Joe and I have officially been married for almost four months now, which is amazing on two counts: 1. because that feels like a super long time and I still feel so happy and lucky and 2. because there were days I told Joe we were only doing some of our ridiculous wedding ideas so that I could write a blog post about it all later. The fact that I haven’t done it yet astonishes me, but on the other hand, I was so thrilled to be done with the wedding that it’s been hard to do literally anything else related to it.

Time and space have finally given me the energy I needed to put this together. Because if I’m being honest – we put on a damn cool wedding, and I literally can’t wait to see people’s reactions.

I’m not even sure where to start. So here’s a picture of Joe and I looking happier than we’ve ever looked on the actual day of the wedding:

I guess I’ll try to go in order.

The very, very first thing that inspired this wedding was my insane desire to have a book arch. You know that standard floral arch people often get married under? Yeah. I wanted mine to be made out of actual, literal books. I’m not high maintenance at all, guys. Joe’s dad was a saint and took it upon himself to make this dream a reality for me, and that jumpstarted us into hyperdrive for the rest of our wedding’s theme.

The second thing that was purchased was my dress. I struggled with my initial wedding dress search because I really didn’t know what I wanted. “Something that doesn’t actually look too much like a wedding dress,” I would say to baffled shop owners as I perused their endless racks of vaguely different white gowns. “Maybe something that makes me look like a wood nymph,” I said a few times, not even really knowing myself what that meant. “Sparkly?” I’d compromise, when my fitting attendant would start to look exasperated.

And then I found this:

Everyone always says that like, time will stop, and everyone will forget to breathe as a collective gasp encircles the planet, and I’ll be honest — I thought everyone was being a bit silly about ~the magic of dress shopping~. I tried on some nice dresses. I had a few options that I “could get married in, I guess”.

But when I walked out of the fitting room wearing this dress, a hush literally descended across Alfred Angelo. I think my mom immediately burst into tears. The group at the next mirror-station over even stopped what they were doing to stare at me, and said, “….wow. That’s the one.”

So we bought it. I didn’t try on a single other dress. And then we lost it, because Alfred Angelo is the worst and went out of business without warning anyone, bailing on thousands of orders. But – then we found another one just like it online from a second-hand dress shop. But that’s a story for another time.

Joe and I started our wedding day out with a ‘first look’ on the balcony of our suite in the Washington Athletic Club. It was a beautiful, elegant spot for us to capture this special moment, and oh yeah — I wore shark hands.

There’s a bit of backstory here, but I’ll shorten it just enough to say: the night before the wedding, Joe mentioned that with less than 24 hours to go before saying “I do”, the only thing that could possibly still be a dealbreaker would be if he found out I had sharks for hands.

So my bridesmaids and I used Amazon Prime Now to get these little devils delivered to our hotel the very next morning. And this is how Joe and I started the road to our marriage:

When it came to planning this wedding, I wanted to do something that really and truly represented Joe and I as a couple, highlighting the things we each love — but moreso the things we love together. It took a fair amount of ideating, and many Pinterest boards, but we landed on books (me) and role-playing games (him). The cross section of that was our shared love of escape rooms, which I’ll come back to later. The whole thing combined nicely into a larger “storytelling” theme, which was subtle and yet represented in every nook and cranny of the event, if that makes any sense at all.

First I’ll talk about the books. We incorporated them everywhere.

It started with our invitations, which looked like little novels. These were designed by the same lovely person who designed my website theme – she designed many elements of our wedding!

We had to hand cut those edges, people. The dedication started from day one.

Then, in keeping with the theme, the very first thing guests saw upon entering the venue was this large book sign, welcoming them inside.

They were not invited to sign a guestbook, because guest books are boring and who goes back and reads them, honestly? Instead, we instructed guests to choose a figure on this giant framed picture, and color it in to look like them. They were now characters in our story.

We kept our guests busy before the ceremony with trivia we had included on the back of our programs. In hindsight, programs were one of those things I probably didn’t need to spend the money on, but how cute were they?

And of course, when they went to choose a seat… there was no bride or groom side. We had our guests make a much more important choice.

I bought a heart-shaped paper-puncher and cut literally thousands of hearts from book pages, which we scattered all over the place.

I had zero interest in paying for live flowers, so my bridesmaids carried “book-quets” instead, made out of beautiful classic books I purchased from Barnes and Noble. Any flowers you do see are fake ones I bought on sale at Jo-Ann and hot glued just about everywhere.

Even our wedding cake looked like a stack of books. And before anyone says anything – yes. We’re aware the cake shop got the name of the D&D Player’s Guide wrong. *facepalm*

We had a number of desserts available, including the above cake, which included cake toppers that were little medieval versions of us painted by one of our bridesmaids.

We also had cannoli baked by Joe’s mother, which, unbeknownst to me, were unicorn-themed.

