Tag: chronic illness

oh hi

Okay so listen, yes. I fell off the map, perhaps. The world got so loud and mean and relentless that I had to pull back a little. Less news, less media, less internet. It wasn’t a conscious thing, just an unconscious act of self-preservation.

And are things better now? Not really. Worse, in fact! But I am still alive and I do still care about the things I care about. The people I love, my pets, the written word. I’ve started and stopped this post several times because I always get mired down in the notion that nothing matters, especially this blog post and I wander off and I come back a month later, ready to apologize for a long silence but then I think, this doesn’t matter, etc. etc. etc.

But, obviously, things do matter. People matter, lives matter, equality matters, Palestine matters. Fighting fascism matters, stopping genocide matters. Speaking up and out while you still have a voice matters. Not watching all your rights get slowly whittled away silently, that matters.

Anyway, that’s why I’ve crawled back here after a year, ready to pop my head out of my gopher hole to say I’m alive, but straight up not having a good time.

I don’t generally like to acknowledge my health to myself, but that’s been a factor as well. I just can’t do everything that I used to be able to do and it’s always momentarily baffling to stand there and realize my own limitations. I was having a one-on-one with my boss at work and he asked what I felt held me back from doing all the things in my career that I want to achieve. Was it budgeting, was it staffing, was it time? And I was like, no it’s me. The only one who can stop ME is ME and maybe I was blessed with a punk-ass bitch immune system to stop me from trying to take over the world, I don’t know, but my health is my number one opp and we’re always in a fight these days.

So anyway, sorry for dipping for so long. I wasn’t truly gone. You can always find me on my socials. Instagram stories, usually, twitter for fandom things, tumblr occasionally. Thank you for hanging around, for the people who reach out, for the people who read my books or my fic, for the lurkers. I do appreciate the community we have and understand how important it is.

If you’re also an American, hang in there. We got this. We can do hard things. đź’ś

the year of the migraine

I’m pretty good at navigating complex systems and bureaucracy because of my job, but I can’t imagine being successful at this if I was working two jobs or had minimum education or didn’t speak English. God, everything is so needlessly difficult.

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hashtag icarus

It’s not that I don’t want to achieve my goals, but sometimes it feels like I’ve girl bossed a little too close to the sun when I have too many things up in the air. I can plow through obligations with the best of them, but I can’t do it forever and the recovery is always kind of dicey.

I signed with Ylva Publishing in April, turned in the first draft of my book in the summer and then spent most of this fall working through the editing process. And somewhere in between waiting for edits to come back, I started the second book. Now, the final, final draft has been submitted and it’s a big weight off, but ALSO, the first draft for the second book is due at the end of the year, so now I’m just realizing that I’m always going to be caught up somewhere in this process of writing and deadlines and edits. Maybe in multiple places at the same time! It’s okay, but I’m new at it and so it’s been somewhat of a learning curve, figuring out how to manage it all.

My body knows, too, when I’ve completed something stressful and important because the moment it’s off my plate, my body forces me to take a break. Sleep all day, nurse my joints, survive a migraine. I spent most of yesterday in bed. (Relatedly, I cannot recommend the Starry Eyes Self-Warming eye masks enough for people who get migraines. I use the ice hats a lot, but sometimes you just want something warm and not cold and these are great for naps.) I even gave myself the day off from working out, and I hate to upset my routine, so you know it was ~serious~.

It’s easier to beat myself up about not being perfect at handling a bunch of new responsibilities on the first try, but even I know that’s not productive or a good use of my mental energy. And the truth of the matter is, even though it’s been difficult, I think I did handle it well. I learned a lot about how I need to structure my time and my environment to make progress. I’ve been lucky to have the physical space to work and a partner who has been very supportive of both respecting my time and helping me change my space when I realized my original set up wasn’t working.

I’m a very disciplined person when it comes to work. I’m organized, I’m self-motivated, I’m efficient and so I was suited to take on a side hustle, so to speak, but knowing you can do it and actually doing it are two different things! But now that I’m somewhere between doing it and having done it, I find myself strangely motivated to keep doing it. To do it better. To have some success at it, even! I’ve watched my body slow degrading since I was a teenager and my vague plan about that, besides pretending it’s not happening, has always been to just work until I can’t and then it’s just like a blurry row of questions marks, but now maybe I do have a back up plan? Wild. Next stop, the sun!