Howdy, folks. How are we all doing? Good? Groovy.
Spooky Month has come to a close, and we’ve now entered November, a pointedly boring month.
Whereas I was expecting October to be a total romp through and through, things went kind of sideways really quick about halfway through. Allow me to elaborate…
If you’ve read my past two blogs, then you already know that Comic-Con and Las Vegas were the big hits for me in October. Even in the very first weekend of October, though, things got off to a roaring start. On the first of the month, my friends and I journeyed to the NY Renaissance Faire for a day of medieval amusement. The day after, I attended a concert in the city to see Currents, who I’m always thrilled for, and Kingdom of Giants, who I finally got to see live for the first time. So, already, October was off to a great start.
Con was a blast, of course, and I rode that high pretty much straight up until the week I left for Vegas. Prior to flying across the country, though, I decided to upgrade to a new phone, which should’ve been great all around. Except, for some reason, my old phone decided to factory reset itself while I was setting up the new one, thus deleting years’ worth of videos, pictures, and other files before I was able to copy things over. And I foolishly hadn’t backed everything up for quite some time, so a lot of that stuff is just gone now.
Thankfully, the internet and social media are a thing, so all of the best bits I was worried about losing still exist online, and I’ve slowly been getting back as much as I can. In reality, this hasn’t been a total catastrophe. It’s just another thing I have to spend a considerable amount of time on to fix, which I’m not really enjoying, but hey, it has to get done, so here I am.
With the trip to Vegas preceded by that minor debacle, I was very much ready to fly out for a weekend of nonstop thrills. That, of course, did not exactly turn out to be the case, though. Vegas itself was super fun, but also bittersweet, obviously because When We Were Young Fest got cancelled on the Saturday my friends and I were supposed to go (still not over it). At this point, October had gone from “sky high awesome” to more along the lines of “ground level okay.”
But then, of course, we had Halloween to look forward to, which certainly cheered me up. I decided to reprise my Mr. Knight (Moon Knight) cosplay from last year, and the results were well worth it. I was bold enough to wear my fancy suit to a pub for an evening of punk rock shenanigans on Halloween weekend, and though I didn’t win the costume contest, my look was definitely well-received by the other patrons of the joint. I then wore it again on Halloween day to work, where I also got a lot of high praise, but alas, I didn’t win the costume contest there either.
Someone is clearly rigging these things.
Also, I have to say, Vegas wasn’t nearly as spooky as it should’ve been. It’s October. Why were there not more spooky decorations all over the place? Whoever manages that town needs to get their priorities straight.
In any case, the overarching spooky energy of the month served well as lifeline for me, especially when things started going not as well as I hoped they would. Additionally, I started attending little writing workshops, courtesy of the Gotham Writers group, during October, which also helped keep my spirits high and my creative juices flowing. For the past few Fridays now, I’ve been hopping online with some fellow writers from all over the place and writing based on the clever prompts that are given to us. I’m probably going to be sharing some of the results of those prompts here on my site sometime in the very near future. Like, maybe this week, even. Be sure to stay tuned for that.
Things have otherwise been pretty smooth sailing as of late. Work is fine. Writing things is going well. Still finalizing “Soul Survivor” prior to sending it out for potential publication, but that shouldn’t take much longer at this point. I do, however, need to get back into reading The Lord of the Rings. It fell off to the wayside a while back, and I haven’t had the time to pick it back up. I hope to change that this coming month. Fingers crossed.
So, overall, October was a winner for me, though not without its stumbles. Here’s hoping everyone else had a safe and spooky October, as well.
Also, remember, Christmas doesn’t start until after Thanksgiving.
Peace!