Sign of Life

In a stunning turn of events, you all find myself still alive and kicking ;)

I know, it must have seemed as if the earth has opened up and swallowed me up without any warning, and for that I'm really sorry. I want to apologize particularly to those of you who worried about me, sent me PMs, etc.! Mea culpa!

For those of you happy to know I'm still here and not interested in anything more, I'd suggest to stop reading here now and go on to do something you'd rather do :)


For everyone else - here's a (short and inadequate) explanation:

As you might remember, my last post was on June 20th, where I (probably drunk on some celebratory birthday bubbly) stated I was hopeful to manage to keep on writing halfway regularly despite the exam looming...
...well, no.
Turned out, there was WAY more material to study than I had anticipated. As in TONS more. That woman drove me crazy over the course of the semester, but she really, really hit rock bottom in my favours during those last 10 days of June.
So, I more or less spent the remainder of the month non-stop studying, with the occasional break for food or sleep.
I somehow managed to actually got summing up the material done the night before the exam, with less than 24 hours of "real" study time on my hands. Despite that, the exam went rather well after all (having the first look at the questions my the prof went up a notch in my favours again, let me tell you ;) ).

Riding on a high after having finished the semester FINALLY, I actually did fire up the computer shortly before midnight on the 30th and created a cabin at CampNaNo for me. I really was all psyched up about tackling another month of writing and possibly even get the whole fic as close to finished as possible.

Fast forward to the next day and I found myself in the situation to really, really, really have no energy left to do anything, least of all to make myself turn on the computer and tackle Day 1 of CampNaNo. I, for the first time in months and months, couldn't make myself even THINK about the fic. I was too tired, too wrung out.

If I have learned any lesson those past years, then to listen to my body and my mind when they tell me it's too much. So, for once, I did the sensible thing and decided to give myself the weekend off and start tackling the writing a couple days late.

On Monday, I honestly didn't feel much better about writing. I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea to go back to the story and wrestle the scene I was writing into something I actually liked. I had no inclination, no impetus, and frankly no energy to sit down and struggle through something I wasn't feeling at the moment, just for the sake of hitting some arbitrary word-goal I had self-imposed on myself.
And truth to be told, it wasn't just the writing - it was the very simple act of switching on the computer that seemed like too much of an effort for me.

I was tired, unhappy, unmotivated and altogether in no mood to even browse the internet, let alone engage with people or do something productive.

I promised myself to get back to it the next day on a daily basis, but each and every new day I lacked the motivation to do anything. It just felt RIGHT to not be writing for the moment. To not be posting stuff or reading posts or browse or just generally kill time in front of the screen.

Then Himself told me he would go on a week-long climbing tip with a friend of our the next week, and I found myself in the funny situation of life imitating art big time. In the fic, I have two OCs that are based on exactly those two people leaving for a climbing vacation... and now the real them actually did the same.
A sign, right?
So, I was pretty adamant about me using the time alone to make up for lost writing-time and hammer out a couple thousand words each day.

That was, until I actually found myself alone and all my good plans going down the drain due to immense demotivation and the bad timing that led to me discovering a new YouTube channel I got obsessed with. A channel that has been in existence for 11 years, so you can guess how many videos there are for me to catch up on....

So, another week went by with me NOT firing up the computer.

Then, Himself was back again, and with him a couple of things we had to attend, a few outings we wanted to do, and a handful of evenings spent doing nothing at all, just enjoying the summer, the rest of the month passed as well, hardly noticed by me.

And now, it's August and I am... back, but not back?
I certainly needed the time off the computer and away from my story, and while it completely threw my intended schedule off, the interruption also freed me from said schedule, giving me enough peace of mind to be okay with the fic possibly not being finished during the summer, and possibly even not finished before the next "real" NaNoWriMo.

So, my plan for now is to enjoy (and survive) the current heat wave, and try to get some writing done here and there with no set schedule or fixed word-goals for the moment until I get back into the flow or hit a part of the story that forces me to keep on writing and regularly at that.

I will, however, try to set aside an evening or two each week to work my way through the waiting posts and comments that have accumulated over the past months.
In short, I'll be here and yet not here for the foreseeable future, and as usual I'll keep you updated on any writing that gets done around here :)

I hope you're all having a lovely, wonderful and relaxing summer!
*hugs*