit. Even if that's not done sitting under the NaNo banner, which this year wasn't really, it's always going to be connected to NaNo because that's where it comes from and the history is important to me. 

Decisions haven't been made yet by the board, or at least not announced yet, and I guess that I am still hoping that the right decisions are made that mean that the ship doesn't sink and we can keep NaNoWriMo or at least have a new and improved version as close to the original as humanly possible. I don't want to lose the good parts of what we have in NaNoWriMo, and I'm holding out hope that it can be saved, but maybe that is being unrealistically optimistic, and I just need to accept that it's time to walk away from any association with it. At the moment, I'm still sitting on the fence getting a splintery ass rather than making a decision one way or the other.

Since I wrote all of the above there has been a little bit more from the board, but it's not really been decisions other than bringing in a consultant... A few people have made the really big decision to leave, and honestly, I can't blame them, and I think it's going to continue to feel like a sinking ship until there is a good, solid outcome - like a change of personnel or really solid consequences for the things that happened and a lot of changes in certain areas that have been highlighted a number of times, or the majority of the community leaves, whether we have a new home or not. 

I Wrote About The Afterlife, But I Never Really Lived More Than An Hour,

Firstly, let me say that that statement is categorically untrue, but I have become more than a little obsessed with Fall Out Boy over the last couple of weeks (I've somehow been worse since the gig, which doesn't normally happen) so there are a few lyrics that I have been singing a lot, and the original version of that has definitely been in the mix a few times (it's from Saturday, for anyone even slightly less obsessed than I am) and I thought it would make a good blog title. Or a tattoo, but since I don't have any tattoos and equally don't have any plans to change that, the blog title will have to do. 

With everything that has been going on I've been thinking a lot about writing. I guess that with everything going on with NaNo it's had me reflecting on how much of an impact it really had on me, given that until the first year of NaNo I had never actually written a full novel. And actually, it took me until 8 months after the finish of my first NaNo to achieve that feat, but it's been an incredible learning curve all the same. It's not always been easy. There have been plenty of times where NaNo has made me feel pretty ill. NaNoFlu kicked my ass more than freshers flu did, partly because I've had it far more often. And then there was what happened seven years ago.

Seven years ago I was writing something that I loved, that I was proud of, something that I finished on Day 9 and then tragedy struck. I am pretty sure that it was my first 20k day (I checked, it was), the year we went to Brighton, and it was then the year that my computer ate my novel, and honestly, I never forgave it. I know it was my fault for not backing the damn thing up, but it was a busy just over a week, and I thought my computer had it. I didn't click save when I shut the laptop, the battery died and cleared the temp files and when I turned it back on the file was corrupted, the novel was gone and there was nothing that any of my IT inclined friends could do to bring it back, and I was heart broken. I still have the files on my computer, but I don't know why. One of those people had run it through every recovery program that they could think of, and it was well and truly gone.

Since that happened, I haven't really been able to put the same effort into a novel that I did into that one. It felt like a little bit of my love for writing died that day, and honestly, it has taken until now or recently at least, for me to think about writing the same way again, because I want to write a sequel to Fairies and I want to love it as much as I love that book. I don't know if that is going to happen, but I would like it to. 

It's not just the writing, is the thing. What I remember about Fairies is that I spent a long time editing that book, and went over it and over it and over it, and then after I self-published it, needed to pull it and then do another edit on it, because something had gone wrong even after I went over it, edited it and had beta readers go over it, too. I think that, subconsciously, I knew that throwing that much energy into writing something and then editing it, and potentially losing it even if through my own idiocy, was far more than I could cope with at the time. I mean, one of the reasons I never considered applying or querying to the 'traditional' publishing route was because I was terrified of being rejected from it, and I know that it's highly likely to happen, because pretty much everyone gets rejected (at least once or twice, but more often a lot more times than that). 

Anyway, the fact that I have been thinking about writing in this way is really positive, or at least I think it is, and maybe it means that one of the novels I have been drafting for the last few years (including a redraft of the one that got deleted or corrupted or however you want to say it) is actually going to see the light of day at some point. Maybe. 

What Comes Next,

My last blog was about what is happening with NaNoWriMo at the moment, and whilst I am hoping that the efforts of the board and others are successful in recovering the organisation enough for it to weather this storm, there's something uncomfortable about interacting with the organisation at the moment, even just to record my word count. I've been keeping all of my writing activities off site, which is only in part because there is no word processor on the main NaNo site.

I had been entering a word count each day that is the lowest daily word count for the site I'm using to write (4 The Words) as my word count for NaNo for the day, but I've been writing a lot more than that and I just don't know how to bring myself to keep a track of my word count through NaNo, because it feels like continuing to associate with an organisation I just can't bring myself to agree with.

It's at a stage where I have been involved in more NaNoWriMos than I haven't (14/25) and I've done it for nearly half of my life, and honestly I don't think I would know what to do with my November without it, but I also know that it's not the same without the community that we have, because all of these writers doing the same thing at the same time is a kind of support that you don't tend to get elsewhere. Although Round of Words in 80 Days and other supportive projects exist, they're not the same, and I just don't feel the same way about them as I do about NaNo, so this whole thing feels like a waiting game to see what comes out of the organisation, or if something else steps in to take over. Other than that, I'll stick to 4 The Words, and hopefully be able to get to the stage where I can finally crack through drafts of a few novels that have been sitting in my head for years. 

So I guess the answer to the question of what comes next doesn't really have an answer just yet, and I don't know when it will have and that's a really nerve wracking position to be in, but I guess that that's where we (WriMos) all are right now.

What Is Happening With NaNo?

 Right, so without rehashing all of the details of what has already been shared on so many different platforms now, I want to talk about what is going on with NaNoWriMo, why it's important and why it sucks.

Once a time, in what was actually a different century, way back in 1999, twenty one writers decided to do something a little bit crazy and try to write fifty thousand words (the industry standard minimum length for a novel) in a month. I was going to write 'in thirty days' but I want to say the original one happened in July, so it wouldn't have been thirty days!

From humble beginnings it became something incredible, because it spread across the globe, with participants in a number of different languages, with forums and somewhere in the last 25 years, the Young Writer's Program was born, and the program started support, well, young writers. You have to be 13 to be on the forums, or to have an account which doesn't have your parent's email address on it, but you can job younger, particularly if your teacher or another educator is running a program to help get young people writing. You can also access the main forums from age 13 as well, where young writers can ask question of, less young writers, or can just discuss life, the universe and anything else. 

