the trick is to keep breathing

GOD HOW THE FUCK DO U MAKE A PLOT

because i am That Guy:

I took a lump out of my retirement savings to support myself while I try to write an actual book! then, a week later, i got hired! this is my life. I've been hired to work as a technical writer with a great local company that does all sorts of technical writing and instructional design work (something im VERY interested in), which is awesome, but the first contract they were going to give me unfortunately fell through. they are frantically looking for projects for me because the VP of Ops apparently wants me as an employee very badly (a great feeling after months of unemployment lbr) so i'm willing to wait it out, esp cause i have the lump now.

and because i'm a giant waste of an idiot, i've decided i'm still going to try to write the novel. for NaNoWriMo. while working and doing work words. and 2 Good Omens zines. and Patreon. and commissions. and my regular WIPs. and cleaning my house. and so on.

giant waste of an idiot.

ANYWAY. most of you have probably already seen this on my other social media but just in case you haven't, i have two polls out about my novel. mainly because i have too many fucking ideas and styles, so i'm letting the general populace help me narrow down for my first novel attempt.

i realize my FF writing is slim these days, MCU and GO being my main fandoms at the moment, but i'm still interested in Ye Olde Canons -- it's a matter of time, these days. so for those of you who know me from FF and such, your input is DEFINITELY appreciated, because you've seen sides of my work that my current fandoms haven't. :) <3

the first poll about the content of the novel is here

the second poll about the format of the novel is here

and since im still technically unemployed lemme toss the reminder that you can always find me, my sites, and my KoFi and Patreon here: https://sevdrag.carrd.co/

<3 <3 send me all the luck you can. as soon as i set up my NaNo page i'll post it here <3

I CAN FINALLY ACCESS MY PRESCRIPTIONS WHAT THE SHIT

Hi, this is Sev Dragomire, please leave a message if you want to be friends.

About
Sev is an incredibly awesome lady who is technically in her thirties but - as her friends will tell you - is actually a 75-year-old hobo grandmother who likes brandy, knitting, cats, complaining about people, and being tactless. She's a chemical engineer & polymer scientist by training, who currently works (too much) running a research-and-development scale pilot plant: her job is exhausting and horrible and unfortunately a keen fit for her skills and needs, which she finds very disappointing. She is a reasonably antisocial introvert who enjoys sharp, clever, meaningful friendships that function mostly online (to allow her antisocial introvert agoraphobia free reign).

Her health is poor; she suffers from fibromyalgia, widespread arthritis, asthma, depression, anxiety, and a broke-ass immune system whose favorite hobby is picking up flus and diseases from anywhere and slamming them down her throat for days at a time.

She loves her family, especially her two nieces, very much. She is currently in an It's Complicated with a very nice Someone.

Sevdrag is owned by three cats. Speaking with Sev is somewhat like trying to converse with your 75-year-old drunk grandmother who is just learning how to text.

This Blog

Posts here meet one or more of the following criteria:

• Archiving the difficulties of living with fibro


• Venting about The Job


• liveblogging depression & anxiety


• health-related thoughts (mental & physical)


• Sharing writing ideas, projects, and work - ideally actual written words


• drunken shitposting


• thoughts on video games, books, movies, TV


• personal updates & journal entries


• idle thoughts on other stuff


• drunken shitpostsing with friends

What the actual fuCK is insurance these days

So I’ve been off of Cymbalta for what is now 14 days. I’m absolutely not ONLY feeling the lack of the drug in my current all-over State Of The Union, but I’m ABSOLUTELY going through withdrawal now which let me tell you for duloxetine is absolutely fantastic. Have a story.

