Anybody else stressed?

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inoue77

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Now I want to be clear that I'm not stressed to write a book in a month. I've done it before for NaNo and I tend to write 1200+ words a day anyways when I'm writing so it's not a huge change. But I still find myself... anxious. Not in a "oh-God-I-can't-do-it" way, but because my entire household has recently gone through a round of colds and flus. I got a cold a week or so ago and then the youngest in the house got another bug (lucky us!) and now I'm feeling the incessant scratchy throat and feeling a bit miserable.

A cold's a cold, I know that. Nothing to be done. But I wonder if anyone else is feeling stressed out by their life (potentially) interfering, obligations, and/or work or family things stepping in the way? If this cold doesn't get worse I'm sure I could write anyways, but still. Anybody else worrying, and not because of the writing?
 

KatJamez

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I definitely am. Work has been interfering a lot lately and will continue to do so throughout the month of November for sure. Using my lunch half hour is not going to happen like I planned, so I am at the last minute trying to get a "calm frame of mind".
 

JustJess

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Yes. My 15 year old daughter is just recovering from Mono (tons o fun). I am a birth doula, I have 4 women due in November, they can go any minute and I can be gone anywhere from 6-24+hrs at a time (during which time, writing is out of the question). My anniversary and my daughter's Confirmation is the 21st and my son's birthday is the 30th. I'm more stressed about missing writing days than the actual writing.
 

IAMWRITER

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Yeah, I've got 3 uni assignments to do this month as well as the usual readings every week too. Plus, I'm going to a few concerts this month too and a video game that I've been waiting years for (literally) is out this month too. Oh, and I prefer to do Christmas shopping this month too before I leave it too late and freak out.

So yeah...November is very busy for me haha. I think the first few days of November will be important in finding a balance and if I get that balance right, I think I can manage 50k words...I think ;)
 

lianna williamson

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Yep. I've got my son's birthday party to pull off, Thanksgiving to host, and the busiest week of my work year (which happens to also be Thanksgiving week) to get through. That's all in the second half of the month, though, so I'm planning to put in a lot of hours the first half and give myself a word count cushion.
 

Nerdilydone

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Being childless and unsick, no worries from that department. I do, however, need to volunteer during morning hours at an accounting place to make sure I get a proper resume up so someone will actually want to hire me. I'm nervous about getting volunteer work/time constraints.

But the personal glory of actually succeeding will be all worth it.
 
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Sage

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Despite the fact that I will be, once again, traveling all November long, the demands on me during that traveling is a little less than last year, when my sister's wedding took place a week before Thanksgiving.

However, the way I have set up my NaNo project requires me to write every day. Last year I could knock out 50K words before the wedding trip to win NaNo, have several days without writing, and then finish the novel before the end of the month. This year, it doesn't matter if I'm visiting with my godmother, helping with Thanksgiving dinner, flying and driving for a full day, etc., I have committed to writing, editing, and posting an episode each day. I don't know what an episode will look like, how many words I can expect on an average day, or whether I'll have days where I'm getting in under the wire or where I'm going nuts because I've already finished that day's episode. So that's where my stress is coming in.
 

Corussa

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I sympathise, inoue77; I'm stressed too.

Like you, I know I CAN do it, since I have once before, but life ('Don't talk to me about life...') is feeling like very hard work at the moment. Mainly for two reasons:

(a) My newly retired mum has been living here since late August and we don't know when she's going to be moving out. She's recently moved home, and the plan was for her to live with us from the day her house sale completed until she had the keys to her new home. Which actually turned out to be a period of three weeks and one day during October (not that I'm counting ;)). But she decided to move in five weeks before her sale completed - her reasons are still unclear - and only once she got here did she say that she wasn't planning to move into her new house until she'd got it rewired and repainted and recarpeted and so on. I'm trying to be patient, especially as it was my idea to let her stay, but it's got even harder in the last week or so, now that she has her own house again. She goes there every day for a short while, takes a few boxes with her, but shows no interest in moving in. I get that it's not much fun living in a house if you're having stuff done to it, but I would not use that as a reason to live in someone else's home indefinitely! It's also aggravating having all her furniture and stuff here - again, even though it was my suggestion, to save her the storage costs. I get particularly stressed since I work from home, and I am used to being quite solitary, so it's sending me somewhat batty having anyone who isn't my husband in our house for any length of time.

