Preface: this is my series of RAW and UNEDITED daily posts for NaNoWriMo. It’s going to be extremely imperfect, lauden with grammatical and spelling errors, but brimming with potential. I post it mostly for myself, but invite any daring souls to try and keep up with the winds that blow me to tomorrow :wind_face:.

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Day 96 (NaNoWriMo Part 15)

Burnout

The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.

Alright guys, full disclosure.

I burned out. Hard last Friday.

I’ve been bedridden since Friday night and in my lame attempt to diagnose why, the answer was obvious.

I was doing too much in too short a time.

And honestly it was exhilerating for quite a while, I’ve never done so much in such a short period of time. I’d always beat myself up for having an abysmally normal childhood free of stress and no challenges, and having the drive and opportunity to finally get to do something was honestly the most fuflfilled I’ve probably ever felt in life. But In my pursuit of the next step, I was stumbling and not even realizing it: I was neglecting eating, sleeping, and growing headaches, until my body decided it couldn’t cover me anymore.

There was one time I was just like: a coulpe of months after starting my first job. The only “serious” work I had done up until this point was school coursework, and I never stressed about that because I always procrasinated till the last minute to do it :wacky:. When there finally came work that wasn’t just stress-once-and-done, I guess my body didn’t know how to react, and I became bedridden once more.

It’s funny, I always thought it was a joke having workacholics tied to their bed and forced to relax and have fun. Now I see the balance is imperteniet :sweat_smile:.

So for the next two weeks, I’m gonna slow down. A lot. I was juggling maybe 6-7 things at once because surprising enough, I was managing my time well enough to do so, but juggling isn’t a free action. Right now I’m gonna focus on finishing up my VR Worldbuilding Class (maybe make a quick video walkthroguh for one of my last three dailies), and drop my NaNoWriMo run for 2020. Honestly I was cheating because we were suppose to be writing a NOVEL and I was writing more or less a fictional MEMOIR based on non-fiction elements of my life, andddddd I ran out of material after Part 14 haha. I will leave this faield run as a staunch reminder to never overdo it, and here’s why.

Time is the fire in which we burn. If time was a candle, the wax would represent how much time you have left. If you burn too brightly, you burn through all of your time, and then, nothing. What matters more is that the flame of the candle burns as consistently but staunchly as possible, and it’s because we don’t live alone in our candlesticks of time. I think back to the candlelight vigils I used to attend as a kid. I don’t really remember why the vigils were happening, but the act of the candles slowly lighting one by one always filled me with wonder and awe. Just by one small flame staying alight enough to ignite it’s neighbor, soon a whole ensemble of candles would light the night sky. This is what is means for your works to to ignite the passions of others: not by being a bright and strong flame that burns out quickly, but by being the flame that needed to be there when it was needed.

It takes a single flame to start a fire. The flame can be of courage, inspiration, and passion, or it be wreathed will ill-intent and destroy everyone that once was. It’s almost like a blunt metaphor for what all our gifts can do: do we choose to inspire or despair. Whatever the case, the result is always the same. Time is the fire in which we burn, and nothing quite burns as bright as the human soul on fire.

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I’ll be sticking around until the end-of-year to close a lot of loose ends (mostly taking the bits of my dailies I liek to upload to my website!). If you’re still around, feel free to tag me in your dailies! I’ll be a lot more active between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

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Today’s word count: 623 words
Total word count until today: 30,003 words

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@mariasokolowska @michellebasey @sabweld @philkastelic @nicolaworley @ParisaR @sydneydobersteinlarock @wildcat @dragon @homeroom11