NaNoWriMo & NaBloPoMo: The wind's shifted.

NaNoWriMo word count: still 0 (it's hard to find time to work on a manuscript right now.)

This morning, I had to step out to run an errand. The first thing that struck me as I stepped out the front door was I could smell snow on the wind. The lower atmosphere is too warm for snow to fall but those clouds are billowing up above. The low tonight is supposed to be 33 deg F. That's just above freezing but I think it might dip into the freezing zone. I don't think we'll wake up to everything blanketed in snow (or ice). But that raw, bitter cold is on it's way in the immediate future.

In some ways this is reassuring. Before climate change kicked into high gear, we'd typically get our first snowfall somewhere between the last week of October and Thanksgiving. The last several years of unusually warm Novembers has had me concerned. I'm a farmer's daughter and I tend to look at the weather patterns from the perspective of how it is going to influence the growing season. It's just something I grew up doing and never really stopped.

We're currently in a serious drought. Whatever precipitation we get would be helpful. Last winter we ended in a drought. It doesn't make sense to say that we were in a drought in winter, but we were. The growing season started late this year because of the flooding and lots of mud that we had in the early spring when planting usually goes on. The summer left us shy of rain and a lot of fields were stunted because of it. When the corn being grown barely comes to your shoulder and in a good year it's taller than you are, it's a rough season.

Surprisingly, there was enough of a harvest that the next town over was still able to hold their annual corn festival like there was no problem. I'm hoping the farmers around were able to get a decent profit off of their corn. It seems like more of that stunted corn was chopped up for silage to be fed to the dairy cattle during the winter than was brought to market to be sold for human consumption. There's a bigger problem than my region's drought, however.

The western and midwestern US have been in extraordinary drought conditions for a couple of years. This is making it hard to grow enough produce, grains, and feed for livestock. As a result, we're operating on a beef shortage for at least the last year. I think the reason why the president is sinking money into the Argentinian economy is because their major export is beef. That's the only logical reason I can come up with.

All these tariffs are hurting the economy here. With bad growing seasons and a major drought spreading slowing across the country, only a fool who is disconnected from where their food comes from would be making these policies. I can only hope and pray for rain or snow. The rest of it falls out where ever the dice land. I'm frustrated that I wasn't well enough to keep a garden this year or do any food preservation. The victory gardens of old are starting to make a comeback as people are doing their best to learn how to preserve their food. People can smell trouble on the wind. It's going to be more than a bad snow storm.

NaNoWriMo &NaBloPoMo: The rules are all made up!

 NaNoWriMo Word Count: 0

 I had a minor freak out yesterday over all of this. It didn't help my migraine any. I panicked that I wasn't going to be able to write again. It had been so long since I had a productive streak on any front that I was afraid that I lost my voice and my ability to tell a story. It wasn't pretty. I ugly cried in the bathroom where no one could hear me for a bit.

 Then a realization hit me. The only one putting pressure on me was myself. It was a rather silly feeling to realize that. I wasn't on a deadline. There wasn't a paycheck waiting for me to meet one. We're not dependent on my writing to pay the bills, keep the lights on, or get groceries. There wasn't anyone stomping their foot and throwing a temper tantrum. It was just my anxiety running riot. It has been doing that a lot over the last year.

I can do my NaBloPoMo posts and work on my NaNoWriMo word count at separate times. I don't need to sit down for 4 hours and write. (Your butt goes numb at about hour 2.5, ask me how I know.) I can write a bit here and there. I just have to schedule and stick to it. There's lots of random downtime in a week that I can use to write a whole lot of words. No need to panic.

NaBloPoMo meme edition with cats!

 I have been stalled on everything. It doesn't help that I've had a migraine for the last 4 freaking days. I blame the weather.

