Hello!

It’s always going to be a fantastic month with the 1st is on a Monday – my little organisational brain finds it incredibly satisfying and I can’t wait to start my first full month in my new job (at what point do I have to stop saying ‘new’? It’s been three weeks!).

My October Goals were somewhat of a train wreck – I expected to be unemployed the whole month and take some time for myself, work on creative projects and do lots of reading, but I got really depressed and overwhelmed by the concept of being unemployed for an indefinite amount of time and I started a job after only a week of not having one which had a much longer commute than from my bed to my office in the spare room, so time has been short, energy has been low but my mental health is on the way up (I hope!), so I’m cautiously optimistic about November.

Without further ado, these are the five goals I’ll be focusing on this month:

1 – NaNoWriMo

It’s National Novel Writing Month – the time where thousands of people all over the world get square eyes from looking at their laptops and attempt to write 50,000 words in just 30 days.

I saw a wonderful article the other day when I was doing some research on journalling of someone who just used it as incentive to write – he included journalling, blog posts and a fictional story (I believe) in his word count and although I’d love to write a 50,000 word novel this month, I think I want to include some ‘diary’ aspects to my word count too. Though they might not be a diary of my life and they might be relevant to the story, which would be an incredibly fun character development exercise if nothing else.

Wish me luck and tweet me if it looks like I’m not writing!

2 – Update my Portfolio instagram

I really intended to do this when I was unemployed so I could use it to get employed, but I haven’t updated my @salportfolio account in seven months, so I’m going to work on doing a bit catch up then it’ll be much easier to do little updates as and when (assuming I don’t forget about the account again).

3 – Cosplanning

I love the amount of words people mush together to make new words – cosplanning (thank you sibling for the introduction to that one!) is when you plan what cosplays you want to do (cosplay itself is a portmanteau of ‘costume’ and ‘play’, and yes I’m impressed that I used the word ‘portmanteau’ too).

I’ve spent all year saying I’m working on a cosplay, but I’ve spent all year putting it off but with the creation of the Mystery Machine prop for an office Halloween costume (see in my ‘Treasured In… October 2021‘ post), I’m feeling very creative and inspired but I want to properly evaluate what I’m capable of (both in terms of skill and the time I can dedicate) and figure out at least one costume to wear to MCM ComicCon next May. I have plenty of time, but if I’m doing it I want to do it well.

4 – Wedding Planning

As of November 5th, there’s less than a year till our wedding and it still doesn’t feel real! I feel like I’ve booked all the ‘big’ things but hopefully we’ll get really stuck in to working with the venue soon and it’ll start to come to life!

This month I want to review my goals for 2021 and work on anything that needs ticking off, particularly figuring out our finances in regard to the wedding and really knuckling down with the saving!

5 – Southampton trip

And with our anniversary in mind – my fiancé and I met in halls when we both went to Solent University in Southampton in 2015 so I thought for our last year before the wedding it would be nice to make a trip. We can’t go for our anniversary weekend but we’re tying it in with the release of a film we’re really excited about and we’re going to go to all our favourite old spots including Sprinkles Gelato for waffles, Forbidden Planet for nerd merch and maybe even wonder on down to the docks.

We’ve not been able to do any of the travelling we wanted to do this year, so I’m really looking forward to this weekend!

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Starting a new job which involves two 45+ minute drives every day is exhausting – and don’t get me wrong, I am exhausted – but I’m working so much harder on planning my time and prioritising what’s important to me. I save admin tasks like wedding stuff and finance tracking for days my partner is away with work so we can play video games and watch ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ when he is home. Sometimes I delete things off my to do list in favour of having a quiet night watching ‘House’ and doing some cross stitch because there’s no point spending three hours doing a task that will take one when I’m in the right mindset.

I’m always getting to know myself better (as we all are, I think!) and learning to adjust and work with myself rather than berating myself and burning out.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx