Monthly Re-cap - Halloween Edition
As mentioned, October wasn't a very productive month and, thinking on it, I really haven't had a particularly personally productive month since I started working. I feel like I felt it more in October, but I also remember feeling pretty unhappy about August's evaporation. None of this is really all that surprising. Kay and I did an audit of our time again last month and came to the conclusion again that we've got very little post-work time available to us and the difference between my time while working and my available productive time while working at the college part-time or not being employed at all is pretty staggering.
October was a tough month in particular though because, as time has gone on, the presidential rhetoric is increasingly bad, and the brown shirt-esque terror continues to escalate. I could go on with my analysis of how this functions and how it's spread, but I won't too much - just that it's terrifically stressful. Trump is a catalyst and goes on to essentially bring the latent facism buried in the American subconscious into an active mode, and it's impossible to avoid. The only useful way would be a media fast, and I'm not convinced that not knowing is better than knowing.
Additionally, our cat was sick for almost the entire month and has only recently begun effective treatments - that's been very difficult to deal with emotionally. She's not an old cat, and it was a huge surprise. We've gotten some help dealing with the costs of her treatment from friends, and that's been as helpful emotionally almost as it has been financially. The period of my working has been plagued with several sizeable, sudden financial issues and the only thing that had been stopping me from getting really depressed about the costs is that they would have happened anyhow and they were often the results of the long term deterioration of our living conditions without being able to repair or replace infrastructural issues, and the costs are only indicative of our suddenly being able to meet the challenges posed by daily life.
Moving into November, I was thinking that I was going to have been finished with my novel already where summer of last year is when I had started in earnest - but July is when I started working and there had been a brief hiatus before that, even. I had taken a small break to finally finish Capital, and returned wanting to work, but haven't made much headway. Given that November is the month of NaNo, I'll sort of symbolically be focusing on writing this month, but I haven't intended on specific word count goals.
We also went to a Halloween party last weekend, which I felt good about and, as I told our hosts, I really don't go out anymore unless I really want to so that's a good indication of if I was having a good time. It was pretty low key, and a bunch of people left to go see the Rocky Horrorshow as it was getting later - but we still got back pretty damn late. Since we don't do that very often, it was sort of a special occasion in its own right.
I turn 35 this November, and that feels weird and not pleasant - but not entirely unpleasent, either. It's been on my mind throughout last month. I guess we'll just see how it goes.