Somewhere along the way, because of a number of different reasons, the forums have become a problem both on the 'main' site and also on the YWP and there are a lot of details to that, and it's shit, because these spaces are a refuge for many of us, a haven for many of us, and they have been the space where we are social, where we find our answers and where we find our friends. These spaces are sacred in a way, but right now, they're locked, and that is the way that they should stay until they can be managed safely.

Writers are a lot like other artists; they're strong but they're also really fragile. There's been trauma dumping going on in the forums which is difficult enough for an international group of adults, but when it happens in the children's space and kids are feeling the pressure of supporting other people, particularly their friends through significant mental health issues, something is going wrong. When users of a forum can't rely on the people there to protect them, even when it's from each other, there is a major problem. Some of the issues have been so significant that they have required reporting to law enforcement and that's a really sticky situation, because of the international nature of the group.

I don't think anyone ever imagined, back in 1999 that we would reach a peak of 400,000 people (I think that was during COVID) and still be around 350,000 people today. Well, we were before these issues became so universally known. The impact of that change and the global reach of the website have made this project a lot more complicated than could have been anticipated back then, and another accusation that has been banded about over the last few years particularly, is that the projects are still very much America-centric. For a number of us, that is categorically true. Participation is possible, but different for international people. When I flew to America in 2018 because of NaNoWriMo I was one of two people who had flown over and the other lady was from Germany. Everyone else was from somewhere in America (except for one of the staff who was from Canada). Now I know that's a least in part because it was an utter privilege to be able to do it, but at the same time, it's the biggest event of NaNoWriMo and there wasn't really anything like virtual participation. I'm not sure what the answer is for something like that, but being focused mostly on America is a problem, particularly when it comes to fundraising. 

One of the big reasons that this is so bad is because NaNo has been hanging on by a thread for a long time. Things that were planned upgrades for the sites weren't able to happen because there was just no budget. The organisation does have sponsors, but the majority of the operating budget is from donations and those donations have a long way to stretch. They fund the websites, the forums, the staff, the packs sent to schools which support YWP as well as the gifts given to MLs (regional leads) to say thank you for their support, as well as the stickers that are sent to regions with MLs for participants. There are designers to pay, tech support and so much more. Anything which affects public opinion of the organisation, like the accusations that have been made, always impacts the financial contributions that are received by the organisation and the capacity to recover from that is going to be stretched because there wasn't a lot of buffer anyway.

The worse part, even than the money because we have worked with less, is that the trust in the organisation could be shattered beyond repair. If things aren't resolved for the YWP, those young people might be lost from the organisation for good, and if adults manage to replace what the organisation gives them with something else, then the entire community that has been built could be slashed to bits, and actually it looks like it is happening, or it is very close to happening. 

Having been part of this since I was 16, I know how important the organisation has always been to me, but I also know that keeping it is not an at all costs thing, and that has only really come about because of the fact that losing it has been a very real possibility in the last few weeks. Without it being the safe space that it should be for everyone, it doesn't have anything like the same value. We're working with the forums shut down and honestly it's fragmented the community more than destroyed it, but I guess that's a kind of destruction. 

I Hate The Word Deserve,

Right, I realise that admitting to watching trash TV like Married At First Sight is the sort of thing that can really divide opinions, but it's a bit like Fifty Shades of Grey - once you've started there's something a little bit addictive about it so you stick with it. I still blame Nicholas Sparks for me starting reading that (and I still can't believe I got to ask Nicholas Sparks for advice on writing, but that's another tangent.)

I've been watching it this evening because I needed a little bit of light relief from something else that's been going on that I'm not discussing in detail (if you follow NaNoWriMo, you probably already know) but honestly, it's winding me up.

There are a couple of people talking about what they want (which is fair enough) and what they deserve, and the bit of what they deserve is getting on my nerves. I know it's just because my head is in a bit of a weird space at the moment, but I find it really grating because people in general so often do not get what they deserve. I'm not just talking about relationships, though it's true, a lot of times people really do not get what they 'deserve' in relationships, but just in general, people don't get what they 'deserve'. 

The majority of our community doesn't 'deserve' what's happening at the moment, in losing access to a big part of our community, even if the expectation is that it will be temporary. The young people who have been through so much and have supported each other didn't deserve any of the things that they have been talking about having happened to them. The people who are currently having to clean up this situation and are having to deal with everyone's emotions, be it sadness, frustration or anger, do not deserve what is being thrown at them. 

Personally, I think I deserve a good night's sleep, but that's not happened for a very long time. Trying to think about the last time I actually slept properly makes me want to cry because it was the last time I felt really and properly safe, and that was quite a bit of time ago now. 

Honestly, as I said earlier in this, I know it is partly because of the headspace that I am in. I'm not a big fan of the word triggered, but there is definitely something that happens in my brain that means sometimes, things just land differently and get right under my skin so quickly, and it happens a lot more when I'm tired, when I'm stressed or when everything is just too loud and I don't know how to try and calm it down. And also when I am either under or over caffeinated, and it doesn't happen very often that I keep a perfect balance. 

Now That's Done,

 When NaNoWriMo wasn't quite here this year I was thinking, I know what I want to write. I want to re-write a novel I have been drafting and redrafting for quite a while and I'm still not happy with and then I also want another crack at drafting Butterflies (yes, the sequel to Fairies). In the end, I have started on neither. 

I started drafting something that I thought was going to be really cool and then it just kind of drifted off until I got bored and then the second was another redraft of something I've been trying to write for a while and getting nowhere with. It's a whole world I've been kind of living in for a while, stewing in because I enjoy it, but I've still not quite found where the story is in it at the moment, and that hasn't changed right now.

Anyway, today, on Day 8, partly with the help of the 4 The Words Multiplayer mode and partly because I was having a rare and lovely dopamine day, so I hammered through the last eight or so thousand words I needed to write and came to the end, but maybe that means that I can write what I want to now, because I don't need to be thinking about word count as much, though I am still thinking about getting through the quests I want to in 4 The Words, which is a good because if it keeps me writing then that would be amazing.