NaNoWriMo & NaBloPoMo meme edition

 

AW: Morning Pgs. 2025: Day 30

 So, I get mad. I resolve to write more. And then life throws stuff like having to get the apartment sprayed for bugs by an exterminator in my way. I am more than a little annoyed. I want to write but it is proving difficult with all these appointments and situations getting in the way. All of this, on top of the existing exhaustion side effects problem. I have completely reshuffled my schedule so I can be awake longer during the day but I am still pretty tired. I also am going to bed at around 2000 (8pm) which is somewhat insulting. I am officially the first person in my household to go to bed. But I am sleeping through the night and waking up with my alarm.

Have I mentioned that I have a CPAP? I don't like the thing very much. It's uncomfortable and awkward to wear at night. I am managing 5 hours wearing it at night. I guess that is progress. I'm not waking up in the night feeling like I'm about to have an asthma attack. I was thinking that was because of my allergies being hellish right now. It turns out that was my sleep apnea. When I sleep, I stop breathing 11 times per minute. I kinda wonder how long this has been going on because there are family stories about my having problems breathing as an infant. There seems to be a correlation between being born preemie and having sleep apnea. Who knows. Enough ranting, time for me to get going on my first task of the day. I'm glad I was able to sneak in a little writing this morning.

AW:Morning Pgs 2025: Day 29

 Hello dear Reader,

Part of my silence has been because I've been busy off line with a ton of stuff. More of it has been fear. I was afraid that my blogs would be shut down because the content wasn't inline with the christo-facist bullshit being peddled by the government. When I realized that was the root of my silence, I got mad. I was almost angry enough to throw things. I took an Xanax and did some deep breathing to calm myself down. My anxiety medication is a blessing and works very well. (Have I mentioned that my anxiety has been just about off the chart for months now?)

I am not going to let fear of being deplatformed stop me. I have always spoken out against villainy and oppressive bullshit. I am going to become a bit more political in my posting here. Look for that content in my morning pages. I may lose readership over this. Honestly, it can't be too many more than how much readership I lost by not joining X after Elon Musk took over Twitter. Or the readership that I lost by just not writing for a little over a year. I don't care much, either way, to be frank.

I am quite likely going to cross post this entry on my other blogs. It's a bit lazy but it saves me from typing out the same message several times. I am going to attempt to resume daily themed posts starting tomorrow. I've been pushing myself to be up and moving in the morning around the time my youngest child heads off to school. My anxiety medication kicks me in the teeth and I often take a nap after he gets on the bus, but if I'm lucky, it'll only be a short one and I'll be moving around and doing stuff at 9am. 

AW:Morning Pgs 2025: Day 28

Hello everyone. I'm sorry that I haven't posted in months. Life has been challenging and my brain has not been cooperative. Since June, I've been having a lot of problems with my anxiety. I realized that part of the problem was the fact that I was reading the news. I have spent the last week abstaining from reading the news and my anxiety has improved somewhat. I am not sure how to feel about that.

I know that it is important to keep an eye on what the government is doing. I can feel the weight of that on me as both a student of history and the person who was groomed to be the family historian. It is a headache to try to reconcile those things with my mental health issues. Some days, literally. But in the face of everything, I have been stalled out in all of my writing efforts. I feel guilty about that.

I don't know if it is because I'm in my late 40s and my brain isn't quite as quick as it was when I was younger or if it is because I've reached the stress level that my brain won't function properly. I'm in therapy. I'm taking my medications. I'm doing what I can for my physical health. I guess I'm doing about 80% of the things I should be doing right. But the brain just doesn't want to cooperate with cranking out fiction, fact, or random rants. 

I have been given a few ideas to work with. Hopefully they'll lead to my coming back to my blogs with more work soon. I am so desperate for something to work and help me get my mojo back. I know I'm not depressed. I'm damn tired because of medication side effects and anxious as hell, which has been kicking the hornet's nest known as my C-PTSD. Hence my not reading the news for the last week. I'll figure something, please don't give up on me. I'm trying really hard, it's just not working yet.