the trick is to keep breathing

So last Thursday around 10:00 I had a bad fall and ended up in the emergency room, with both ankles basically busted.

Cut for discussion of injury. ( yeah )

Can’t really walk. Couldn’t really even stand the first few days without supporting myself on wheelchair / nearby table / couch / something else. Crown helped make the first floor wheelchair accessible and put together one of the basement beds for me to sleep on in my sunroom cause i cant do stairs. Feathers brought me down enough toiletries that I could brush my teeth and actually wear deodorant. My parents came to visit with groceries and fruits and lots of help getting everything set up so that I can survive first-floor-only for a little while.

Check-up with the ortho on Wednesday put me into a boot - good news; boot FAR better than cast! - and predicted about 6 weeks before I’m back to any normal kind of motions, with next check-up in two.

This certainly isn’t my first time impaired — I spent most of my senior year of high school on crutches or in a wheelchair for a variety of reasons. But that’s very different; you have friends at school willing to help you out so that they can use the elevator, and you have parents at home who still do your laundry and get your mail. I’m nearing 40 and don’t live with my husband for a variety of mutual personal reasons, and I’m kind of lucky to have a basement gremlin in Feathers at this point or I would be, just, you know. Boned.

All projects are behind. Drawing? Writing? Don’t know ‘em. Today for the first time I sat down at my desktop while in the wheelchair and while I can make words, it isn’t really that easy, or that comfortable.

My life as a cripple (patent pending) so far has been interesting. I have my grandmother’s wheelchair, which is great because I have it and didn’t have to pay for one, but not so great in that it’s made to be pushed, rather than for self-propelling. And wheeling myself around on carpet also not made for wheelchair ease is, well, fucking exhausting. I better have massive arms after this. I’ve had to rearrange nearly everything so that I can access it without having to stand up. Hell, even a trip to the bathroom is like a 20-minute quest montage from Lord of the Rings.

The poor cats are not adjusting very well at all.

ANYWAY! Friends! I will be literally useless for at least the next 6 weeks. I still plan on putting out fan stuff just to keep my own sanity, but will it be quality? Who knows! Will i open commissions again? Depends on the emergency room bill! Do i consider crying at least once a day? Of course!!

Love, Sev

(content warnings: i just talk about the shit that's going on rn cause i gotta, but if any of it is triggering for you, be careful or scroll past)

so, as it turns out - as anyone could have predicted - i'm behind AF on nano.

look, a lot of it is that the first week of november got tied up in the hellhole that was america's election. fuck. i had done a lot of research and i knew what to expect and i STILL DIDNT KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT. that entire week was draining as fuck and even the relief of them finally calling it for biden was destructive and devastating in its own way. (i cried. i dont ever cry. i fucking bawled.)

and some of it is another lesson in preparation. i have a great outline for this novel! i know all the plot beats for all three plotlines! but i didn't practice getting into either character's voice, so while im still writing, it's very third-person-onmicient type, very distant, rather than the third-person-intimate that im going for.

and ive become STUPIDLY hung up on that! LIKE, ITS STOPPING ME FROM WRITING. i realize i just need to forge ahead and i'll find their voices eventually, but like, brain matter no go. head empty no thots.

SURPRISINGLY, though, if i count all words i've written (including nano, patreon, work words, fanfic, etc) i am on pace to hit the 50K. guess what I might be doing, rather than focusing entirely on the nano words. fml. etc.

---

my two oldest nieces are coming this weekend for their birthday celebration. when they were young i decided that instead of birthday gifts, what each girl got was a weekend alone, just with me, where we would do super fun things and they get to have all of the focused attention from their aunt and uncle. it's worked great, but this year, because of the rona, their schedules are all fucked up (you would not BELIEVE what my bro and SIL have had to work out to manage both of their jobs with 3 children under the age of 7 at home; it's crazy), and we wanted to limit the travel as well. so both girls are coming together to stay with me, to celebrate together. i'm very excited, but wow, that's also been a whirlwind.

i had to clean the entire house. the thing is, when you've been in house since march, and you're already disabled, and you're depressed, and you're tired, and you have 5 cats, the house can quickly get to a pint where you really give no more fucks about it. hugely. bigly. i had to summon my mum, Crown, and murder husband to help me out with it, but now the house is gorgeously clean and i am happy. doing all the work at once was kind of a sledgehammer to the face tho, RIP me, but i did it.

fought with Crown over a bunch of stuff too. it's resolved and we are in a better place after having it out, but that also hit me like a fucking pickup truck, thanks.

also didnt help nano.

---

isolation is weird. i dont mind being alone - i love being stuck in my house alone, that's like, my dream world - but i feel like i've hunkered down here in other ways as well. friends i used to talk to daily, i check in like once a week. a BIG part of that is, well, having nothing to really say. my new contract remains in covid limbo, my other work continues, and my desire to write a novel to sell is just aksjdlkasdjggs, so like, ??? why bother to talk, there's no news here, etc.

im also just not very good at staying in touch because of (reasons) and the situation is compounding that and really doubling down on it. how can i reach out to people when im spending most of my mental energy not going completely batshit??? "hey demons. it's me. your boy."

i mean i also feel like other friends are pulling back as well, probably because none of us really have anything new to say. it's just an interesting side effect of isolation, i guess?

plus it's the jazz hands depressssiioooonnnnn ~! for all of us!

i really just exist on discord these days. honestly.

