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October

I am coming to the burnt-orange season when I can sit on the porch and write just like this.

I have settled on the heart of my anxiety. I have not written for weeks. I have been bottling it all up, hoping the force of my stashed passions will get me through 6,000 words each day next month.

I did not participate in NaNoWriMo last year, and I think that was a good decision, though I regretted it afterward. I remember how deeply I struggled to learn to do my job, and for how many weeks. It would have been idiotic to try to write a novel then.

I have felt myself change. I do not want to hide from the truth. That is not the point of writing in a blog. I realize that all throughout my life I have been holding myself back from my present situation. I have been aloof. Always my eyes were fixed on the horizon, and my attitude was that one day I would be in a position that suited me. I can see that last year I did that, reserving myself for my writing session at Starbucks.

However, I have come to the dilemma that writing is in life, not apart from it. I cannot write while I am living, but I cannot write without living. Thus, there must be a reorganization of myself, and I can no longer hold myself aloof. My writing has been but a vague shadow of myself, while a fantasy parallel to the novels I have spent my reading life reading, gothic novels and romance. That does not satisfy me anymore, and so I have not been writing, and I have been very, very anxious. This anxiety is enough to make me act out tremendously. It makes me feel what I have doubted for so long, and that is that I have not grown out of my writing. It follows me like a shadow and troubles my dreams. Unfortunately this is going to be a long month.

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