A lot has happened over the past month. The most important part, though, is that I’ve been actively fighting my gray friend on multiple fronts. I’ve started therapy with a really good therapist, and I’ve also started medication, although I haven’t noticed any changes on that front (it’s only been a week since I’ve started them, though).
My therapist is pushing me to get out of my cocoon and try new things. She noticed how much I light up when I talk about my books, and at her prompting, I’m going to join a writing group. I’ve been wanting to find a writing group for some time, but all the groups I’ve reached to were either full or never got back to me. I think I’ve finally found one that might work, so cross your fingers for me.
Another big thing that happened this month is that I finally started my research on my dissertation. Step 3 is finally underway. I observed my event. Now, I just need to get some students to volunteer to be interviewed and then do some document analysis of their story prompts. My goal is to have all of those pieces done by the time we go on winter break so that I can start step 4 (writing my dissertation) during break. Here’s to hoping everything goes my way, because so far, not everything has.
Finally, the other thing that happened this month is that I took a serious stab at NaNoWriMo. I tried it once before and gave up about a week in. This year, though, I wrote pretty consistently until the week before Thanksgiving when I had a pretty nasty work week (doing my dissertation observation and hosting several big events). While I lost my daily writing streak, I still managed to end the month having written 34,461 out of 50,000 words. In other words, I’ve got the first third of book three out of the way. Not too bad, if I say so, especially since writing that same number of words for book two probably took me about three months.
November hasn’t been the easiest month, but I’m grateful that things are getting better for me. I’d love it if I could banish my gray friend by the time New Year’s rolled around, and while I know that’s not realistic, I’m just glad for every positive step I’m taking toward better mental health in the meantime. Plus, other things are going well. I’m making progress toward my doctorate, book three, and improving my writing. That’s definitely something.
Mindy Kinnaman 