11/4 It's done.

I've already changed my mind about this year's NaNoWriMo project. If you're surprised you shouldn't be. I should have known from experience that blogging is infinitely harder than noveling, and that's made 20 times worse when you're on a time crunch with a word count to hit.

I decided to pick back up the NaNo I started in 2009, and so far the biggest struggle is keeping my writing style somewhat consistent. Back in the day I actually planned out my writing for NaNoWriMo, and thankfully I still have all of that saved on old hard drives. I have various notes and backgrounds for the characters jotted down, and I actually had an outline saved but looking back on it I definitely didn't even come close to following it the first time so there's no reason to try to stick to it now. A lot has changed in the last 7 years. A LOT. But I can still pretty vividly remember sitting down and writing most of this story, and I can still remember where I left off and where I wanted to go with the story in the near future. There's a lot of plot holes from the first half of it though, and I read back over the whole thing last night trying to prep myself to dive back in and I was visibly cringing nearly the whole time. After the month is over I might go back and try to edit the first half to make a little more sense, keeping in mind what I've already put down for this year's story.

I'm armed at the moment with a (sort of) decent breakfast and a large mug of coffee, with a 3 day weekend ahead of me, and I'm ready to dive into this story head first again. Ask me again in a week how I'm feeling about this though and I'm sure my enthusiasm will be long gone.

11/2 I already want to change my mind.

11/2/2016

Getting a little bit of a head start from what I managed yesterday, giving myself a whopping 5 hours to finish instead of roughly 45 minutes. Day two definitely off to a better start than day one was. Today’s post might be a little bit scattered (well, more so than yesterday), I’m trying to do a thousand things around the house while cranking out today’s word count. Domestic chores for the evening include: making a dent in the literal mountain of laundry piled up in the closet, washing and dying my hair, more laundry, possibly vacuuming, and maybe putting away the mountain of clean laundry (if it ever gets to that point).

And an hour later all I’ve managed to do is wash my hair. I’m really good at this time management thing today.

I literally just keep staring at the screen, tabbing over to other pages I have open, scrolling through Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, whatever I can to do to procrastinate writing this up tonight. The boy is working on a project in his office, trying to 3D print a handheld gaming device of some kind, so that’s whirring and chirping away and making all kinds of noises in the background. I think my game plan of dying my hair tonight is a lost cause. I don’t have the energy to dry it, go through the ridiculous process of dying it, just to wash and dry it again. This is probably why it takes me roughly 6 months (if not more) to dye my hair. I’m just lazy about it anymore. I used to be super on top of it, religiously buying the minimum of 3 boxes it would take once a month just to keep it up, setting aside a full day or evening to get it done, and just knocking it out. My hair is so much shorter now, and I’m slowly trying to grow the black layers out of it so I’m down to just 2 boxes of the same color instead of 3 boxes of varying colors, and I just can’t be bothered with it. Yet I also can’t be bothered with going to a salon and paying entirely too much money to dye the amount of hair that I have on my head.

I almost forgot there was a Wings game tonight, so we can add various hockey noises and rather loud obscenities being shouted from the other room to my background noise for the night.

We’re now at the 10pm mark and I’ve finally made it through the dying process (very begrudgingly on my part, it took a bit of agitated convincing by the boy), and now we’re on to the setting/waiting process. It takes me so long to get through all of my hair that by the time I finish my whole head the spot I started in is really already ready to be rinsed out. I’m a little nervous about this color. It’s a LOT more vibrant red than I was really expecting or ready for, it’s going to be a huge change from what I had. Fingers crossed it doesn’t look completely ridiculous once it’s rinsed and dried.

During my sitting and procrastinating for the entirety of the night, I’ve been on the hunt for a pair (or multiple pairs) of boots that I can wear this winter. I have the hardest time finding anything that goes past the bottom of my shins because my calves are so wide and I hate it. Nearly 90% of the “wide calf” boots for sale top out at 16-17 inches and that’s not even really close to being a “wide” size. My calves are massive from years of dance and marching band, as well as working in retail and running around for 8+ hours a day, 40+ hours a week. I’m also really on a tight budget (who isn’t anymore though), so I don’t have the disposable income to special order ridiculous boots or even “splurge” on a super nice pair that should last me a few years. I think I finally found a few online from Torrid that might work out, bless Meghan Tonjes for introducing me because I’m in love. I’m also super not into driving a thousand miles and making a bunch of stops at various stores and shopping centers to find THE BOOT, so I have my fingers crossed that these two pairs I found will work out well for me. The reviews seem really good and the measurements are pretty spot on with what I need. The only real concern I have is that none of the styles I really like are in stock in my actual size, so I’m going up a half size and just praying that they aren’t obnoxiously big. I don’t mind padding with an extra pair of socks, but I’d rather avoid that if at all possible.