Next up was Joe’s inspiration. I’m almost more proud of the role-playing game elements of the wedding to be honest, because it’s all just so, so fun. My favorite bit was the boutonnières, which we made out of gaming dice. Honestly, out of everything at the entire wedding, these are the piece I still think about and just smile. Our wedding was so cool.

We supplemented the book decor with dice, using large paper ones we’d nicked from a nerdy charity gala months earlier, and actual D20s in our wedding colors that were scattered pretty much everywhere there wasn’t already a paper heart or a book.

Not to mention the dragons and unicorns we slipped in wherever we could. Because it’s us.

We gave our wedding party different role names, because everything about weddings is so formal and weird and we wanted to fix that. Our officiant was the “Wedding Master”, our parents were the “Elders”. Our flower girl and ring bearer were the “flower fairy and ring guardian” and we treated our wedding party like an actual adventuring party, giving everyone party roles.

I gave our flower fairy two options for her headwear. We made her a flower crown, and at the last second, we also made her a unicorn headband.

She chose the unicorn headband.

She also dropped more of those paper hearts from her little basket instead of flower petals, because obviously.

Our ring guardian was way too young to perform the actual duties expected of him, so we gave him a sword and sent him on his way. It was a disaster. We (and the entire audience) loved every second of it. Here he is, going the wrong way:

We also veered pretty far from tradition and threw in a few of our own… like rolling for initiative to see who got to say their vows first during the ceremony. We used a giant D20 in our wedding colors that we had commissioned from on Etsy.

I rolled an 18, beating Joe and setting the tone for our entire marriage.

Most people would say this was probably enough. Fun thematic elements all over the place, plenty of crafts, many ways for our guests to be continuously delighted and engaged over the course of the evening.

Good job, bride and groom, on an excellent wedding!

…Have you met Joe and I?

This wedding was just getting started.

When our guests made their way to cocktail hour, they were greeted with this set of puzzle pieces. They were instructed to find their name, then take the puzzle piece with them to the table number they had been assigned to.

Once they arrived at their table and met their other table mates, they would soon realize that their puzzle pieces went together, creating a larger puzzle with strange letters on it. If they had assembled the puzzle correctly, these letters would give them instructions.

Following the instructions, which actually included deconstructing parts of the puzzle and putting it back together another way, gave guests additional instructions on how to use their seemingly innocuous table number to light up the random wooden box that had been on their table. Surprise! It was a lantern. I don’t have a photo of one lit up, but imagine it lights up.

Then — if guests tried to lift the table number back off of the lanterns, they would find that they were magnetized, so this action would reveal a trick opening on top. Hidden inside the lantern (they were there all along!!) was a set of “quest logs”, which instructed guests to find a series of additional puzzles around the venue.

Every table succeeded in lighting up their lanterns, and some people dropped off after that in favor of chatting and drinking. We expected this. A very large handful, however, took the next stage very seriously. Joe had created four ingenious stations with various kinds of puzzles to solve, each one sending each “adventurer” further along a storyline we’d created. They had to play a game against an invisible foe, assist a wizard with making a potion of courage, and help a giant up a tricky set of stairs.

Each puzzle station gave them a code, which they’d then use to open a lockbox, which contained stickers for them to put on their quest logs. A completed quest log would have one final meta-puzzle to solve within in, which gave our guests the final code for the final lock box. Once guests were able to open this final box (thus completing their adventure and arriving at the wedding of Queen Kristina and King Joe), they were able to take a wedding favor as their prize.

The night happened in a blur. I am so, so thankful for our incredible photographer and videographer for capturing the event in such detail, because I hardly remember even being there. I do remember feeling incredibly happy — because I knew the whole experience was almost over, but also because the joy we could see on the faces of our family and friends made all the stress and work of the last year feel so completely worth it.

This wedding would not have been possible without the incredible support of our friends and families. I cannot tell you how many hours of their time people gave us to make this as incredible as it turned out. I honestly don’t know why we have friends anymore at all. But apparently, they like us a lot, because they helped us pull off this ridiculous, gargantuan thing and they still want to hang out with us today.

There were even a few surprises from some of those amazing people, including warm milk and cookies that showed up late into the night from our friend Katrina, and the t-shirt slingshot that was brought out during our best man Alexander’s toast. Yes. I’m serious. He flung out t-shirts that said “I went to Joe and Kristina’s wedding and all I got was hit in the face with this shirt.”

A lot of people say your wedding won’t be the best day of your life. That it won’t be the day you’re the most in love. That many things will go wrong, and that you’ll laugh, and you’ll have great stories, and you’ll move on and do many bigger and more important things with your life.

…I dunno, man.

We had a pretty excellent wedding.

And I think for both of us, seeing the culmination of all the hard work we were both respectively putting in, for months, and how happy we’d made pretty much everyone we know… I think we fell in love all over again that night.

I know there are amazing things on our horizon, and doing things like having children and creating a home together and growing old will definitely all be amazing things, and I know we’ll love each other a little more every day.

But our wedding was really, really goddamn cool.