As much as the pressure of NaNoWriMo can be excellent, but I think it has also squashed my head a little bit. I have felt guilt about not writing like I haven't felt since, well, since last November. It hurts my head to be looking at the screen for as long as I've needed to in order to finish this quickly. It's hurt my hands, because it's gotten so cold recently and even when I put the heating on for an hour it doesn't make it feel warm enough for the amount of exercise my fingers get. 

I think this is getting ramble again because I do actually have a really bad headache, I'm looking forward to going to Starbucks tomorrow for my Eggnog Latte reward, and I'm considering getting the very patient shih tzu a steak to celebrate having done the worst of it. 

It's Like November Started And You Forgot What The Blog Was,

I was going to say that November started much like any other November, but that would be a total fib.

Every other November I have ever participated in NaNoWriMo has begun with a really bad pizza - because once it's a tradition, it's a tradition, even if it sucks - and either napping or waiting up for midnight to get in those precious words just after midnight so that you start the month right. It used to be a couple of hundred words, but developed into I had to write a thousand words before  bed, or I needed to get to first day par (1,667 words) before bed. I have never, and once upon a time had thought I would never, go out on Hallowe'en night, let alone to a concert in another city, before the start of NaNoWriMo, because that sort of thing is craziness. NaNoWriMo is the most important thing for me when it comes to November. It has been since I first found out about NaNo from one of my online writing buddies, Fong.

This year, seeing Fall Out Boy live again, no matter when, no matter where, was the most important. I was praying that they were going to play their cover of We Didn't Start The Fire, but they didn't. I struggled for weeks to get a ticket and then one came up in Birmingham for Hallowe'en night and I just jumped on it. I didn't think of the consequences much before I bought the ticket and when I had bought it I only thought about the fact that if I had a camper van already - it's more of a long term goal than that sadly - I would just hunker down and start NaNo in a different city and drive home when I was happy with my word count. Let's face it, I would have been thinking I was going to basically live in Birmingham for a few days. As it was, the gig was going to finish at about 11 and I was going to drive straight home after getting out of the multi-storey car park, and that would mean I was home by about one. Maybe half one, but probably one.

During the gig I made a few friends as I so often do, and then I then found out a few of them were going to struggle to get home, so I offered to drive them. The result of that was I didn't get the Burger King that I was craving - not really a massive loss, I guess - and I didn't get home until about 4 in the morning. I got in, made a brew and then I don't really remember where I was when I started writing, whether I was sitting on my sofa or if I got straight into bed and started writing, but I did one of the two having skilfully resisted the urge to sit in a motorway service station and write because I was feeling a little lost from myself by not doing. 

- 

It's weird, because I wrote for a few hours, I updated my word count and then I tried to sleep, and I think I was overcaffienated, because I had needed to get home, and that meant motorway driving and it can be so boring that I am tempted to nod off, so I needed proper coffee, but then it meant that I couldn't sleep. When I did eventually sleep, that took another bite of time out of the day. I spent the rest of the day doing what I call fannying around, because I don't even really remember what I was doing, but I wasn't writing and I should have been. 

I spent the first couple of days thinking that it was going to get better but I've noticed my word count is plummeting and as a proud member of The Overachievers I'm really struggling to accept that. I'm battling with the idea of, no, not even the idea of but the fact that my ADHD is affecting me far more than it ever has before and it's actually not my NaNoWriMo super power right now, it's the greatest barrier to me actually being able to succeed.

It's not helped by the fact there are some big things going on in NaNoWrimo, and they're not all positive. Areas that have always felt so safe are no longer feeling that way, and a place I have wanted to find a way back into for a while has given me a way back in, but sadly it's not a positive way in, and I'm feeling completely overwhelmed by what is happening to an organisation I used to love. It's so hard to love it the same way at the moment and that feeling of detachment is just compounding all of the things I was already struggling with. 

I'm still here, I'm still writing and that's not going to stop any time soon, but I'm not going to finish today and it might not even be tomorrow, but it'll happen, and hopefully it will get easier soon. 

There Are Literally Files,

 On my computer called sh1t and nonsense. One called one, one called the other. And the reason? Because it's NaNoWriMo and my energy is meant to be focused on writing and not on naming files, but I am still, more than six months later, getting used to using this laptop and I'm still, six months later, having to check shortcuts for things like screen shots, and I'm still struggling to toggle between things, so I have a couple of dump files (files where I literally copy and paste everything into) on my computer that were always opened and never saved (risky, I know) and they were occupying Pages, so I was writing everything that wasn't on 4thewords (where there are also dump files but at least they are named) in Notes. Notes doesn't have a word counter, so adding my word count was annoying because it was copy and paste into 4TW to fight the monsters and then also have to copy any paste EVERYTHING, because I wouldn't be me if I wasn't working on a couple of projects at once during NaNo, to count the words so I have an official total. 

And then I got irritated so saved one file as sh1t and one as nonsense and then I could have a brand new dump file for NaNo, which is still not the easiest thing, because I still have to copy and paste everything into it unless I start working directly from it, but I have a sum total word count without having to try and get to the tab that has the word counter on it. 

Also, it's NaNo, formatting has gone out of the window. So has sleep. 

In terms of word count, well, it's going. I'm planning on actually writing a proper blog at the moment, but this should give you an indication of how well I'm able to string a sentence together about what is going on. 

Being Somewhat Irritated At The Stupidity of Social Media,

Finding out two days before NaNoWriMo that Facebook stories don’t really “do” links that are clickable is more than irritating considering the fact that it appears either a decent proportion of the international WriMo community (if unfamiliar, see previous blog) seems to have evacuated Twitter (I’m not calling it by a letter, it’s stupid) and many haven’t arrived on BlueSky yet (yes, I know it’s invite only, because it’s still being built and yada yada yada - I don’t have to be logical and reasonable when I’m having a moan about something, okay?). 

You might be wondering why it matters. Well, it doesn’t, I guess. Except that it does… I’ve been a part of the NaNo community for a long time, have done really stupid things (great things, really great things!) like fly over to San Fransisco for the last Night of Writing Dangerously because I couldn’t square it with myself to let the idea of never going sit right - I just couldn’t. I also went from thinking, who are these mad people who finish NaNo in a week and I can’t write five thousand words in a day to doing my first 10K day, then having three in a month and then finishing in four days (secret: no sleep, lots of caffeine, and being a considerable chunk younger than I am, and currently feel) so during NaNoWriMo and Preptober, I write a lot about each, and people actually read it. People don’t just read it in - oh God I’m using a phrase from work that I hate, but whatever - penny numbers like they do over the rest of the year, a lot of people read it, probably because it’s a lot more focused - you could say hyper focused, if you wanted to… - and the people reading it are interested in NaNo. 

