April Camper

I’m sitting in the sunniest spot on the house; a small table by our kitchen. I’m eating an omelette and my tea has just been poured. It’s the third of April, and it’s time for April Camper! I did a list similar to this in March and I liked it, so here’s another one.

It’s a list of things I’m implementing into my life this April, vague-plans is what I called them in March. Here we go!

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1/ Lamping it

Okay, I’m aware that most people would have lamps already. But I didn’t! So I got a lamp and it’s now sitting on my desk, next to my bed. It’s helped me because I can crawl into bed and then turn the lamp off from there without having to get up and turn the light off. What I’m hoping it’ll achieve is not looking at my phone once I’m in bed. I have a habit of looking at my phone in the dark (which is so bad), so I’m hoping that by having a lamp I can turn off without moving, I can leave my phone somewhere else that I can’t reach.

2/ Camp NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month. Ohhh man, is this is a goodie. I don’t think I’ve talked about NaNoWriMo before, so let me explain.

It’s a big internet thing where people from all over the world sign up (for free) on the NaNoWriMo website to see if they can beat the challenge, or ‘win’. The challenge is this: you have one month, November, to write a 50,000 word novel, from scratch. That’s 1667 words a day, though if you only wrote 300 words one day,you have to catch up on them in the following days. The website has a little word tracker so you can look at your stats and see how many words you’ve got left, etc. It’s pretty fantastic.

It takes place in November every year, and every year there’s a flurry of YouTube videos and blog posts, telling you how to ‘Preptober’ so halfway through November you don’t crash and burn.

But it’s April, I hear you cry!

Camp NaNoWriMo is every April and July. It’s a little different, though made by the same people. ‘Camp’ is where you have the month of April to set yourself any writing goal of your choosing. Again, the site gives you a word tracker and tells you your stats, which is great. My goal for the Camp is to write 10,000 words of my already-existing novel to bring it up to 55,000.

On the first of April, my stats told me I would have to write 334 words every day to reach this goal. As of today, I’ve already written 1941 words, so now I only have to write 288 words to finish on time.

3/ To-Be-Read

Last month, I decided to intentionally read through a Christian book. With that going well, and me steadily making my way through some wisdom, it’s time to tackle some of those classics that have been on my bookcase since high school.

So far, this has been going well. I started reading ‘Rebecca’ by Daphne du Maurier and finished it in two days. (It was actually so good I couldn’t stop reading; and with the help of my trusty lamp, at one in the morning I was still going strong!) I’ve owned it since year 12 but never got around to it. But now I have and I’m hoping to keep this trend going as I make my way through ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Bronte.

4/ Road Trippin’

I’m going to Sydney! Last month was Brisbane, this month is Sydney. I’ll be visiting one my sisters (groovy time) and my friends that live down there, so that’ll take up my mid-April.

5/ Organisation

Organisation has some of the best connotations in the world, not gonna lie. This month I’m helping my mum organise the upstairs area of our house, which contains all things sewing. Is there anything better than looking at pretty floral fabrics all stacked together?

6/ Running

The weather’s cooling down (very slowly, but it’s happening) which makes running more pleasant. I quite enjoy running while I’m doing it, it’s more the putting in effort that’s difficult. But no longer! Running will be a consistent part of April. Totally.

7/ Blanket-y goodness

I’m not 100% sure about this one, especially because I’m going away to Sydney for a week and a half, but I’ll definitely be thinking about it. Mum and I have spent one Saturday morning going through some sewing things upstairs, and that included repacking fabric and getting rid of gross fabric (no matter how far you run, at least once in your life you will look at some fabric and ask yourself why you bought it). It got me all inspired to make a patchwork blanket. I’ve made one before, and it’s one of my favourite things I’ve made. It’s pretty, soft, warm, well-sewn. But now I’m tempted to make a second. You know, just because. I might just start cutting out some squares this month.

8/ *insert comfy pants dance here*

I’m buying myself some pants!

(To clarify: I already own pants.)

As winter will be here before I know it, I’m realising that I own a lot of jeans but only one pair of comfy pants. (You know the ones I mean.) I’m planning on buying some on Thursday (two days!!) and I’m more excited than I should be. What can I say; I enjoy bundling up and being warm.

9/ Carcassonne

I didn’t mention this in March Camper, so I’ll introduce the idea to you now.

Carcassonne is a board game (only you use tiles? Anyway). For a number of years, my dad would buy our family a new, interesting board game for Christmas. Games like Ticket to Ride, 7 Wonders, Stone Age, and Killer Bunnies, in case you’ve heard of them before. They’re not your typical Monopoly (thank goodness), and if we’ve pulled one of those bad boys off the shelf, you know compulsory family fun will be happening.

March was for 7 Wonders. We played, not every night, but often enough to call March the month of 7 Wonders. April is the month of Carcassonne. It was the family game I was always the worst at (you have to be very aware of what the other players are doing, and that stresses me out. Why can’t we all just do our own thing and be happy?), but the first night we played it I won. Oh yeah.

Last night I didn’t, but no one’s surprised.

10/ Volunteering

I asked mum what else I’m doing in April and she said volunteering and I said I’m not putting that on this list. I didn’t want to, in case it doesn’t end up happening, but hey, it’s here now, because it is an April plan.

This week I’m meeting up with a school chaplain to discuss helping her with scripture, etc. It’s definitely something I want to do and am interested in, so I’m hoping I’ll get some experience in that field.

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Some of March Camper is still in play; learning barre (bar? I hate this spelling confusion) chords and doing more cooking. The thing is, I like making dessert and snacks (savoury muffins anyone?) more than cooking dinner, but that’s a problem because you need dinner every night but dessert every night isn’t wise.

Sarah xx