All I wanted – my mission statement throughout this entire process – was for people to say they’d never been to a wedding quite like ours before.

I’m not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that was repeated to me, verbatim, at least fifty times over the course of that night. I’ve never smiled so hard in my whole life.

Even though this wedding made me crazy for many months… I wouldn’t change a thing.

Listen, if there was gonna be even one good thing about my role being eliminated at work and needing to find a new job — it was going to be that I would actually have time to do Booktubeathon for serious this year. Because as I’m sure you’re all aware — it’s my second favorite book-related challenge on the Internet. The first of which, of course, being NaNoWriMo.

But get this. While I don’t technically have a day job I need to go to, Booktubeathon falls on the perfect storm of days I still will be quite crunched to actually read books at all, let alone seven.

Monday: Job interview that will take at least half the day
Tuesday: Doctor appointment in the morning, going into the office for something midday, then a hair appointment afternoon/evening
Wednesday: Nothing, thank goodness. I’ll be reading pretty much all day, when I’m not packing
Thursday: Why was I packing? Oh right, because I am spending the rest of the week in NYC. Which will be amazing, just – you know – ill timed. At least I have a long flight to read on.
Friday-Sunday: Doing NYC things, and trying to fit some reading in amongst it all

Basically, I’m doomed. Here’s my TBR:

I opted for a bunch of short books, thankfully, with a ratio of 3 actual novels to 4 graphic novels. The bottom two graphic novels I’ll be doing a coin flip over, as per the challenges. To find out about the rest of the challenges, watch the official challenge video. I also need to consider doing one of these as an audiobook, since I now have two days of commutes I didn’t account for. Plus I need to find time to watch the movie version of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas… yikes. This is going to be something.

But this is par for the course, with me. Nobody is surprised. If you want to watch me flail along during this challenge, be sure to follow my Instagram account!

As a fun little bonus, this week I have also created a series of lists with recommendations for things I like and use, like board games and cute stuff and even products I use to maintain pink hair. I’m an Amazon affiliate, so I do get a small commission if you end up buying anything, but I get asked so often for recommendations that this seemed like a good solution. I recently made one for writing, and while it’s not exactly made for readathons, there’s still a lot of stuff in there that applies. Like fuzzy socks. Man, I love fuzzy socks.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got. This was initially going to be a video, since I had this small inkling of a desire to make a video, but that was a fleeting idea. Then it took me another week to actually write this, because apparently, all content on the Internet is difficult for me these days.

Who else is doing Booktubeathon? Do we think Kristina will actually win this year?

I haven’t successfully won since the very first time I tried it, back in 2014. Coincidentally, that was the last time I didn’t have a full-time job taking up all my time.

If you want – leave a comment telling me what you’re most excited to read, or give me NYC recommendations!

I figured it was well past time for me to write some kind of blog post, since my content has been very, very sparse this year. 

Hello! This is me back at work, wearing clothes I bought in Japan.

It’s sort of amazing actually — for the longest time I felt like I had been making videos for such a huge portion of my life that I really didn’t know how not to make videos. I had all these extreme notions that video-making and being a YouTuber defined a huge portion of my existence, and it turns out — that was just bs guilt I was putting on myself.

Once you strip away the false obligations, the needless stress, the sense that you owe people something, it’s surprisingly easy to not do something. As soon as I stopped making videos, it didn’t take me long to get very used to having one less thing on my list of stuff to do. I hate to say this, but I hardly miss it at all.

Here’s something I’ve learned in the past year:

I started seeing a therapist, who early on, asked me to divide up my time into 4 buckets. Work, Family, Friends, and Things for Me. She told me to guess what percentages of time each of these buckets was taking up in my life, and I’m pretty sure I said something that sounded very reasonable and balanced.

Then we actually divided it up, I was shockingly wrong. Doing this was such a strange experience — I kept trying to put things like YouTube, blogging, social media, and costume-making in the “Things for Me” box, because that’s the way I’ve always viewed them. But my therapist wouldn’t let me. 

“Those things are work,” she said. “They belong in the work category.”

“But they not my job anymore,” I argued. “They’re hobbies.”

“But do they take up energy? Do you feel tired after you do these things? Do they drain you creatively? Do they take up time you could be spending on other things?”

I felt called out, I felt seen — and not in the good way. “I like doing this stuff. I do this stuff for me,” I tried again, a bit less certain.

“Do you?” she asked me. “Do you make YouTube videos for you? Do you post on Twitter for you?”

I paused. Did I? Were all of these hobbies, this incredible amount of time I spent making things, was it because it energized me? Or because I felt some sort of obligation to do it, like most work?

When did making internet content become akin to eating my proverbial vegetables?

“Let’s start here,” she told me. “How much time do you spend… taking a bubble bath. Exercising. Watching TV. Coloring. Going for a walk.”