• about 4/10 realize I’m running out. Play happy phone tag w my rheumatologist (they always want me to come in for an appt before they will prescribe anything; i kindly ask them to check my records where it says I’m immunocompromised).
• 4/17 Dr office finally agrees to call in a 90 day refill and will do another one when i get an appt any time during those 90 days.
• me: waits expectantly.
• last week: no drugs, no notification of new prescription, no nothing. I call the dr office. They submitted it to Express Scripts on 4/17.
• call ES. They have absolutely nothing on record for me more recent than a 2016 script.
• realize my other prescriptions have been filled through CVS Caremark.
• call Caremark. They have the other prescriptions but nothing for Cymbalta.
• call my Dr. They won’t submit another script even though ES has nothing on file. They tell me to call Caremark and have them contact ES to get the script.
• call Caremark / Carefirst / whatever it is. I discover that the other prescriptions were run up through my old Bridgestone COBRA insurance.
• I spend 2 hours on the phone bouncing between 7 different people trying to explain the situation.
• Apparently there is a special team that is supposed to handle my current insurance plan, but as I am transferred around, I apparently haven’t talked to anyone from that fucking team yet.
• I eventually manage to find someone who can transfer all of my recent refills OFF the COBRA and ONTO my carefirst insurance.
• I’m then tossed through three other people before I find someone who can tackle the missing duloxetine.
• turns out CVS/Caremark does NOT call out so they will NOT contact ES to look for the script.
• They recommend that I ask the doctor to submit the refill to a local CVS so that i can get the drugs sooner.
• i start laughing uncontrollably and remind them that the dr has already submitted a prescription and has absolutely refused to submit another, that the office is waiting for some insurance to make the request.

At this point, mind you: The dr has submitted a refill request and therefore won’t initiate anything. ES has not received anything on file for me at all, and therefore can’t do anything for me. CM will not contact ES. My literal only option here is for CM to contact the Dr for a new refill script and just PRAYING that the Dr will mcfuckin fill it.

• I finally - finally - land someone willing to take down the information and request a 90 day refill (through the mail service, because that’s the ONLY way i can have the request initiate from CM, since my dr won’t initiate and ES can’t) from my goddamned dr office.
• they recommend i call the Dr office and explain what’s happening so that they don’t reject the refill request.
• fuck
• the dr office doesn’t really seem to understand what I’m saying. They have me schedule an appointment and they’ll ask the Dr if they can submit another request to CM. I’m desperately trying to explain that CM is going to send a request just like please just make it go through and don’t complicate this any more.
• i am transferred to scheduling, where I sit and let the phone ring repeatedly for 15 minutes before I hang up and call back. The phone lines take a lunch break from 11:30-13:00. They were just going to let me sit there for an hour and a half i guess?????

HOW is this the way things are SUPPOSED to work? (Spoiler, it isn’t; I’m american, i get it.) just. Like. I HAVE BEEN ON CYMBALTA FOR OVER SIX YEARS. This isn’t some new medication everybody has to be woo-boo careful about. This is a fucking maintenance drug I’ve taken for a big portion of my adult life.

And I’ve been off it for two weeks. I hurt. My brain is dumb. I’m fucking exhausted. And I’ve wasted all morning on this. I’m so frustrated I want to cry and punch things.

what the FUCK.

COMMISSIONS and COMMITMENTS:

• Bem and Roy do Tiamat (7-10K) --> START
• MCU / Black Jewels crossover (10K+) --> FINISH OUTLINE
• PaNcaKeS (however long it is) --> POST
• Measure of Distance, new chapter --> POST
• Old Vines, new chapter --> stay 5 chap ahead of posting (updates wednesday)
• Patreon smut fic --> patrons only!

BACKBURNER STUFF:

• Sokka fic I owe Lua --> GOT THAT IDEA FROM TUMBLR GOTTA WRITE IT
• knees deep in water (but we're not sunk yet) --> finish the GO triptych

writing is hard!

---

BUT HERE! are recent fun things you may not have seen!

( Read more... )

me, belatedly looking at this list from a distance: jesus christ i'm writing 1400 different ideas and AUs and universes here why
also me, squinting: no im not in a character and pairing niche right now what do you mcfuckin mean

me, after posting: STOP LOOKING AT MY WORD COUNTS LIKE THAT AAAAAAAAA

(current (i think) masterlist here: writing / comms log)

I guess not so HELLO; I’m still here.

