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Happy Halloween! (And October Monthly Wrap-Up)

Happy Halloween!!! I love Halloween! I love dressing up and candy and it's especially fun having little brothers still who go trick or treating and dress up as Stitch and Darth Vador. Having little brothers makes every holiday more fun.

So, October has been a busy month and I posted like... three times. Which is pretty awful of me and I feel bad, mostly because I really wanted to keep at it with this blog. But life happens and things go undone and get pushed back to the bottom of the To Do list. But here's my October in review and hopefully it'll give you a glimpse of what I've been up to.

October Writing: At the beginning of October I finished the first draft of Silver! The sequel to Golden. It was harder than Golden and took longer, but I had the best time writing it and there's still so much to do with it. Not to mention the third book, a short story/novella and maybe... another one? I'm going to have a really hard time letting go of Renee and her friends. I also wrote a 35 page short story. Is that a novella? I have no idea... I'll have to look it up. Constellations (the short story/novella) took me a looong time too, mostly because I got so busy. But yeah, that's what I've been writing all October. Not to mention slowly preparing for Nanowrimo where I will be completely rewriting Project Khione. That should be interesting, but I think I'm finally in a good place with the world and the characters and what I want to happen.

October Reading: Ummm... so I didn't do much new reading in October. I reread Lodestar in preparation for Nightfall which comes out next week!!! I preordered the extended addition with the Keefe short story and I am beyond excited to read it!! Not to mention Renegades! November is going to be a great reading month.

October Music: Not much of a change here... I've discovered Grizfolk, Sleeping Wolf and a few other new artists that I don't really know well, but like some of their music. Most of October I've been listening to my Silver playlist and I'm working on my Project Khione playlist which I will listen to for almost all of November. Until after Thanksgiving of course, because that's when I break out the Christmas music.


October TV Shows: Let me just say, one of the only reasons I am still alive, one of the few reasons I survived October with my sanity is because of my TV shows. The Gifted, Inhumans, Shannara Chronicles, and the Flash are the ones I'm watching consistently every week and am hooked on. Arrow, Legends, Scorpion, and Once Upon a Time have sort of slipped from me. Oh, and duh, how could I forget Stranger Things? Despite the fact that I try not to watch shows that literally everyone in the world watches, I just couldn't help but get hooked on that show. It's honestly amazing and I just finished episode 9 yesterday. It. Was. Amazing! And I can't wait for the next season!

October Life Stuff: I don't know why these two classes, Art History and Introduction to Communications is so hard for me, but they are. I've been struggling with them a lot and they've really been stressing me out. Work has been hard too. There have been some... difficult and stressful situations I've been in that has really annoyed me. We visited family a few weeks ago and that went... decently. There were a few explosions if you know what I mean near the end, but we survived and got through it and there's no place like home. There have just been some other stressful, pressure stuff going on that have been resolved more or less, but that at the time were really stressful. My anxiety has kind of been flaring up, I think just after the kind of month I've had my anxiety is just beyond. Not to mention I'm closing out October with a horrible, annoying cold. I'm mostly recovered, but it was very frustrating to get sick for like the sixth or seventh time this year and knowing (pessimistically yet logically) that I will probably get sick again before the year is over. I have five-six reviews for Of Magic and Mayhem which I am very excited about. I've said this before, but I'm really proud of my writing in those short stories. I don't care if other people didn't or don't like them, I'm just very proud of the worlds and characters I created and just how far my writing has come from a few years ago.

I've also been going to this enneagram/leadership class at church with a few friends. It's been really interesting and fascinating and fun. I used to think the enneagram was kind of stupid and this thing that people did that I never wanted to do. But after the first class I was hooked. I've learned so much about myself and the people around me. I've learned a lot about what I excel at, my best attributes, and my lowest and how I can improve them. But most importantly, I've learned about myself in terms of how to grow closer to my relationship with God through the enneagram. By growing and becoming "healthier" in enneagram terms and becoming the person that God has planned for me to be since before I was even born. It's been so awesome and I plan on writing a whole post about the enneagram at some point (hopefully soon).

But for now, I'm taking a deep breath and am going to go enjoy my Halloween evening and look forward to (hopefully) a calmer and better month of November. I hope you've all had a great October and a great Halloween! Get lots of candy, have fun dressing up no matter your age and have fun with friends!

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