Hello, wonderlandians. How is your Sunday going? Are you guys ready for the start of a brand new week? I know I am so not ready for it to be Monday. I have had such an awesome day today just lounging around and reading. I did have to do some shopping for my house. Grocery shopping and other things. Today I wanted to talk to you guys about a project that I had mentioned previously in other posts. I have been wanting to write a book for an extremely long time. I’ve got five different projects in the works when it comes to book ideas period this one book but I’m talking about is something that is so personal to me and I’ve wanted to write it for the last 7 years. I have not had the courage to sit down and put my thoughts to paper. I figured I’m going to be 27 this year and I thought it was finally time to get my story onto paper.

I’m working on a project and I know a lot of authors give their projects names. I figured I would give my whole writing idea the name project Odette. I know that that doesn’t make sense right now but it is a very fitting name for this project. So I I am going to be doing Sunday post is kind of writing updates for the week. My goal is to have the first draft of this book done by July. I’ve been working on it since November of last year and I maybe three or four chapters done. It’s going to be a 17 to 20 chapter novel.

The reason I’m so nervous to put this kind of book out into the world is that it’s a bit controversial it has to do with the topic of mental illness. The topic of mental illness has been such a taboo topic my entire life that I have been so afraid and ashamed of my mental disorders. I’m not normal by the society’s standards and it’s very scary. I’m always afraid that somebody is going to discover that I have obsessive compulsive disorder. That’s someone’s going to discover the fact that I have depression or really bad anxiety. To me that is such a shame. somebody who suffers with any kind of mental disorder shouldn’t be made to feel they’re not normal. Even to this day, I am so afraid that somebody is going to figure out that I have OCD. I’m very comfortable with the fact that I have obsessive compulsive disorder and if somebody has a question for me about this disorder I am willing to educate I’m willing to discuss this topic. A lot of people aren’t educated on the topic as you guys know I was listening to a book by Howie Mandel about his obsessive compulsive disorder. And something that he said in his book really resonated with me. He was afraid that when he let it spill on a late night TV show that he had excessive compulsive disorder that it was going to be the end of his career. After the show happened there was a guy who came up to him and said hey are you Howie Mandel and he answer yes. He thought he was going to get criticized because of the fact that she has this disorder. In fact, it was the complete opposite of fact the person he met on the street also had obsessive compulsive disorder period for the first time in his life he realized that he wasn’t the only person to suffer from this. In fact, there’s over 3 million adults in America alone who suffer from this disorder. There are over 1 million adolescents who suffer from this disorder too. If people would just educate themselves then I myself wouldn’t have felt so incredibly scared for people to find out. I decided a couple of years ago that I was done hiding the fact that I had obsessive compulsive disorder. I made a video on my YouTube account called My OCD Story.It was probably the most empowering moment that I’ve ever had when it came to my disorder.

Anyway if you guys couldn’t tell the book is going to be about obsessive compulsive disorder and I really don’t want to go too much more into it. a lesson that I’ve learned through this whole experience is that when people do find out that I have OCD there really curious about what the disorder really is. I’ve been asked a ton of questions, yes some of them are extremely personal but I try my best to answer.

Okay, guys, I’m going to end of this post here because I’ve been rambling for a really long time.

Thank you all for doing me here in our little part of Wonderland. Don’t forget to feed the unicorns on your way out.

Until next time

Much love

Ashten