Let’s just say it was an embarrassingly small percentage of my time. But the knowledge that those things do have their place and should take up a percentage of my time made them vastly easier to do. And knowing that some things I had convinced myself were enriching and necessary were just more work I had convinced myself was ~so important~ was… a wakeup call.

So that’s why I’m over 2 months past my wedding, but haven’t posted many pictures, haven’t made a big blog post about it, or even sent thank you cards yet. Because those things are all work, and there’s a time and a place for them, but maybe it’s next month. Or not at all. Or maybe tomorrow. 

Since I got married, here’s what I have done:

• Went on an amazing honeymoon with Joe to Japan and and Hawaii, and we still dream about it just about every day
• Went camping twice, once with my family and once with a large group of friends. On the friend camping trip, we played a lot of board games, and by ‘a lot of board games’ I mean I was part of a group of 4 people who played 7 games of SeaFall over 2 days which probably amounted to over 20 waking hours of our trip
• Found out my org at Microsoft was being dissolved, which catapulted me into a rigorous job search almost immediately upon getting home
• Took on a massive house clean-out project, which has resulted in most of my weekends being spent moving things and rearranging things and throwing things out
• Spent a lot of time with my friends. So many of them did so much incredible stuff for Joe and I to make our insane wedding dreams a reality, and now we’re trying our hardest to repay them by being the chillest, most agreeable people we can be

I’m looking forward to figuring out what my next career step will be, spending even more time on my book, trying to be a yes-girl when it comes to fun things going on with my friends, actually having time to do BookTubeAThon this year, enjoying a few upcoming trips to NY and SF, and of course, there’s this year’s NaNoWriMo. It’s lucky number 13.

Joe and I on a hike in Hawaii.

I’m trying my hardest to get ‘back to normal’, even though I really have no idea what that means anymore. It’s been pretty incredible discovering it every single day, with Joe right by my side.

I’ve had “write a blog post” on my to-do list for a couple weeks now, and I keep pushing it off because I’m just so exhausted.

“But you should do a life update!” I tell myself earnestly, amidst the messy bedroom I haven’t had time to tidy, the work project I’m completely heads down on, the wedding tasks that are piling up, the seemingly endless stream of appointments and engagements and wedding crafting sessions and, like, that one night I got to see Hamilton. I scream it into the void, “the world would love a life update!” but it echoes off the stacks of dishes I haven’t done, the laundry that sat waiting to be folded for two entire weeks, the twenty new emails I got just since I left work an hour ago.

(Hamilton was great by the way).

The truth is, I am barely keeping my head above water.

I’m not saying this to gain any sort of pity, or prove how much hustle I have by wearing my stress on my sleeve, or anything like that. It’s just true. It’s just why I’m ‘absent’ online. It’s just that I don’t have time to blog. Why it takes me over a week to reply to most emails in my personal inbox. Because I don’t even have time to pick up the pile of various random things on my floor that I’ve stepped over every day for an entire month, let alone find ways to make my life sound interesting and cool in a trendy blog way.

This is the place I’m at in life right now! I’m busy! That’s the thing I can yell from the rooftops — I’m 2 months away from my wedding! I said yes to owning a project that was maybe a little bit too big for me right now at work but I am super committed to blowing everyone away anyway! I have to work late some days because I want to! And except for how stressful wedding guest lists are, the guilt associated with asking everyone you know to help, I actually like the wedding planning process. I like finding unique ways to express my relationship in party form. I like finding little ways to delight our guests. I like fabric swatches and schedule planning and decorating. I like planning a fantasy honeymoon for the magical ~other side~ of this process.

I’m doing a LOT right now and I am really over letting myself feel guilty for not ALSO doing things that are arbitrarily self-imposed, like blogging or making videos or any other things I just do because have made a habit of doing so. I’m the boss. And the boss says it’s okay to not do it. The boss says it’s okay to be a girl who’s spending most of her time on her wedding, because she wants to. It’s okay to be a girl who’s putting in extra hours at work. It’s okay to have a messy house because you have other priorities right now and it won’t always be like this.

I am in charge of a massive project at work that’s a huge stretch from my regular responsibilities — and that’s an awesome opportunity to learn and grow. I’m under 60 days away from my wedding day and insisting on making it special and awesome in a dozen ways that all take a ton of time and planning — but will be so worth it. My friends all seemed to turn 30 in the same year and I believe everyone deserves to celebrate their special days in special ways, and I’m so glad I’ve been there for them. There are bridal showers, and bachelorette parties, and wine-tastings, and hours and hours and hours poured into the process of telling the world, “hey world, I love this person.” But I wouldn’t do those things if I wasn’t so excited to share that love with my friends and family.

Plus it’s tax season. That part just sucks, but not everything can be sunshine and rainbows.

My social media accounts are barren. I haven’t made any new cosplays. I’m still writing but only in the cracks of time between everything else, and usually when I find a rare, blissful, beautiful spare moment, it’s all I can do to just fall in bed and watch some TV so I can recharge a little bit. Sometimes I just cry, because it’s all so much.