---

ANYWAY.

i haven't yet given up on the novel, nor have i given up on trying to grow my kofi and patreon to help me out in these terrible times. (crankyoldman, thanks so much for the Kofi! that covers this month's entire Chewy order! <3 <3 aaaaaaa ILU and i miss you guys!!) it's just such a bizarre fucking time to be a conscious thinking creature and that's weird, i guess.

---

went to target and bought a bunch of men's shirts for the winter. sorry but for what i want men's clothes are vastly superior. you can't get a women's t-shirt that's long enough to go over hips or really be tucked in unless you find a "tunic length" and they're like $25. i got 3 mens tees for $18. i also now have a giant hoodie with thumbholes. bless.

plus big ass sports bras. i just want my tits to be comfortable. dont always bra them, but like when im cleaning they gotta be held. gently. softly cupped in place so that they don't get tossed around too much. i dont know where im going with this.

i just want to be comfortable here in my private cave.

---

the stasis of isolation. such an odd year it's been this last month.

---

Ko-fi for the cats || Patreon for CYOA and the novel || Sev's Pub, my creative works discord || carrd for the rest

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.

a wild sev emerges from the depths of the ravine HI WHATS UP LETS TALK ABOUT NANOWRIMO, ORIGINAL FICTION, AND MY FUCKING SABBATICAL

( me yelling into space about my life )

Anyway, the IMPORTANT question is about NaNo projects. I've narrowed it down to 3, because I have to start somewhere. (none of them are lesbian werewolves in space, namely because while i have the characters and worldbuilding down, the plot needs some solid work i haven't done.) Let me know what you think of the following concepts -- you don't have to vote or anything, but if something sounds interesting, I'd love to hear it.

1. Young woman working as a non-magical analytical scientist suddenly and drastically discovers she has the specific magical ability of working a season's circle with a coven of four (spring summer autumn winter; she's autumn). The season's circle is when four witches work together to create a passageway between the [land of the fey] and the human's world, allowing an (1) powerful being to step through or back. This particular circle is attempting to summon a cool demon-type dude who is powerful enough to stop an entity called the Oak King, who's basically spreading dark magic through the land etc etc. The circle has been holding on to the magic with only 3 witches but they need the 4th to complete the rite. Unfortunately, Amber has no fucking clue how any of this works and basically gets stabbed with her power; Summer really hates her for some reason; she has to come to terms with Autumn being the season of death; and who the hell is going to finish her analytical work while she spends three months in a season's circle coma? Additional options include: background romance, Gay, lots of fun worldbuilding, urban fantasy type setting where this could be the real world just with some magic bullshit.

2. Sassy idiot lady born with the power to scry into the past uses her magic and tools to make a living exploring things for fussy customers who want answers. Lives in a rough edge of town, doubles at a bar for free food, manages to get by in the grey area between the brightness of the City and the darkness of the Void. One day a scry doesn't work, which has never happened in her career, and she starts finding out other magics are failing: the bar owner's beer went off, her father's healing magic didn't come when called, etc etc. She's eventually sought out by [the equivalent of a detective] to help [a City murder case] but drags him into finding out what's going on in their small town as recompense. Turns out the two are related, but she doesn't have any other magical powers and doesn't know how to fight off this [creature] that's slowly moving in on their City. Bisexual protag and this is definitely Not Our World. Additional options include: Karma Knights (when killing someone is right, they're the ones who do it), Wild Gay Fairy, this world could easily explode if i let it.

3. Young lady was born with a huge reservoir of magical energy but lacks the ability to channel it all. Having been abandoned/orphaned (not sure yet) she's now training with the dwarves to learn how to be a healer, figuring she may as well try it. Her (erstwhile; somewhat removed) cousin has the gift to heal the earth, and asks Enna to come on her pilgrimage across the Civil Lands and into the Nolands to try to heal the damage so that the land can be used [think: remnants of a nuclear apocalypse healed by elemental magic]. Cousin, her existing band of jolly protectors, and Enna set out across the absolute disaster of the journey, haunted by demons and Nightmares, often having to invent new ways to use their skills because nobody has faced this shit yet. One part FFX pilgrimage, one part Enna finding her own purpose, one part environmentalist rants in the form of a tiny girl.

Thoughts?

[edit] markdown y u always do this to me fuck ity

Updating from the iPad is hilarious because, of course, it has autocorrect for me, and it capitalizes random things when usually if i’m Writing a blog entry i just dont capitalize it unless it’s important. See? What the hell is with you, you idiot.

My sabbatical is reaching a new phase, which makes me sad, because i feel like i’m still crawling out of the Anxiety, Depression, And Physical Damage Black Hole that i dug over 5 years, and i’ve had like, 3 months, and like the busiest 3 months to take off (Dec/Jan/Feb) and even though I’ve spent a fair number of days just reading fanfiction and eating, like, mangoes, i still know i’m not healed, and in no way ready to go back to a full-time challenging job. I keep bemoaning everything and friends always gently remind me that this is a recovery process and I am allowed to self-care and heal how I need, but i’m always feeling like i am simultaneously doing too much and too little.

