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I did not intend to challenge this round, because Brain™ has been locked into super-scattered-fugue mode for a few months now and I'm having trouble committing to anything further in the future than lunchtime. But it's NaNovember, and that always does a few things for me. Most important, it gives me a ready-built excuse for mental drift (sorry, what did I miss? I was trying to figure out how Hazel dies ...) It reminds me that all writers pretty much struggle with the same things I struggle with; fair defense against the What Is Wrong With Me demon. It puts me back in the headspace of "heck with it, it's story!" and lets me beg off the pressure to try and write something that other people will like. Also, I've done NaNoWriMo every year for the past 12 years, it would feel weird to not do it now. I don't always 'win' (currently batting about .500) but I always do it. And I very, very often say that I'm not going to do it 'this year' and then cave and create a new project sometime after Oct. 27. This is one of those years. Fitness-wise speaking, walking is what I have the bandwidth for, so walking is what I shall do. My Apple Watch says that I am currently averaging <4,000 steps per day, so I plan to increase that by 1k/ week until the end of this challenge. 8,000 per day seems like a fundamentally doable goal, considering that I am lucky enough to work on a highly walkable campus and live in a fairly walkable neighborhood (with an exuberantly walkable dog!) That's it. Write and walk. If I do any GMB workouts, then that's bonus points, but it's November so best if I don't get too attached to other outcomes. (Good advice for all the year, but somehow easier to take during NaNoWriMo) I'm still timeboxing and it is working pretty well, so there's that. I have very specific things to do with my Creativity blocks for this month.

This is mostly a productivity challenge. But I'm trying to make it fun, too, because if it isn't fun I won't do it. I'm 55 years old. If I'm not grown up enough to do non-fun things by now, it probably isn't gonna happen - but most things can be made fun, right? I love my job. Seriously, my job is absolutely amazeballs: it suits my ADHD need for constant variation, makes good use of the education I recently finished paying off all those bloody loans for (!), and puts me in daily contact with some of the best people in all of peopledom. In short, a perfect fit. Every rose has its thorn, every pro has its con. The price of my insanely awesome work flexibility is a complete lack of STRUCTURE. Which for me means that some days I get a whole great large lot of things done. And some days (even weeks) I do absolutely nothing, and there are no external consequences for giant chunks of unproductive goofing off. But there are consequences for my mental health. When I look back over several days of bullet journal and realize that I have accomplished nothing, the 'why even bother' and 'what exactly is the point of anything' monsters inside my head get loud, my brain starts to itch, and depression looms. Blech! Fact: there is always work that I can do, and that actually needs to be done. But much of it is work that can be procrastinated until right before a major inspection or something. Basically filing, organizing, filling out reports. The boring bits. The easy easy easy to procrastinate bits. Secondary fact: I talk a lot about wanting to spend more time on my creativity - more drawing practice, more fiction writing, more pathetic attempts to learn contact juggling for klutzes. Key word there is "talk." What I actually spend time on is YouTube videos, Zelda Breath of the Wild, and internet shopping for things I don't need. So this challenge, I am having an honest stab at timeboxing. I can't get too restrictive with it, because my schedule does vary and my inner bratty brat will rebel with vengeance if I try to plan out every moment of a day. I'm keeping it stupid-simple: I've gone into Google Calendar and blocked off a one-hour chunk every day for "Focus Work" - tackling any paperwork that I have that I want to procrastinate, actively researching new teaching and classroom management strategies, reviewing curriculum for needed updates. And then another one-hour chunk for "Creative Work." If I have a meeting or an evaluation during those chunks, I can move them to wherever in the day they fit - but when I'm in those boxes, I'm in. As in Do Not Disturb. I am Doing A Thing. This time is for THIS. In other news, I've been involved in the NF 5 day walking challenge, which I am planning to expand into a 30 day walking challenge. I fell off the regular workout bandwagon again (seriously, I've been on and off it so many times I should have strong legs by now just from the step-ups!), so I'm starting over with GMB Elements 3x/wk. My workouts over the past two months have been at a construction site on Saturdays, mostly doing weighted carries with large pieces of lumber or bags of cement. Not bad, actually, but I do need more than once a week, and the heavy framing is done now. *I work for the U. S. Military at a leadership and communications school. The school is actually taught by active duty military personnel who have a lot of experience with leadership and communications and the other military topics, but little to no experience in the art and science of teaching. E.g. how to structure a lesson, choose a teaching strategy, build engagement and interactivity into a classroom, all that stuff that I went to school for. (I have an M.Ed in Educational Leadership). Besides the dullsville administrative tasks listed above, I get to help the faculty prepare for each new lesson they take on, certify them to teach it, evaluate them in the classroom and give them steering guidance, conduct a lot of faculty development. And a huge part of my job is just walking around, chatting with faculty and sometimes students, in the "how's this curriculum workin' for you, what do you need, how can I help?" line of chattiness. And I get to kind of choose my own schedule, so long as I'm available when they need me to evaluate them or go to a meeting and all my reports get turned in quarterly.