Unfortunately though, as much as you can Google blogs about NaNo or whatever and I would come up SOMEWHERE (no, I haven’t Googled myself to see where and no, I’m not going to even just for poops and giggles) most of that “traffic” has been generated through Twitter, and my Instagram page, but for reasons I don’t feel the need to go into here, my Instagram page is currently (and for the foreseeable future) set to private because of something which happened that just made me feel a bit uncomfortable about it being open access. 

Now, whilst the blog is and always has been something I write more for myself than anything, I won’t lie, it is exciting to see the readership of it grow during November. It is the sort of thing I enjoy as part of NaNoWriMo, partly because writing blogs can be a good way to get some words in that aren’t focused on the novel and my family have always said a change is as good as a rest (this is BS, do not believe it! Rest is always best!) so swapping out of novelling mode can be good for a bit to just give myself a little time to not need to be thinking about what happened next. (I’ve said before that I don’t write novels so much as incident reports of what happened when the characters wandered off, so those kind of periods of only passively engaging with whatever project I’m writing are hugely beneficial). With the forums appearing to have depended into a literal dumpster fire at this stage, and the fact they’re not something I’ve ever really had too much engagement with since we moved to the new site (I know, it’s really not new anymore and I can’t even remember what year it was we last moved) and all the changes going on in social media at the moment (whether you think people are abandoning Twitter or people who don’t pay for Twitter services are just getting little to no visibility) it feels like a massive loss of community, even more so than COVID was and because of being an American run organisation with a global reach, we kept REALLY tight restrictions for a very long time, even when individual countries would have allowed our events to go ahead (not challenging that decision by the way, I think it was the right decision to put everyone into a similar or the same boat. 

Given how stressful NaNoWriMo can be and the fact it can feel somewhat triggering for some people’s mental health for a number of reasons, I find it really challenging to accept the loss of community that seems to be happening, and whilst there are still a number of tools like Discord, and in person write ins are back to happening, that’s just the way it feels for me at the moment. We’re also having to accept that changes in venue spaces (I’m thinking particularly in the UK at the moment, though I appreciate it may be replicated elsewhere) accommodating events like we used to has become harder and without compromise, local writing events may not be possible anymore. Pubs that used to reserve a back room space for no deposit want something like ten to fifteen pounds per head deposit and when you’re taking about any major city that gets pricey fast. Lots of places are closing down, and with the way that prices are going up, a lot of writers, particularly the young studenty types, the very young relying on their parents type, or the broke writers trying to make money from their art and self-expression types are stuck in a position where they can’t really afford to attend some of the venues that are possible to use. But despite all of that mess, NaNo is nearly here, and it’s going to happen, and it’s going to be messy and weird and not everything is going to plan, but like Chris Bay and the founders did back in 1999, we’ll find a way. Because we always find a way, eventually.

Some Of You Might Be New Around Here,

Around this time of year I normally do a Facebook post to say ‘hell, it’s about to get crazy up in here’ but since I have been devoting so much time to the blog - yeah, I know, it’s about damn time and it’s still not really been the time that it needs or deserves - I figured I would do it here and then link it, because why not?

What’s happening? It’s nearly November so it’s nearly time for NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. 

What does that mean? It means writers are going to go a little bit mad trying to write fifty thousand words (or more) in a month. 

Is that wise? No, of course not. But it is fun. I think.

I’ve been taking part in NaNoWriMo since I was sixteen years old and only took one year off because of my dissertation. Yeah, it wasn’t a great year anyway, but anyone who remembers me back then will remember a more grumpy, more pissy, more depressed version of me that was missing my favourite event of the year. Yes there was plenty else on my mind, not least the dissertation and the FEAR of what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my life, but missing NaNoWriMo was a big, big factor.

So, what does it mean? It means your friend neighbourhood writers, like me, are going to be a little (more) on edge (than usual), a little (okay, a lot) more strung out on caffeine than usual and we’re probably going to do some things that the general population of the world find “odd”. We might be more likely to cancel plans because we’re spending time with our laptops, we might need our writer friends a bit more than we need other people we usually turn to, and those friends might be people we just met recently who are also going through the NaNoWriMo experience, journey, Hunger Games experience…? If writing isn’t your thing, that’s fine, but I would advise that at the very least, if you’re not willing to take on the mantel of Tea Bitch and bring tea and sandwiches at regular intervals (easiest way to a WriMos heart is taking the responsibility for their own sustenance out of their hands, generally) at least stay out of the way and don’t expect too much in the way of conversation outside of how is the novel going and the response being a positive or negative sounding grunt of some description. 

Speaking of conversation which centres around how the novel is going, expect a lot of numerical references to how it’s going. Possibly. If it’s going badly that might not happen but it doesn’t mean that a lack of numbers means it’s going badly. 

The fundamentals of this yearly message are what they are always are. Be nice to your writers and if you don’t hear from them for the month, don’t hold it against them (or me) because we’re kind of focused on other things. 

What Am I Most Concerned About When It Comes To NaNoWriMo This Year,

 What Am I Most Concerned About When It Comes To NaNoWriMo This Year,

I feel like I have been writing a lot about what it’s like to ‘do’ NaNoWriMo and the best kind of days et, but I’ve kind of been doing it through a lens of I don’t want to talk about certain things because I don’t want to think about them.

First off I have been having issues with my laptop. First and foremost this is a worry because I cannot hand write quickly enough and I really, really hate having to sit and count up words. I also really don’t like looking at average words per page and trying to work out how much I have written on that basis. I don’t know whether the issues are with the Internet or that I’m depending too much from the laptop itself. I hope it’s not the second because it’s a Mac and it’s only six months old, but who knows? 

I’m also worried because I have a gig the night that NaNoWriMo starts and I don’t know if I will be home by midnight. Since I don’t currently own a camper van, I will have to come back home before I start writing because I can’t just take my home, or my satellite home, to the gig and then get some sleep afterwards - however short - then set myself up to start to write. I can’t even just head back to the car and start to write, which will be frustrating because I’m probably going to be in a queue to leave the multi-storey car park like I have been when leaving gigs before.

