Failure to lunch

Basically, November has been an unmitigated disaster. In the sense that nothing spectacular has happened, and the huge goals set for the month (complete a draft of a 50,000 word novel for NaNoWriMo, grow an exemplary moustache raising loads of Moula for charity, get closer to a solid plan set for the 'top secret I've told everyone I'd love to do it' Route 66 bike dream) have all passed me by in an unnassuming and mediocre fashion. I've fallen into the middle ground of unexciting but bearable and pretty easy life, being mediocre and happy to let that happen. I've raised £26 for Movember. Reached just over 35,000 words for NaNoWriMo. And put together lists, sorted budgets and planned dates by which certain things have to have happened for the trip next year. But they're all just 'alright' things. There's been no huge leap forward or giant, spectacular event to really get them going. Why? Life.

I've been busy. Busy to the point where reading, writing, going in and out of work on extended hours to get as much money as possible and also trying to keep fit, healthy, play my instruments once a week and keep up with TV are impossible to combine with sleeping and eating. I haven't even kept up the commitment I made of blogging more regularly, especially about the efforts of the month. It's easier, when you're on the dole, to do five to seven posts a week, I suppose. And to keep up with eating regularly (hence, after a lunch hour spent in town, this post title).

Anyway, I have read a few books this month, and I reached a bit the other day in Engleby by Sebastian Faulks where the protagonist returns to writing the diary we're reading after some time. It summed up the first month and a bit of working full time with other things I was desperate to keep going perfectly.

'Busy is good, isn't it? Busy means we're hard at it, achieving our ends or "goals". Haven't had time to stop, or look around or think. That's considered the sign of a life well lived. Although people complain of it- another year gone, where did that year go?- tacitly, they're proud. Otherwise they wouldn't do it: you put your time where your priority is.
Suppose, though, you're not sure that what you're doing is at all worthwhile. Suppose you stumbled into it over a spoonful of lime pickle. It's easy, it pays quite well. But really it's a distraction. It stops you thinking about what you ought to be doing.
[...] This "busy" thing isn't a commitment, it's an evasion.'