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Hey! Hope you all are keeping well in this wonderful, yet dreary, fall season.
It has really been a transitionary month, more so than September. The dark and drear really snuck up on me and I had a really hard time getting back into the swing of using my Happy Light. I always forget just how much that improves my mood. And helps me find more energy to get things done.
October is a favorite month of mine, though. I like the idea of Halloween, the spookiness if not actually going out and doing any trick or treating…and we generally don’t answer the door either… The favorite bit comes because my birthday is in October. And in recent years I’ve been taking a whole week off for it, a staycation where I get to do what I want from the comfort of my own home. It is pretty great!
This year I was sick before my birthday and recovering on it. It was most definitely not the day, or week, I’d hoped. I’d not really planned much but I’d had a lot of ideas about what I’d wanted to get to, what I wanted to do. And it wasn’t just that I was sick, for the first time I experienced really bad heartburn. That is such a scary feeling. Especially when it keeps you from sleeping for a few nights before you figure out what’s going on.
We did make the most we could of the week, went to Barnes & Noble and really relaxed. I binged the first seasons of a couple of shows and had a bunch of really nice goblin days.
I am also further into my hyper focus/obsession with an app called Notion. Have no memory if I’ve mentioned this lovely program before but I’ve been using it like my brain’s external storage. It makes sense to my brain in ways that the separation of products in the Microsoft and Google suites do not. And, in that space I’ve found that I’m not alone, a lot of people (seemingly especially neuro-spicy individuals) really like what Notion has to offer. I like to say it is like having one bucket with multiple sections rather than separate buckets for everything. And that makes my brain very happy indeed. Notion is helping me keep track of myself, my thoughts, and I’ve been moving towards using it to help me stay on task and make plans and goals for the future.
Oh, and, I rearranged my office. I was feeling very stuck and disorganized. Apparently a new office setup really helps!
Novel Writing
I really fell off of this train in October. At least the back half of the month but for at least one week I do have an excuse of sickness. I’m not one who tends to try to write a novel in a month in November but I am hoping that this coming month will be better progress. Elle will need to hold on, I guess.
Artwork and Art Business
While I did do an art piece a day this October I was still very low energy in the whole creative scheme because Inktober was the only art I did all month long. Here it all is! I learned a lot about myself and my creativity, more coming on that in November's posts.
I also did receive my newest order of stickers, finally, while I was still recovering from being sick. They will be dropping the end of the first full week of November if all goes to plan! For my current stickers:
New stickers coming soon:
Blog
As with everything else this also fell off the rails a bit too, though it was also understandable. I missed a post gasp and tried not to feel weird about posting a book review because I had literally no other energy or ideas the week after being sick. I’ve not done book reviews in a while. I think it partly comes from worry that I’m diluting the content I should be making like talking about art and creativity but reading is a part of my life so I’m thinking I’ll bring back a bit more book reviews in the coming months.
Honestly even writing this, an objectively easy post wrapping up the month and reviewing how things have gone, is feeling hard. To be fair, I did take care of some bigger items that I’ve been putting off because, well, I’m a little scared. So I’ve already spend some other creative energy today.
Reading
I guess everything was slow in October, which makes sense if I’m trying to lean into a season of rest. Partly this is because I did read a draft of the hubs upcoming book, partly it was because I was sick, and partly it was because while I enjoyed The Goblin Emperor it was a bit of a slow burn and I was feeling out how I felt about what some people called cozy fantasy. Jury is still out and once the plot was going a bit more at pace I greatly enjoyed it. Sadly I would have liked more and as far as I know there is no more in the series proper though there is a related series that follows another character from the original book. May check that out!
The books I finished this month:
Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett, book 12 of the Discworld series. A thoroughly witty and hilarious journey of witches going to take care of problems abroad.
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. As stated above, I did enjoy this book, a lot by the end but it definitely started slow. I’ve heard some people place it as cozy fantasy but others state otherwise. As this would be my first foray into that arena I cannot say whether I agree or not and further study of other cozy fantasy is required, not a bad gig, honestly. Anyways I really wish that there was more of this story directly but will likely get to that related series at some point, as the TBR pile allows.
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill. This was brilliant. You can read my more in depth thoughts here since I wrote a whole post on this one!