I’m worried because I’ve taken some time away from work recently and I can’t remember what time, if any, I have booked away from work for the start of November and I know it will be very frustrating to have to be working during the earliest days of November and not have the opportunity to write like I want to, with the speed that I want to, if I find the ability to do it again.

Bringing that up, I need sleep more than I used to do. I feel like I’m never going to be able to push myself the way I did five years ago and I won’t be able to achieve what I did that year, but at the same time, if I want to try, I need to try. Yes, Fall Out Boy isn’t going to make that easy, and the total shambles that is the voice to text app that I’m using. If that was working properly, I might have a fighting chance of being able to make a start on the drive back, but I also appreciate my mother would be spitting feathers if she knew I was ‘writing’ at the same time as driving.

I think my biggest concern is that, when I’m back in work and I’m writing as well, I’m worried I’m going to be running though coffee like it’s going out of fashion (which I sometimes fear it is with the popularity of things like matcha latte) and that it’s going to be all I can do to keep myself focused for long enough to get through work and writing, and that if I don’t collapsed into bed from tiredness, I’ll be so caffeinated that I can’t sleep and too many days of that - about two days of late, though once upon a time it was six - and my brain just breaks. Even tea did for me once, because I quite like strong tea and I drank a lot of it, and I didn’t sleep for more than twenty minutes that night because my brain wouldn’t switch off. I thought it was the caffeine at the time, but now I know about the ADHD, I don’t know if it was more that, because I was in love with my novel and I just wanted to carry on writing it.

I’m worried I won’t love my novel, I’m worried I’ll love my novel too much. I’m worried I won’t have the time, or the energy or the inspiration. I’m worried about so many things, but the thing I need to remind myself of right now is that I have felt this every year for a lot of years, and this year is not different. It’s okay to be worried, it’s okay to be challenged, in fact, it is what NaNoWriMo is for, and that’s what makes it so phenomenal.

The Party Is Over,

Before anyone says anything, I am aware that I have said throughout the World Cup that I wasn’t supporting England and that I had a few reasons for that, and those reasons still exist, and honestly, last night was just further examples of my issues with Steve Borthwick, because he wasn’t choosing the team based on form and fitness, but on the basis of who he likes and that annoys me because it’s not fair to the players left out and it’s not fair to the fans who expect to see the best team on the pitch when they’re turning up to support their team. 

Last night was the sort of game where I thought, wow, England are actually playing the way that we want them to. I can’t help feeling emotionally invested whether they are winning or losing because I have supported them for so long, for one, and for another because whether I’m happy about it or not, I am English. There were some amazing things going on during that match, though Farrell running his mouth lead to a penalty being brought forward, his decision to go for the points on the second penalty was one I questioned since they were so close to the try line, and the most ridiculous one of all was it took so long for Steve Borthwick to empty the bench after the Boks brought in The Bomb Squad. Sadly, the England players whom he had matched to The Bomb Squad were not the right ones. I love Sinkler, Genge and Chessum, but both Sinkler and Henge gave away penalties in the scrum which makes me wonder whether they would have been better starting and bringing on Cole and Marler against The Bomb Squad, maybe with Dan. As it was Dan was on the bench the whole game and Ford was brought on when it was basically all over. It was far too late in the game for him to turn it on it’s head and honestly, I think he should have been brought onto the pitch to look for the drop goal opportunities when South Africa were back within two points of England because it was clear that they were looking for the penalty that would win it, which is exactly what happened. 

Vunipola was basically useless in place of Curry when he was brought in so Curry could have his nose sorted (he’s definitely headed for a nose that looks like Borthwick’s!) and that was disappointing, because nothing he’s done this tournament has been particularly standout, leaving the question of who outside of the England squad should have had his seat on the coach. I am furious about George Ford being used as a bench warmer, given that it was his performance in the early games where he put an absolute shift in, that gave England the momentum that left them as the only unbeaten team in the semi finals, and then the second Farrell was allowed to play again, he was like the forgotten toy that Borthwick was no longer interested in playing, but my biggest frustration with last night was Freddie Steward. 

Freddie Steward was belting last night, and the thing that upset me was that towards the end of the game, it was clear that he was tired from everything he had done, and he was kept on the pitch for, if not the whole eighty, close to it. He made a couple of errors towards the end of the game, most likely because he was knackered, and in the post match interviews it was clear that he was kicking himself from it, and he shouldn’t have been, because a bad pick on the team meant that h4 couldn’t be replaced. The second any of the Boks weren’t performing completely on form Erasmus pulled them, and it was brutal, but it was also what needed to be done to get his team to victory. I’m not saying that when Steward dropped the last long ball he should have been pulled off like he was a kid caught doing something he shouldn’t, but I do think Borthwick should have seen that he needed to come off and moved him back to the bench, telling him how good he’s been all game. 

The commentators kept talking about how ‘greasy’ the ball was because it was raining (why on Earth not just say the ball is wet, for Christ’s sake) and that didn’t help, but he’s English, he’s used to a bit of rain, and it wasn’t his only error.

Whilst there were a few decisions by the ref that definitely contributed to the loss, I have said before how much I despise when people blame the ref for losing, and I definitely think that one of those decisions was more Farrell not being able to deal with his own frustration and keep his mouth shut, especially given that England were leading the game at that point. 

Overall, it was an incredible game where England showed they still have it in them to win the World Cup, the potential that is. To be leading the game until so late on was absolutely amazing, even for someone who doesn’t want to be an England fan right now. My hope is that they continue to build on the work that has been done here so when we’re looking at the Six Nations next year, hopefully there is some new blood in the squad and hopefully it’s some of the incredible players who never even made it to the bench this time around. 

Confessions,

When I first started thinking about this blog post, the scene from Moulin Rouge (didn't try to spell it as Mulan, didn't) where Ziegler (I had to Google that I was getting the character right and have realised I should always back myself, because I was right!) is trying to cover for (it's not Renee Zelweigger) Nicole Kidman's character for being ill, and yells, "SHE'S CONFESSING!", popped into my head and made me both inwardly groan and also made me laugh, because the connections my mind makes with words entertains me but at the same time, why am I so weird?

