When I set my monthly challenge for October to be working more on my acting career, I was so excited about the things I had in mind. I had some things in mind that were bigger plans that I knew would be things I would need to save up for, but there were several things I knew I could work on. And honestly, I don’t really know how much I succeeded or failed at my challenge.
I knew that I would have the convention and that would be a big acting related event. And it did help my career in many ways, but my plan was to try to do more than just that. I wanted to do some research into classes, work on organizing things to be ready when I have auditions, and schedule and hopefully take new headshots. And I did a little bit of research work (part of that includes my tv research), but I didn’t do a majority of what I wanted to.
I don’t want to make excuses for myself, but I know why this didn’t happen. First, I was dealing with money issues and that made me hesitant to plan for anything that would require money. I also didn’t expect to be as tired after the convention as I was and that took a lot out of me. Part of being tired (and another reason why I didn’t do much for my career) had to do with my grandma passing away. I’m grieving this loss very differently than I expected and I think part of that has been that it hasn’t fully hit me yet. When my grandpa passed away, I was with my family a few days later. When I have had friends pass away, it felt more real because of how I had been staying in touch with them. This time, I don’t know if it will fully hit me until Thanksgiving. But for the past few weeks, I’ve been just having this weird feeling that is almost like I have a bit of grief and sadness affecting other things. I’m ok and nobody needs to worry about me about being depressed or anything. This is just how I am processing it and it wasn’t what I thought it would be.
Obviously, working on my acting career is a challenge that isn’t going to stop just because it’s a new month. I need to work on this and keep working on this. I still want to accomplish the things I had in mind for last month, so I will keep making plans and trying to get them done. I do still have the same financial restrictions for now, but planning can be done without spending money. And for the things that will require money, I can take steps towards those too.
And for my monthly challenge this month, I’ll be repeating one I’ve done in November before. I’ll be working on writing a book. I’ve stopped working on the book about online dating that I was working on in the past because I didn’t like how it was coming together. And a few months ago, I had the idea to change the book to be more about life lessons I’ve been learning from online dating. I’ve been working on notes and organizing ideas for what these lessons are so that I could be ready to start working on the new book. And I’m planning on working on it this month.
I still do not think I will have a finished first draft for the book after the month is done because I don’t know if the book is done yet. I know that I will have more stories from online dating that haven’t happened yet, so I will want to add those as they do happen. But I want to get each section that I’ve got notes on right now written during the month. I don’t know if I want to work on one lesson/chapter each day that I write or just try to work a bit every day. I’m allowing myself to be flexible and see how it works best for me.
I feel much better about working on the book this time because I do have notes that help me see the flow of how the book can go. I have shifted lessons around so that it makes more narrative sense to me. And I’m excited to be able to write down some of the crazier stories that weren’t going to be in other versions of the book because they weren’t substantial enough. But now, I can’t put a bunch of stories together in one lesson if they work that way. I can’t wait to see what happens as I write and what I might be inspired to edit and change as I work on it.
I do also have an idea for a fiction book about dating that I have notes on, but I don’t have the same pull to work on it as I do with my life lessons book. I also think reflecting on the lessons I’ve learned will be a good thing for me and will remind me that even though dating hasn’t been going the way I wanted it to that I am getting some good things out of it.
Hopefully, when I do my update after the month is done I will have some great things to share about how the writing went. I have high expectations for myself since this is not the first time I have tried working on this. I know how I didn’t succeed before and want to make sure I don’t repeat those mistakes. And even though this book will still be a work in progress after the month is over, I want to feel like I’ve gotten a lot of work on it done and that it’s more of a book than a bunch of ideas.
Good luck to anyone else doing NaNoWriMo this month! I hope you get everything out of it that you are hoping for!
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