This weekend, so far, has been incredible!  From a Thanksgiving which could have been a disaster but wasn’t to a cleaned up kitchen, to turkey soup cooking on the stove, to finding the perfect gifts for Christmas, to…wait for it…wait for it…passing 50,000 words in my NaNoWriMo challenge….Life is the best it’s ever been for me!!!  I am so grateful for the people who encouraged me, the sleep I lost, the words that just flowed (especially tonight when I wrote over 8000 words in about 5 hours) to the opportunities that are falling in my lap… I am so stoked!

I am also extremely wired, and it’s now 3:00 AM and sleep continues to elude me.  I cannot even imagine what I’ll be like when my first book is published!  I may have to ration the coffee at that point!  But it is all good!!!  I may have to push up the date I’m expecting to be published, because I’ve clearly shown the discipline for writing vast quantities of, well, stuff!  Some nights, the words flow like water, while others, they’re like a drain stuffed with glue.  But in the end, I was able to write the 50,000 words plus a few extra in 30 days, while still working full time, and trying to keep up with my class.  Not to mention, Thanksgiving, a night with limited power (I ran an extension cord from my bathroom to my office last night to enable me to write!), to the resulting mess in the kitchen because I couldn’t run the dishwasher or count on a steady stream of hot water. 

I am living proof that following your passion is a fast moving train.  While pontificating tonight, it occurred to me that the hardest part of following your passion is convincing yourself to take that very first step.  Once you take it, though, you’d better hold on tight and be ready for things to moved faster than you’ve ever seen before!  I wrote 8,000 freakin’ words in about 5 hours tonight!  How cool is that????  Sure, they came slowly at first, but when I just let it start to flow without trying to make sense of it, the floodgates opened and I couldn’t have stopped them if I’d tried. 

I originally had planned to write until I had maybe 2000 words left to finish tomorrow, but I lost control at some point and had to keep writing.  I was finally able, at the 50,233 point, to tell myself that if I didn’t stop, I would be writing until my head hit the keyboard!  And poor little Munchkin cannot understand why her warm bodied mother is not in bed where she belongs, creating a warm, comfy place for her kitties to rest their weary heads!

OK, OK, so she finally gave up and took over the second chair in my office, but she isn’t completely happy about it!  Will she adapt to my new career path?  It will certainly involve a lot more late night writing sessions because I will no longer be at the mercy of my alarm clock.  I write better at night.  I don’t know why, but I do.  The words flow better after 9:00 PM.  But who am I to question the muses? 

I will, however, try to get some sleep because I need to get the rest of the ingredients for my turkey soup tomorrow, and of course, the straining and cooling and reassembling process will begin as well.

My gratitudes tonight are:
1.I am grateful that I completed the 50,000 word challenge, even if the book is far from complete.
2. I am grateful to have power throughout the house again.
3. I am grateful that my kitchen is, once again, put to rights.
4. I am grateful to have a huge pot of turkey soup cooking on my stove, a testament to another joyful Thanksgiving.
5. I am grateful that I have one more week of full time employment for someone else before I embark on my new journey.

Love and light.