Tag: mental health

Untitled

Laura Highcove

So I failed at my goals. In two weeks I did only seven scenes and almost nothing on blessings and legit nothing on j55. No real excuse, I just didn’t hold myself to the plan. I did find that instead of taking a shower right after lunch, that I’m more productive if I stay in my work clothes, so I’m going to try that for this next bit and see what happens.

I have 30 scenes left in wizard now. Two weeks until march. That would be two scenes a day. A bit of a tall ask but I feel like I need to do it. I can’t just give up on my goal. What if it was a real enforceable goal? I’d have to power through. Does mean j55 will go on the back burner. I think three stories was too much but I’m going to keep trying with blessings.

I want to finish this story but I think I’ve ended up in a place of resignation about ever publishing anything which dampens my enthusiasm. It shouldn’t be about publishing, but then who will ever see my stories? I want people to read my stories. That’s the point really. They’re just so much out there about how even if you’re good its all about luck. I understand why that dialogue exists, however its actually rather discouraging to me. I could be amazing. A once in a lifetime talent (not that I think I am, but you know what I mean), and it doesn’t matter if the right person/people don’t see it. Which I suppose is an argument for getting the most stories out there and getting myself out there, but that just isn’t the way it lands for me.

I want to finish the storyteller trilogy to prove I can. To actually end something. I wish that was motivation enough in itself.

A Collective Sigh of Relief

Laura Highcove

I didn’t post the previous post until the same day I posted this one (though I back-dated it to the day I wrote it) and part of that was because this past month, almost to the day, has been particularly hard. On top of the normal seasonal depression, my grandmother-in-law passed on Christmas, despite Biden winning the election it has been a continual shit-fest (oh yeah, I’m cussing now, not a lot, but some things deserve it), then we had a coup attempt, and it could’ve been so much worse than it was. I also had several other family things going on. The last post really encompassed my malaise.

And I’m just now managing to pull myself out the other side. I think Biden actually taking office and Trump actually being gone has had more of an effect than I expected. It’s like the entire country is finally allowing themselves to be okay again. This article by Chuck Wendig is a thing of beauty and it might do you good to read it. It helped me a lot start putting things into perspective.

The Hubby and I discussed the absolute glut of Bernie Sanders in Mittens memes that have literally flooded the Internet. I’ve never seen a meme storm like this one. And we both agree that this is the entire country latching on to the joy that is a nonsensical meme because we can finally do that again. Because we’re no longer terrified of what Trump is going to do next, that we might lose our country, our freedoms, our lives to the capricious will of that fucking sociopathic narcissist.

Things aren’t normal, they’re not safe yet, but there’s finally hope. And that hope is being expressed by the whole country, using this man in mittens.

The “New” Year

Laura Highcove

Here I am, more than half way into January of a new year and there’s no retrospective, there’s no plan for my writing, no excitement about what the future could be. I feel like I’m drifting through some sort of of alternate reality dream space while mechanically performing my every-day tasks.
Maybe that’s how the entirety of the last year (well since March) has gone, and I just didn’t really acknowledge it until now. I mean I knew the last year was bizarre, but somewhere in my mind, even though I know on an intellectual level that a new year doesn’t mean anything to the cosmos, I was still expecting something to have changed? Something to have shifted? Something to have settled? That there would be something to latch onto. And there isn’t. The agreement reality of the country that surrounds and informs my existence is coming apart at the seams.


My faith in the general goodness of humanity was cracked last year, and that rift continues to grow. I don’t believe that there is no goodness in people but, well, this post sums it up surprisingly accurately.

I look at everyone in my life fundamentally differently now. I believed for a long time time that people are born good, and they are, only now I realize that this world whispers lies, tiny lies over and over again. And some people look at those lies and they question them and search for the truth that will make the world better for all. And other people look at those lies and make them their world, so when they search for truth, the truth is grown from those lies, and they become so convinced of their own rightness that nothing else matters.

Pushing Through

Laura Highcove

After the last post, I feel like I should update you on the two big upheavals in my reality.
1) Supernatural’s final episode was complete and utter trash.
2) Trump is refusing to concede to Biden and he’s encouraging his ‘followers’ in the belief that he was cheated out of the election.

Neither of these come as a surprise, but I’m still very upset about both.

That being said, I had a great vacation in Williamsburg. Went to see family briefly, went to a number of nurseries, hung out and had great food with my husband, and got a new video game that I haven’t had time to play since I got back.

Writing has been rough. I kept up with my word count in Williamsburg, but I’m at the point where I have to wrap up everything beautifully. I have to tie up all the loose ends and make it satisfying and once again I’m stuck in the my dead zone, (from the halfway point of the book until the 3/4 mark). I suppose the only thing I can do now is just go write the ending in more detail and hope that at some point I’ll figure out how to get there. It’s already 6pm today and I only have half my words. I wanna put it off for tomorrow but I know it’ll just be worse. Sigh. Just have to keep pushing.

Breaking the Rules of NaNoWriMo

Laura Highcove

Friday and Saturday each gave me a ridiculous upheaval to my reality and I’m still reeling a bit.

Destiel

First, and the one you likely don’t know/care about, is that on Friday I saw the gay relationship of two characters on the long-running show Supernatural Dean and Castiel actually canonized. Like legit. Not like the subtext for the last twelve years that, while amazingly obvious, was still subtext. It was an amazing moment that made me cuss out loud because I never thought I’d see it. And there are still episodes left in the show.

POTUS

Then on Saturday Biden won the presidency. I cried for about a half hour in relief. And I know this doesn’t fix anything, and there are still problems, but right now I’ll settle for it not getting any worse for a bit.

NaNoWriMo

And around all of that, I’m still working my way through NaNoWriMo and I will tell you that I am playing faster and looser with the rules than I ever have simply because it’s necessary. I am doing everything I possibly can to make it the easiest and most productive experience possible. Partially because of mental health issues (which come in no small part to everything that’s been/going on.) and partially because my process has changed so dramatically over the years.


The past few years I’ve had difficulty/gotten stuck in NaNo because what I had written wasn’t organized and thought through yet, thus I couldn’t see the way forward. When trying to pound out words, I write things out of order, I write scenes multiple times with different focuses, everything just comes out into a huge pile. And editing makes it very hard to keep track of word count.


So this year I just said ‘screw it’. I write what I write and count those words, and then I edit those words: copy/paste, write more, delete even more, all to get a working scene, and I count those words as well. Is it to the law of NaNo? Absolutely not. But it’s following the spirit of Nano, which has always been to get you writing. I gave myself permission to do what I needed to do in order to be as productive as I can be AND free myself from the guilt of not following the letter of NaNo. And maybe I won’t verify my story at the end, maybe I will. But either way, I will have more of my story written, and that’s what matters.

My NaNo Pep Talk

Laura Highcove

Okay, so yes it’s scary. Terrifying even that I might not be able to come up with an ending, or a good ending. But all I need to do is write. Write, spend time with the characters. Ask them what they’re doing and see what they say. They’re all established pretty well by now so they should be able to answer. At the end of this month you’ll either have an ending, or you’ll have 50k words getting you closer. And yes, that includes this because the mental game of writing is also important in the writing process. So just write.

Working Toward Productivity

Laura Highcove

As per usual, I come back with a reset post after a time away. Not even blaming myself for this anymore. This year has been such that blaming myself would just be not only unproductive, but downright cruel. I’ve been struggling for months with the balance between self care and productivity. Luckily I have people and activities in my life that bring me joy and I’ve been focusing on them.


I think I’m to a point now where I want to try keeping track of what I get done in my time-sheet again. I pulled the old dusty file open (it was still sitting on my desktop) and saw that I had stopped tracking hours after April. Not entirely surprising, and probably good for my mental health. It has been so weird looking back, and actually really weird looking forward.
I go to the Kroger every week for grocery shopping and I look around at all the people in their face masks and just keep thinking ‘this is my life now’. Because it is. Even if we get to the point where the virus is under control and we have a vaccine available (that works?), it is still forever a part of the world’s ecosystem just like the flu. Our lives going forward will be (and already are in a lot of cases) be defined by this.


As such, we are slowly learning to function in this world, which is what I’m still struggling to do. It’s not easy, not even going to lie. Self care is very very important and as such I made a super important change to my time-sheet. I switched the ‘write’ tag to ‘create’ and ‘read’ to ‘ingest’. Because I want to encourage myself to do what I need to to be happy. Create can include writing, of course, but also filming for my YouTube channel, or even working on my cross-stitch, just putting some sort of visible product into the world. Ingest includes reading, watching TV shows, and working with my horses. Experiences that enrich my soul and give me a reason to keep going.
I also have a straight up self care tag.


Not sure how this is going to go, but I’m going to aim for 15 hours in the coming week. Just to see what happens. Right now I’m feeling encouraged, which is certainly a good place to start from. Especially since I wrote this post in the middle of the list of things I wanted to do today. Now back to that task.

