Quality Over Quantity

As usual, the beginning of another month has simply sped by and I'm just kind of left wondering what happened. I can't believe we're already ten days into November. Really, I'm going to take too long turning around one of these days and it will be Thanksgiving. Such is life when you keep relatively busy, I suppose.

As you may already be aware if you ever check in with me at my freelancing blog, The Creative Cat, I'm participating in NaNoWriMo this year for the first time in several years, as I finally have time for it, at least in theory. I'd been trying for some time to get my entire client base to a point where everyone I work with is paying premium pricing for my content and earlier in the year, I finally succeeded. I've been able to cut my overall workload in half as a result, meaning I now have actual time for creative endeavors of my own. 

I have to say, actually having time for something like NaNo in particular has been really pleasant. I'm working on a short story and poetry collection called Jar of Lies and so far it's going pretty well. I'm really happy with some of the ideas and think quite a few of them have some real potential. Others are just plain fun to work with, which is also OK. I'm a little bit behind on my word count at present, but it's nothing that I won't be able to easily make up this week. I don't actually have a deadline on the books for today, so should be able to make a nice, big dent in it this afternoon sometime.

Indian Summer

Indian summer is in full effect here in the Monterey area and I really don't like it much. Some people here love the unseasonably warm weather and welcome the chance to enjoy an extended summer. Being the fragile little Pisces that I am, I'm really very sensitive to heat, so I have to worry about problems like heat stroke. Especially since like most households around here, ours doesn't have air conditioning.

Thankfully, Seth is the type of guy that insists on doing anything he can to make me as comfortable as possible. Within the past week or so, two of the fans we depend on to stay cool when it's warm decided to kick the bucket. We tried to order a replacement in time for it to get here before the heat wave started, but there was some problem with the order on the vendor's end and it was unexpectedly cancelled.

Yesterday, Seth actually wound up walking five miles and visiting three different stores to get us a new fan so that we wouldn't fry to death. I'm really grateful that he did, too, because having this new fan in here today has made a massive difference. It's been warm, but I haven't even broken a sweat despite the temps being up in the 90's somewhere for most of the day. Thankfully, I didn't have any deadlines today, so I was also able to just kind of forget about work for a change and just vegetate.

At the Threshold of the Fall Equinox

Tomorrow is the equinox, so I guess it will officially be fall at long last. I can't even express how happy that makes me. It's time for cooler weather and nice, long nights. It's time to read Dracula and watch horror movies. It's time for big steaming homemade bowls of stew, and soup, and chili.

Then it will be time for the holidays. Last year, I think I felt like I'd finally made them my own. Not what my family, or my ex-partners, or society thought they should be, but what I felt they should be. It turned out the right approach combines religion with the same fun, cozy traditions Seth and I have developed by ourselves over the years. I am really looking forward to doing that again. My holiday season felt like it had a lot of meaning on more different levels than usual and that's something that's been missing.

........

I decided I'm not really going to bother with my high school reunion in October. The main reason is the tickets were prohibitively expensive -- for me with my limited income, anyway -- and I just couldn't justify spending almost $200 for Seth and I to attend something I'm not even sure I care that much about. However, I also really don't think I feel like wasting an entire weekend socializing with people I'm not even close to just so I can say that I did it. As nice as it was to see some of the old peeps at Robert's funeral, the introverted Pisces that I am still kind of couldn't wait to leave. An hour or two of forced social interaction is about all I can realistically expect out of myself these days.