I have also been awake for 17 hours after getting just three hours sleep, so that could be an influence here.
I finish university in 180 days.
I've always given the advice that if you are in a bad situation, safely remove yourself from it, and if you are in a good situation then work hard to keep it going. If you love what you doing, keep doing it.
For the record I'm not in a bad situation, my life is great.
This is the problem I have: I'm not sure what I love doing any more.
Writing is an amazing experience, and how you have all taken to my publications has truly blown me away. It has made me look at what I create in a whole new light; you have made me value my creations. In just a few weeks I have gone from "I'm not great, the vast majority of my work is awful!" to "Maybe." That is a massive step for me.
I also do crafting, and making things. Crochet and cross stitch are two of my biggest hobbies. I find it awesome that I got YouTube subscribers purely because of my first [bloody awful] tutorial on knooking. So many of you complimented my crochet snowflakes when Liz posted a picture of them as a prompt. That was so lovely.
Reading has been the basis of my entire life. Finding new worlds in the poetry of Homer or the weird as bleep fanfic on Tumblr... I have probably spent, in total, half of my life just reading and absorbing stories. I have lived a few million lives through literature in all of its wonderful forms.
I do get nostalgic about performance. I done GCSE and A Level Drama and Theatre Studies; I have done performance poetry; I have been in plays. I know what it is like to have the thrill of a standing ovation, and believe me when I say that it is better than anything language could describe. I can't do it any more because of my physical health. Film is a good substitute, and I enjoyed filming the videos; I even had the same stage fright that I got very familiar with when I was performing on stage.
Watching films is another hobby of mine, and I was given a lot of DVDs for my birthday recently. I now have nearly every film that has had George Formby in it, and Audrey Hepburn. I also have a Netflix subscription, and there are so many things I want to watch on that too.
Why am I telling you this?
Basically, I have lost my motivation. I can't even look at Senate of Blood without knowing I'm 15,000 words short of my NaNoWriMo target, despite having a very thorough plan. I don't want to read; partly this is because my A Levels and my few months at a brick university destroyed my passion for literature by forcing me to read things I hate. It is also partly because I power through books so quickly. I read the entire Harry Potter series in a single day. Crafting isn't appealing to me either, because again I have to put in so much effort and time for so little. Watching films just seems like a waste of time.
Everything I love doing either feels like it is too much work for too little, or just wasting time when I could be doing something. I don't know what that something is exactly, but something nonetheless. I know that I have depression and there is no way I'm going to be shy about that. However, this is not my normal low, or my normal cycle. This is new to me. I have no motivation to do research. I'm doing it, and I am absolutely working on my university assignment and Senate of Blood and the Rose on Fire update, but I don't want to be doing it. I don't know what I want to do with my time.
Part of it is you. I don't know whether you will like what I produce. I have never, in all of my years of writing, cared about what I create. You have made me care, made me value my work. This is new for me. I feel now like there is a standard that I have to reach. I know that Senate of Blood is tiring, and demanding; I should know, I feel like I need a nap after writing each chapter. I know that the real action of the novel won't be released until about May 2014, but that the opening chapter is officially released in a week and a bit. I have no idea if you will stick with it for several months. I have no idea if you'll even finish the first paragraph. It includes intense philosophy that I'm still working out, and I'm the author; this does not bode well for the reader. You are the reader and I have no idea if what I'm doing is going to make you happy. Because SOB is so demanding, I think that if you are put off by it and that thought scares me. I have nightmares about my narrator and yet what scares me more is if you walk away. Oh and yes, I did just admit to having nightmares about my fictional creation, but you might find out why if you stick with reading it. It is entwined with one of the philosophical ideas that I seem to have used as a leitmotif in SOB.
I'm posting this because my thoughts are always a lot clearer once I have written them down, or typed them up; I'm not posting this out of pity, or as some sort of attention seeking thing. The whole idea behind this blog is so you can see the behind the scenes things, and as this is playing such a huge role in my life right now, I thought I should share it.
I am going to try to fix this. I'm not sure how, and all ideas are very much welcomed, assuming you even got to the end of this. It is really long. I'm sorry.
TL;DR: Ellana has gone weird. Please send cookies.
See you on Tuesday with happier news!
E