Wow, October flew right by. In spite of my efforts, it felt really hectic. Really, though, I should say that I’m glad I tried to make it less hectic – I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like if I hadn’t been trying to keep things simple!
My day job is really tying up a lot of my time, both physically (commute + work + commute = about 11hrs/day 5 days/week) and mentally (taking a lot of downtime to recover after work). It’s hard to get enough sleep, hard to fit in the things I like doing, etc. I have a lot of extra-jobular things I want to do, and it’s frustrating to find myself without the energy or time to do them.
But everything is a chance to learn and practice, right? So I’m trying to see this as an opportunity to practice self-care, and to work on staying centered in really stressful situations.
Comedy
I’m also watching really, really funny TV stuff to unwind. My favs currently:
- Community – Oh. My. God. This show just keeps getting more and more meta and awesome and fantastic. It’s delightfully bizarre, and features characters I adore (and adore to loathe). My favorite is (unsurprisingly) Abed Nadir, who is basically a walking version of TV Tropes. He is an expert on all things TV / pop-culture, and a major outsider even in the central group of outcasts/weirdos that make up the main characters. Plus, he’s cute, and makes up half of my favorite bromance of all time: Troy and Abed. I was trying to find a pic to sum them up, but I totally failed, so here they are rapping in Spanish.
- Parks & Recreation – This show is a very, very close second to Community. Every ep, it seems, just gets better and better. The characters are all ridiculous caricatures, but because they’re all like that, it works. The one quasi-normal guy is played by Adam Scott, who is a genius, and even he has a whacko backstory. I love it. Plus, Ron Swanson is the fucking man.
- Party Down – This stars Adam Scott and is my go-to show for making me feel better after a shit day at work. No matter how shitty my job is, it will never be as bad as being on the catering crew the show is about. Never.
NaNoWri…No.
I’m not doing National Novel Writing Month this year.
The last time I had a November where I didn’t write 50,000 words of fiction was in 2000. I was in graduate school. If you’ve heard me gripe about grad school, you know how that went.
So far, this November is superior to that one. It does feel weird, though. The end of the year is supposed to go: Halloween, NaNo, Thanksgiving, NaNo, panicked-prep-for-Christmas, Christmas, New Year. Now I have all this time to get ready for the holidays, I’m sort of at loose ends.
It’s kind of nice.
