'twas the Night Before Christmas

I have always loved the Christmas season. Though our culture has shifted the focus of this holiday to the commercial end of things, there's still something about Christmas that makes me smile. I think it has something to do with the lights. Seeing bright (if slightly tacky) light displays everywhere gives me a really funny, happy feeling. It always has. However, I think my absolute favorite part of the season is Christmas trees. The smell, the lights, the ornaments, I love everything about them. Whenever I'm feeling sad in December, I like to turn on the Christmas tree and just sit with it in an otherwise dark room. Something about it is incredibly calming to me. Yes, I know I'm strange. 

Christmas Eve is such an exciting day. You can feel it in the air, no matter where you are; last minute Christmas shopping, the smell of baking cookies, Christmas parties full of laughter (and screaming children). In my household, we spent a good part of the day together putting together Harry Potter lego sets to arrange around the base of the Christmas tree. As non-traditional as we are, it was still great fun! Even though the dog kept dropping her soggy toys all over the pieces and the cat kept sitting on them, we were still successful and our arrangement looks quite lovely, if I do say so myself. 

Now, all that's left is to fall asleep so that Santa can come to visit! Though it's against my normal sleep schedule, I mean to try! I love the excitement of coming downstairs on Christmas morning! It's something I'm not sure I'll ever outgrow! 

Merry Christmas, everyone! No matter your faith, I wish you happiness!

Creative Energy

It's so strange getting back into a routine once you've been working on something totally different for a while. During National Novel Writing Month, I was writing at every possible moment. All of my creative energy was channeled into that one source. Since I was also working with a specific goal and deadline, I was able to push myself harder and meet with greater success than ever before. Of course, now that it's over, I don't really know what to do with myself. For a few days after NaNoWriMo ended, I was mentally and creatively exhausted, so it was nice to take a step back and rest my mind a bit. Now, however, I'm starting to feel a little do-less. I have this excess of creative energy floating around and I'm having a really difficult time directing it. I jump around from one project to another, without making any real progress on any of them. I need to finish the cross stitch designs that I've been working on, but I'm feeling so scattered. I need to refine my novel, but I don't know where to start with that. I should keep up with my blogs, but I feel like I can't really capture anything interesting to say.
On the bright side, this has led me to the desire to learn something new or to return to the projects that I haven't worked on in years. It's been ages since I've picked up a pair of knitting needles, for example, and my jewelry making supplies have been in my closet for longer than I can remember. But this desire to start something new is a bit scary as well. I feel like it's likely to be a total disaster. I know that practice makes perfect, but that first project, the place to start, is eluding me.
I have so much creative energy bouncing around my brain, that my head wants to explode, but I need the inspiration to channel it into a new project, the inspiration to take that first step...

New Project

As those of you know know me in person will no doubt be aware, I take far too many pictures of my cat, Phantom. She is kind of like my baby. I know, its pathetic. I am destined to become a crazy old cat lady, and I am surprisingly okay with that. Anyway, onto the point. I decided to put those pictures to use and finally succumb to joining Tumblr. So, in addition to this blog, I am also running a Tumblr account based on Phantom's daily adventures. If you like cats or just want to humor me, check it out, promote it, be amazed at how cute she is or how lame I am, any of that.
http://phantomthetemplecat.tumblr.com/

She is also now on Twitter as @TheTempleCat and she'd love some more followers. Or she would if she really understood what Twitter was. I'm also on Twitter as @AydenAlendil. Feel free to follow me as well, though I don't Tweet that much.

Until next time, farewell.

NaNoWriMo

Hello Everyone,
By this point, I doubt that anyone is still reading this, and I must say that I find that totally understandable. I did just drop off the face of the Earth for a month. But I assure you that I had a reason! As many already know, November is National Novel Writing Month. For those who have not yet been enlightened, NaNoWriMo is an online challenge in which participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. If that sounds like insanity to you, let me assure you that it is. 50,000 words in 30 days boils down to 1,667 words a day, if you write every day. If you happen to get behind, it can be a nightmare to catch up. What's amazing, it that people all over the world undertake this challenge, even established writers like Maureen Johnson.
Though I've attempted to participate for several years, something always got in the way. It seemed that every November I would wind up with a romantic crisis which dulled my creative spirit and desire to write. These break ups were VERY poorly timed, I must say. However, this November, I decided that nothing was going to get in the way of me giving NaNoWriMo my all.
I am proud to say, that this year, I succeeded! Despite falling behind over Thanksgiving break, I managed to catch up on my word count and hit the 50,000 word mark last night. I'm really pleased with myself and excited to wrap up the story and edit my first draft over the next few months. I feel like I've accomplished something I can be proud of!

Anyway, enough about that for the moment. Now that my month of insanity is over, I should be back to posting with more regularity. I'm also working on getting a Tumblr set up and will post the link to that when it's up.