More than a month without an honest blog post. Because I’ve been working hard…or hardly working.
In short, I ultimately did not participate in the National Novel Writing Month this year. I had everything ready to go, and at the closing bell on November 30, my word count towards a NaNoWriMo novel was a whopping zero. That’s not to say that I didn’t work on anything. As I had decided near the end of October, I chose to focus on the manuscript for “Payroll,” but that has also slowed down somewhat, and I’m losing faith that I’ll finish the manuscript by the end of the year as I had hoped. Am I disappointed? Of course, especially because I thought my idea for a NaNo novella was not bad. Maybe not great, but something to write in the insane pace of NaNoWriMo that I could feel comfortable with and not get too attached to.
But, as I said, I also didn’t get as much work done as I had hoped in general during November. Aside from increasing the amount of time I’m spending trying to find regular work, I’ve also had some depression issues that started around the end of October. This isn’t unusual for this time of year, and it’s been something I’ve struggled with in the NaNoWriMo years I’ve participated. Every year around this time, I start to suffer from a general depressed feeling. I’m pretty sure it’s not Seasonal Affective Disorder (more commonly known as SAD) because I tend to feel the same way around April and May of each year, too. It seems to run on a six month cycle, so it likely has a biological basis. I think I’m starting to do a little better now. It’s also probably the reason I haven’t written an honest blog post for over a month now.
I have started exercising and trying to improve my diet, not only to combat my current depression issues, but also because I really need to lose weight and get in better shape. I’ve had some other physical issues, and with my back problems getting worse as the weather gets colder, I’ve decided to actively try and strengthen it before I become bedridden again with back pain during the winter to see if I can make it easier or shorten the down time. When I weighed myself a couple weeks ago, I weighed in at 199 lbs. Not good, and my blood pressure has been responding in kind, being in a pretty consistent state of prehypertension. That’s the biggest concern. However, my girlfriend gave me twist stepper as an early Christmas present, something I can use to get a good lower-body cardio workout that’s low impact so my back is able to handle it. As of now, I’ve only lost about 2 or 3 pounds (my scale is not terribly precise), but I’m looking leaner in the face and neck, and my girlfriend has said that I’m looking different. I’m chalking up my slow weight-loss right now to muscle gain, as I’ve been taking protein shakes after my workouts to facilitate muscle-healing, but it seems to be having the side effect of building a lot more muscle than I’m used to. The fact that I’m looking leaner with much actual weight-loss would confirm this.
I’ve also started drinking these nasty vegetable drinks, which consists of spinach, broccoli, carrots, tomato, cucumber, a squeeze of lemon, and water blended together to get the maximum nutrients out of it. I’ll admit, it doesn’t taste great, but after a few time, it felt like my body was craving this drink, like it was desperate for the nutrients. Actually, it’s more tasteless than anything, so the squeeze of lemon gives it some needed flavor and opens it up a bit.
Of course, during all of this, I seem to have caught the cold that won’t die, so while I’m still doing all of these things to fix my body, a virus seems to have some other ideas. So, I’m cutting this blog post a little short as I’m still groggy from the NyQuil and it’s hard to concentrate. The only good thing about being sick is having a reason to take that stuff.
SheldonNylander.com 