Tl;dr: in January I accepted a 6-month contract working for [Contractor Co] as a technical writer for [Employer Co], which started late February and explains most of the February absence bc it happened very fast and I had a lot of things to get together in 0 time.

The job’s an hour away, so I lose 2 hr each day to transit. My contract stipulated that my eventual schedule needed to be MWF in office / TR work from home, or that wasn’t going to work out, but for the first 4-6 weeks I had agreed to be on campus every day for training and learning purposes, so that’s what happened to Feb and the beginning of March.

I then went out to visit my BFF/Murder Husband to help out (and play) with his new service puppy, which was — the trip was great and we had fun with each other but the whole service puppy thing was a literal disaster and I think I’m not exaggerating to say his health condition might have sent him to the emergency room from stress (a trigger) without them extra pair of hands. Plus, puppies.

Then this shit happened.

I’m now working from home, as is my entire team — so much for that 2hr drive, huh? It’s my first full week (flew home last Monday, didn’t work Tues or Weds bc I had to set up for house arrest) and while I was real bad this week I’ve finally got everything sorted out so I can be productive moving forward.

Everything is a bit surreal. (I am at 12 days since my flight home, without symptoms - i mean, i have a runny nose and a cough but that’s normal, I had it before flying, i have it every year - just as an FYI.) See, I love being in my house, so quarantine is like... perfect for me. Which isn’t something you say to someone, because it sounds like you want this to go on - which I absolutely don’t - I’m just expressing that it’s much easier on me to do this than most people, and no ma, you don’t need to worry. I’m great.

One of the things I have found I am very good at is — not denial? But — realizing when in a situation you are powerless beyond a certain point, and thus, moderating the amount of anxiety channeled towards that particular situation. So while every now and then something breaks through my barrier and I end up driving the anxiety bus into the ravine, overall, I’ve been doing well.

I think there’s something about — having — already being disabled, right? Like, I could worry every day about my fibro, I could get angry, I could get upset, but like, what the fuck would it do? And I’ve honed that tool over the years (to the point where some friends think I’m doing much better than I truly am cause I just don’t talk about it) and it’s coming in handy now. I’m used to it. Okay, another health thing to be careful about. Yep. Put it in that file drawer.

Then again I also had an existential panic in the middle of the grocery store unrelated to anything, so.

I’ve been posting daily cat pics on Instagram (Seventhe) and tumblr (sevdrag) for anyone who thinks they’ll need a daily pick-me-up. I wrote a Fuck Tonne of fic in January and then Feb (the job) dropped, but I’m at a point where I’m ramping back up in fic, too, so I’ll link to that as I go.

Weird stuff. Hang in there.

well, butts, my paid DW expired. I’m really watching money atm so I’m not going to revive it until I’m in a better place financially. I miss my icons, and my tag abilities. butts. someday i will pay you again, DW.

Anyway this entry is just a tracking exercise for me, prioritizing my writing responsibilities for the rest of January. Buckle up, chucklefucks

( Words )

A NOTE: if you’ve commissioned me please check this list and make sure I have your info right! I FEEL LIKE I FORGOT SOMEONE??

If you’re interested:

• All of my standard Commission information.
• Commission BLITZ ROUND: the Murder Husband and I offer $20 for 2000 word blitz commissions.
• My Patreon, where for $5/mo you can vote every week to resort all of these priorities.
• PayPal if someone out there wants to give me free money, but like, you may as well get some words for it.

god how the fuck do you do normal quotes on a mobile device thats hella annoying

We’ll start with the tl;dr version, saying that I have in fact met NaNo on the field of battle this year and emerged with about 50,004 words in a jumbled document that is something like an original fiction.

However, I had a LOT of thoughts about it, and in absolutely no order, here we go.

