Personal Note: I am SO behind on EVERYTHING!

 Dear Reader,

I made the mistake of looking at the writing calendar I set up way back in January of this year. It is a brutal reminder of just how much my writing schedule got destroyed by the effects of Covid-19 on my community. Distance learning was a big thing for the first half of the year. Theoretically, that meant that the kids were working on their laptops and I could be working on mine. In actual practice, that meant that I had to sit and active monitor their work so that they weren't spending school time looking at cat videos and listening to fart sound effects. (It was a daily battle with one child because he finds these things hilarious and will sneak around to watch/listen to them.)

I have a list of projects that are all stuck in a holding pattern because I just haven't had the time or the energy to work on them. Camp NaNoWriMo was supposed to be my "finish last year's NaNoWriMo project" and it was spent focusing on distance learning with the kids. It was frustrating but we got through it. I thought that maybe the summer session of Camp NaNoWriMo would go better, it didn't because then the kids had distance learning summer school.

My editing time has been eaten up by household chores and depression. I'm still to some extent reeling from spending half a year acting as a teaching assistant for both of my boys who are learning disabled. The rapid switching between grade level work and different needs was exhausting. I used to be able to do this fairly well but ever since I became disabled, it's gotten a lot harder. Thus, when the time came to consider if we were going to risk sending them into school or continue distance learning, we chose to send the boys into school.

The school has been taking safety precautions very seriously and making sure that everyone follows them. The boys are in a classroom with the academic support that they need. And their grades are doing well. My youngest boy has taken to trying to write his own books in his free time. I am entirely unsurprised by this as he's become hyperfocused on the Captain Underpants books. We might be writing the author a letter and sending him some fan art in the near future. In the meantime, I have been attempting to provide gentle guidance in the art of writing a manuscript. While this has been taking time away from my working on my manuscripts, he is getting better at organizing his writing which is helping his grades go up.

With the kids going to school, we have settled into a routine that is allowing me to get some writing done. Currently, I am trying to finish my third NaNoWriMo project from this year. The projects for NaNoWriMo are focused on a casual book offer that came from an associate of mine. I originally wrote about two novels worth of fan fiction for his Live Action Role Play game system. I sent it to him with a note to use it as he wished. Next thing I know, I'm being asked to create some fiction that is set in that universe to help give some flavor to the game system. This turned NaNoWriMo into my writing like I was on fire. (I think this was assisted by a hypomanic episode, because I turned out two books in two weeks, one 50k and one 60k words.)

Now it is December and I'm trying to do multiple things at the same time. I have the crafting of yule presents (I'm almost a third of the way through my list. I started late this year.), cleaning up the apartment so we can decorate for the kids, the act of decorating, and my holiday baking. In the midst of all this, I'm still trying to do my daily writing in my journals and my creative writing (like finishing the 3rd NaNoWriMo project in short order). Blogging keeps falling a bit low on my list of things to do because I'm a bit disorganized right now.

December has always been a chaotic month for me in the form of getting things done. It always arrives with a hefty dose of Seasonal Affective Disorder, Bipolar II related depression, and a laundry list of trauma anniversaries. As such, it's really hard to get into the holiday spirit because almost everything about "holiday cheer" triggers revulsion and a powerful aversion to it all. So, I have to push through that to get the holiday stuff for the kids done. Because we're a heathen oriented household, yule isn't just one day like christmas. We observe it for thirteen days, starting around christmas for the convenience of the rest of the extended family. During yule, I take my time off from 'work' which means my blogs tend to go quiet and my manuscripts languish as I focus on relaxing and spending time with my family.

I confess, I am tempted to spend yule working on back work. I'm not going to do it because it will shoot my stress levels up through the roof, but I am tempted.