Hey, Miss J!

5156.

That is my current world count for today. I plan on attempting to squeeze out at least another 1K before bed.

Or maybe I’ll be up late writing… I have no clue.

This contest has taken a lot more out of me than I ever expected.

I’m extremely sleep deprived… and confused about whether or not I’m hungry.

I thankfully don’t stink because I did force myself to shower today.

My eyeballs are aching. I’m cold.

My blood pressure has gone up again. Probably because of all the sugar and salt I’ve been stuffing into my gob.

I refuse to get on the scale until 3 days after I’m done with Nano.

Healthy cooking took a backburner to my pathetic attempts to balance my personal life and this very stupid writing competition!

I think I’ve consumed more sugar and salt in the last week than I did in the last three months!

Between all that and extreme bouts of nausea from the meds… and actually passing out from a lack of sleep – Yeah, last time I’m doing Nano.

The first time I got involved with the contest, I was in my 20s. The previous time before this year, the last time I was involved, I was still in my 20s.

I am nearly in my 40s now. My foggy, heavily medicated and aging brain doesn’t need all of this.

Not anymore.

Through all the pain… and yes… right now I am fighting another headache—I did teach myself that I could seriously write if I put my mind to it.

After this, with NtC, I’ll aim to update once a month.

Until it’s done. Which is great because I have a huge segment of one of the last chapters already penned. It’ll need edits of course, but yeah.

I’ve seen people on AO3 post 3-5 times a week. How on earth they can update so much and not die is beyond me.

Then again, their chapters do tend to be considerably shorter… Some of those are about the size of my blog posts.

Back in the early 2010s… Yikes, now I really feel old… Um, back then, my chapters were short like that. I’d get embarrassed because of it. Then, I didn’t want to write an update because it felt like it was too much.

My latest chapter of NtC… Chapter 20? Yeah, that chapter is 46 pages.

I kid you not. I started this chapter on the 23^rd. Just a few days ago. After finishing Chapter 19, which was 45 pages long. I started that chapter on the 21^st.

You see where I’m going here?

My joints and especially my backside have not had much of a break at all.

I’m going to try and attach a picture of where I am right now in the contest. I don’t have long at all to go before this month is over.

Like 3 days after today…

No pressure.

… I want to cry so hard right now.

…Because I’ve been fighting weakness too and thigh cramps.

I attribute all of that to not eating the right things for the last 7 days.

I never knew that thigh cramps were a thing, but it happened… and it was worse than Charlie horses.

Going to do my reading, Duolingo and get back to writing.

~J. Lyst