What's Next?

I started my day with Googling if there was a single word

that means both optimistic and pessimistic. According to Google, no, but people may use the words realist or pragmatic to represent those two ideas at once, and hey I like the sound of that. It seems that I am always simultaneously reaching for the most ideal future while catastrophizing. Spell check says "castastrophizing" isn't a real word, but Googling didn't used to be a real word either. My generation broke a lot of stuff spelling and grammar wise. It's called denominalization, which spell check also says isn't a word, but it definitely is. You're welcome future generations. Anyways, the reason for this random Googling is that when I started NaNoWriMo this year I had the wild idea that I would write a 50k word novel and a short story of around 10k in the month of November, however, I was prepared to not meet either because my heath has taken a sharp left. Results, I finished the 50k novel and did nothing with the short story. So, it is a solid victory even without accomplishing both, and my health has still been slowly worsening during that time. So, I consider that an extra win because health decline plus teaching should have turned my ambitions into failure, but I am stubborn and pragmatic. So, I made it anyways. I have been operating so heavily out of this space that it leaves me questioning if what I am doing is realistic in any way. Am I truly being pragmatic?

The year is ending and, as usual, I am thinking about next

year already. There is a lot a on my list of things to consider. I have big potatoes and small potatoes and either way I have potatoes, which is great because I love potatoes. They are one of my comfort foods. I am realizing how unhinged I am sounding right now. I think I am being too influenced by Jenny Lawson. I just finished her book Furiously Happy and I realized her narrative voice is practically my inside my head voice and I'm still figuring out this blog thing, so I might as well do one inside the head voice post because optimist - the people reading the blog will love the whimsy and hearing what I actually sound like, at least inside my head, pessimist - no one is ever going to read this blog, so I can sound like whatever I want to and it won't matter. Speaking of which, those living in my optimist zone, what do you think of the new way I am trying to start each paragraph? I was hoping it would break up the text more because internet formatting is obnoxious to work with, but it might just be more annoying. I think it makes the post look more editorial. I don't know, I digress, back to potatoes. My small potatoes include things like; making my reading goal for next year, planning my writing goals for next year, and planning my lessons for after the state exams in January. They are small potatoes, not because they are easy, but because regardless of how I plan, those things will occur. No matter what, I will end up reading, writing, and lesson planning. However, having a clear plan is helpful.I have lots of control over the small potatoes, so they aren't scary. Big potatoes are things like getting published, figuring out what is going on with my health, and figuring out how to carry life forward. Big potatoes are nebulous and only partially in my control. In publishing, I have query letters going out, I am trying to get better at social media and this blog to improve my visibility, and I am not discouraged by the wait because I haven't hit anywhere near the average rejections before partial requests yet. That is a comforting thing. I know someone is going to love my story as much as I do and I don't mind having to take a journey to find them. In figuring out the health, I have a lot of medical tests coming up, but I have no control over if there will be results or what those results would mean. Figuring out everything else depends, more than I would like, on my health. I have been declining since August and dealing with these shenanigans for almost two years now. I can't comprehend getting worse still and how it may affect my life. I have always wanted to write and teach, but I always thought pulling the combo off would come down to my grit, not my ability to sit up in a chair or stand. On top of that, I hate that either this issue is something significant, a weird mess of side affects from medications I am on trying to fix the weirdness, or somehow it isn't real. I can't know and it is driving me nuts because I simultaneously struggle to get through everyday tasks and berate myself like I am just choosing to be lazy versus having complex symptoms from an unknown something.

I shall remain ever optimistic, despite the evidence. I won't

give up just because of answers I don't have yet. For anyone, in my optimist zone, who has wondered why I write, this is a large part of it. It is not because I think my writing is God's gift to humanity. Writing is God's gift to me. It has kept my train on the rails alongside my faith. I don't know how I would have made it to now without it. I will be writing until I literally cannot anymore because it keeps my sanity and my hope. That is also why I tend to write grim stories with a thread of hope, because that's life. It gets dark, but there is always some hope somewhere. I am not sure if that mentality also makes me pragmatic, but it is the cheese on my potatoes, because cheesy potatoes are always better than non-cheesy potatoes. I am going to figure all this out. It just will take some work and optimism to buoy the pessimism. I am not sure where in life you are, oh reader in my optimistic zone, but I think it is a fair bet that you are somewhere like where I am. Our stories are different, but you have a lot of potatoes. I hope you know what your cheese is, and maybe I can be an ingredient in your cheese. That's what my goal in sharing my writing is all about.