Jobs and Critiques
I took a look at my blog page and realized that all of my blog posts for the last year fit on one page. I apologize to my readers. I'll do my best to blog more.
My life has been consumed by two things of late: writing and my husband's job hunt.
Two months ago, my husband graduated from college. Four years of struggle and hard work produced a degree in IT with a specialty in networking and security. He's been hunting for a job since early May. Three months later, he's had a few nibbles on the three dozen resumes he's sent out, but that's it.
Meanwhile, we have no income. Thank the good Lord for my generous family. They've let us keep our apartment and all our stuff as my husband tirelessly hunts for a job.
The affects on me have not been pleasant. I've been prescribed extra medication to control the overwhelming anxiety that was crushing me. I'm on a medication to hopefully keep me from lying awake for hours, worrying about everything that could go wrong. It works 90% of the time. I'm also on a medication to control the anxiety during the day that's thankfully not a benzodiazapine, like Xanax and Klonopin. It's also to help the symptoms of hypomania. That started a couple of weeks ago, my brain's reaction to the stress. Whenever I get stressed out, I get manic, and it turns into a vicious cycle of increasing levels of mania until I crash into a major depression. It's already been two weeks, so we'll see how much longer it will last.
In the meantime, I continue with my writing.
Getting out new material has been tough since I have been so stressed, and the symptoms of hypomania are really putting a halt on my creativity - racing thoughts mostly. It makes it hard to concentrate when my brain flits from subject to subject, rendering any focus on a single task nearly impossible.
I've been doing a lot of critiquing on a writing website I found. It's a great community of writers with forums as well as the main draw: peer review. It's called Scribophile. Sorry, this pen name isn't the one I use on Scribophile, so you won't find me there. My identity is strictly secret.
On my new favorite website, I've joined a group that's allowing me to have five people follow along and read all my chapters, getting a feel for the book as a whole, not just a single chapter. That's the website's only downfall in my opinion: most critiques are from people who will never read another chapter in my book. There's no critique of my plot or characters, only what they see in a single chapter. I've made some friends on the website, though, so it's brought more good than just having people read my work.
Among all that, I've also started reading a lot again, so I'm hoping to post more book reviews. There hasn't been a lot of knitting happening in a while, but I have projects already completed that I can post about.
I'll try to be more regular with my posts. I do love this blog, but I have a hard time balancing all the things I enjoy. The creativity involved in writing can be all-consuming, but that's part of what makes it so wonderful.
My life has been consumed by two things of late: writing and my husband's job hunt.
Two months ago, my husband graduated from college. Four years of struggle and hard work produced a degree in IT with a specialty in networking and security. He's been hunting for a job since early May. Three months later, he's had a few nibbles on the three dozen resumes he's sent out, but that's it.
Meanwhile, we have no income. Thank the good Lord for my generous family. They've let us keep our apartment and all our stuff as my husband tirelessly hunts for a job.
The affects on me have not been pleasant. I've been prescribed extra medication to control the overwhelming anxiety that was crushing me. I'm on a medication to hopefully keep me from lying awake for hours, worrying about everything that could go wrong. It works 90% of the time. I'm also on a medication to control the anxiety during the day that's thankfully not a benzodiazapine, like Xanax and Klonopin. It's also to help the symptoms of hypomania. That started a couple of weeks ago, my brain's reaction to the stress. Whenever I get stressed out, I get manic, and it turns into a vicious cycle of increasing levels of mania until I crash into a major depression. It's already been two weeks, so we'll see how much longer it will last.
In the meantime, I continue with my writing.
Getting out new material has been tough since I have been so stressed, and the symptoms of hypomania are really putting a halt on my creativity - racing thoughts mostly. It makes it hard to concentrate when my brain flits from subject to subject, rendering any focus on a single task nearly impossible.
I've been doing a lot of critiquing on a writing website I found. It's a great community of writers with forums as well as the main draw: peer review. It's called Scribophile. Sorry, this pen name isn't the one I use on Scribophile, so you won't find me there. My identity is strictly secret.
On my new favorite website, I've joined a group that's allowing me to have five people follow along and read all my chapters, getting a feel for the book as a whole, not just a single chapter. That's the website's only downfall in my opinion: most critiques are from people who will never read another chapter in my book. There's no critique of my plot or characters, only what they see in a single chapter. I've made some friends on the website, though, so it's brought more good than just having people read my work.
Among all that, I've also started reading a lot again, so I'm hoping to post more book reviews. There hasn't been a lot of knitting happening in a while, but I have projects already completed that I can post about.
I'll try to be more regular with my posts. I do love this blog, but I have a hard time balancing all the things I enjoy. The creativity involved in writing can be all-consuming, but that's part of what makes it so wonderful.
Photo Credit: "A Cup of Coffee On A Table Among Books" by Aplonia
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