May’s Moments of the Month: October // I Lacked in Pretty Much Every Aspect of My Life

The title of this post is not clickbait, unfortunately.

October was… a strange month, to say the least. It was another one of those months that felt like it somehow went by super quickly but also dragged on forever.

I was pretty much in a slump in every area of my life, from reading to blogging to writing to my mental health. I guess the only thing I truly excelled at was watching TV, which I don’t think… qualifies as a skill. Here’s to hoping November will be slightly better—it is my birthday month after all!!

I read 4 books this month! Which is the actual worst, considering how I was excited to have more time to read during the break and how we’re nearing the end of the Goodreads challenge and I am woefully behind. But… I at least started to get a bit of my slump near the end of the month!

I always start to slump near the end of the year, and I feel like with everything that’s happened in 2020, it’s hitting me especially hard this year. But that just means that it’s time for me to turn to graphic novels, webcomics, novellas, and other shorter books to read!

     

• Clap When You Land Elizabeth Acevedo // Acevedo’s writing is just… so profound and emotional. not my favorite from her but still phenomenal! ★★★★☆
• The Hammer of Thor Rick Riordan // [reread] I love Alex Fierro so much and that’s all I have to say ★★★★☆
• The Shadow of Kyoshi FC Yee // Kyoshi and Rangi are my favorite girlfriends!! I liked book 1 better but this was still great and I’m so sad there are no more Kyoshi books ★★★★☆
• The Stars and Everything In Between Victoria Lee // was really nice to see Noam and Dara learning how to live (together) after their trauma! also was a very quick read ★★★★☆ [3.5]

updates

I didn’t post nearly as much as I wanted to nearly as much as I wanted to this month, but considering how lacking I was in the reading, writing, and mental health aspects of my life… I’m not surprised. It’s the end of the year, aka the time of feeling slumpy, and even though I had a few post ideas, I just couldn’t find the motivation to write them.

However, the two posts I made in October were honestly some of my favorites of the year! And apparently you all really liked them too, so I’m happy with that and don’t need to lament over a lack of posts. (Also, an FYI for anyone who was interested in a Notion template of my pages: I ended up making one and you can access it here!!)

favorite posts from others

• Alison @ Antari Reads discusses fatphobia in books and also in the book community, and I highly recommend reading it!
• Chai @ Books with Chaima lists YA SFF books releasing in 2021 and all of them look so good!!
• Kate @ Your Tita Kate walks through how she writes her amazing reviews and gives some great tips.
• Fadwa @ Word Wonders lists books with asexual main characters for Asexual Awareness Week!
• Marie @ Drizzle and Hurricane Books is back from her hiatus and talks about some YA contemporaries that deserve more love!

So I’m participating in NaNoWriMo this month, but instead of the 50k goal with a novel, I’m aiming for 30k of short stories. I decided that trying to write 50k of my actual project would fail spectacularly seeing as I didn’t get the chance to work on the plot of it. But I still want to practice my writing and build my stamina, which is why I chose to write the short stories!

Here’s a snippet of what I’ve written, and if you’ve already seen this before… ignore how I completely switched the characters’ names lmao!!! After getting an unexpected, overwhelming positive response when I shared this on other platforms, and subsequently considering making the story a full-length novel, I realized it actually works better as a part of a longer work rather than a short story, so we’ll see what happens with this. D:

I’m always the worst at updating my progress in time on the NaNo site since I usually write around midnight, but so far I’m already behind my goal with only 1837/3000 words! Hopefully I’ll get the time to catch up, but again, I’m keeping this low-pressure. (You add me on the site if you’d like!!)

Unsurprisingly, my mental health dipped in October!! It always gets worse during school breaks because my brain is like “you don’t deserve rest, you are a machine who is supposed to work forever” so you know… that’s nice. I also have been suffering a lot from feeling absolutely frozen and unable to just get up and do. anything.

But, to be a nerd for a moment, dance has really been saving me and my mental health! I think I’ve mentioned this before, but this month’s classes especially just made me feel so good. Dance is so freeing and healing for me, especially so this year, and I’m endlessly grateful for it.

I also watched a bunch of shows! I finished watching The Legend of Korra and… I love Korra SO MUCH and I can’t wait to read the comics for Korrasami content! I also continued rewatching ATLA, though it was interrupted by my binge-watch of the 2 seasons of Haikyuu!!, which was very fun to watch. Then I watched all of season 4 of The Good Place in 2 days, and I sobbed my eyes out over the finale!

• read 10 books ✗ (I failed SO BADLY)
• outline WIP for NaNoWriMo ✗ (didn’t even come up with a basic plot :D)
• keep up with Reader ✗
• reply to comments! ✓
• do driver’s ed ✗ (I think I need to finally take this off my monthly goals…)
• get more sleep PLEASE ✓ (went from 6.7 hours on average to 7.3!)
• college prep ✓

• read 12 books (yes I have been reading very little and yes I am participating in NaNo but DAMN IT I need to win my Goodreads challenge!!)
• write 30k for NaNoWriMo
• keep up with Reader
• reply to comments!
• self-care (with the election and feeling of more academic pressure, I’ve been kind of stressed!)
• get >7.5 avg hrs of sleep
• college prep

My birthday!! I don’t usually make a big deal out of my birthday, but it’s still a thing that’s happening! It feels very strange to be getting older, especially since college is looming closer and closer on the horizon. I don’t have any plans (I never do), BUT I do have a school break the week after my birthday so I’m treating like that like a birthday gift. <small>And because I do get some people asking every year, here’s my wishlist!!</small>

US election results… I don’t even want to talk about this. Everything about this year in terms of politics has been the absolute worst, the system is and has been completely broken, and I am so exhausted and stressed! As I write this, it’s election night, but we probably won’t know the results until at least a few days later and I’m just. very panicked!!

NaNoWriMo! Like I said, I’m not going to be participating in NaNo the traditional way by writing a novel, but instead working on short stories. We’ll see if I manage to hit my goal of 30k or not, but no matter what, it’s nice to keep up a habit of writing every day and improve my skills!

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how was your October? are you feeling slumpy? are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? what are your favorite ways to de-stress? please take care of yourselves!!