50,276

yep, you read it correctly folks....50,276 words in my inaugural NaNoWriMo challenge!

too tired to even write this, so giving myself a well deserved early mark

very very proud of self!

grateful...

is how i feel really

despite a shocker day at work - seemed everyone had attitude today, lots of bad moods and 'tone', some from people i normally get on well with, so much that by 5pm when i had to leave to get to the specialist (another story there!) i was glad to see the back of the place (and this is rare) but also i started to wonder if it was me? was any of it my shit and my projection onto others?

as far as i can tell i was in a good mood, busy yes, needed to get a lot done yes, but not in a bad mood...guess in the end, everyone elses rubbed off on me!

so then, i leave on time to get to specialist on time (coz i am respectful of others...) and for the 2nd time in 2 visits she is running more than 15 minutes late - no phone call, no text...imagine if i turn up late, i have no doubt she wouldn't wait for me and i'm paying her? fucking joke - i have NO idea what they teach them at medical school but some social skills and gee i don't know, a skerrick of empathy would be good!

i get home with enough time before tennis to call my parentals, and i have a good chat to mum and she shares with me a story about some of their closest friends....

let's call them A & V...lovely older couple who they have been friends with for years, they go to the races together and i see them most xmas's when i'm home visiting...turns out he has dementia and it's really impacting him now...and my mum recounted to me a story that V told her last week: that A had gotten up in the night, unable to get comfy in the bed, gone to each bedroom in their house in search of a comfy bed, and then come back to their bedroom and stood in the door crying and asking what would happen to him...

breaks my heart....for her, for him, for them both....and even though it wasn't the best day i am GRATEFUL that i am ok, that my parents are doing fine...

so thank you universe for looking out for the people i love  xxx

'without being crass.....

it made me hard' was the male response to my sex scene! was well chuffed with that response...

it's hard to write a sex scene, well the first time you do it, it's hard (no pun intended)...and i have put it off for a few days, not knowing where to start, how to write it, how i wanted it to be read etc etc

so last night, i finally had to overcome my procrastination and just write...and i turned to my old friend, vodka for some help! a strong glass of vodka with lemonade and i was able to pen a scene i was happy with, bar one word! yep, you guessed it, how DO you describe 'it' in a word that isn't pornographic or overtly male?

so, today is the test - the best friend, who's been reading each chapter as it's written, has been giving great and very positive feedback, which has been encouraging...although i suspect there are things she wants to point out but feels too bad! frankly, wish she would point them out as i want her opinion on all manner of things chic lit! especially since this is her preferred reading genre, and distinctly, not mine!

ah the irony...

so, she sends this message after reading the scene: absolutely brilliant. very very well done'...so i post on FB my delight at her feedback and a male FB friend (and i call him an FB friend coz he is - we have NEVER met in real life, we connected about a year ago after i'd been to an online/internet thingy and he was friends with a number of people i met, in the last year we've had some great conversations, some very intimate, others inane, but on reading my post he sends me a message saying 'send me your sex scene' and i do)

of course that sent me into something of a spin! a man reading my sex scene - i guess that would be the ultimate test? i was visibly cringing as i knew he was reading the extract i'd sent to him...

don't know why i was worried - this was his response:

'and not to be crass, but it made me hard...it's good, i like the way you've written the speech, you can hear it'

wow! completely blew me away...

so, imagine my surprise at getting 2 glowing reports...chuffed! no other word for it, absolutely chuffed...

sooo with that i will excuse myself, finish my cup of tea, clean my teeth and crawl into bed! i've had a truly lovely weekend, lots of me time, a great therapy session, had a nice chat with the bloke at the bottleo, caught up with the bff, did a walk, went to aldi, spoke to my fam and another of my dear friends...all good!

g'nite ya'll...

not the best of days....

and nothing really bad has happened...meaning nobody i love or care about has been hurt, nobody i love has died, nothing in particular has happened i'm just in a funk...perhaps it's a case of the mean reds...

started mid to late afternoon yesterday when on the way to the airport with my dad he asked me if i'd met anyone, and was i over Ben etc etc

to be honest, i am so busy right now that i haven't really had too much time to think about it, but yeah, i guess sometimes being single is lonely...

for the most part i love it and since i took this job, which i also love (for the most part, otherwise this post would have no basis in reality!) i haven't had much time for anything but work, tennis, friends, family, exercise (although i definitely have less time for it!) and rejuvenating...oh and during November, NaNoWriMo...

