Yello to all, just a quick post today to fill you in and bring ya up to date. As one has likely deduced from the title of this post, the significant event I had hinted at happening in mid-November was Will and myself MOVING. For one of only a few times in my life, we have moved house but not country, and are still in Melbourne. The experience of not having to fly for a day and get rid of most of my possessions is quite a new one to me, and I'm enjoying being able to actually buy things like furniture without having to factor in an impending hemisphere swap. When we first got the keys the walls were an unmistakably yellow shade of beige, which was obviously not going to fly with me, but luckily we were able to get permission from the landlord to paint and so that is what we did for a very intense three days before moving in properly. Approximately one day into said painting I came down with what I'm pretty sure was the flu, which was fabulous timing all round, but we still managed to get it done with some help from my mum and aunt, so all was well. I'll put together some posts about the apartment over time, probably starting some time in January once we've got the shelving for our living room and there's less miscellaneous clutter lying around. I'm excited to get back to home-based content, and also just have more space to create things, so 2020 will hopefully be somewhat of a renaissance on the blog front.

Something I also mentioned in my last post which contributed to November being incredibly hectic - and also to my lack of spare creative energy to put together a post before now - was NaNoWriMo. Despite moving house, painting the entire apartment and getting the flu (swiftly followed by the #1 worst throat infection I have ever had in my entire life, pain-wise only second to the actual sensation of recovering from my tonsillectomy), I WON BABY. I WROTE 50,000 WORDS OF MY NOVEL IN 30 DAYS. Technically I wrote it in less than that because owing to the obstacles mid-month, the final 25,000 words were written in under a week. Those of you who follow me on instagram will have seen this unfold in real time, culminating in a 6pm to midnight 5,000 word sprint on the final day of the month. Very proud of myself, won't lie. My novel itself is still only about half way done - it looks like my revision process will be cutting down rather than adding more, which I prefer tbh - but I'm a lot more confident in my ability to actually get it done now, and I'm hoping to have my first draft completely finished by the end of February. I shan't lie to u my progress since NaNoWriMo ended has only been about 4k words so far, but I have made Sims of my main characters so that counts for something.

In other news, I have entered my allocated period of longing for continental Europe for this financial quarter. Writing about Italy (my novel takes place partially in Rome, Lombardy and Florence) has unsurprisingly made me feel quite slighted by the cruel hand of fate aka the geographical inconvenience of the land which I once more now call home, and the southern hemisphere's ancient ruin-less summer is not helping. In an attempt to navigate this injustice and amplify the vibes I needed to channel for NaNoWriMo I have been posting some of my fave Roman photos on Instagram, which reminded me that I have at least three full blog posts worth of photos from my last trip that I have yet to slap some questionable prose on and share with you. Despite the unenthusiastic manner in which I just presented that fact to you, they are some of my favourite photos that I've ever taken in the land of carbs and I'm excited to put them all together, so look forward to those jolly nuggets of escapism coming your way in the near future.

Unlike Ariana Grande 'soon' in my vocabulary does not necessarily mean within the next ten days, but as that is literally all we've got left in this decade I'd imagine there will be at least SOMETHING up for you within that time. On the chance there isn't, however, I hope you have a fab Christmas/Hanukkah/Winter Solstice/non-denominational period of merriment, and if you're working in retail my thoughts and prayers are with u. I will be hopping over to Perth at some point to meet up with my dad and spend some time with my grandparents, and be back in time for New Year's and my 27TH BIRTHDAY (if any of you have been with me here or on Youtube since I was 18/19, how fkin wild is that) on January 2nd. I haven't put together my full list of goals and resolutions for 2020, but I definitely want to be more active online, both here and on instagram, and make some god damn youtube videos. My accidental sabbatical is now almost at 2 and a half years, so it is probably time 2 shine once more. Will has just returned from walking Calvin (both pets are living with us in the apartment, which is interesting but thus far positive) so I'm gonna go and stop him from accidentally chopping his fingers off trying to cut through frozen bolognese. Let me know if there's any specific content you want me to chuck together as we head into a phresh decade, and I will see you all again v soon. x0

PS. I'm not sure if I'll 100% get around to writing a New Year's post, but if you're in need of some inspo, I wrote this post last December, and at the end it has an index of ALL the NY-friendly posts I've EVER put up so go wild.