This post is a lot more sad and vaguely desperate than originally planned.

Someone asked me the other day why I was bothering to do NaNoWriMo this year.  She was saying that I was so obviously unprepared and busy and couldn't really squeeze it in, and all I was doing was hurting myself since I was giving up hours at work so I could work on my novel and it was added stress.

The short answer is that I'm obviously insane.

But the longer, more reasonable answer is the fact that...I need this.

I don't like to whine about my job, because I get that I'm incredibly lucky to have one and be wanted, but I have to face the facts: it makes me miserable.  It's not something I am interested in, I will not be staying there, and all it does is stress me out and give me no gratification in the end.  I feel like I'm wasting my own time, as well as theirs.  I feel constant guilt for taking the job of someone who could really like this and turn it into something.

Basically, I am miserable with my life right now.  I haven't blogged mostly because I haven't had the time, but also because...there are few things I find interesting these days to blog about.  The place I spend at least 30 hours a week at makes me so depressed and hopeless I don't have the energy or care to do much else the rest of my hours.  I feel so detached and far away from anything I love, from anything that makes me feel passionate and real.

Which is why I'm doing NaNo(WriMo).

Writing is the only constant in my life, and since I started working, I haven't done any of it. It feels as though doing NaNo is the last shred of hope for me, that it's the one single, solitary thread I have left that ties me to being Me.  Maybe I'm being dramatic and/or putting too much stock in a simple activity, but...this is how I feel.  I need this. For my sanity, for a small, glimmer of hope in my life.

So, sleepless nights, endless wordcounts, less money, pissing off work because I won't commit to full time yet...

It will be worth it.