I took a four-day weekend over the Thanksgiving
holiday, and each day was singularly devoted to one activity. Running around
during my work week multi-tasking like a madwoman and fitting in leisure activities
helter-skelter has caused me to forget the pleasures of clearing my schedule,
calming the chaos in my mind, and letting a day be entirely focused only one
thing.
On Thanksgiving, I went to my friends’ house.
She had graciously allowed me to invite another friend, too—someone I had been
wanting her to meet for a long time. I was a little nervous, introducing two very
close friends from different eras of my life on the basis of intuition alone.
But I just had a feeling they’d like
each other, and bam! They hit it off instantly. I’m happy that they each have a
new friend now, but mostly I was selfishly happy because I have been feeling alone
lately, and had been looking forward to this Thanksgiving a lot. I had a deep longing to bring my
tribe together, and this was my way of engineering that. It’s important for to
me to affirm that I have a family here, and by getting everyone together in the
same room to share food and companionship, I felt safe, affirmed, and
connected. Feelings of safety, affirmation and connection have never been a
given in my life—I’ve always had to fight long and hard to find them. I’m envious of
people who can take those things for granted, who have simply never known the
lack of them. For me, they are precious things that once garnered, I must
nurture and protect.
We had a great time cooking, eating, talking and
laughing into the evening. The luxury of being able to devote an entire day to
simply being with “my” people felt deeply satisfying. Growing up in a military family,
I've never taken friendship for granted. I have never taken it as a given
that a community will be there for me, or that people will stay in my life
forever. So to have one day of being able to bask in the companionship of good
friends and a shared connection from the past was a real gift.
Video games are something I’ve always used to
calm my overwrought brain, and I have been going non-stop at work for
months now, to the point that I'm close to burnout. I’ve always had excellent concentration
once I get into the “zone” and get my focus onto something. But my job entails
multiple interruptions, mini-crisis’s, and constant disruptions to my brain flow which,
as an introvert, I find exhausting. I’ve adapted, but it takes a toll. Having recently
discovered Neverwinter Nights, I decided to try binge-gaming on Friday, and
played for eight hours straight It felt completely blissful to lose myself in
a singular activity, with no pressure to do or accomplish anything else and no
interruptions. I got my feisty little Rogue up to level 30 and I beat the crap
out of the pirate king, then I ran out of bag space and gave up. It was fun
and I don’t feel the least bit guilty for blowing an entire day on a D&D-based video game I am way too old for.
Yesterday, I decided to clean up my act and
spend the entire day working on my novel as an homage to the last day of
National Novel Writing Month. I’ve discovered that it’s not a good idea to try
to write a novel in a month. It’s just discouraging. I wrote for almost six hours
straight on Saturday, and I feel like I barely put a dent in. At least when I’m
pecking away at it a few pages at a time, it feels like slow but steady
progress. But I wrote until my fingers hurt yesterday, and all I could see was
how little difference my massive effort made in the overall completion of the
first draft. I can’t fathom how anyone can possibly write one novel after
another like it’s just nothing. I’ve focused my writing almost exclusively on the
novel this month, and it’s not even half done. But the good thing is, writing
for a long stretch of time really helped me get into my character’s head. I am
committing the unpardonable sin of writing it in first person present, so my
character’s voice is all I really have to carry the novel through. She’s a very
flawed person—a blustery bully, scattered, delusional, loud, and given to
excess, but she also possesses a ferocious artistic genius and a huge heart—it just
takes a while to drill down to it. She gives me courage and she makes me laugh
at myself, which are too qualities I am in usually in short supply of.
--Kristen
McHenry
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