Tuesday 2nd May 2017

The trouble with finishing a long project like a novel is that I suddenly find myself with time on my hands.  And after months of conditioning myself to feel guilty whenever I procrastinate, I now find myself continuously restless because anything that’s not writing feels somehow wrong.  It’s like stepping off a travelator.  It’s like returning home after holiday.  It’s like that comedown after sex.
The feeling usually goes away after a few days but until then I feel disconnected with the world.
I was so disconnected that I managed to leave my squat support pad at the gym.  At least, I think that’s where I left it.  Whilst I took it easy on the squats and didn’t do the shoulder press, my back feels a lot better, which was surprising as it’s been aching due to being hunched over the desk working on the draft.  It would appear that ache is not the strained muscle ache but a different one.  I didn’t even know that the same place could have different aches.  I still plan to take it carefully until I go the Canada.
I’ve worked out that I’m in Calgary for about 6 hours on the flight out.  I want to do something whilst there but not sure what.  Possibly get a geocache or something?
I sent over some money for storm chasing tonight.  This is to cover the rental of the defibrillator in case one of us gets struck by lightning, and for petrol and tolls for the car.
I’m currently debating what to do about data whilst out there.  I can rent a MiFi device for about £80 but it’s bandwidth capped after 512mb a day.  I could also pay to use my data plan but that’s going to cost about £5 a day.  Or the final option is to buy a PAYG sim whilst in the US.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do.  The choice will go beyond cost and into things like having the ability to make calls to book rooms and the like.
With the writing out the way, I’ve found I’m now focusing very much on my trip.  There’s part of me that wants to go back into the draft and fix some of the secondary character problems but I know it will be far better to let the novel fade a little from my consciousness so I can approach it afresh.
I’ve also noted that now I’ve finished it, I’m really starting to doubt it and my abilities.  I feel I’ve been pretty level-headed whilst writing it.  There have been some bad days but I’ve always been able to rationalise those.  However, today, I’ve just had an overwhelming amount of self-doubt about my entire writing career:  the book’s terrible, I can’t write, no-one will like it, no-one will buy it, everything I’ve built will collapse around me.
I think most of that is from feeling a bit mentally exhausted.  I was ready for bed by about 8:30pm.
I did play Warcraft for the first time in a number of months.  I did the 7.2 scenario and quite enjoyed it.  But I finished that, did one world quest and got bored.  As I said, I’m so restless.
I’d planned to go to the cinema tonight, but the idea of sitting still for three hours just did not seem like fun, even though I desperately want to see the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie.
So instead I watched more Youtube where the content is always in nice 10 minute segments.  I did think that now the book is done I can really start focusing on the vlogging.  I want to do it whilst chasing, but I’m not sure about the logistics of editing and uploading on the road.  Perhaps I’ll just film all the content and then upload edited videos once I come home.
I need to check my camera gear at the weekend.  I need to buy a new bag, and I want to try out my intervalometer after I forgot the cable when I went to Brean Down.  I just hope there’s some good weather on Saturday as I fancy a bit of a road trip.
But I have quite a busy week ahead already.  Tomorrow I’m back to the hospital and Thursday we have a cake club meeting.  I also want to find some time to start plotting out the short story for the anthology I got asked to submit to.  It would be great to have that done by the time I fly.
So as you can see from The Climb today… I’ve been a bit all over the place today and not very focused.  That will ease over the next few days as I get accustom to the fact that I finished the novel draft.  Still got plenty of writing to do but I’m going to give myself a few days before I jump into anything new.
If you want to follow more of my journey, then be sure to check me on my social channels.  Likewise, if you’d like me to expand on any point mentioned above, please say so in the comments.

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