I’m roughly half-way through today’s word count goal and it’s time to go rinse my hair out and I’m completely terrified. It’s so red I don’t know what to do with myself.

Rinsing complete, it’s definitely really red. Really, really red. It’ll be hard to tell until it’s dry how it really turned out but I can’t even fathom torturing my hair anymore today so it’s going to air dry overnight and we’ll see how it goes in the morning. I feel like I’ve gone this super vibrant red route before, but it’s been so long since I can’t remember when it was. It’s so different from what I’ve been sporting for the last year or so. My poor hair is so dry and angry right now. It’s going to need a really good deep conditioning treatment sometime over the weekend or next week.

Also during my sitting and procrastinating tonight, I got a call from the girl closing the store tonight at work and now I’m slightly annoyed. She called to say that she thought I didn’t know that I was opening tomorrow (I did know that), and she thought I thought I was working Friday instead (I didn’t think that). I appreciate the slightly panicked thought, but she is the absolute last person that needs to be reminding me of my schedule. I’m not the one that makes the management schedule every month, but I am the one that puts it into our scheduling system every week. And I’m also the one that creates the associate schedule every week, meaning I’m staring at the days and looking at who is working when for about 6 total hours after it’s all said and done. I know when I work and when I don’t. She’s also the least reliable out of our 4 piece management team, and the only one who routinely is forgetting when she works. Three times in the last two weeks she’s showed up in the morning thinking she opened the store when she was either closing that day or actually off. I guess it’s better than thinking you close when you actually open, or even worse thinking you have the day off when you’re supposed to be opening. I know I probably shouldn’t be so bitter about her, she meant well giving me a call. But seriously. I’m the last person you need to remind about their schedule. I have it under control.

The boy just peeked his head over to my desk and was peering at the screen, I don’t think he’s fully understanding the NaNoWriMo concept or process. It’s kind of amusing. I’m also starting to think I might regret not creating a new novel this year and trying to blog instead. Turns out it’s a lot harder to truthfully speak about your everyday life than it is to make up a fictional story and build characters and a plot line. I’m already throwing around the idea of branching off from the blog project and picking up either something new or pulling up an old NaNo and continuing on. We’ll see. There’s two different stories I’ve thought about more than once over the years while trying to plot out NaNoWriMo, or even just thinking about picking up again in general, and I’ve been really itching to try to bring those back out. Maybe I will make the switch. Although technically that would mean I would have to pick up the slack of the words I’ve already put down. Which isn’t a ton, but 3300 words is not a small amount either. I guess 2 or 3 days in is better than a week or 10 days and deciding to change your mind.

The last thing I’m doing before signing off for bed for the night is mentally preparing myself for all the bills I have to pay out of this paycheck, and I kind of want to cry. I’m trying to budget out for the boots I’m thinking about buying, groceries, miscellaneous things for the house, getting a small jump start on Christmas shopping. But my car payment, both credit card bills, phone bill, and hospital bill are due out of this paycheck. Which is literally my entire check, plus a tiny bit more. Which is ridiculous and definitely cry worthy. Being an adult is dumb. Which is probably why I’m distracting myself from real life by trying to figure out which novel I’m going to switch to.

11/1 Day One: The madness has officially begun

11/1/2016

This should be a shock to absolutely no one that I’m just beginning this post after 11:00 pm on the first day. I’m going to be real lucky if I can manage to make it to 1667 words before midnight. Not only am I waiting until the last minute, but I also have absolutely no idea what kind of topics I want to cover for today. I have a lingering feeling that a large part of the entries I make this month will be complaining and whining about various work related things so I’m not too keen on starting off that way but that’s all I have on my mind at the moment.

