As always, let’s start with the numbers …

Physical Comics Read: 16 (34/267)
Digital Comics Read: 0 (471/471)
Trades/Graphic Novels Read: 2 (4/16)
Books Read: 4 (107/126)
Movies Watched: 1 (164/194)
TV Series Watched: 0 (55/58)
TV Seasons Watched: 0 (99/105)
Podcast Episodes Remaining: 182

I have to admit that I’m sitting here a little stuck on what to write about. As much as October was a whirlwind, so was much of November. When you spend so much time dealing with elements of your job both during and after work (even though I do my best to stick to my contract hours), finding time to do things gets a little bit hard. And the stuff piles up. Then the stuff that has nothing to do with this particular project piles up. And then you wake up in the middle of the night thinking you’re having a heart attack.

It wasn’t a heart attack, by the way. I had a panic attack, but it scared me enough to go to the doctor that day. The prescription? More exercise, less feeding the stress or at least putting aside the things that could be physical healthy to help with my mental health. My therapist agreed with that, and so I started to walk at the end of every day; I also went back to logging food on MFP, which I’d done for a while but had really neglected.

So I guess that’s why this is one of the first months in a while where I’ve had a significant drop in podcast episodes. I know that I at least knocked out a couple of seasons of shows that had ended, so that definitely helped. You know, in the same way that I do my best to set aside the first 20 minutes of my lunch break to read at my desk. It’s encouraging that I can carve out this time each day.

However, it’s also frustrating. I spend a lot of energy each day trying to make it through the work day, and while some days are better than others, I get so tired by the time I have a moment to myself or a window to do what I love to do that I wind up not doing much except for scrolling on my iPad or my phone. And while I hate to assume this about people, but I want to say that there are a lot of other people who feel the same exhaustion on a regular basis. How do you not get overwhelmed by all of it? And why does it seem that I keep cycling back to some of the same struggles that I’ve expressed during the bulk of this project?

I guess that’s the difficulty of trying to make a change like this that’s slow moving. You’re going to feel stuck in a rut and you’re also going to feel like you’re running out of time to really get something accomplished.