The dark times are over. It's been cloudy on the horizon, but this morning I saw a faint trickle of light peaking through the desolation before it. As the day drug on, the light became brighter and brighter, until my entire world shines. My shift is over. My days off are here.
Hyperbole aside, I am pretty happy to have some days off. Even though it's been the exact same amount of days that I normally work, it feels longer. I had 2 days to renew my first aid and H2S certificates last Wednesday and Thursday, then I worked my usual 8 days Friday to Friday, which made it feel more like 10 days at work. To make matters worse I now only get a 4 day weekend instead of a 6 because I need to make up for those two days I had "off" for the courses. So this is less like the light at the end of the storm and more like the false hope at its eye. I have but a brief respite before my inevitable return to the grind. Ho hum.
I'm going to have a pretty busy 4 days off too. My first time off shift was really productive. My grandma came out to the house and helped me get my room scrubbed squeaky clean. We moved all the furniture, shampooed the rugs, washed the walls, bleached the bathroom, and got all my laundry done. It was nice to scrub everything down and get a physical fresh start to go along with the metaphorical one after coming back from Europe. I still have tons of work left to do on the house though before it's up to my standards. There are two rooms downstairs still that became my sort of "dumping grounds", so they are quite messy and disorganized. Then there's the kitchen, which is just cluttered with crap. The cupboards are full of junk, and the whole thing needs a makeover. I've been putting that one off because that's a solid several hours of work. Probably a full day just into that one room. I think I'll put it off one more cycle until I have the full 6 days off.
Since last weekend I was visiting my Mom down south, this weekend I'm going to need to do some catch up. The garage is filled with garbage bags that need to be hauled, I need to catch up on some laundry that I've been neglecting too. For cleaning this weekend I'm really going to just focus on doing the final touches to my room to get everything in nicely organized order, cleaning up the garage, and I might try to tackle one of the two junk rooms while I'm at it. We'll see how ambitious I get.
Apart from just the cleaning stuff, I have some other obligations this weekend. First there's book club. This week we're discussing The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeny. I know that some of my book clubbers read the blog, so I'll simply say that I felt this was basically a non-book, and leave it at that for now. I'll probably do a full-ish (as in a couple paragraphs, probably not a dedicated post) review about it after book club is over. After book club I need to start a project that I told my sister I would do. Well, it was less of me telling her I would do it, and more of her telling other people that I would do it, putting me between a bit of a rock and a hard place. Thanks Ambo.
My last things I want to get accomplished during these 4 days are book related. As you may remember from a previous post, NaNoWriMo is coming up. I'm determined to finish a book this year, and I already have the exact one that I want to write planned out mostly in my head. I have a note folder with a bunch of stuff about the story and the characters in it, but that's just a sloppy mess of incoherent thoughts spewed onto the page. Before the writing begins in earnest, I want to have if not a full outline, at least somewhat of a coherent idea of how I want to write this story out. I already have the first chapter's first draft written, although I hated it so much that it nearly made me quit writing this book all together. I've already got the idea for how to fix it though, I just need to do it.
I'm not going to hesitate to do a bit of writing before November begins if I feel the urge, but I'm not going to rush myself either. I'll focus right now on getting all the preliminary stuff in place - I still have a few things that I need to research first - and then once that's done I'll start writing. If it coincides with the beginning of November, great! If not, then I guess I'll get a bit of a head start on the whole ordeal.
So I need to clean up a few rooms, fulfil some familial obligations, and do some writing. It goes without saying that I need to keep up with the daily blog posts as well. I'm going to get some drafts done up for future posts as well. I already have one that I'm saving for a rainy day when I don't get the time to post something, and I have the next Sunday podcast review already written up and sitting in the scheduled posts section. This whole blogging thing's starting to come together nicely!