Better Day

I actually did quite a bit today: job application, lots of walking, some chores, fifteen minutes of Torah study (OK, that’s not so good in itself… I wanted to do more, but ran out of time again) plus shul (synagogue) in the evening.  I filled in another job application where I don’t think I have the relevant experience.  There are library jobs around, but most are not at my level and those that are seem to be mostly full-time, which surprises me a bit, as I thought librarianship was a career path that had lots of part-time opportunities that would fit better with my mental health.  I wonder if I should have taken the changed job description that was offered to me in further education around this time last year (is it really only a year?!).

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My CBT therapist set me “worry time” – I am not supposed to worry throughout the day, but to write my worries down and worry at a set time.  I have struggled with this.  It’s hard to remember, or to be sufficiently self-aware, not to worry when anxious thoughts come.  However, on days like today, when I’ve achieved some things and feel reasonably positive, it is hard to worry to order.  Today I feel reasonably confident of my ability to write books and even somewhat confident that someone will publish them.  I don’t feel particularly confident that I will get married, but I don’t feel too lonely or concerned about the emotional and practical difficulties of being single forever.  But this will have no impact on how I feel tomorrow or perhaps even on how I will feel later.

I have almost finished writing my Doctor Who book.  I need to do some polishing to the text (removing sentence connectors that are repetitive and probably redundant) and adjust the formatting slightly.  It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours, so hopefully I’ll have the book ready to be submitted by the end of next week, two weeks at the latest, well in advance of my desired deadline of the autumn.  I wish I could have got the word count below 100,000 words; it’s a bit over 101,500 at the moment, which is OK, but apparently publishers prefer under 100,000 because it’s more expensive to publish longer books.  But I can’t think of an easy way to get rid of nearly 2,000 words and think that by this stage it’s better to wait for an editor to tell me to cut them, considering I’ve cut quite a bit to get it down to the current level.  But I am open to suggestions about this.

I’m also excited at the thought of writing fiction.  I have ideas for a couple of novels, one I’m focused on and one or two that are in the back of my mind.  I’m excited at the prospect of telling my story, or at least something somewhat like my story, as well as the stories of other people who are marginalised in the Jewish community.