Sometimes this little blog feels like my confessional and I'm not sure that that's always a good thing, but there we go. 

The thing I'm going to confess right now though is that, due to struggling a lot with being able to plan when to get things done and find the energy and motivation to do so, so I've been trying my best to write when I have the inclination, motivation and most importantly the time, and then I schedule them to be posted later. It's a bit lazy, but hey, that's life. It's a coping mechanism and I need it. 

The more we move into a social media age, the more there is an expectation of access, and a want for things like a schedule for when we do things, and it's one of the things I really struggle with. When I was a Twitter sprint lead, things would come up and I would be completely time blind and then realise that my shift was supposed to be a few hours ago or was supposed to start thirty minutes ago and obviously at that stage there was nothing I could do about it, so whilst I would love to be able to do more things in the NaNo community which are kind of 'live', I also find it a really difficult commitment because I don't want to let people down and I know I screw up sometimes. Even before my diagnosis I was pretty intensely aware of my faults, or the impact that 'whatever' as I thought of it as then had on me.

As I was thinking my way through this post, and it was another that was sort of shouted at the voice notes on my phone by way of a first draft, I realised that it's not uncommon to schedule things like content, but it blogs, videos and such like, and actually, it's a really useful way of being able to utilise the down time we all need and the switch off we all need. I know that social media is highly likely to be having some form of impact on my mental health at the moment and whilst it's not the only reason I am having panic attacks, it definitely isn't helping. I also know that this blog gets a lot more readership throughout NaNoWriMo, for obvious reasons, and that social media is one of the ways I promote it. Whilst this is never going to be something I do for my actual job, or anything like that, I think it would be really misguided to completely go offline like I may wish to do during the month that I write the most about, so this whole scheduling thing has another benefit of actually giving me some breathing space if I need or want it. (Though that does take a level of forward planning I'm not sure I'm quite up to given the amount of other things I need to do during November and plan for before NaNo starts... )

Certain Things Make Me Happy,

 This is a bit of a stupid one so I'm not even sure that it's going to get posted, but I'm enjoying writing some daft things at the moment, and also I'm battling a monster on 4thewords to try and beat a quest, so I need to keep going, because I want to finish this particular set of quests before NaNoWriMo starts or I'll have no room and want to focus on all of the main story stuff - and as you have likely already gathered, I don't do well with my attention divided!

My family started shopping at Aldi a while ago and for whatever reason, it wasn't me. It's nothing against Aldi, it was just I got too stressed in supermarkets and had no idea why. Oh the answers I have now mean so much to me. 

Complete honesty, I was probably a little bit of a snob about it at first, because I have always thought it was a bit cheap and cheerful, though I have since realised the error of my ways. I do love the place, but I have to be careful when I go into the store because it being busy makes me panic and if I go into a store I'm not used to and can't find things where I think they should be, I get really upset. There is a reason that my first conversation with the doctor about the ADHD assessment was me saying I think I'm autistic. 

In not too dissimilar a vein, I struggle with Aldi for a different reason and that's because they make really awesome stuff, but only do it periodically or they make something brilliant and then they discontinue it and I get really frustrated. I know they're not the only ones but it seems to be happening a lot at the moment and it really upsets me! Nespresso did it once - they made Rosabaya coffee which was featured in my favourite BBC drama, and then they stopped making it. I had tried it a couple of times and loved it so I was gutted.

Last year, Aldi didn't do their potted Cheddars at Christmas. It's basically a posh cheese spread with a TINY bit of jam over the top in a bit of a mason jar looking thing, but they are brilliant, and they were always selling out in previous years, but last year, just didn't do them. With the recent changes in stores, they also seemed to drop the three cheese pasta salad that has absolutely no business being called a salad, because it is cheese, mayonnaise, pasta and a tiny bit of onion - though that one had now made a come back. They've dropped the original flavour of their mock chicken from the fridge (can't actually remember what that was) and they've changed the teriyaki beef, and apparently the macarons were for summer only, even though they were the best thing ever. I think they were a bit of a fashion for this year, but I love them and it makes me sad I now need to drive to the big Tesco for macarons, because even I know that's excessive, but if I have cravings, I will do it. They took away, though have thankfully brought back the tomato and mascarpone sauce jars (though the price has gone up by about 50%), have seemed to stop doing hollandaise sauce in a jar, are really hit and miss of when they have their brand of the Thatchers Lemonade Cider and Blood Orange Cider, and I could take all of that (no I couldn't, I loved all of them and when I find something I like, I stick to it for reasons) if they hadn't stopped making my absolute favourite thing of all time.

Over the summer, Aldi made a vegan prawn sandwich. I've had 'vegan shrimp' before, but I never actually ate shrimp so I have no idea whether it was anything like the real thing or not, but I actually liked prawns before I decided that fish were friends and not food, so only a reasonable faximile would ever do and nothing has ever been close until that sandwich. It was on brown bread, which I hate, because I have a tense relationship with bread in general but brown bread makes me want to cry, but this sandwich was incredible. I would honestly, believe it was proper prawns, but I knew it wasn't. The taste was great, the texture was perfect, all was right with the world and then it disappeared with no warning. At least McDonald's tells you when they're going to start cancelling things off of the menu, instead of just it going bye-bye and potentially never being seen again. To say I am heartbroken isn't an understatement, because good vegetarian foods are still pretty rare and SO MANY OF THEM come around and you think, yes, this is great, and then it disappears because ranges are reduced or companies go bump or I don't really know what happens. My mum said she read that a lot of people aren't buying Beyond Meat burgers because they're so expensive (and they are) but they're SO GOOD. They're some of the best on the market, if you can stand the fact that you will have to remind yourself a few times it really isn't meat. I have days where I can't cope with that, but I still love their burgers.

Though not the intended topic of this blog, it's one of the reasons why I try and stick to big brands now like Quorn or brands like Richmond that are expanding into meat free whilst still making slaughter sausages (oh, come on, I don't say V* stuff like that very often, I'm allowed to be a little bit militant about it on very rare occasions). These products do tend to be at a slightly lower price, but I also figure they have a bit more staying power, so if I am having really bad day, or week, or month, or longer, I know I can get the sort of thing I have developed a craving for, rather than wanting a vegan smoked salmon style thing I don't think you can even get anymore (No, it's not made of carrot, and that recipe can get in the bin where it belongs.) or my beloved prawn sandwich. Hopefully Richmond keep making their original meat free sausages (because the sage and onion ones suck!) because I could just eat those for weeks. 

