Long time no see, eh blog?

Been thinking about visiting you again these last few weeks, and here I finally am.

You know that stuff I said back in August, about trying to stick to the study and training and working and everything else? Yeah, it didn’t work. I burnt out, and suddenly none of those plates were still spinning any more. I stopped going to classes, and stopped training. Even work got wobbly for a bit. And other things too: I stopped eating well, stopped trying to maintain any sort of sleeping pattern, stopped having any interest in visiting social networking sites (which I’d previously been on constantly throughout every day). I stopped going out and seeing my friends. I stopped listening to my favourite music and basically had no interest in any of my favourite pastimes.

Yeah. Textbook depression, I know.

But.. I felt better. I wasn’t miserable -in fact, I had been much more miserable for months beforehand. And some of my stress indicators -like bad habits and eczema -disappeared completely. So while I wouldn’t necessarily say it was a good time for me, it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I learnt some things about my limits, and my ability to cope with stress, and about my priorities. And I decided that waiting another year to continue my studies (if I decide to do that) isn’t the end of the world.

So. I’ve been getting back into the training, slowly. Well, ok, I’ve only been doing some cycling, but it’s a start. I bought an indoor trainer for my bike because we had three very wet weeks in a  row here in Sydney, and it was a good excuse to do so. So I’ve used that a few times and it is a serious workout indeed! Very pleased. I really miss swimming and running too (I had another running dream the other night) so I plan to jump into those again too. Real soon.

I’ve also rediscovered a creative pastime that I stopped doing about 7 years ago: creative writing. All through primary and high school I was a fairly prolific writer, mostly fantasy and sci-fi. Mostly not very good (I did mention ‘primary school’, didn’t I?) but I thoroughly enjoyed the process regardless. Checking my files, it appears I stopped after my first year of university. Which I think can just be put down to the changes in lifestyle and living arrangements I was going through around then.

So, early in October, I started writing again. Since then I’ve completed four stories, and written several other random bits and dialogues and scenes. And I’m loving it. So far they’re all fanfiction, Torchwood fanfic to be precise, but I intend to get back into some original stuff again soon.

One of the things this lead me to was NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. I first heard of NaNo last year when a friend was doing it. I never did hear if she finished it or not, but I looked it up at the time and thought it was a big goal. The idea is to write a story with a minimum of 50,000 words, within the month of November. (Technically 50k is small for a novel, but it’s a big enough goal for a single month.) This year, I decided to do it -a week before the beginning of November, that is. At that point I had finished two stories, one 7000 words long and one roughly 24,500 words, so if I succeeded, this would be by far the longest story I’d ever written.

And I’m delighted to say I hit the 50,000 words mark on November 21st! With nine days to spare! Totally amazed myself, wrote a half-decent story, made some new friends, and had a great time throughout. Am absolutely doing it again next year.

So. That’s where I’m at, blog. I’m back, I’m totally keen to get back into training (I still have every intention of beating my SMH Half PR next May), and I’m looking forward to lots of fun! Yay!