July 2022

My goal for this month: to breathe.

Gods have I needed it. And no, I haven't always been successful. I've spent a lot of the last 6 years (but especially the last 3) cramming so many things into every available minute of every available day until I was so overwhelmed that I just threw up my hands and ignored it all in favour of obsessively reading fanfiction instead. Not a single aspect of my life hasn't been impacted, but I'm noticing it the most with trying to adapt to the changes in my writing process. I spoke about it a bit (somewhat disjointedly) in a Twitter thread in the middle of the month.

My Instagram is mostly focused on the safe spaces, the calm spaces, the small joys of -- literally -- stopping to smell the flowers. Tackling these tasks has meant decluttering and letting go. Not just of actual objects taking up space, but also of mental and emotional things that I was holding on to that weren't doing anything other than harm.

I don't think that I realized how hard that was going to be.

Or how necessary.

✅ Take a Vacation

I'm going to pretend that it's still a vacation even if I have to work while on it because the point is that I was away from my house, which is one of my most favourite places to be but when you work and live and love and raise four kids in a place that you are also responsible for cleaning, it's really hard to shut off that running commentary of chores and tasks that need doing. 

A change of scenery was exactly what I needed and I gotta say that we had a pretty fantastic view of Okanagan Lake. It was a great way to start and end our days.

❎ Read from the To-Be-Read Pile

Funny enough, my goal of breathing didn't include reading. I have a pretty good idea about why I didn't read any books in July (one of which is that I unexpectedly fell into a rather lengthy fanfic that was delightful and incredibly well written), but I will admit that I picked a couple of books up, read the first page and then realized that I wasn't ready to consume them just yet. 

I did order some more books though, so maybe August will be a reading month?

✅ Holy writing, Batman

Yeah, so the reason why I wasn't reading is because I was apparently undertaking a brand new writing project that required an outline (it keeps growing) for six books (I'm not kidding) in a fictional alternate version of Earth (like seriously, what have I gotten myself into) that has all sorts of really interesting things (if I do say so myself) and is this massive family saga, at the heart of which is every epic romance trope you could hope to hold in your hands.

I don't know what is happening inside my brain. 

I have over 30,000 words of world concepts and character backstory and descriptions and specific symbolism that I want to use and notes on how the magic works. (This is not including the research I've undertaken to help clarify thoughts.) Never in a million years did I think that I would write something like this, but here I am, writing something like this. 

I don't even understand my writing process anymore. Outlining is now apparently a thing that I do. It's really working for me since I'm sitting here going "Oh, characters A and B do this in Book 1 but this other thing can't happen until after characters F and G figure out this other important detail, so probably Book 4?" and just carrying on like that.

I think I just need to come to terms with the fact that my muse is taking my academically-warped brain and is playing it like it's her new favourite instrument.

✅ Crafting

So, I have about a million craft projects that either A) are started by I stopped working on them, B) I have all the stuff to do the project but haven't started it, or C) I have plans to do a project "when I have time" and I know exactly what it will entail but I don't have any of the stuff yet.

Several of these projects are rather sizeable cross-stitch projects. Ones that keep getting put off in favour of doing smaller, more fun, and easier to complete cross-stitch projects that I suddenly "feel" like doing. [insert eye roll here]

Several more of these projects revolve around scrapbooking and/or organizing photo albums. (I have 4 kids. Two kids have baby pictures easily accessible, one of whom has nothing beyond the first year.) These ones are the kids of projects where I'm reluctant to undertake just because of how out-of-control the whole thing has gotten.

I have started on one of the rather large cross-stitching projects. Yay! I will share pics on Instagram at some point. 

I have also begun planning out a strategy for completing the other projects, based on type of project, size of commitment, cross-over with other craft project, and how long the project has been waiting to be completed. Basically, anything I don't already have the supplies for is taking a back seat until everything else is done.

❎ Exercise... What exercise?

I'm just going to blame the extreme heat for this one. It was a convenient excuse, I'll grant it that, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

Too hot to move, so I didn't move. Unless you count typing as moving? Can you burn calories with typing?

Also, my ultimate goal for the month of July was to breathe and, in all honesty, if I were to have engaged in any form of excercise, I would not have been breathing very well.

Oh! I went on a hike when I was on vacation! I got some steps in afterall!

All in all, July was... Well, it was really frickin' long is what it was. I seriously have no idea how so much happened this month or how it was that 31 days seemed to stretch on for so long! 

Odds are, August is going to be gone in a blink and then it's September madness.

Hope your summer has been a good one so far!