1 October 2020: Busy Month & High Hopes
How is it already October? And yet, how is 2020 not over yet? This entire year has been a hot mess and it's already almost over.
October is shaping up to be a busy month!
Oct 6th: the release of episode 3 of Write Reckless! "Emma Justine: Brainstorming, Fanfic, & The Count of Monte Cristo"
Oct 15th: the second issue of Alaura's Bookish Bulletin newsletter will be sent out (including story audio!)
Oct 15th: also my next blog post
Oct 17th: Make Me Read! installment 3
Oct 20th: exclusive content release for Patreon and Ko-fi
Oct 22nd: public story audio release
Oct 29th: yet another blog post
Y'all, this isn't even including my social life. I want to go to the drive-in movie theater (because they finally have one near me!), I'm gonna hopefully play D&D, and I might go to a drive-thru haunted house!
Despite how busy everything is shaping up to be, I'm excited to challenge myself to get all of this stuff done while being back to work. I committed to everything during vacation/Quaran-Times, so it's definitely bound to be a different experience now. Just trying to maintain the blog, I already know how difficult that is when I'm mentally drained from work. I'm still determined to try.
In that spirit, I decided I wanted to voice my hopes for the month of October. Different from goals, though similar, these hopes are more things I'm willing into the universe, though they might not happen:
I hope I will have more good days than bad
I hope my class will be able to run smoothly as we try to deal with distance learning challenges
I hope my creativity will flourish
I hope people around me are able to accomplish their goals
I hope no more major crises occur (though unlikely)
I hope I can figure out a balance between my work life, my writing life, my social life, and self-care
Will I be perfect this month? Not likely. Will all these hopes be fulfilled? Probably not. Am I sending good vibes out into the universe anyway? Absolutely!
It's okay if things don't go as planned. It's okay if things change. What's important is making sure that we're focusing on possibilities rather than past failures and disappointments. It's all about growth and learning.
Having a growth mindset is about accepting the failures and disappointments, and re-framing them in your mind as learning opportunities. While it may be heard to do this with mental illness looming overhead, it's not impossible and is worth trying. In fact, it does a lot to combat cognitive distortions in your thinking!
Here's to the start of a busy month with high hopes!