Christmas Is Coming, And I'm Leaving (Home)

By on

Courtesy of my shitty Gimp skills
 

Hello again Reader,

Slam the brakes! How is December going by so fast? Just yesterday was the first of the month, and now you’re telling me that we’re already two weeks in, chestnuts roasting on an open fire and all. Impossible. Compared to the November marathon this has been a speedrun. In just one more week I’ll be moving back up north!

I can’t quite process the fact that in just seven days I’ll be sitting in the car with my dad with a trailer filled with my things, driving up eight hours back to my hometown. I’ve lived here for three and a half years, give or take, and though I’ve been eagerly waiting for the move, it just doesn’t feel real now that it’s so close. I only have one more week here in this 20 square meter cell with the loft I sleep in. One more week of solitude. One more week of the life I built here, then, never again.

I’ve no intentions to move back this far south, so the day I leave is the day I leave. Sure, I’ll have to come visit every now and again to hand over my training book and, once my thesis is done, get my graduation papers, but other than that my time in this small city by the sea is at an end. And even though, as I said before, the move has been expected, and even though I’ve waited to go back to all my friends and family and the things I know, a strange melancholy has hit me. The pensive and reflective type.

I wonder, did I take this time for granted? Did I spend my time here the best I could? A long chapter in my life will be over, and I’m not far enough along yet to see if I made the best of it. Hindsight, though 20/20, is a telescope looking back to the past, so you can’t see things clearly until you’re far enough away. I want to believe I did my best. I want to believe that I didn’t just waste my time. I did write a novel, which is sitting on its fourth draft, I did start this blog, and I did deepen my connection to my writing in a way that I am truly grateful for. None of which I could’ve done if I hadn’t’ve exiled myself to a trade school seven hours away from everything I knew.

I feel a little wistful leaving this little place. In some ways I don’t want to, but those are the very signs that I must. Stagnation is one of my greatest fears, and I’ve learned to move toward things that are uncomfortable. There are times in one’s life when you just need to let things go and move on, and this is one of them.

What’s next?

As you might’ve noticed, I’ve released the next three chapters. And oh lord did I not want to. they’re rough, and most likely will have many things in them which I will end up cutting once I get around to finishing the complete first draft and beginning the second. But hey, nothing’s perfect on the first go.

Also, I won’t be posting next Saturday seeing as that’s moving day. At max I’ll get either the PDF of part one to you if I’ve the time in between school and packing up my things, or the next three chapters of book two. Possibly both! No post, sadly.

BUT! On the twenty seventh, after all the Christmasy things are over and done with, and the next episodes of Stranger things will have been watched, I’ll be back with you!

Book three is progressing slowly, but steadily, as always, and once all the moving and schooling is done for the year, but before I set off to sea, I’ll have ample amounts of time to write away without nodding my head from a lack of proper sleep and an overabundance of stress.

Once I start my day job of six weeks at work and six weeks off, things will be taking a stranger pace, but that’s a discussion for next time.

For now, enjoy the story. Our little retinue has made its way to the outpost Decimum Iuxta Mari and are in for more than a few surprises.

Thank you, once again for reading. I’ll be coming to you on the 27th at the latest from the cold darkness of northern Finland.

P.S. there's still no snow here down south :( 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction

By on
  Welcome, My name is Nicholas H.O. Tolvanen. Or Hot for short. This abbreviation, sadly, is not descriptive. My parents decided to split my worldly title perfectly in half, (be that on purpose or not), just like I myself am a half-and-half creature. From my mother’s side I got N and H, while from my father’s, O and T. Anglo and Finnish respectfully. The focus, however, of this blog shan’t be me, good reader, nor my names, for they don’t really matter. This new one being one in a long list of pen names I have. Though I do intend to share more of myself in posts like these, the focus of this blog is my project… The Limbo Chronologies© To start, and to explain myself a little, just for context’s sake, I’m a twenty-six and counting as of yet unpublished author. I’m sitting on a finished Sci-fi novel manuscript that I’m trying to get traditionally published, and I’m starved of readers. The Limbo Chronologies, on the other hand, are something I’ve scribbled and sketched about since I th...
Read more

Consistency

By on
Image
Photo by Geomancer448 under CC BY-SA 4.0 at Wikimedia.org Hello, reader. September is coming to an end and soon the spooky month, (October), begins. I must admit that from all the twelve months in the year, the tenth is one of my favorites. The air is perfectly crisp and cool, the wind in the trees is loud and biting, and the leaves begin their fiery withering before gently tumbling to the ground. That, and it’s dark, and people tend to go out less late in the evening, leaving the parks and city streets bare, wet, and cold. Leaving it all to me. Also, if you’ve noticed, Chapter three is out! It might take some time before chapter four is ready, seeing as I have simulation training starting next week, (Long days from eight to four), so I won’t have much time between thesis work and all the things I need to do (gym etc.). (That’s all on the Limbo Chronologies front). What are you waiting for? Go enjoy the new chapter! The rest of this post concerns a thought I’ve had about consistency, ...
Read more

Writing and Me

By on
Image
Writing is hard. Even now, as I type into this blank docx file, I struggle to come up with the proper words to describe just how hard it is. It becomes far more difficult, at least for me, when writing something like this, instead of prose. (This being the main reason why I’ve put off doing another blog post, even though I chide myself in doing so). That is not to say that I didn’t have difficulties in writing fiction a few years back. Those difficulties came, not from language, but from a skewed mindset on how to embark on projects, and how to write fiction in general. So, as I work on part two of The Limbo Chronologies, and edit part one, I thought about sharing what helps me, and how I go about things. I’ll start with telling you about my routine. Routine Put simply, I sit down every day, (usually in the morning), I open my hour/word tracker excel sheet, I clock in, I write. I use the Pomodoro technique, (mostly). 25 minutes of deep focus, 5 minute break, repeat, until I finish ...
Read more