wherein Liz muddles on through, with varying degrees of success

Unsurprisingly, my inability to make myself go to sleep at reasonable hours has resulted in a lack of adequate sleep this past week, and I now have a cold. Thus far, it's manifested mostly as clogged ears (with an occasional unsettling crinkly sound when I swallow), accompanied by a slightly stuffy nose and a slightly sore throat. Also incredible tiredness... which I think is a sort of backhanded favor, because I know how to deal with illness-induced tiredness, and that is to go to bed. Apparently that habit is engrained deeply enough that it overrode my lack of motivation/inability to switch gears and sent me off to bed for a solid twelve hours of sleep last night, and then for a nice two and a half hour nap this evening.

And thus my brain was, for the first time in a couple weeks, clear enough that I could attempt to write something. The results came out incredibly depressing, which is doubly annoying since I was hoping for fluff, but even so. Writing!

I also got a few errands done today. I mailed Vicky's present, deposited a check I'd been meaning to deal with for two weeks now, and got a haircut. I also opened the new wire grocery/laundry cart I ordered via Sears two weeks ago (since my old cart broke after nine years of loyal service), and laid out the parts so I can put it together tomorrow. (I did not quite feel up to parsing diagrams and using a hammer and pliers tonight.)

And I drank a lot of tea. Because tea. And honey. And illness. And caffeine. Yes. Tea.

So, you know, life goes on. *wry*

wherein Liz rambles about word counts and colds

I collect my posted stories in a file more or less as I go through the year -- there may be a lag of a few weeks here and there, but whatever -- partly because putting together a whole "what I wrote this year!" post at the end of December is a massive pain in the ass and I'd prefer to spread the work out, but also partly because it's nice to have a tangible record of stuff I created that I can look at when I'm feeling down.

So far in 2014, I posted 15,175 words of fanfiction in January, and 9,050 words of fanfiction in February. (Note: the February count may change if I add stuff to "In Spite of Time, and Death, and the Space Between the Stars" when I edit it for crossposting to AO3.) Not all of those words were written in those months, and I wrote a bunch of other words that I'm not counting because they're part of unfinished and thus unposted stories, but if I tried to count words by writing date I would drive myself mad in short order so I don't bother. (I am a very scattered writer, you see.)

I posted no original fiction whatsoever, which continues to annoy me. :-/

But I am well on track to reach 100,000 words by the end of the year -- that only requires an average of 8,350 words a month -- so by and large I am satisfied.

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In other news, I still have a cold and as a direct result am still ridiculously, stupidly tired, to say nothing of the clogged ears and nasal passages. But it's weird, because as I said in my last post, my carefully ingrained "how to deal with a cold" response is overriding my "cannot deal with anything" depression-induced apathy and lack of motivation, and I've been bizarrely efficient in between extensive bouts of sleep. I got my grocery shopping done neatly and promptly, and also put together my new laundry cart and gathered my laundry supplies so I can Wash All The Things tomorrow after work. (I did not have the energy to actually wash stuff today.) Score one for behavioral conditioning, I guess???

...

Or maybe it's just the NyQuil? It does seem to remove some inhibitions, such as my brain-to-mouth filter, so maybe it removes some of the obstructions that make getting stuff done so impossible when I'm depressed? Hmm. This could stand some investigation.

Or maybe not. I'm probably just being weird because see above re: drugs and no brain-to-mouth filter.

Eh, whatever. At least I am getting some sleep.