Confessions of Fangirl

So my car had some issues. It overheated on the way to work yesterday morning which I have to say was pretty scary. I had to basically idle the last few miles and turn the car off when I was sitting at stop lights because I just didn’t know what else to do. I suppose I could’ve pulled over and gotten a tow somewhere, but I was actually looking like I was going to be on time for once and because sometimes I just want to be in denial about my issues. Sometimes I have to be in denial of my issues for a little bit before I can deal with them.

I saw this thing on the internet that said something like, “I find if you put off doing anything about your problems, they either work themselves out or they explode in your face. 50/50 odds aren’t bad.”

I should see if I can find it, because it’s both hilariously true and relevant to how I live my life.

Wow, Google is a powerful thing. Okay so I’m horrendously tired right now, and I’m not sure I’m going to copy this over correctly. It’s a screenshot of a tweet so I can’t just copy paste. I have to type it out, which means there’s a good chance I’m going to miss a word or incorrecctly transcribe something. Still, I’m hoping to get close enough that you’ll get the picture.

“Something kind of neat I found out… If you ignore a problem long enough, it either goes away or ruins your life. So 50/50. Pretty good odds.”

Damnit, I’m too tired to keep going.

I’ve been putting off writing since I got home. I’d wanted to work on something while I was at work, but work was so busy, so packed full that there was just no way to get around to that. I had every second so full, I didn’t have time to finish my actual work work, never mind work on a personal project. Then once I got home, I just felt so tired and daunted by my word count goal that I didn’t want to work on it at all.

I remember reading this article a while back that said that if you’re struggling to meet a goal or feeling intimated about meeting a goal or something along those lines, that you should multiply the goal by a factor of ten. Maybe it was a factor of five. I’m not sure now, but it was definitely an outrageous multiplier. The logic behind it… I remember there was logic behind it. Or supposed logic. I can’t remember now if the idea was just to pump out so much stuff that some of it had to be good or if it was to help you push back the mental blocks or some other such thing, but I do remember thinking the article was interesting.

There might have been a few articles like that, now that I’m thinking about them. I seem to remember a sort of “phase” where that was all the rage in the “self help” world. One particular article was about making lists of ideas. Ideas for stories or products or pieces of art or whatever--didn’t matter, just ten ideas every day. The guy writing the article said that if you can’t think of ten, think of twenty. He said that if you double the goal, your brain realizes that some or most of those ideas are going to be total useless garbage, and in knowing that, you’re giving yourself permission to write down and process terrible ides. Maybe you don’t keep all the ideas, but you the more ideas you come up with, the more likely it is that one of them will be good. That’s just statistics.

Once you start practicing coming up with ideas, even if most of the suck, you’ll find ideas (in all levels of quality) come more quickly and easily--at least according to the guy in the article. I don’t think he’s wrong. One of the other things I remember him talking about (well… I think it was him that brought it up, it very well could have been one of the other amny, many self help writers/gurus I’ve studied) a study on a high school art class.

In the “study” half the class was told that their grade would be based on making one “amazing” piece of art (pottery, I think , in this case) so they had to make just one great thing, and the other half of the class would be graded on sheer quantity with nothing based on how well they made the pieces.

In the end of the study, the students who were graded on quantity rather than quality were the ones who produced better quality, more creative pieces of art. Allowing yourself to be bad at something, but continuing to fight for it over and over again is the surest way to improve. That’s part of why I’ve been pushing myself to write more I figure if I can write a billion things, one of them will be good and then I can go from there.

Even knowing all that, and knowing that I’m a better writer when I’m writing all the time, it’s still hard for me not to feel daunted by the goals I’ve set for myself. If Id’ been better through the last six months of hitting my goals, I’d be in way better shape than I am now. I did fantastic in the first few months and then Summer Break happened and everything just kind of hit all at once.

It don’t feel like it’s slowed down at all. Shit, I’m sitting here now, barely awake, attempting to open my eyes and look at the keyboard or the screen so I don’t fall asleep, but I’m about to slip onto the floor. Ah well, tomorrow is another day. And a day I’m not working, so that’s a plus.