but when i got home last night i felt sad - perhaps not so much sad as reminiscent - the question about Ben got me thinking about him and only the day before I told my mother that i dodged a bullet with Ben...maybe i felt bad about saying that? maybe the universe is punishing me?  either way i felt sad

wasn't helped by an email from a colleague who is clearly pissed off with me right now - he's been showing attitude towards me in recent weeks and i can't pinpoint what is going on - at some point i will get up the courage to ask him, but in the meantime he's been cranky with me, late to my meetings (often he doesn't turn up at all), he is pushing back on things that i make decisions on and he was rude to a staff member of mine...

of course his excuse is that he's busy - well, fuck, who the hell isn't busy? we have a bucket load of things to do and he is under enormous pressure (i know this for a fact), but still...

anyway, it's kind of added to my melancholy (good word that) and i find myself deep in a funk...

so, hope the rain in Jo'burg will stop and i will get to watch some cricket - hope Lexie (my main character) will do something good in tonight's instalment and i hope i get a good nights sleep so i can go to tomorrow's mnt meeting with good humour and a kind and open heart....

commitment to self...

is something that i have thought about in passing previously, but in the last few weeks, since i signed up for NaNoWriMo, it has come up a whole LOT more...

so turns out i have made this commitment, one that requires an enormous amount of discipline, energy, and time...not to mention, one needs to find inspiration sometimes...

but i am proud to say that as at today, some 16 days through a 30 day challenge, i am on track to complete a 50,000 word novel in a month

yep, that's right! hard to believe, and let me tell you it's fucking hard work...i am beyond exhausted, burning the candle at both ends, as it were, and all to do something for myself!

how nice...how different, for someone who has, for a large part of her life, done things for others and put her own needs to the back!

so, i'm pleased to say that my commitment to myself and to completing NaNoWriMo is so far, going well! at an average of 1,671 per day i have done 26,737 words, which equates loosely to 15 chapters!

let's hope i can keep this up for another 14 days!

wish me luck!

contentment...

is just about the only word i can come up with for how i feel today...

so my day started off well! good nights sleep, message of thanks and gratitude from my boss regarding a big piece of work that i had done, sun was shining when i got up, work good (despite perhaps one too many meetings today), productive day, tennis with my coach, yummy dinner, cricket on the tele, and then an approval to go to a conference at the Gold Coast next year...if i sleep well tonight it will just about be the perfect day!

oh, and my sister let it slip that she has ordered me a personalised Carlton iphone 4 cover - nice! very excited...no doubt that will be my nephews gift to me so mental note to act surprised when i get it :-)

so yep, life is good right now! i love my job, i'm loving the challenge, i'm loving the people, i'm loving doing something that is appreciated, i'm loving the relationship with my boss, loving getting paid regularly! i love my friends, i love my family, i'm relieved and pleased my mum's cancer is soon to be a thing of the past...oh and i love that i finally committed to NaNoWriMo and have written 7 chapters in 8 days! seriously, not sure i could be happier?

and typically when i write this sort of thing i think 'yeah i could, if i had a partner' but you know, honestly, right now, for the first time in my life it feels like almost everything is going well and i don't think i have time for someone special right now, and if i had someone special in my life, i'd want them to feel special...

so i am one contented chic right now, and grateful...thank you universe xx

800th post!

wow, turns out this is my 800th post...can you believe that? well, i can of course, since writing is one of my all time favourite pastimes!

so following the 'bubble girl' post last, it seems that since i had essentially left to the universe what would happen next, universe has indeed provided...

and i was not going to say a whole lot of stuff that had been flowing through my head since friday, but fuck it...this is my blog, i don't care who reads it and i think i need to get it out of my head

having this person re-appear in my life just about a year ago has been interesting, allowed me to really put the new me into action, exhausting (without a doubt), mostly one sided, draining and frankly, by the time she left here on sunday afternoon the only words ringing in my head were 'sort your fucking shit out'...

seriously! is she the ONLY person on the planet who thinks she's tired? is she the only person to ever have had a husband (who's lovely BTW), 2 kids (also lovely), a business that they run and complain constantly about how difficult her life is, how mentally exhausted she is (seriously, if i hear that expression one more time i will most likely stab the person who says it - she said it so many times in the course of 3 days, i found it hard to imagine anyone could convince themselves they were mentally exhausted, rather than doing something about it)....

seriously! take a long fucking hard look in the mirror and sort it out! any conversation that starts out about someone else ends up being about her, every attempt at empathy quickly becomes sympathy and a comparison to her situation, almost everything comes back to a discussion about the inadequacies of her parents (admittedly they were a bit odd)...i found myself thinking how sad it is that someone who's 42 has little or no understanding of social graces and still thinks it's ok to blame her parents - seriously?