But I’m doing awesome stuff.

And I can blog about it when it’s over.

Until then, I’m just going to try my best to get 7.5 hours of sleep each night.

So you know what, to-do list? Screw you. I’m not writing a blog post today. I’ve got enough going on right now without your bulleted-list of judgment.

*Crosses “write a blog post” off to-do list*

You’ll have to forgive me, because it’s taken me the better part of January to get a handle on my reading goals for the year.

The reality of 2018 is that the first 4 months are going to be heavily dedicated to my wedding, but then… then I have the entire rest of my life to not be planning a wedding anymore, and thus, to read. Plus a Honeymoon. Which means many, many books on the plane.

So here are my goals. I tried to give myself a handful of specific and semi-ambitious goals, but most of the rest of them are casual, and even encourage stopping reading books when you’re not enjoying them, or skipping out on a particular challenge altogether.

Goals 1-5 I wrote myself, and goals 6-15 I borrowed from the 2018 reading goals set by my friend Katrina. Her goals are great, and I highly recommend checking out her full list.

1. Read at least 3 books that fall into the category of “you should have read this by now” whether it’s a classic or been on your shelf too long
2. Read at least 3 books about people who are very different from yourself
3. Read at least 8 actual physical books
4. Finish reading The Book Thief
5. Read The Name of the Wind
6. Read a book that’s over 500 pages
7. Quit a book before you’ve finished (or at least skim the rest)
8. Get rid of a book immediately after reading it
9. Read a book immediately after acquiring it or hearing about it (before it even makes it to the shelf or TBR)
10. Read a book you think might make you a better person
11. Read a book of short stories
12. Read a book with a cover that bothers you
13. Get rid of a book without reading it
14. Get at least 2 books behind or ahead of schedule at some point in the year
15. Decide not to do one of the challenges on this list

The best place to follow my progress is my Goodreads account, though I will try to remember to come back here and update when I’ve finished a particular challenge.

I’d love to hear what your reading goals are for the year, or what other things you hope to accomplish in 2018!

The end of this year really snuck up on me. 2017 was a strange one. It was a terrible year for politics, for shootings, for climate change, for sexual harassment, for generally feeling happy, and for the USA in particular. And while I had some personal wins this past year, it wasn’t actually a particularly standout year for me in terms of accomplishments or life achievements. It was mediocre, in just about every way.

But in a sense, that feels sort of fitting for the year that put a lid on my twenties. My twenties had some truly incredible moments. But they also had some pretty low lows, and I do feel a bit like that decade of my life had turned into the guest who’s overstayed its welcome. I am more than ready to embrace my thirties. I have learned so much about myself, what I want in life, and who I want to share that life with.

So for 2018, I welcome more than just a new year filled with hope and possibilities. I welcome the next chapter of my entire life.

Living my best life on my recent 30th birthday cruise

• Attended my first political march/protest and made an effort to follow the news and get involved more than I ever have before.
• Started a writing prompt project/community called #Wordbound, which has since fizzled, but I’m working on bringing it back in a bigger and better way that should launch in 2018.
• Have maintained pink hair for the entire year – and learned to go much longer between hair washes! I am comfortably up to 4-5 days, when I used to be a chronic every day washer.
• Spent a lot of the year planning my wedding, though I have a lot left to do (in 2017 I secured our venue, photographer, videographer, attire, asked a bunch of our best friends to be involved, and much more!)
• Made 2 large adult purchases with Joe (a new dining room table and a new couch) which felt really good and made me very excited to continue to make life decisions with him.
• Spent our summer vacations getting to know each others extended families in North Dakota and New York.
• Did a good amount of traveling on the weekends, including a Disneyland trip with my lady pals, two trips to Vegas (one for Joe’s mom’s birthday and one for our good friend Alexander’s birthday), Boston for NerdCon and San Francisco for the Night of Writing Dangerously.
• Went to my writing group nearly every week and dedicated a lot more of my time to writing than I ever have before, which included completing my 12th NaNoWriMo and starting a book I am feeling really good about releasing publicly when it’s finished.
• Read 44 books! I didn’t quite hit my 45 book goal on goodreads (drat) but I feel really good about how much I managed to read this year, especially taking breaks now and then on my commute for podcasts.
• Played a lot of board games, including finishing Pandemic Legacy Season 1. Also did a lot of escape rooms, and I’m pretty sure we solved every room we attempted in 2017.
• Continued working at Microsoft, building my career, and saving money. As many of my friends are quitting their day jobs to pursue their own passions and hobbies and online content creation, I’ve found myself clinging to the very kind of life I used to run from. Stability is so, so nice after a decade of hustling on YouTube. I really am enjoying my job.
• Stopped making YouTube videos, maybe not forever, but at least for now. It’s been sort of a strange year, since I’m not making regular content on any platform really. I made 1 video in the past 6 months, Team Hypercube has been defunct for awhile now, and even my social media has slowed down. I feel personally engaged with my hobbies, but since the bulk of that is writing, most people don’t see it. So I’m quieter these days, but I’m not gone. I want to blog more. I want to take more pictures. But I can’t promise much else.
• Turned 30 years old on a cruise to Mexico with my favorite friends.