Being Gentle with Myself

Laura Highcove

Man, living through history is hard. Yesterday Georgia started to reopen. The general consensus is “are you f-ing stupid?”. Also, last night the store had toilet paper. Yay!

In regards to my writing, which is why you’re really here, I have been doing far better. I am giving myself less hassle for not being productive and I’m actually ending up more productive. How productive, I’m not sure since I stopped using my timesheet, but I am getting done what needs to get done and that’s the important thing. I am still moving through the Huntsman and enjoying the revision step as much as I always do. I am doing a last pass through the Law of the Prince Charming before videoing my reading each scene and posting that video along with the text on Wattpad for public consumption.

I am keeping up with my Stories & Succulent YouTube Plant Channel’s update schedule. I am also now on board with diymfa.com for writing a new series of posts on Writer’s Intuition the first of which will go up in June. All in addition to working at the barn in the mornings, keeping the house clean, and caring for a sick fish. (He’s doing fine, but I’m doing daily water changes right now.)

It’s a lot of stuff, but like I said, because I’ve been giving myself less hassle about it, things have been going pretty smoothly. I have no end goal for finishing the Huntsman, not that I’m going to let it go on forever, but right now I’m just going with the flow. I’ve also been playing video games, watching lots of Asian Shows, and caring for my plants. In general I’m just being gentle with myself. It’s an easy trap to get into right now that there’s so much free time and that I should be super productive as a result, but living during a pandemic on this scale is stressful. Low-key, all the time, you can’t get away from it, death is actually an option, stressful. Do what you can and take care of yourself. I’ll say it as many times as I need to.

Self Care

Laura Highcove

I wrote a big long post talking about what I needed to do, and the new plan I was going to enact, and then I sat back and thought about it. I think pushing myself too hard right now is just a bad idea. I’ve been low level stressed since this whole pandemic thing started and it’s just …it just is. There’s no getting away from it and sure, I could beat myself up for not being productive right now, but why? Why have we let this country tell us we’re only worthwhile if we’re producing?

I’m going to work on the Huntsman at least some every day. I’m not setting any kind of goal or limit except to take it out and type at least one word. And then I’m going to enjoy my plants, and straighten my house, and watch netflix, and play minecraft, and whatever else I want to take care of myself during this.

I hope you do what you need to and that includes taking care of yourself too.

Week 4 of April

Laura Highcove

Every once and a while, life happens. Well okay, you’re right, life is always happening, but now and again it really happens and you get swept up in just going because that’s all you have the time or energy for. That is the general explanation for the reason that I haven’t got much of anything done in the past month.

In a bit more detail: I had serious trouble with motivation on the Huntsman. Copper continued to lose weight. My new antidepressant suddenly made it so I could only get four hours of sleep at night and I had to deal with not sleeping and getting the medication changed. And I had a horse show and the practice and preparation for that.

As such, all of my writing goals fell by the wayside. I basically got next to nothing done. Luckily, despite the sleeping problems, the antidepressant was working and I didn’t fall into depression during this time. I simply decided I had to keep doing what needed to be done. (I did still get out my Newsletter, I was very proud.) And now that I’m on the other side of the horse show, and Copper has gained weight, and my sleep schedule is mostly under control, I was able to finally hit the reset button.

Because that’s the way I get back into the swing of my life when it’s gone off kilter, hitting the reset button. I basically had to let go of any lingering regrets about my lack of productivity (not easy) and just make a whole new plan. I joined up in Camp Nanowrimo for the encouragement of fellow writers that helped me push through finishing the draft of the Huntsman. I started working on a completely different story, to give myself a break from my Storyteller series. I wrote about six versions of this post that I was completely unhappy with before reaching the current version. I got my laundry done. (big deal after a horse show) And my hubby and I signed a design contract as the first step for finally getting our basement finished.

I went back and looked at the quotes that I put as the featured images for my writing journal posts, and I’ve noticed that a vast majority of them talk about doing things a bit or a step at a time, and just keeping that up as consistently as possible. I don’t choose those quotes at random, I look for something that speaks to me in the moment, so that’s just something at the heart of my outlook on life. And I think I’m okay with that.

My lack of achieving my goal does mean that I don’t get to play Kingdom Hearts 3 for a bit longer than I was expecting. My new goal is to reach my Camp Nanowrimo goal and see how far that gets me in my new story, and to get my April Newsletter out. Nothing huge, but for now, it’s enough.