Today was interesting if a little long. I didn’t get nearly enough sleep last night because I stayed up stupid late and then I had to get up earlier than usual to get to the outreach we were doing this morning. I had to be there around 7:30 am. And I was there at 7:36 am which is really good for me, “on time-wise.” Whatever. I’m working on it and I had to leave my house before 7 am to do that which was asking an awful lot. But I didn’t exactly go to bed at a reasonable hour last night. I knew I would probably pay for staying up too late, but honestly, it wasn’t that bad today. It’s probably tomorrow that I’m really going to suffer. Tomorrow the adrenaline will have faded and I’ll just be left with my tiredness. I think this is part of why I continue to stay up too late. I won’t pay for it too much the next day and I’ll think I’m invisible and that I don’t need sleep when I do in fact need lots and lots of sleep.

I kept losing track of myself today and searching for words during my presentation. I felt like I repeated myself a lot in a boring way, but I did my best. Well, I suppose my best would’ve involved getting a reasonable amount of sleep last night and spending more time preparing than just making a vague spreadsheet and talking about how much time the organizers estimate we’ll have. Although sometimes the more prep and stress I put into presentations, the more things go off the rails and I have to wing it anyway. I like having a loose plan so that I can quickly adjust to audibles on the play (like I know much of anything about football besides the fact that going ten yards is a down and a touch down is six points) and keep going.

I do have a planner I’ve been using pretty regularly that I think is helping me. It’s the Panda planner brand and it’s nice that they have spots for things thing focuses, goals, priorities, as well as things you’re thankful for from the day before and what your wins of the day are.

I found a sticker that has Leonard Snart’s quote about plans and throwing them away so I put that on there and it’s immensely hilarious to me that I put a quote about plans failing and being tossed out on a planner. That’s exactly my kind of humor.

I’d really like to stay up and talk in more depth about 100 things, but I’m barely staying conscious anymore and I literally can’t hold my eyes open anymore. Time for bed for me!

I cannot remember ever having been so tired in all of my life. I’m sure that’s not actually the case, but it sure feels like it. I know I’ve even said something like that on previous occasions so I know this isn’t the isolated incident I feel like it is. But to say that I’m desperately tired to the point that I feel sick? That would not be an exaggeration. Part of it is (sorry TMI ahead -- you’ve been warned--mmmkay?) I’m on my period. My period always takes it out of me. I think every other time I’ve said, “I feel like I’ve never been this tired before,” I’m about to start my period. It is nice that it’s coming at relatively normal intervals now and I don’t think my other symptoms are as bad as they used to be, but that still doesn’t mean I’m well.

I really wish I’d been able to write more this week, but every day has been a struggle and I haven’t had two brain cells alive to rub together by the time I’ve gotten home any night this week.

I can barely function today honestly. I was impressed that I made it through the day. It was a busy day at work. We were so slammed and I barely had time to think.

Not to say that I wasn’t tired all day, because I was definitely tired all day, because I definitely was, but now that I’m home and fed I can barely keep my eyes open. I’m fighting really hard not to fall asleep on my chair in the living room. I’ve decided that I’m going to be in bed by 11 pm tonight. I don’t have to be up until about 8:45 but after barely getting any sleep last night and partying it up with my friend Emily and also knowing that I’m going to be working extra long days the next few days to try to gear up for the trip I’m going on in a few days, I think it’s important that I really commit to getting an enormous amount of sleep tonight. I suppose I could go ahead and go to bed right now, but I need to write. I’m so behind on my writing goal, it’s not even funny.

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make the word count goal. I’m determined that I’m going to make my story goal. Considering that I think I only need a couple hundred more words to make my “bring Dolls back to life” fic, I think I can finish it and get it edited and posted before I leave. Whether or not I complete that goal is going to be close because as I mentioned I have a lot going on! I really want to make it though. As important as it is to me that I get my word goal met, I think the writing and posting a story each month is the goal that is really the most important to me. The words I write for my goal don’t have to be for anything in particular and I count my journal entries. I feel good about that because the writing habit becomes more and more of a habit that way, but it also means that I don’t necessarily work on writing in a way that’s geared towards building better plots, characters, etcetera. It’s the stories that (at least I hope!) are going to do the most for helping me improve my writing skills long term.

Not that I’m giving up on that goal! I’m not. Right now, I’m not too far off track. It’s like I have an word count per day average of 590. My goal was 600 so that’s pretty close. In top of that, I still have a few months to go. Making that goal is still totally possible at this point. Not to say that it will be easy or anything, because I don’t believe it will be easy at all. Especially if I’m this tired everynight I try to do this. I’m so tried. I can barely stay awake at all. I’m so tired I’m typing with my eyes closed because I honestly can’t hold them open.