YOU ARE 42 I wanted to yell out to her on many occasions over the weekend, but no, i held it in and tried to empathise (i at least know how to do this)....

so, she dumps me by text today - that's grown up isn't it? yep, when i sent her a thank you text for the chocolates she bought me i got something like 'i've done a lot of soul searching and i don't think we're a good fit'...

hilarious, and yet true...we have little or nothing in common and not for the first time in weeks i am able to reflect on my own journey and feel VERY proud of the person I am, the work i have done and the decisions i have made in the last coupla years...

sooooo onwards and upwards...sure i'm a wee bit sad, but mostly i'm just relieved that i won't have to listen to her self indulgent crap anytime soon!

nite x

bubble girl....

ah yes, have bean hanging out for this feeling since thursday evening...

had a full on week at work last week, well technically only 4 days since i had friday off, but by thursday night it felt like i'd worked a whole week! last weekend was interrupted on saturday and sunday by some work related issues and by monday i felt as though i hadn't had a proper weekend (shouldn't complain and this isn't a complaint, as some of my colleagues spent their ENTIRE weekends at work)...worked like some sort of crazed adrenaline junkie throughout the week (which included melbourne cup) and the start of NaNoWriMo and by thursday night when i left work i was  dizzy from exhaustion...that doesn't happen to me too often

didn't sleep too well on thursday night, rarely do when i have house guests, and friday we shopped, literally until we dropped...my designs of a morning shop, lunch out then an afternoon nap before a walk and then a home cooked dinner soon fell by the wayside...

got some great stuff mind and in all, was happy with the day

saturday some more of the same but this time at paddington markets, which i LOVE! Paddo markets is one of those archetypal Sydney things! always there, always good, seems impossible to leave without having either picked up a unique something or gotten a few great ideas for clothes or house stuff...love it! then afternoon tea in the QVB and a bit more 'browsing' before heading home around 5.30pm by which stage another entire day had passed and all we had done was shop and eat!

quieter night last night and a nice home cooked meal and then this morning, which despite my desire for a quiet sunday morning, was a reasonably emotionally charged morning with an admission from the visiting friend that she thought she'd done something to upset me yesterday and had she pissed me off and that she'd been tossing and turning all night...

fuck! so NOT how i wanted my sunday morning to go...so a lengthy discussion follows and i sit there, trying to be as calm as possible, and we go through it all...certainly, good thing to do but i recommend a) not being tired and b) having had some reflection time before doing such a thing...me, neither!  anyway, all's well that ends well (or that's how the saying goes right?) but i can tell you that i have spent some time reflecting since it all unfolded...

exhausting frankly....over now and i guess resolved, but exhausting...

in the time since this friend re-appeared in my life this time last year, after a 16 year hiatus, at her doing, albeit not voluntarily, i have pondered on where it will go? whether or not we would be able to re-establish a connection that would allow us to have a meaningful friendship going forward? whether or not that's what i wanted? sure, part of the pull is that we had a good friendship 20 or so years ago, well as good as we could back then, but neither of us knew anything about life or ourselves back then...

we're different now, i'm certainly different now, and i have found myself questioning where it might all end up, and trying to work out where i'd like it to end up...

coming up empty frankly

can't decide

not sure i have to

so for now, i'm going to be content with being back in my beautiful little bubble...ah!

girl interrupted...

that's what it feels like to have a house guest for not one, not two, but three nights during NaNoWriMo...

and sure, i'm enjoying her visit, but i am feeling bad that it's distracted me from the task at hand, which this month, is NaNoWriMo...

did so well to start! met or exceeded the word count on days 1 and 2, did about 2/3 of word count on day 3, nothing today, but tomorrow i hope to be able to make up for lost time...

so i feel, not quite as dismantled as Winona in girl interrupted, but still..

3415 down, 46585 to go...

yep, you read it right folks! 3415 is the current word count and 46585 is the words i have to write between now and 30 november...

what was i thinking? this is a serious WTF?

in all seriousness though, i'm enjoying having made this commitment to myself! for YEARS i have been saying i wanted to write a novel and in recent times i have wanted to do NaNoWriMo...and i have found way too many reasons (none of which were probably good reasons not to) not to do it...

but no, this year i decided none of those reasons, or even excuses, coz let's be serious that's what they were, were actually good enough...

so, 2 days in, 3415 words down and 2 chapters that i am reasonably happy with!

who would have thought i would be so good at something when i really set my mind to it!

shoulda known that...not like it's the first time i've observed myself to be a) good under pressure and b) able to demonstrate good willpower when it's something i really want...

funny how sometimes we lose sight of our strengths!

happy writing to any fellow NaNoWriMo's...

S
x