I have a confession to make, you guys. I've been cheating on the ADF.
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I spent today at church! I did the same thing last Sunday, actually. This was our third time showing up at the Unitarian Universalist church, and I'm always really impressed with it. The greeters and ushers are extremely welcoming, and each week there's been a part of the service that really touched me.
We've already been invited to an LGBT potluck, asked if we are looking for a wedding venue (since it passed!) and just repeatedly welcomed. It's not that I haven't felt welcomed at the ADF rituals I attended at Trout Lake Abbey - because I have - but this is something that's local, that's weekly, and that appeals to my inability to settle on a single religion.
Right now I'm not making a lot of progress on my Dedicant Path - I did a very basic Samhain because I've been sick and stressed. I'm not reading a whole lot on the mailing lists. I haven't done any of my book reports yet - I've got a couple of Baltic hearth books I could ask for permission to use for my hearth culture reading, but I haven't bothered to ask the preceptor yet. Or I could use Travels Through Middle-Earth, which I already own and everything, but I'm really not feeling the Anglo-Saxon or Norse cultures lately.
I think it's just the end of fall and winter coming on. Winter is when I tend to ask myself why I care about X or Y thing. I'm evaluating whether I want to renew my ADF membership when the year is up, what I want to do for upcoming holidays, whether I want to keep doing NaNoWriMo in the future...
Yeah, I said it. I am not very excited about NaNo right now. Admittedly, some of that is probably because it's week two, and week two is generally considered the hardest part of NaNo. Last week, between the election and family health crises, I was too stressed out to focus on writing for several days. I'm almost caught up now, but I'm wondering what I get out of NaNo, and what I want to get out of it.
When I was in Tempe, I really enjoyed going to write-ins because, over the course of time spent together, I felt like I'd become friends with the other people in the region. NaNo had a social aspect that I don't feel like I have here. I also don't feel like I need the motivation specifically to write in November - the last few months, I've been very regular about writing both fiction and non-fiction.
I like challenges that make me struggle to do things I don't otherwise do. Story-a-Day was exciting this year because I'd never won it before and I wasn't sure I could do it. National Poetry Writing Month is awesome because I don't spend a lot of time with poetry during the rest of the year. But I've won NaNo. I don't really have anything to prove there, and if I'm not getting the social aspect either, then I have to ask myself why I'm doing it.
I think the answer is "habit" and I don't think that's necessarily a good enough reason to do it again next year.