 

Kayak tour in La Bufadora, Mexico

Moments after losing “Trivial Pursuit Twister” on the cruise, a game invented by Joe around 1 in the morning

1920’s speakeasy-themed escape room in Long Beach after the cruise, where we got 10th place in terms of overall time

• Actually finish your book to an extent where you feel okay sending it to beta readers and then, potentially, agents.

• For the love of god, start writing a completely different book. (After you finish this one, Kristina. After.)

• Plan an awesome wedding you’ll always look back on fondly, but also don’t let it make you crazy.

• Cosplay, or not, but only because you want to.

• Read at least 40 books. Be mindful of the books you choose to read.

• Continue to de-clutter and minimize possessions/wardrobe. Invest in nicer things, but less of them.

• Exercise. Please. Even just a little bit.

I did! I promise, I did! This summer I discovered virtual marathons so I did a lot of running (I have 4 medals to prove it!) and I did another 5k at work, which brings me to a total of 5 races participated in. My fitbit helped me make sure I was moving around enough each day, and I went to the gym a little bit. Baby steps, but I definitely got more exercise this year than in previous years of my adult life. Next year will be even better.

My resolutions for next year:

1. FINISH A SOLID DRAFT OF ANY BOOK, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY. I’m not going to put an unrealistic or stressful goal in here about agents or shopping the book around, just finish it. Maybe get a beta reader or two. You can do it, Kristina.
2. Enjoy the remaining 4 months of wedding planning, and remember to keep it about you and Joe to the very best of your ability. By the time you revisit these goals the you will be married and the wedding will be over and that’s pretty powerful to think about right now, so enjoy it enjoy it enjoy it.
3. Read at least 30 books. This is a very low and unambitious goal, but I want to enable time for myself to listen to podcasts and watch TV and see movies, which are all things I never have enough time for. A big part of this goal, really, is to see more movies in theaters, keep up with more popular TV shows, and discover new podcasts. All of this will be in balance with your reading goals.
4. Once the wedding is over, work on at least one of your big backlogged project ideas. Maybe that podcast idea? Maybe the other secret idea?
5. Finish Pandemic Legacy Season 2 and Charterstone within the year. You are only one game in on each of these, but you deserve more leisure time. Have game nights!
6. Do many more escape rooms! I won’t put a number here, but do them all!

Thanks for sticking with me, blog readers. I appreciate it so much that there are many of you who will stick around even if I’m not making stuff constantly. I’ll still share things, of course, but your patience as I try out having an actual real normal human life is everything. Happy new year, internet fam.

Alright, guys. I’m in a better mood about NaNoWriMo this week. I’m feeling positive. My outline is 7,000 words long. I’m ready to go.

Also Halloween just tends to put me in a good mood. Over the weekend I had two different themed parties to attend, including a Harry Potter party (I dressed as a grindylow) and a super villain dinner party (where I was ‘Night Shade’, the poisoner). Both costumes utilized various things I have collected over the years at renaissance faires and cons and I’m always glad to reuse silly costume-y impulse buys.

Plus, today my boss insisted we all dress up as witches for work, as it is her dream to have a coven. My boss is weirder than your boss.

This gave me an excuse to rewear the cloak that was made for this Halloween short film I created two years ago, and the witch hat I decided I needed to buy at the Wizarding World.

I also signed up for a digital 5k called the Halloween Hustle, which I agreed to run with my pal Justin with the condition that we wear costumes for that, as well. This was the final check on my Halloween to-do list for the year, before settling in to pass out candy (we hardly had any trick or treaters) and watch Halloween movies.

So that makes four costumes this Halloween, total? I don’t know why I do this to myself.

Our time was 44:07, which isn’t anywhere near my usual times. It was cold, and we kept stopping to wave and give thumbs up to people who were excited about seeing peanut butter and jelly running around the lake. It was a real delight, and I highly recommend it. The time was much less important to me.

Plus the sun went down as we were on the tail end of the run, which was absolutely beautiful.

NaNoWriMo begins tomorrow (or in 1 hour, technically), and I’m really hoping to start off strong. My goal is to write at least 2-3,000 words a day for the first 3 days, since I have to head down to Portland this weekend for some wedding stuff.

I keep feeling nostalgic about NaNoWriMo starting, thinking about how this is the 12th year in a row that I’ve got butterflies in my stomach on Halloween night as I wait for the clock to strike midnight. I keep thinking about how every year I’m at a different place in my life, but this writing challenge is a constant. How I started this challenge over a decade ago as a kid in my childhood bedroom, writing on a hand-me-down desktop computer and fitting my noveling in around homework, and how in all this time, NaNoWriMo has seen me through 4 laptops, 3 different houses, at least 4 boyfriends, two different colleges, a graduation, 4 different jobs, a decade of YouTube videos, a certificate degree in writing, an engagement, a castle, and now wedding planning.