(b) A much smaller stress-causer (by comparison) is the fact that my husband - after I had planted the idea in his head and encouraged him - is giving up his incredibly stressful, badly paid job in a week or so, so I will be the sole earner. Which wouldn't be causing the stress it is if my mother/his mother-in-law hadn't been hanging around the house almost every day for well over two months, with no end in sight!

tl;dr: whine whine whine, whinge whinge whinge. But these things were brought about by me, so I can't complain (or shouldn't complain, since I'm patently doing so). And I will not use them as an excuse not to win NaNo! At least, I hope not...
 

Thelassa

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I am completely overwhelmed already this month. My fiancee quit her job a few weeks ago, so I'm having panic attacks about our finances and the possibility of spending Christmas under a bridge. I'm trying to correct a mistake from my 2013 taxes and hopefully reduce the tax levy on my wages, which adds to my financial anxiety. I had a cortisone injection in my spine a few days ago that is supposed to help with my pain from the herniated discs I wound up with from a back injury last spring, but it's going to take a couple of weeks to kick in. I also haven't been sleeping well because if I'm in any position for too long, my back hurts worse and that wakes me up every two hours. In the meantime, I'm in more pain than I was before. I also work for the postal service, and November is when things start to get super busy and I can expect 10 hour shifts almost every day for the next couple of weeks, then 10-12 hour days every single day as Thanksgiving approaches, and the looming shadow of December is already creeping over me with it's mandatory 12 hour days and potential six-day work weeks. Not that I don't need the overtime, but when my entire life becomes work-sleep-work-sleep for a solid month, I get really depressed and cranky.

I've been so excited for this year's NaNo because last year was such a blast and I met a lot of wonderful local writers who I stayed in contact with. I know what I'm going to write, I fiddled around with one of the fancy writer's programs to learn how to use it in time to write with it, and was counting down the hours to midnight all day yesterday. Then we went to a kickoff write-in, and I went completely blank because I hate opening paragraphs with a passion. Everyone was bragging on their thousand words, and I couldn't come up with a first sentence. Then I felt like a bitch because my fiancee stopped writing to try and coax a beginning out of me and I just wanted to mope and shut out the world.
 

inoue77

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I hope everyone gets through okay! Sounds like I'm not the only one with a lot on my plate--and a lot of you sound like you DEFINITELY have more--so in a strange way that's satisfying. I'm about to begin writing. Where I live there are few to no meet-ups so I'm alone save for online activity. Thanks for the encouragement!

Good luck with all of your lives... Oh yeah, and with NaNoWriMo, too.
 

AshleyEpidemic

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I'm always stressed that life will get in the way. Every time I've tried camp, I've always failed because life gets in the way and I et distracted. Luckily that hasn't hurt my progress in November. I'm paranoid because I'll be traveling to Atlanta during this NaNo and the number of people in the car keeps growing so I'm scared they'll interrupt my writing. I need to get it down. Goal must be met.
 

Evabeth

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I'm super stressed right now. My computer crashed, and the only replacement I have for it refuses to backup my work and struggles to transfer simple word processing documents to a flash drive. 30 minutes! I wish I was joking. At any other point in my life, I would have purchased a new laptop by now, but with three surgeries this year and one more on the way, I won't have a new laptop for a very long time.
 

EMaree

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Real life has pretty much torpedoed my NaNo chances already, so I'm a little bit down about that. But hey, it can't be helped.
 
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Nerdilydone

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Real life has pretty much torpedoed my NaNo chances already, so I'm a little bit down about that. But hey, it can't be helped.

I'm sorry! Man, that's so annoying when that happens. Two years ago I tried NaNo, but my apartment building caught fire towards the end of the month. I didn't lose much, but still. I hope your circumstances are less dramatic.
 

JFitchett92

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Getting in the words for NaNo has been tough. I'm working full time, job hunting and trying to balance my time with the wife and kids. A lot of my writing has been between the hours of midnight and 2am. I'm on under 1k a day average because I'm either too tired to write for long lengths of time, or I'm just not finding the words. If I get halfway through the novel by the end of november I'll be happy, but even that's looking difficult right now.

If only I had an unlimited source of income! Then I could free up about 60 hours a week of free time!

EDIT: It's 1:30am, and I just added another 2k words with relative ease. A few high yield days should put me back where I need to be by the third-quarter (I hope)
 
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