We’re barely into November, and we’ve really had to dive into planning for Green Week and the upcoming holiday season this week and I’m not fully mentally or emotionally prepared for this yet. I’m not sure if many other retailers use the term Green Week, but if you’re unaware it’s the week leading up to and including Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Tiny retail history lesson if you didn’t already know how Black Friday got the name, most bookkeeping and accounting is broken down into colors for positives (black) and negatives (red). With the day after Thanksgiving being the official full transition into the Christmas holiday shopping season, companies would see such a huge lift in sales that it would usually be when they would start turning a full profit on the year after expenses. Profit would mean marking things in black, hence the title Black Friday being adopted. Apparently “Green” Friday sounds more appealing and positive to the retail culture, so that term has been adopted by at least the company I work for. We started using the term Green Friday/Green Week about 3 years ago, but after nearly 10 years in retail I still find myself using Black Friday more often than not. It’s fine. Also to be noted I’m never 100% sure that’s the correct/best way to explain that but it usually sounds good in my head so I’m just gonna roll with it.

I think we figured out we need something like 40 total staff members for that holiday week, and we currently have 16 on hand I believe. None of our management team is convinced we’re going to make the goal by that week. We have a little under 2 weeks to hire 24 people, and at least 7 of those hires have to be actual seasonal staff that we can utilize during the entire holiday season, not just for the Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends. It’s terrifying. I’m responsible for making our schedules on a weekly basis, and I’m already struggling to make ends meet there because the staff we have can’t even fill out the hours we’re given every week. It’s not just our store/company struggling though, it seems to be everyone we talk to in any store. There’s only so much recruiting and passing information along that we can do, if you’re not getting applications in it doesn’t make a bit of difference.

Keeping in line with the holiday theme here, this was the first year I’ve experienced Halloween in a neighborhood different from the one I grew up in and also the first time in about 7 years that I’ve been home on Halloween to actually experience it. The last 3 years I’ve been at work because most of the rest of our management team has kids and I’ve never been one to really care about being home since my parents enjoy handing out candy more than I do. Years 6 and 7 ago I believe I was at Wrockstock which put me out of state and nowhere close to being home for that one. I’ve never been great with kids, especially the tiny young ones and somehow I was the one that ended up actually handing out the candy and interacting with everyone while the boy stood back with the dog (who had a costume of his own even though we didn’t bother dressing up) and observed every awkward moment. Tiny children plus interacting with strangers meant a whole lot of weird vibes. We also ran out of candy just about an hour into the evening, which of course was a bummer for everyone involved. I was kind of surprised at the number of kids that still came up and either rang the doorbell or knocked on the door even after the lights were off and the door was closed. We were always taught growing up that unless the house is lit up and the door is open, it’s off limits. Dark houses mean either they ran out of candy or they’re not participating, which is the opposite of an open invitation to come up to the door.

Guys, it’s only day one and I’m already struggling with content. Yes, it’s my own fault for waiting until the end of the night and putting myself on a tight deadline. It’s also my fault for not taking notes during the day of things I wanted to talk about. At least 3 or 4 times today I made a mental note to remember something I wanted to talk about on the blog and clearly my mental notes were absolutely useless as I have no idea what those topics were.

On a completely unrelated topic since I’m already fully aboard the struggle bus, I’ve recently discovered the snapchat video/picture filters other than just the overlays and it’s been a life changer. I don’t know 1) why it took me so long to figure out how to use them or 2) why I find them so entertaining, but I spent a large part of my lunch break today making stupid faces at my phone and saving screenshots of various snaps. I think my friend Shannon was the lucky recipient of a few of the more ridiculous ones. I kind of wanted to touch on social media at some point this month, but I might save that for a different day when I’m not pressed for time. I don’t know why I can talk about various social media related things for ages, it’s not a topic most people care about. But it’s a huge interest to me.

I think I’m just starting to brainstorm ideas for topics this month so I have something to come back and reference when I’m struggling for the day. This coming weekend should be pretty easy for that, I have a 3 day weekend and the only plans we actually have are to go to a concert on Saturday night. Sunday’s post should be an adventure all on it’s own, we’re seeing Yellowcard on their final tour and I’m already prepared to cry like a baby. The last two “farewell” tours I’ve seen have been nothing short of crazy emotional, and I’m sure this one is actually going to be worse than those ever were. I saw Anberlin go out a few years ago, which was an amazing show as it was the first (and obviously last) time I saw them live. Every Avenue was the other one and I’m still not over that. It’s a super sore subject to this day. Timehop is the worst for reminding me of these things this time of year, Every Avenue always did a string of holiday shows at the end of December and they also chose that to be their last tour one year so this was the time of year I would be buying tickets and getting excited about it. Stupid bands and their stupid “hiatus”. I think I angrily tweeted that at some point, hiatus is the worst word ever.

