November Postmortem

Welp, it’s that time again, where I make one post to write about all the things I did but failed to blog about.

November was busy. I went to a con, I organized my desk (this is a huge deal, y’all), I actually finished – like washed, dried, folded, and put away – all my laundry before packing an oversized suitcase and flying to Australia. And then there were two marvelous weeks of jet lag made even more marvelous by a cold I’d been trying unsuccessfully to get rid of for about two months.

But before I get ahead of myself, let’s see what I checked off my to-do list.

How’d I Do?

1.) I successfully finished recording my parts for the band’s new album. As far as the Kickstarter rewards go, the t-shirts arrived after I left and my mom got them sent out. I’m still working on getting the downloads out. I’m on a metered internet connection so trying to share such large files is a real bitch. But I’m almost done, I swear. I’m gonna get it done today (and if I don’t I give you full permission to digitally hound me until your downloads arrive in your inbox).

2.) Writing has been going really well. I’ve gotten more query letters sent out since arriving in Australia and I’ve written 25,000 words of my New Project. Most importantly, I’m having fun with my writing and trying not to beat myself up for not meeting certain arbitrary goals I set for myself.

3.) I’d say I’m acing my goal of getting to Australia and collapsing. The collapse happened. I slept for ten hours every night for almost two weeks. I’ve been lazy. I’ve bird watched. I’ve gone for a walk in the park almost every day. It’s been awesome to unwind from the non-stop pace of the spring/summer/early fall.

What Now?

1.) Banjo. I hauled this thing all the way to Australia and I intend to play it. So far, I’ve been doing a pretty good job playing it every day, but I’ve mostly been focusing on playing the same two songs (the only two I know by heart) over and over again. I want to expand my repertoire (that’s a hard word to spell, what is it French or something?) and get to a place where I’d be comfortable taking my banjo to an open mic and playing a medley of tunes. I also would like to get to a point where I can start playing my own songs on banjo, but that may be a goal for next year.

2.) Writing. My current project is going pretty well. My goal is to finish it by the new year or soon after (that’s about 50K-60K words). I also want to come up with a revision strategy for another project where I need to combine two drafts in order to make a working first draft. In addition to all that, I want to establish my writing goals for 2019 and get the outline done for a New Idea that popped into my head yesterday.

3.) Querying. As I said above, querying is going well. I’ve been trying to keep at least five active query letters out at a time, so I’ll keep trying to do that in December. I also want to keep on top of following up on queries I’ve already sent out. In addition, I want to rewrite my one-page synopsis (A.K.A the bane of my existence) based on feedback from my critique group so that it’s ready to when I send out the next batch of queries.

4.) Socializing. This is something I’m bad at. It gives me a lot of anxiety, but I recognize that interacting with my fellow human beings is good for my mental health. So, I’m going to try to make friends while I’m here in Australia. Also, I’m going to make more of an effort to connect with my existing friends through chats and video calls, because that makes me happy [insert call to action for my online acquaintances to contact me while I’m abroad].

5.) Having fun. I have a tendency when I’m fatigued (which I totally am, right now) to completely withdraw into the land of hermitry where I binge watch Netflix shows, watch YouTube videos, play stupid phone games, and sink into a swirling vortex of anxiety and beating myself up for not being productive. But hey, I’m on vacation. It’s the holidays. I don’t have any commitments (feel free to virtually punch me if you’re feeling jealous). I need to just let myself have fun and relax without putting pressure on myself to do more. I’ve done more than enough this year.

Well, thanks for reading.

Feel free to share your December goals in the comments. Also, if anyone has any tips on how to make friends when you’re living in a foreign country and not going to school/working I’d love to hear them.