I crossed two milestones yesterday.

The first involves writing.

I have written 502,159 words so far this year (words that I count.)

That’s more words than I’ve ever written in a given year. (The best year previously was 412K.)

I think this is huge. I didn’t write a lot at the start of the year. There was an entire month when I didn’t write at all. But I have managed to slowly accumulate a body of work.

Despite the slow start, my average daily word count is currently 1657. I’m not quite to Nano pace every day, but I’m closing in on it.

I would like to hit 600K for the year. That means 50K for both November and December. Which is totally doable…if my hormones don’t decide to go entirely insane.

Which brings me to the next milestone.

I signed up for a gym yesterday.

This probably doesn’t seem like much of a milestone. For me, it’s huge.

It means that I’m trusting my health, that I’m trusting that I’m going to be well enough on a regular basis that I’ll actually go into the gym.

The primary reason I joined the gym was so that I could start getting in more steps daily. I am building back up to 10K steps every day.

Last night was a bad night. I couldn’t fall asleep, and then I couldn’t stay asleep. I went to sleep with a headache and I still have one this morning. I blame the hormones.

However, I still got up and took myself to the gym.

It was a slow start. I walked 1.5 miles in 30 minutes. I figure that’s good enough for my first day. Then I did my pushups, some yoga, and some stretching before I came home.

I don’t need to do more than that, honestly. I probably won’t have 10K steps today. That’s okay. I’ll build up to it. Maybe next week I’ll be walking faster, or further, I don’t know.

Before I started the keto diet and got my migraines under control, walking while I had a headache would have been a recipe for disaster. Not only would the walking make the pain much worse, it would also increase the amount of time that I was in pain.

We’ll see how my headache does today, whether in the end I think the exercise helped or not. Generally speaking, doing light exercise (like walking) while I have a headache has been a really good thing. I pushed it today. Jury is still out on whether that was a smart thing or not.

But now, time for more words. I am still having SO MUCH FUN with the current novel. I’m also focusing on feeling satisfied with those chapters that are more difficult to write. I know that at least a couple of them have been very powerful.

I hope that your Wednesday is going well!

ALSO – Every Wednesday Blaze and I go to Ristretto’s Coffee and Wine, from 6:30 to 8:30 to write. If you’re local, come join us! We pretty much only write the entire time, not a lot of talking. (Yes, it’s part of the sit down, shut up, and write time.)

I’ve been running this Meetup group since April. Very few people join us, though a lot always say they will. I’m figuring we might get more writers for the next month, for Nano. We’ll see.

http://ristrettoscoffeeandwine.com/