I have two minutes left and still about four hundred words to go. This is probably some kind of foreshadowing for the month to come, barely missing the daily goals. I’m not sure what would be worse, struggling to have a 1,667 word blog every day or fighting to pull 1,667 words out of nowhere and have to create a story out of them. I’ve done the noveling thing every time I’ve tried to NaNoWriMo so this is definitely a different attempt for me. We’ll see how this comes along. I’m already well aware there are going to be a few days where writing anything just doesn’t happen, but I’m going to make a damn honest effort at pulling this out. I’m already trying to come up with bribes and rewards for myself to make it through the month, and I feel like it’s too early for that. About 5 minutes ago I heard the boy crack open a new beer downstairs and that’s all I can think about now. There’s a beer and Anthony Bourdain waiting for me in the living room and I won’t let myself partake until I’ve hit the requisite word count for the day, even though technically it’s past midnight and I’ve already missed that goal. I tried.

We sell a travel coffee mug at work that says “I Did My Best” and I think I need to invest in that for use while I’m writing the rest of the month, if nothing else. The company that makes it also sells a planner and a notebook with the same phrase on it I believe, and maybe a pencil case as well. I never liked it when we first started carrying it but it’s definitely become relevant to my life lately.

At this point I’m just stringing this out so I can hit the 1,667 words I need and get that first badge for the month and feel like I accomplished something before I go to bed. I need to not let this stress me out over the rest of the month, I have more than enough to worry about that actually concerns my real life, but I’m sure that no matter how hard I try to put it to the back burner it’s going to haunt me every day. And with that sounding way more ominous than it should or needed to, I’m done for the day. I’m still jealous of the people that can manage to crank out multiple thousands of words on their first day (although there have been years where I’ve accomplished that), or the people that can literally double the 50K word count during the month (I don’t understand that one at all), but if I can at least hit the basic milestones or even just manage to somewhat consistently put out some kind of content this month I’ll be satisfied I think.

10/29 NaNo-ing and other life adventures

I've participated in NaNoWriMo for the (almost) last 6 years. 2009 I didn't really know what it was but I wrote a ton that year, 2010 - 2013 I actually used the site and participated, 2014 I updated my profile and told myself I was going to make it happen and apparently never did (I can't even find a file saved anywhere that indicates I started to write). 2015 brought a new life and a new house and a new boyfriend and I definitely didn't have time even though I thought about it most of the year. And now we're into 2016 and I'm telling myself I'm going to make that attempt again. However instead of novel-ing, I'm going to make an attempt at blogging. Even just writing that out terrifies me a little. Heh. Great.

I will apparently never learn that November is the WORST month for me to try to do anything at all outside of work. November means Thanksgiving, which means Black Friday, which means the start of the crazy holiday season at work, which also means that even though I only clock 40 hours on the work week I might actually spend about 55 in the store, which means WHY DO I TRY TO WRITE IN NOVEMBER. It's still October and I'm already stressed about work. This can't be a good idea.

But It's still going to be an attempt. That's why I figured it was a good idea to dust off ye olde blog that hasn't seen the light of day in 4 years and dive in headfirst. That's also why there's been a few updates in the last few days. Stretching out the writing fingers, and getting used to putting "creative content" out on a semi-regular basis. I'm making the possibly naive assumption that by just blogging instead of creating a novel it can be a slightly more relaxing process since there won't have to be too much planning that goes into it, but again: we'll see. I'm already mentally prepared for the lapse that comes at the 20,000 word mark when I want to give up but then remember that we're only just over a third of the way through and giving up that early is embarrassing.

After abandoning this post for a good 10 minutes I've discovered that I need to find a way to count my words in whatever I end up using to write for the month. For what I can find, neither Blogger or the word documents on my computer have a word count feature and that's a bummer. The software I used to use on my laptop was great, but apparently it's only for OS X and not anything I can get for Windows which is a double bummer. I guess that'll be tomorrow's project. Nothing like waiting until the last minute. As always.

Edit: Google Docs it is. That should have been an obvious choice.
Double Edit: Before this edits, my word count was only 488. HA. I forgot what 1667 words a day looks like. What have I done to myself.

10/28 Fire alarms and 3D printers

Thankfully those two subjects are not actually related. Although if we're trying to go in chronological order the 3D printer technically came first, but for the sake of making a semi-decent story to follow the fire alarms can be the first topic. Lets be real, there's not much I can elaborate on having to be at work at 5am to have the fire alarms tested, and then listen to the piercing shrieks for the next 3 hours at 6 minute intervals, all while trying to crunch business numbers and make a schedule. My Wednesday morning was not the best.