I know earlier this month I was worried this might be the year I don’t finish, but look at everything I’ve been through since I started doing NaNoWriMo. I’m good at this. And I’m ready to start year twelve.

Make sure you’re following me on twitter if you want to join in my inevitable word sprints!

Lastly, I’ve been slowly building a mailing list over the last year, but this past weekend I finally kicked it off with a snazzy little welcome letter! If you’d like to be on the list for semi-regular life updates, news and perhaps even sneak peeks at what I am writing, you can sign up here. It’s going to be fun.

Okay. 50 minutes until midnight. We’ve got this.

NaNoWriMo is still a half a month away, but I can feel it looming in the distance, creeping in and causing stress and anxiety and a little bit of excitement but mostly anxiety. And listen – this is year twelve. I’ve finished NaNoWriMo while in college and working a job and running a YouTube channel all at the same time. I’ve finished NaNoWriMo when I missed an entire week to the flu. I’ve finished NaNoWriMo while dealing with breakups, while moving out of my parents’ house for the first time, while taking trips that stole my attention, while working on big projects at work, and more.

But this year feels different.

I’m nervous.

Yes, I’m planning a wedding. Yes, I’ve taken on a lot more responsibility at work and it eats up a lot more of my time. But I can deal with those things. I’m very good at finding time to do NaNoWriMo. I can wake up early. I can lock myself in a room. I can turn down social plans, or stay up late, or bribe myself with pictures of kittens.

The one thing I can’t work around is myself, and I haven’t exactly been able to rely on my ability to focus these days.

I’ve never had to worry before that a hurricane or a shooting or a wildfire or a new piece of terrible legislation will be the reason I might not finish NaNoWriMo. And I realize being able to say these things puts me in a place of privelege, and I acknowledge that. But I’m paying attention now. And while I can sing from the rooftops how important art is in times of chaos, that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to create it myself every single day because these things have been terrible – are terrible – and they’re happening with alarming frequency, and there’s no one leading this country doing a damn thing about any of it. I feel helpless, and sad, and scared – pretty much every day.

So my biggest fear this year is that I won’t finish. That my streak will end at 11, and year 12 will be the year I just can’t.

The only way I know how to work through this fear is to talk about it.

Honestly, I’m not sure I know how to mitigate this, except to wake up every day and face it. There genuinely might be more important things to do in November than work on my novel. Those things might be going to a protest, or using my 1667 words that day to write a letter to someone in congress, or crying in the bathtub. And that’s okay.

But I’m going to wake up every day and try.

And when I can, I’m going to try to remind others that creating art when you’re hurting can be therapeutic. And that some of the best works come out of trying to resist, so we should pour our anger into the things we create. And that even more important than making great art is making safe spaces for each other, and checking in with each other, and coping.

I believe we can all do it, together. But if we can’t, that’s okay too.

LIFE UPDATE:

I keep re-inventing new ways to be busy. I’m not trying to wear that as a badge of honor, it’s just true.

This summer Joe and I ended up doing way more traveling than we had planned, which was incredible, but also made the time feel like it flew by. On top of that, I’ve been ramping into a somewhat larger role at work, and on top of that, I’m still planning that pesky wedding.

Momentum on my book has… slowed, but I’m still squeaking out whatever progress I can make in the cracks of the madness that has been this whole summer. It finally, finally rained today and I breathed this sigh of relief I hadn’t realized I’d been building up – shorter days and crummy weather means I might finally be able to hide away in coffee shops and get back into a good rhythm of writing. And of course, it also means NaNoWriMo is right around the corner…

Other things that have been going on with me…

• Joe and I did a really adult thing and bought a new dining room table. Then at the last moment we decided to put it in our living room with the board games instead of in the dining room, so we’re not quite full-fledged adults yet. We’re now eating off our older table, and have had TWO epic game nights since the new one was delivered. #noregrets
• I went to PAX and didn’t do any cosplay, which is the first con I’ve been to in probably 3 years where I didn’t cosplay at all (aside from LeakyCon, but I was a bit busy there, ha). I’m here to report that it actually felt great.
• That being said, I will be cosplaying at GeekGirlCon at the end of this month, but just one day.
• I haven’t made a video in over two months and the jury is still out on how I feel about that.

I don’t have that much to report on. I’ve been letting myself do a lot more relaxing and non-productive stuff than usual, which has meant watching TV, reading books, and saying yes to things like game nights spontaneous hang-outs.

For the longest time I really tried to cut out as many consumptive hobbies as I could, to maximize the time I spent on creative ones. Reading books was just about the only one I let slide, since reading is nearly as important for a writer as writing is. But… guys, it was exhausting. I still wish I could make all the things, but you have to give yourself a break sometimes. So that’s what I am working on.