( “NaNoMusings” )

been meaning to update just like ive been meaning to do a lot of thingslksdjgldkfjgdf

So here I am 20 days into NaNo and still banging it out like a champ. I’ve had two goose egg days so far, but I’ve had a lot of very productive days as well (esp thanks to lassarina!) and as of today I’m about to be only ~1200 words behind actual target. That’s ~32K of absolutely original fiction I’ve written this month and I’m on track to making it 50K.

The amount was never a question for me - last year, after quitting my job and signing up for the Winterhawk exchange, I wrote 57K in 10 days; that pretty much proved to me that NaNo wouldn’t be about the wordcount - but it was about the habit. Can I write every day on something? Can I write original stuff every day? Can I write it around all the other words I do, for pay and for fandom?

I mean, yeah, sure, looks like I can.

I’ll admit, I went into November with a changed mindset. Having realized I’d been out of industry work for a year absolutely hit me in the head with the what do you have to show for yourself rock, and it led me to a new sort of determination I haven’t seen in a while. NaNo - the act of doing something daily and tracking it - was really just a crutch to get me into new habits. And it’s working — somewhat.

I’ve been much better during the day about dedicating time to words. I can write over 5000 words in one day before my brain really starts to sink. I can switch between original and work and fanfiction as I need. And I’ve been writing (nearly) daily for 20 days now, which was the goal, so yay.

But - as my fucking dumb gay ass should have predicted - regiments and discipline come in steps. And when I’m spending time on original fiction to that degree every day plus my work words, plus fanfiction stuff, I still don’t have time to do much more than... keep up. I’ve made no real progress on unfucking the house; I can keep afloat, but that’s it. Any extras cleaning I’ve done over the last few weeks has been UNdone by days where i can’t get to thinks.

[And, also, crucially and critically: I am sick. I’m sick for the first time in MONTHS, possibly since LAST WINTER. It was a good run while it lasted, but I’ve now been sick for over ten days, sinus infection / flu / fever / cough / sore throat / runny nose / sneezing / aching / stuffed head / gross feeling / no willpower to do anything / naps every day and not the fun gratuitous kind. I do need to note this because it’s also robbed me of any extra energy I might have had for additional activities.] [I don’t mind because it wasn’t like I was ever going to get sick again in my life, and this really just proves that it was having me out of a crowded office situation with tons of people and their tons of germs that helped me stay as not-sick as I did for so long.] [ Plus I always get sick on November so it’s like oh, hey, you again?]

The key will be — December, I want to say, but December always sucks. Holidays take up a lot of space for me and my family - not just time, really, we only spend a couple days together, but the energy of preparation and gifting always becomes frantic and gross by the end - and I have another niece birthday visit coming up that’ll eat up a weekend. The key will be taking this daily motivation and hanging onto it through December, and into January, and letting it morph itself into something that encompasses more than writing.

Now that I have the daily habit, I want to do the same with drawing, to just doodle something daily and let myself practice at that. I need to set days and times aside for house projects and have them be priority — not let the specter of Nano Words or Work Words be more important (Nano is of course a fallacy i use to be lazy; work words are important cause they pay).

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this ramble. About four or five days in I had a real low period and almost decided to quit NaNo because it was interfering too much with the rest of my day and words and chore schedule and grumble I didn’t know what I was doing and I should be writing work and commissions anyway and such whining. Then I woke up on day like six or seven, my head clear, realized that had been An Episode, and just pushed on with the wording. 20 days and over 30K is a success for me on projects; it’s the maintenance, the daily bits.

I dunno. There was gonna be a point to all this but now I’m just talking about the process (but in the most BORING way POSSIBLE because i dont want to get INTO the PROCESS and now I’m just CAPSING at RANDOM)

Anyway. Still here, still writing, still having successes and failures big time. Still broke! Who knew!

(It will always be a shame that ppl at tumblr cant see my brilliant DW tags; i use IFTTT to cross post, but i haven’t yet found one that will swipe up all of my DW tags and include them on the tumbles)