Monday, however, brought the arrival of a new-to-us 3D printer which has been by far one of the coolest purchases the boyfriend has made. Monday was Day 2 of my recovery from last Saturday night's shenanigans (There were copious amounts of beer and whiskey consumed, picking up a pizza on a 4x4, starting a bonfire with a leaf blower.....I needed 2 days to recover), and the boy also decided to take the day off just because. I'm still convinced the "just because" was actually because he knew the printer was coming, but that's another story.

We quickly blew through the basics of 1) downloading patterns/blueprints from the interwebs, and 2) creating basic shapes and designs with the construction elements provided in the programs we downloaded, and I now have a tiny fox mascot perched atop a cube-in-a-cube sitting next to a slightly asymmetrical B adorning my desk. My next project has been to make a coaster, a few festive decorations, and possibly dive into a few tiny gift ideas for Christmas. Actually, my next project will be ordering new materials from Amazon because (as expected), you fly through things much faster than originally anticipated. Also I can't be the jerk that constantly uses up the materials that the boy bought for himself even though he's kind enough to let me overtake the printer.

The designing and researching and printing has pushed ideas into my head though of things I've been contemplating for quite a while but haven't necessarily had the means to do. First being tossing around the idea of opening some kind of online shop on Etsy. Yes, there are a million and a half shops that sell crudely manufactured 3D printed trinkets, but it's still a thought.

Second being finally going back to school. I've been putting it off and putting it off for so long because "I can't afford it" and "it would interfere with my work schedule too much" but I'm kind of sick of giving myself the same excuses. I'm past the age that I have to rely on my parents, and also now that I'm out of the house I have the ability to file for my own financial aid which would be a huge factor in making that thought a possibility. The work schedule I suppose I could get around. I know I wouldn't be able to be in school full time while working full time, and I definitely can't afford to go back to part time work just to be in school full time. I don't know what I could manage, but I'm sure I could manage to work something out with the right conversations.

I've always had a half-minded interest in graphic design elements, ever since high school. For the "required" computer class elective I took a basic graphic design class (and by basic I mean the only one that was offered), and the teacher I had for that class kept encouraging me to take it further but I didn't want to listen and never did. The very short college stint that I had I took another basic/intro design class that I flew through and the professor there did the same thing but once again I didn't want to listen and thought I didn't have much interest in the matter. Turns out, after 10 years of working in an unrelated retail field I've discovered that not only do I love visual design elements, but I love anything that involves using a computer to design and create things as well. Except most software programs. Don't ask me to design a program, just give me a running and well working program to create new things with.

Who knows. We'll see, it's just a matter of time to figure things out the way I need them to go.

I'm not quite sure yet if this is a good idea or not.

Since I moved out of my parent's house last summer and in with my boyfriend, I haven't had any place that I can call "mine". Yes, we technically share the house (his house, I have minimal financial responsibility there), but there's no where in the house that I can retreat to and just have "my spot". We changed that this weekend, and it's possibly the smallest change ever, but I'm thrilled. I bought a new desk, lamp, and monitor, and he threw together a working PC for me from old bits he had laying around the house from previous technological endeavors. And now I have a mini "office" in the loft outside of the bedroom. Maybe I'll stop using quotes "eventually."

But of course, now that I have said office for whatever reason I needed it, I feel like I have to do something with it. I've had the thought itching in the back of my mind for a while now that I want to make a dive back into an online presence rather than just lurking like I tend to do, so I suppose this is the right way to go about it. We'll see. If anything, it's a nice change from just sitting on the couch in silence together scrolling the internet separately. Now we're just sitting in separate rooms (not that the loft really counts as a room, but close enough), silently scrolling the internet with the occasional Facebook message/sticker being sent just to remind the other that we're still here. 

I always feel like I get stuck in a rut of trying to produce content online for everyone else's enjoyment rather than just a creative outlet for myself, so at the moment I don't actually know what I'm going to try to do with this still other than just a digital journal really. I might throw up a recipe or two occasionally, or chronicle our camping trips during the summer but for now I think it's going to be a dumping ground at the end of the day for whatever I need to get out of my head.

If you're still here, even if it's just because you forgot to unfollow this blog, thanks for sticking around. Hopefully someone out there gets some enjoyment out of the weird things that go on in my head.