WORDBOUND:

I haven’t shared a #wordbound prompt response in awhile, so I decided to work on one tonight.

Write a scene where a character lets something go, figuratively or literally.

No service.

The phone said the same thing every time Allison checked it, no matter how strongly she willed the WiFi signal to find something – anything. She held it up in the air, hoping it might catch some rogue stream of Internet hovering in the sky, by chance. No service. She heaved the old wooden dresser closer to the window and climbed on top, legs dangling over the side, trying to get the phone even higher up. No service. She shoved the window open with her foot and held the phone right out the window, dancing with disaster as she gave it one last effort. Even though her grip was snug, the ground two stories below was jagged with rocks.

Still no service, loser! she felt like it was mocking her. Allison yanked her arm back inside and slammed the window shut.

It had been four days since her parents had dropped she and Riley off at their Great Aunt’s house. Four days since any texts had been able to come through, since getting any pictures from her friends, since updating any of her social media. She could only imagine what might happen in four whole days at summer camp. She imagined her friends had not only met boys, but were married off and starting careers by now. They’d surely have families and houses and grandchildren by the end of the summer. She’d be hopelessly behind and never catch up and might as well not even bother going to high school at all – and to top it off, she couldn’t even complain about any of this on social media.

Allison heaved a sigh and threw herself back on her hard, patchwork bed, the useless phone still clutched in her hand.

Maybe she’d just move in with her weird aunt permanently. They could ceremoniously burn all their electronics, live off the land, swear off all boys forever. It seemed her Great Aunt had done most of these things already anyway, so Allison was sure she’d be all for it. Cabin buddies. Out in the woods. In the middle of nowhere. Forever. Someone could make a sitcom about them.

High school seemed hard anyway. Maybe she’d just skip it. Her friends probably wouldn’t even miss her, after all the fun they were likely having at camp without her.

Allison tucked the phone under her pillow and vowed to not check it again until the end of the summer.

Well, maybe the end of the day.

Okay, she definitely wouldn’t check it until at least after lunch.

–

Well, at the last minute it appears my main character decided not to let it go at all, but what can you do. Sometimes your characters are just more stubborn than you are. Hope you enjoyed this little tidbit – now to decide if it will actually make it into the book!

Hey everyone! In case you missed it, #wordbound is back as of this past week! We’re officially on Week #25 after a bit of a summer break, and I couldn’t be more excited about getting back into the regular swing of writing with you guys.

This week’s prompt was a blogging specific one, and it was: What’s something you’ve always considered writing but haven’t yet?

The interesting thing about #NaNoWriMo (and having done it 11 times) is that most of my really big ideas I’ve at least attempted a first NaNo draft of. And while most of those projects I would probably entirely rewrite rather than attempt any sort of editing pass… it does help me sleep at night knowing that at least one version of many of my favorite ideas exist in some workable form.

There are a few things I’ve always wanted to try my hand at but haven’t, but I’d say those are much more of idea fragments, rather than full-fledged projects. Anything that gets past the fragment stage usually ends up just getting written in November.

Here are some ideas I’ve had and may come back to some time:

1. I’ve been wanting to write a series of weird short stories, ones that don’t have much to do with each other but still feel somewhat like they go together. I’ve maybe already written some things that would work with this idea, but I haven’t come up with any kind of defining thread so it’s a perpetual back burner project.
2. I talked about this in a blog post recently, but I’ve wanted to write something that involves North Dakota and my family heritage and the midwest for many years now. I’m still working out exactly what that project might look like, and how best to incorporate real history and traditions into a fictional story.
3. A few years ago Joe and I got in a car wreck which left us stranded in a snowy highway town in Montana, and I’ve had it in my head since then to write a paranormal version of that experience. I imagine that could be a short story. I really want to write it.
4. I’ve also been sitting on a non-fiction road trip idea in which I would write a series of blog posts about the various stops along the way. I first had the idea for the road trip a few years ago, and mapped out all the stops and how long it would take me, but then I never actually went on the trip. This is still something I would love to do.

I can’t think of anything else specific to share! Right now I am very focused on trying to actually finish a project that I haven’t let my mind drift too far into the realm of new ideas, because new ideas are attractive and shiny and distracting.

So many of the books I’d love to share with you guys someday are half-realized NaNoWriMo drafts in desperate need of more work, so I’m just trying to learn the focus needed to take first drafts to the next level. Taking writing classes and studying novel-writing as a craft has both armed me with the tools to hopefully do this, but also the additional self-doubt of realizing my story’s flaws more clearly. One step forward, two steps back. But I am trying to write every day. Even when it’s hard. Even when I walk through a bookstore and feel that crushing knowledge that thousands of amazing books are already out there… but possibly there are people who’d want mine too?

My goal is to finish the first draft of my current project by November 1st, in which case I’m hoping I can pick up one of these other ideas as a nice palate cleanser.

We’ll see, though. November creeps closer every day and I have a ton of work ahead of me.