Quitting Camp NaNoWriMo.

          I hate, and I do mean hate deadlines.

          I feel like they are ableist in the absolute worst way, despite my love for all things NaNoWriMo. What I mean by that is for chronically ill authors, people, who may or may not have the ability or the energy to keep up with deadlines like this, it’s hard. Harder this year that it’s ever been for me before.

          I think part of it has to do with the fact that this April, the weather does not know what the hell it’s doing. One minute it wants to be sunny and warm, and the next, there’s a wind blowing through that’s so cold it makes me want a parka. These snap decision weather changes and I just do not get along. They have been causing a lot of pain in my leg, and aside from that, my migraines have been at an all-time high.

          Lately, it doesn’t matter if I want to write. I can’t.

          I’m too tired. My leg hurts too much. The screaming and throbbing in my head is too much. My anxiety is burning a hole through me because I cannot do any of the things that I enjoy doing. I cannot write. I cannot read, and I cannot relax because if I try to relax, my anxiety tends to remind me that I’m not doing, or haven’t yet completed something that I cared so much about doing this year.

          In theory, I guess I could count these blog posts to my wordcounts for the month but that seems like a copout. It seems like an absolute cheat because, if I’m honest, these posts are just as hard for me to make as any other. It doesn’t matter if I’m typing on a laptop, a phone, or my Kindle. It doesn’t matter if it’s a pen and paper in my hands, everything is just too hard right now… and I feel too sick… and maybe we need to normalize that.

          Maybe we need to normalize the ability and the right to say no, and to say that even though we committed to something, we just feel too sick to go on. That we’re sorry, and we tried, rather than shaming people for being a failure. Because if we were at our best all the time, then it wouldn’t be our best, it would be our “average” and we’d need to work ten times harder to be our best.

Signed,

          I cannot go on. I’m sorry, I tried.