Which I should take as my queue to pass out. Yeah. I think that would be the smart thing at this point even if I really don’t want to go to bed yet.

I knew when I was up at 2 am laughing with my friend and dying over the ridiculousness of the shit we were watching, that I was going to pay for staying up all night laughing until my lungs hurt and I thought I was peeing myself. It was worth it though. I felt so good while I was hanging out with Emily. I always do, but when we get to just hang out in pajamas and be girlfriends, it’s one of the best things ever. We spent time with her little boy, whose three now and calls me “Cake” and that was really nice too. Then her hubby came home, hooked us hope with some good stuff, and then took the baby off my friend’s hands. I’ve disapproved of a lot of the shit he’s pulled that my friend has talked about, but their relationship has come a really, really, amazingly long way.

Okay that’s it. I’m falling asleep and I can’t process anything at all anymore. Night y’all!

I’m so tired. I’m frustrated and cranky and in a hella pissy mood in general. I know it’s partly that I’m tired. I’ve been going and going and going for what feels like weeks and when I think about it, it kind of has been. I worked Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of the last week of August and then that Thursday night I drove to Dragon*Con. Dragon*Con was a whirlwind of excitement, activity, and socialization for three and a half days before I drove home Monday evening. I had Ju’Leia over Tuesday and Wednesday was amazing, but it still felt like I was going a little. I mean we had fun and it was low key, watching dumb movies fun, but I was still trying to be functional and sociable which is pretty tough. Then I took her to the airport the next morning. We left the house before 4:30 am. I did get a tiny wink of sleep before I had to be up for a shower and work, but it was not nearly enough. I spent the day at a different branch which meant being hella personable and hella on point since I was with people who would only be judging based on who I was that day. Then I did a day at my normal branch and I honestly don’t remember how I made it through. I had Friday off and I slept a good chunk, but Dad wanted to go get a camera so we did shopping and ran some errands. Then it was back to work on Saturday. Again, the weekend wasn’t overly hard but it was still a lot to pick back up on.

The rest of this week has been hella dumb and frustrating and busy. There have definitely been some good points. I had my yearly review meeting today which went really well. I was stressed and anxious about it so that didn’t help my overall situation, but I was glad to have it done and I was glad that I was given such glowing praise.

It’s just been such a dumb week with being short staffed and the internet going out for a bit and schools not closing at normal times and everyone flooding to the library before the hurricane hits. There’s this crazy woman from Greensboro who keeps calling and then getting into tangents about the devil being alive and well in North Carolina and just… all kinds of stuff. I’ve got a three day weekend this weekend and I know I’m going to be doing nothing but recovering.

That said, I’m heading to bed and hoping that tomorrow will be easy even if I’m worried we’re going to be overrun.

It’s going to be my goal for the week to spend ten minutes each day writing with my undivided attention. I don’t know how well this will go, but I think that it might be my best shot at getting back on track with the writing goal. Making a goal number didn’t seem to work lately. Like I was getting stuck on the number and sort of psyching myself out with it too. I remember reading that sometimes when people want to get themselves to push through a difficult goal, they double their goal and push for the outrageous number instead. Actually, there’s a whole philosophy out there about multiplying your goal by 10, but I wasn’t going to try that.

I thought the minutes might make it easier. That way, if I’m struggling to write, I won’t make myself miserable that I haven't reached the number I had originally planned.

I say that, and even as I sit here, attempting to stay conscious enough to write this (I have nodded off twice now), I’m struggling to get through five minutes. Today was intensely tiring. I started by jogging and working out at the gym around 5:30 per usual for me and dad so I was up at five (not uncommon now, but still, it’s not my preferred time. Then I worked an extra hour at work so that I can have Friday off. I worked Sunday but only five hours so I have to make up the time somewhere and I really don't want to come in on Friday for three hours.

I really wanted this to be my undivided attention but I just fell asleep again.

Anyway, after that, I went to the doctor. There’s an Urgent Care/family medicine place that has recently opened up and I thought I would try them since they’re so close to my house. I’ve been struggling immensely with my feet and I needed to make sure that I was a) not wrong about the issue and be doing all I could to treat it. As it turns out, there are a few more things I can do, some foot/ankle braces they could give me, and they wrote me a prescription for Advil. I need to take that actually. He wants me to take it three times a day.

Anyway, I’ve focused as hard as I can for as long as I can. I’ll have to try again tomorrow.