Rugby,

 I wanted to write something about rugby, but everything I have been reading about rugby has been pissing me off so I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. That being said, if I don’t write this now I’m not going to write it and England will either be through or they won’t be through after the weekend and then everything will be different, won’t it?

Firstly, I rugby but I hate it at the moment, because Owen Farrell sucks. I realise some people have said he’s amazing and the tall trees catch the most wind but honestly, I think it’s a whole load of crap and he is a legitimate A-hole. 

It’s not just the lack of learning from his persistent bad tackling or the fact that there are others in the team that can do his job better, because there definitely are and George Ford has proved it this World Cup, but it’s everything down to the smarmy look on his face when he was talking to the ref about a decision. He’s so full of himself, but he had to have a kicking coach in literally earlier this year because he was doing so badly at HIS JOB! He might have broken the England kicking record this year, but that’s only because Wilkinson played for England for less time. If they factored in time, he would never break it. 

It’s not just him that’s annoyed me, but also Steve Borthwick because he kept backing a crap player that needed to sort himself out and he should have taken the captaincy off of him, but no, it’s his mate, so he wasn’t going to do that. He’s cut Arundell from playing because of a bust up between him and Farrell. It’s just not how to run a team at all.

Overall, last weekend was every result I did not want to see. I don’t think England really deserved to get out of the groups because of the way they were playing, and to an extent, neither did the All Blacks. I thought Wales were night and day better than they’ve been for a while and my heart broke for them losing out on the Semis, especially Dan Biggar, though I appreciate that they are a really young side and I can’t wait to see what amazing things that they do in four years time. I was gutted for France, because they played incredibly - that was the best game of rugby I have seen in a long while, and because they were probably the best placed to beat the Boks, unless it was Ireland again. 

I was crying over Ireland though. 

I love Ireland, even if they’re coached by Farrell’s dad. I love Johnny Sexton, especially getting to call him a loveable knobhead. I love Bundee Aki, and I can see that it will likely have been his last World Cup, for which I am gutted. I’m gutted for Ronan O’Gara as well, because those three and Mack Hansen, and honestly everybody on that team, they are beasts in the best possible way. They are phenomenal. They were ranked the best in the world for a reason and I am utterly gutted that they went home when they did and the way that they did. It was brutal.

The reason that the post match journalism has pissed me off so much has been a few things. There’s been so much crap at the refs, and yes, in all games there were some questionable decisions, and there is going to be some disagreement over what other people would have done. You can’t play the whole game through VAR and keep stopping and starting over every little thing and I think it’s easy to blame ref decisions for the outcome of a game. Yes, it sucks. Yes, I was livid that someone threw their hands, whether it was a slap or a punch or whatever you want to call it, at Tom Curry, especially after dragging him out of the pile by his ankles. The fact he didn’t throw a punch back, I was really proud of and he clearly let it go pretty quickly, but people are more focused on a tackle of his that he wasn’t penalised for. I think his red card earlier in the season was actually pretty harsh, but yes, he also needs to learn from his mistakes and potentially isn’t doing, and his coach needs to take some responsibility for that and so does he. There’s also been a lot of griping about the pools, but there have been some incredible matches from teams that are considered to be “Tier 2”. I’m glad that the conversations are being had about having more matches and potentially having England go to Fiji as well as others. 

I am gutted that England is the only Home National left in the Cup. I am confused that they are the only North Hemisphere team left. I don’t have a word for the fact that Argentina are the only team that could put the cat amongst the pigeons and be the first new winner of the cup since England 20 years ago, but I do fee like the All Blacks versus Springboks is goingbto be the final, and I’m not sure that the All Blacks have recovered enough to beat the Boks, sadly.

Why Is It So Much Easier To Write When You're Angry,

 I'm not sure if this is a me thing, an ADHD thing or actually a common thing, but seriously, why is it so much easier to write about things you're annoyed about? 

I was in the car on the way back to my house from my parents' place and was chatting away to the voice notes on my phone as I sometimes do and I realised, I don't know if it's because of my sense of humour or not, but when I'm annoyed about something, mildly vexed or just playing at being mad because it's funny, writing comes so much easier. I realise that when you get really annoyed about things like mayonnaise like I do - it was a whole other blog - then it's something that becomes quite easy to get annoyed and then write about it, but seriously, I don't know why but it's easier.

I wouldn't say I particularly struggle with road rage but there are plenty of people who wind me the hell up on the road, whether it's failing to indicate, driving at half the speed limit or, and this is my big pet hate, walking into the road and knowing that if I hit you, it's my fault.

Even before the point where The Highway Code was changed and this whole thing of hierarchy came in, the responsibility for an accident most often sat with the driver, partly because we're the ones with the insurance for being on the road. There are bits I do agree with, and that's the whole thing of making sure that drivers are reminder we're bigger, we're more dangerous and the bigger your vehicle, the more dangerous it becomes to smaller vehicles and passengers, and even if a some of the time, possibly a lot of the time, who knows, drivers aren't the problem or not the only problem, a reminder to be more careful is important. What winds me up is not the fact that we as drivers are now more responsible for children's safety near roads, but everyone's safety, despite the poor choices that people - mostly adults - make. 

Most kids school coats, particularly when they are very small, are brightly coloured and one of the reasons for that is road safety, and whilst I myself am a big fan of a biker jacket or a long black wool coat, I really detest when people decide to leave the house to walk the dog in a dark blue or black rain jacket or similar, when it's dark, the street lights are crap and the road is 30mph or worse, there are no street lights and it's a 40mph. When you're crossing the road dressed like that, drivers struggle to see you! Honestly, I could wax lyrical about this and I'm relatively sure that there are several minutes of me shrieking at my phone about it with the pitch of my voice getting higher and higher the more agitated I got. Someone walked out very close to my car, it was late when I saw them because of what they were wearing, but if something happened, it's my fault. 

