How does one add a title to Blogger posts? - test title - so far it seems to be the first line?
11/11/13 11:29 am Monday, Veteran's Day

The wrimoer was balking at having to sit down to write so soon again. She had worked at the writing for 80 minutes the previous day, but then had done so much else involved with the writing afterwards, that it felt as if she had been immersed in the project for a very long time. Much as she would feel at the end of any kind of immersive session like that that she was eager to get back to it the next day, the next day invariably brought a need to distance herself from it.

After the previous day's writing she had spent time setting up a new blog for it so that she could immediately publish the writing. This was as her experiment to see whether one's writing improved if one knew it might get read. Then she collated all she had written up to that day into one file and submitted it for word count to the Nanowrimo web site. And, she posted an excerpt of the writing to the website. She used the day's writing has her excerpt.

The compromise this day to get herself to write was to just agree to do a half an hour. She had set a timer for it. If she wanted to do more fine, but at least she would get that much done. She was still filled with misgivings over the whole thing though. Misgivings that she was wasting her efforts and her time. As she wrote this idea, the question came - why was it ok to spend several hours browsing in social media or reading anything of interest to her, but not ok to spend several hours writing like this? Was it that doing the writing, the more she did it, implied she would be stuck having to do it through the rest of the month at times that it would be extremely difficult to do it because it would so conflict with other things in her schedule. If she invested heavily now, she would feel too tied. One never felt truly invested in strictly for pleasure activities. There was a difference. There one could stop doing them and not feel guilty about stopping. With the writing, once one had gone that far, one would just not feel free to stop.

Ironically that was also the problem once it was all over. It stopped. It left a hole in the fabric of one's days. In the purposefulness of one's days. There was something so beneficial about feeling one had to do a thing on a daily basis. She had to find a good routine around this though, or she would end up not doing anything with it.

She thought that she needed to put an aspect of play into the project. She needed to find a better way to reward herself for her efforts so that she really enjoyed having done it. The way she had made her walking in the house into a kind of game. That was also usually done in small manageable chunks. It was probably better to get a good rhythm going over a longer walking period but for now she just sought to do as much as she could, even if it only meant small amounts at a time.

The walking routine had really been interrupted by her having to go on foot to the library and anywhere else in walking distance since her car was now apparently completely out of commission. She had not gotten the official word directly from the mechanic, but she had heard indirectly. Any day that she walked to the library, meant she did not do any walking in the apartment routine. That was enough to break the routine. Perhaps she should keep just a bit of that habit going just to stay in the habit of doing it in the house. It could not hurt.

Was she ready to play with the story of Hansel and Gretel's brother Tansel? Not now. She was just balking in general, being stubborn.

She had been pondering again in search of a comparable activity in image making that matched this activity of writing. What was like it? Letters to people with sketches in them as Van Gogh had done? Could one sit there drawing scenes for an hour? She had love
half hour alarm rings - 12:01 pm reset for another half hour.
She had loved being able to go to the sheep farm and sketch the sheep with their lambs at the end of winter. She would sit in the car alongside the fields of one particular farm. The sheep were there because at that hour their food was still there. That was quite a few years ago though. The farmer and his sheep had long ago moved to a larger property up North. There was no more such sketching to be had.

There was the cow farm up in a nearby town. She used to go drawing there. It was very picturesque. They had an unusual breed of cattle. Tourists were always stopping to take a quick photo of the herd grazing. It was so unpredictable where the herd might be though that she had long ago given up trying to go sketch them. It was a long way to drive with the small hopes of being able to see them out there. They were also often too far out in the pasture to see properly. It was just all too unpredictable.

She loved being able to draw figures and animals in action. Some actions were just too rapid to draw. Sports would seem to be great for such quick figure sketching. She had tried to draw hockey skaters on a local 'pick-up' flooded rink. She had had fun with it though it turned out as a bunch of squiggles or scribbles.

She should really be starting on the commissioned work that she had to do every year around this time. This job had gotten so offtrack when she had done the Nanowrimo to completion two years ago.It had set everything else back and she had ended up feeling so bad about everything. That was another reason she had such doubts about doing this this time. She hoped she would find it in herself to do more writing at night where it did not cost her the daytime. In the daytime was when any efforts towards anything seemed to have such heavy time prices because of the way the daylight fled.

