sick day and introverted musings

I have been under the weather all day yesterday. I suspect an intense stress and anxiety attack as the main cause. Things at work are rather stirred up at the moment and important decisions have to be made.

In the middle of all this I found myself thinking about a bit of a revamp for this blog. Maybe it's my way of coping with all the other matters that demanded for my time and attention. I am also feeling that familiar itch to lock myself up in a room for days and write my books without interruption.

It is Saturday and I will have to get some work tasks done. Then tonight I might be stepping out a bit to visit a friend whose father had just died. If events unfold as planned I might also end up telling another person how much I had been hurt by his behavior weeks ago and for which I have hardly forgiven him.

Yes, it is most likely too much anxiety and stress that is getting me all sick and tired in every sense of the words.

I am reading this book :

It is written by Sophia Dembling and it caught my attention while I was browsing in the bookstore last Thursday.  It is easy to read and very uplifting for an introvert like me.

I like the chapter that discusses friendship:

"What is a friend? We probably all have out own definitions. For me, it's someone I don't feel alone with. Who doesn't bore me. Whose life I connect with and who takes reciprocal interest in my life. It's someone I feel comfortable turning to when I need to be talked off the ledge, and for whom I am glad to return the favor."

"Once we start investing in a friendship, we start weighing what we get back. It's a make-or-break time. And for introverts, the investment can feel costly in terms of energy expended. It's the points when we start asking, 'why bother?' --- a legitimate question, as long as it's treated as a question rather than a blow off. Is this person willing to see you, and fun to be with, one-on-one? Does the conversation flow? Is it satisfying? Do you feel energized or depleted after time with this person? I love friendships where the conversation is so interesting, you can't end it even when the visit is supposed to be over."

Sometimes I feel I could use a couple more people who could be real friends. I could relate when my sister moans her lack of a girlfriend posse. We both dream of a constant group of four to five girls sharing the same values and overlapping some interests. The values are important. We could like totally different music but having the same values mean we agree on the things that matter -- in our case those would include compassion for animals and care for nature, reciprocity and responsiveness in relationships, respect for religious beliefs, just to name a few.

I am an introvert who is rather pained by the fact that I have to survive in the world of advertising. I am writing myself a whole notebook on the subject to sort it out and maybe find something that could ease me through until the time that I could fully focus on my book-writing and art-making. I don't want t spend days of my life just gritting my teeth through "shoulds" and "musts" until I could literally afford to be simply a writer and an artist.

Sometimes I feel like the effort will kill me. Pushing myself to be the kind of person everyone expects and then be the kind of person I really am. It's a tightrope walk without a net.

I promise to be brighter soon.

NaNoWriMo quick post

I am on the fourth day of the NaNoWriMo challenge and I have more than six thousand words.

My novel is a fantasy with magic and dragons and a love story thrown in for good measure.

I mustered up the courage to join and afterwards to persevere with the challenge because I was sent messages by the ghosts of two authors : Doreen Gamboa Fernandez (a local author who was also my journalism professor in college) and Diana Wynne Jones (popular British author of the Chrestomanci series). Appropriately these happened right before Halloween and on All Souls' Day.

My cat Mogget has kept me company through the late writing nights.

I powered myself with coffee, pizza, Coke, and occasional trips to write in McNeighbor for a change of scenery. This was just for the first three days to get me going with the first few thousand words. I am on a good pace now and no longer need extreme measures to keep writing. So far so good.

In the process of writing this novel I have discovered a whole new level of joy.

My novel writing is interspersed with a lot of journal writing, sometimes like a running commentary on how the novel writing is going. Sometimes the novel writing triggers other writing project ideas or life project ideas and I put those down in the journal. I have never written so richly, not since the time I was spilling out love poems almost everyday when I was in my twenties. The poetry has been sparse for the past ten years but I can feel it gearing up for a comeback soon. Oh what lovely time lies ahead!

I invested in a paper dictionary and thesaurus because there is nothing like the feel of paper and smell of ink when you are in the midst of creating a world in words. I also find the dictionary apps and online dictionaries too distracting with too many extras on the side. I also want my resources portable and not dependent on battery life. I want all the battery life of my iPad spent on writing.

A part of me regrets that I have not done this sooner. And then another part of me responds with the thought that there is always a Perfect Time for everything and Now is my Perfect Time for this. There is nothing to regret.