I think the new Highway Code goes too far in putting the responsibility on drivers, because we've already been through a phenomenon of crash for cash for motorbikes and cars, with people essentially baiting a crash to happen so they can cash in on the value of the car and also compensation for things like whiplash, and I can only think that this transfer of responsibility is opening motorists up to the same but from pedestrians. No one wants to hit a person, or no one that doesn't need some form of evaluation, but if a person steps out in front of your car, that's not your fault and there's not always a way to stop the car and prevent damage to the person. Sometimes the worst damage we do to ourselves and others is from trying to prevent damage during an accident. 

But as I said, writing about something that annoys me is really easy, so I could really go on...

There's No Such Thing As A Perfect Environment,

Arguably I've been making NaNoWriMo sound like an insurmountable task over the last few blogs and the last thing I want to do is put off anyone thinking about trying it. I think it's worth remembering that it can be challenging for everyone, and seeing people through the challenging bits is really important, because we can feel a bit isolated in those moments and for some of us, me included, a bit of pre-planning can help to avoid the whirling pit of despair that can open up because of that. It's also been one of my primary functions for the last I can't quite remember how many years, and I feel like I might be a bit stuck in that mode.

You can make it a lot easier for yourself with a bit of forward planning and I think I've mentioned that before, or for some people the actual life side might be a bit easier. Forward planning isn't everyone's forte and it's certainly not mine in most respects, but with a supreme amount of effort and the outside motivation of "CRAP, NANO IS COMING! LOOK READY!" I can do bits and pieces that do make for an easier time.

If you live with someone else who is pretty much willing to look after you like you're a very small child, that is going to help sp much. I realise that living with parents is very often not an uncomplicated situation and not everyone's parents believe in doing everything for them, but living "at home" can help and being in a relationship when your partner is happy to take up some of the slack can help. I've also had some pretty nice housemates that were willing to do bits and pieces. Beyond that, if you live somewhere that you can get a laundry service, you're in a position to pay for meals to be prepared for you, where you don't have anyone else (including pets) to care for, you're in a good place, but most of us can't afford those sorts of services, so what do you do to prepare? 

Well first off, accept the inevitability of the fact that preparation is more like the momentum which starts the month, rather than something which will sustain you throughout. What I mean by that is, don't expect that you can have a months worth of perfectly laundered clothes, pre-made meals, bought in snacks, cleaning done and everything else your little heart desires to make it easier. Be realistic. Even if you do own enough pairs of underpants to make it from one end of the month to the other without doing a load of laundry, there's a phrase about ... 'stuff' happens, and also when you get to the end of the month you don't want to be going commando whilst waiting for the washer to finish on a load that is solely your undercrackers and they don't dry instantly. (Also, the rice pudding advert says you can microwave your socks dry, not your smalls, so just don't even think of it). You would hope that the gross things I've heard about how to make a pair of boxers last four days were out of my Scouts or the younger version, but sadly not. Let me tell you, the only way that doing something like that will help you with NaNoWriMo is going to be people talking will distract you less, because they will take a wide berth from you due to the smell. Whilst I am joking about all of this (and I am joking, believe me) the serious point is, yes, of course make sure you do all that you can to make the early few days or weeks of NaNo simpler, but also accept the fact that the majority of us are going to have domestic tasks to attend to again at some point within the month and that is not only okay, but it's actually really healthy. Taking a break from staring at the screen is right for your eyes, but it's also good for your brain.

On the theme of being realistic, it's all well and good deciding to make yourself fifty tubs of vegetable soup and freezing them, if you have the space to, before NaNoWriMo if you will actually then defrost and eat them, but if not your wasting time, money and energy into something that's not actually helping you at all. You'll be much better off thinking about really quick and easy meals that you can throw together - remembering to add at least a couple of fruit and vegetables so you don't end the month aiming to get scurvy - because it'll work out cheaper and it's easier to convince yourself to eat than something you made that you've already decided you wish you hadn't bothered with. There is a reason I'm not offering specifics here. I'm fussy about food because of textural issues - no mother, I'm not just a picky eater!! - so I eat WEIRD things, and what I eat might not be someone else's 'safe' foods, and given we are a global organisation, the things I recommend might not even be available where you are.

The most important thing, and I think this about life in general and not just about NaNoWriMo, is, think about what balls you can drop. Very often life can feel like a game of beach volleyball but in reverse, so instead of lots of people trying to keep the ball off the floor there's one person and a lot of balls. You might share a ball with other people - my mum, my dad and I all share the ball that is responsibility for Teddy (the dog) so it's not all on one of us - but other's will belong solely to you. It's worth thinking about which ones of these you can share with friends and family, of course, but it's also worth thinking about which ones matter if they hit the floor and which ones don't. The laundry, for example. Personally, I have a massive laundry hamper and more clothes than I can wear in a six week period, so if I don't do laundry, it's not going to be too big of a problem (until I have a meltdown and want a particular set of pjs and they're not washed, but that's another issue). Feeding yourself is not a ball that can be dropped. School work and similar, or work work isn't usually a ball that can be dropped, though some of us do take annual leave during NaNo because it makes things easier, we have the leave and we can. That's all fine. Limiting the responsibilities you have elsewhere is definitely valid. 

BUT...

You have to think what that costs you. I don't just mean financially though that certainly comes into it, but instead, what are the consequences of dropping that ball? For me, laundry wise, it's simple things like, what I want might not be available. It's not great, but the world isn't ending. I will then have ten plus loads to do of laundry when NaNoWriMo is over? Problem? No, but I despise laundry sitting around the house drying. Okay, so is there a different solution? Yes, my mum might be able to do some of my laundry for me when she's on her slower weeks at work. It comes back dry and folded and she even irons things for me (I don't iron) HOWEVER I need to drive it over there, and then drive back and the same in reverse to get it back. There is always going to be some degree of conversation there, which takes time I could be writing and there is also SO MUCH TRAFFIC around here at the moment that the drive is not as simple as usual and it's not overly quick. I've also been told that you can't write at the same time as driving, partly because a lot of speech to text apps suck, so I'm going to have to sacrifice writing time to be able to utilise that option. Same for if my mum offers to make me dinner. It's whether the time away from the computer screen is worth it for the benefit it gives.

I think we'd all like to live in a magical world where there are mice to do all of the housework and a chef prepares what we would like to eat just at the time we need to eat it, and our tea or coffee cups never get cold and never run out, but in the absence of a perfect world, we're just going to have to do our best, aren't we?