The other day she had sat down to what felt like a reasonable starting time. The sun was full on her. It was a lovely setting and atmosphere. By the time she had finished her stint though, the sun had that look of having turned its path to not just its descent, but the part of its descent that signalled it would disappear shortly. She always hated that look. Why did it have such associations for her? How could she give this hour better associations so that they did not make her feel so bad. The whole landscape reeked with this look just from the angle of the lighting on everything.

What were all the associations this meant for her? How much did others see or feel it this way? She could not remember this being that bad when she had lived further south in New York. Did they just have less light up north here. It would soon grow dark so soon here. It was bad enough already, but they had not yet reached the shortest time. There were several weeks to go for that.

Coming into this winter, or the changing of the clocks, had not been quite as bad as in previous years, because of how she felt about her adult art class. She had started seeing how coming together with them on  winter days had really made the winter better. This year she had found herself relishing the idea of it.

Perhaps the winter and daylight problem was more an association with a big reduction in being around other people. It still would mean that somewhat if she had no car.

12:31p next alarm! She set it for one more half hour. This last alarm had rung so soon it seemed.

... but she did not intend to rule out having a car. One never knew where, when, or how what one needed or wanted came to one. The walking to the library was cold and hard, but also had great benefits and fulfillments. With the new wheelie for her art supply bag that a student had given her, she was equipped to get to the library on foot whenever the weather allowed. She was feeling healthier already because of this walking and because of the enthusiasm she was experiencing  for the adult class.

She longed to be able to hop into a car and go where she wanted, but there were also not that many places she wanted to go. That had been a problem for her the past several years. She had felt so stifled living in this area. She did not like needing a car to get to places. But neither did she really want to live in a big city anymore.

Was she hearing more thumping around downstairs that did not sound right? It could be a child visiting and jumping around. Every once in a while it seemed like she was hearing that kind of noises, often accompanied by the sound of short quick running footsteps that little kids made. In her building it was hard to judge where sounds came from.

The cat had slept all day in the chair.  By evening he wanted some food and then wanted to go out. That meant he would probably spend the night out in the cold and/or wet. She hated having to let him out in the evenings. That was what he liked though. If she started keeping him in overnight, he would not get to acclimate to the cold. It would be too much of a shock for him if he did end up out on a very cold night. This way he would at least be used to it. She only hoped he would choose on his own to stay in at night during the very cold times. It would drive her crazy to have to run downstairs to try to call him in and worry herself  over whether he might have showed up too late after she had called for him. She never knew how long she should wait for him. He just did not respond consistently. It would be a reassurance to know there were many places for him to take shelter in. How did all the other animals manage it?

The squirrels had the leaf nests up in the trees. The crows huddled together and their feathers were good insulation. Some animals hibernated. This cat had a thick long coat. He had to be no different than a fox or mountain lion. It just dawned on her - bear hibernated not because they were cold, but because there was no food out for them in winter. Hibernating was a way for nature to handle the available food sources. The cat might well stay in once it realized there was not much going on with jumping flying insects or mice rustling in the leaves.

She was reaching the end of her rope for having things to think and write about. Had she written the previous day about subjects she had read up on? She had written a bit on what she had learned about Dickens, and about the new old production of a Shakespeare play. What else had she heard on the radio that intrigued her? Now she could not remember. It was not popping into her mind.

A bit of mundanity was the local Wrimo group on FB. There was a person writing sporadically about not being able to participate because this year they had no home. The person seemed to be taking such a victim stance. It was hard to watch. She had given advice, though she knew she should not be doing so. It seemed like the person was stymied in every direction. The whole world really did sympathize with such people. These situations were actually considered by almost everyone as being beyond a person's control. But could it really be true that there was so little one could do for oneself?

1:01 pm She made it to the last alarm - 90 minutes!

Even if one just did a tiny bit for oneself on a daily basis, that would help one's emotional state and just might open the door to finding a solution to one's situation. One could not even envision that from where one stood if one held one's self to be a victim of one's circumstances, instead of the creator of one's life.

1:04 pm. She would stop and do her word count and other 'administration'.
2176 words - Wow! - a good surplus to boot. 24 wpm!!