Whole30 - Final Stretch - 2 Days Left

It took a LOT of willpower to sit back while my family pigged out on burgers, fries, and cupcakes for my husband's birthday.

I am almost done with my second Whole30 and for all the reasons I started it, I feel great. I feel like I have less stress, less cause for stress, and more control over my body, my mental health and my choices (both with food and otherwise). I wanted to feel like this, and I'm very happy I do. The only thing that makes me anxious is the possibility that when I'm done, I'll immediately go back to my old ways with food (I still crave junk food), which will end up erasing all this progress.

But I have a plan, and I'm feeling confident about it.

Only one indulgence a day (as small as a hershey kiss or as large as a cookie from Barnes n Noble, but only one...everything else I consume on said day has to be healthy and nourishing). Alcohol only on Fridays or Saturdays...even if I have a super stressful Tuesday, that's no excuse to crack open a bottle of wine. Every other meal/snack throughout the week should be nutritional.

I'm not gonna lie, I am very excited to reintroduce indulgences like a pastry or a glass of wine, and I'm feeling strong and confident that I'll be able to keep the indulgences in the parameters of the above plan. I'll also reintroduce sweeteners in my coffee/tea, because I really can't handle a cup of tea without honey or a coffee without a little bit of creamer. They'll be within reason and I think I can manage cravings otherwise even with a lightly sweetened English Breakfast tea at the book store.

Other benefits I've had from this Whole30...I've lost weight and inches. Maybe not as much as I did the last time I did Whole30, but I was breastfeeding then and weighed more when I started, both I think helped contribute to 10 pounds lost...this time it might be about half that much, but I'll report the total when I'm officially done on Monday morning.

It's nice to know I can come back to this "reset" every time I feel out of control. Now if only I could focus as much energy on other areas of my life (writing/jewelry)...I know I can, I just wish it was a consistent thing for me...like, my ideal life would be to have 10 extra hours per day so I could evenly split my time between family, work, writing and jewelry.  But sadly, that's not likely to happen.  If I could commit to allotting my time and making a habit of spending a little bit of my free time every day towards writing and building the jewelry shop, I'd feel accomplished. But it's so difficult to dedicate that kind of time every day. I've come to the conclusion that while my kids are young, I basically have to just stay up later than my husband and the girls, but when 10 PM rolls around and I have to decide between staying up an hour later than everyone to write or going to bed, bed usually wins out.

I'm going to boost my shop up again because it's easier for me to do jewelry related things with distractions than it is for me to write or edit.

Hoping this healthier mindset keeps me motivated and focused!

NaNoWriMo2016 - Day 5

I got to sleep in late this morning.  It's rare that I get up anywhere past 7:30 in the morning and today it was after 8, which is unheard of.  Not that I didn't wake up a few times beforehand...like in the middle of the night when our 6 year old came in the room complaining that she's afraid of ghosts (we made the mistake of letting her watch the new Ghostbusters movie with us last night...she went back to bed when I negotiated that she could keep her door open and our door open, in case she needed a quick getaway to a safe place in the event that a ghost showed up in her room) and at 6:45 this morning when our younger one came and crawled into bed with me for 10 minutes before I convinced her she needed more sleep (it worked, which is also very rare).

After breakfast (made by the newly returned husband) and a fun trip to stores to get unneeded things (like the ingredients to no-bake cookies, also made by the newly returned husband) (and the ingredients to cereal mix, made by me, currently in the oven)...we got home and had lunch, then I got my younger girl to bed for a nap and I went out to Barnes n Noble for 3.5 hours to catch up on my word count.

I got to 2,550 words and feel mostly satisfied with the quality of what I added to my story.  I'm still feeling like I have plenty of content and plenty of story line left to fill the pages.  And I like my idea...the female protagonist makes "memory movies" in the future...no one spends real time with anyone else...everything happens remotely with virtual reality...weddings, birthdays, anniversaries...and she creates them out of nothing but photos, video clips, and requests from her clients.  This way they can pretend they spent real time together with their new spouse or family celebrating a birthday, or friends celebrating a graduation, when really they only ever interact online.
Human population numbers are low, birthrate is low, etc. But for the most part, people are happy.  The female protagonist isn't though.  And the male protagonist wants everyone to be happy.  He wants to become the next president, and he probably will.  He wants to do a good job, fix the country's problems, etc.  The female and male protagonist get "matched" which means they're considered compatible by a system that reads and analyzes their user profiles, their online activity, etc.  They've both had unsuccessful matches in the past and are both pretty much sure the system is a joke, but they like each other, despite themselves.

She gets framed for doing something that's illegal in the future (lying online). Gets kicked offline.  He knows how dangerous it is to be offline and goes to look for her. Her best friend, the one who framed her to get her kicked offline, also comes to find her.  She tells her she's met communities offline that are full of loving, good, innocent and harmless people, they're repopulating the world and she didn't know another way to get them help.  She didn't want to put her friend in harms way, but knew she could influence the one person that could help these people.

Just realized I basically wrote another synopsis, which is basically the same as what I posted here a few days ago.  Oh well!

I love November (not sure if I'll be feeling the same way on day 15, haha).

And then you blink, and it's November

I'm committing myself again this year to participating in NaNoWriMo.  Fifty-thousand words in 30 days.  I have been outlining an idea for the past few weeks, an idea that surfaced over a year ago and now I feel the same unavoidable urge to get it out as I did with my first manuscript.  It's set in a future where people stop interacting in person and the human population keeps dropping.  It'll be set from the point of view of two people (man/woman).

I'm listening to the NaNoWriPod podcast and feeling very frustrated with myself for not staying up until midnight last night to write.  It never even crossed my mind, to be honest.  After trick-or-treating with the kids and trying to fit in some mind numbing TV time, which followed a full day of work and editing my WIP from several years ago (I've been sending queries out again and have already been getting those form letter rejections, trying not to take it personal again), I was just exhausted.  Actually, it's probably best I didn't stay up, since my 2 year old crawled in my bed at 1:45 AM for about 10 minutes before I forced myself to convince her that sleeping in her own bed would be better.  It actually worked...she stayed in her own bed the rest of the night, but that short middle of the night interruption is something I'm not used to now that both my kids sleep through the night.

In conclusion, for better or worse, here's to another month of committing my free time to writing! Good luck to anyone else starting this adventure today!!