Commissions are going really well!! I’ve a list of about 12 to do, which I’m always working on in the background, and it’s helpful money to tide me through until 01 May.

I’m also making some money writing (mostly accounting / economics / business stuff so far) blog content for someone a friend hooked me up with, which is some more reliable income, thankfully.

I’m also taking the steps to line up going back to the same company, as a contractor, to work part-time on an engineering project (with a concrete deadline); I’m hella not excited about going back to engineering right now, but I also owe it to myself to try this and see whether I like doing part-time contract engineering. I might enjoy it, in which case, I’ve got a lot of opportunities and a reasonable income that would support me on 16-24 hours a week. And if I don’t, I know I gotta start looking into a different career, so shrug throws self in ravine

The thing is when i ask myself what i want to do with my life i’m usually asking when I’m like, tired as fuck or having a flare up or something, and the answer is always “sleep for eight days” or “remove my spine from my body”

Anyway, those are the haps. I’ve a bunch of shitposting I’m NOT going to forget about, y’all, and I’ll be posting links to the new things I’ve written in a bit. And commissions are still open, for anyone who’s interested - I’m keeping them open at least until 01 April, probably until 01 May, although I’m now going to be taking them on a rolling basis so that I don’t get backed up.

Ugh I’m just exhausted cause I’m babysitting niece 3 and she didnt want to eat or sleep today and i just got her to sleep and i want to put my head down on this table, like, how do people have actual kids

I have to say: 34 feels old.

So over my brief microsabbatical I decided on a list of things I want to get done by the end of the year: thus, New Year's Resolutions, in reverse, ie my resolution is to have this done before the new year. See? Get it? It's like I'm clever instead of backwards and wrong!

1. Get Healthy [metric: exercise 3+/wk; lose 10+ lb]
   Content note / Note this: being healthy and losing weight are not always the same thing! Health has a unique meaning to every individual body!
   That being said: for me getting healthy and knocking off weight go hand-in-hand at this point in time. From May-September I ate poorly, rested poorly, drank too much, drowned in stress, and had no time or motivation to work out at all. That plus medication changes has resulted in what is, for my body, unhealthy poundage.
   I miss swimming. I miss yoga. I don't miss running, fuck running, but I miss being able to run I guess? I miss punching my bag. I want to have Korra arms. And I have, quite reasonably, 10-20 lb I could lose before being even close to "danger". (Trust me, I'm a Taurus; we don't diet.)
   This is something I can make happen by 01 Jan 2016.

2. Inhabitable basement [metric: obvious]
   Right now the basement is storage, which is part of what basements are for, but mine opens up to my patio (and grill, and fire chimney) and has a nice little area by the windows where friends could sit and drink wine and grill things. I've two drum sets in my basement and my keyboard, all of which I have been missing desperately. (I miss music! I dream about pianos.) My workout area is functional, but not at all welcoming. My laundry area could use some sprucing.
   Much of the storage is related to the above, which means I just need to sort it and work through it. A good part, however, is my grandmother's stuff. She finally passed away in August (I am not sure I even mentioned it here; I was too broken by it to do so) and I do not mind storing her things forever but need to go through them and decide which way makes sense.
   This is, also, quite doable by 2016, and having those areas back in my life will please me immensely.

3. Shame room --> Craft room [metric: obvious]
   I want to turn my spare bedroom into a crafting room, to house sewing / knitting / beading / anything else I may start doing. Right now it's a shameful repository of clothes-to-be-donated and a few boxes from moving (not original boxes - these were empty boxes that were repacked with "shit i do not want to deal with rn" and hidden).

4. Plan for the greatroom [metric: having an estimate / loan]
   I have plans in my head to redo my entire greatroom, which started with my neverending desire to replace the horribly stained carpet in there and grew into a really, really epic floor plan. I need to get it from my head onto the page, then find a contractor who can give me estimates on time / cost to make it happen. Why not? Houses are investments, and my cafe-bar thing will be incredible.

5. Work-Life Balance [metric: ???]
   I need to prove to myself that I can, in fact, work the kind of job that pushes all of my success buttons without killing myself. The next 3 months will be busy, as always, but not deadly, so it's time to fucking do it. I still don't know how to make a metric for this; maybe I can use success on the other Resolution points, because they won't happen if I continue to use my energy on work.

6. Mental Peace [metric: ???]
   I went back through some journal entries and I've been in a massive depression funk since early 2014. That's too long. It has started to severely affect my health and my job. I need to attack this. I realize depressions don't "go away" but I haven't tried anything really and I at least deserve an effort.

7. Write Again [metric: get some word count] No real comments. I just miss writing.

I stopped there, since there are really only 3 months left in the year, and they will contain not only the major hols of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but also the birth of my newest niece or nephew, so I'm well aware that this is a lot to do in that time frame. (Obviously they won't need to be complete, but I work better with deadlines, even self-imposed ones. Better to not let myself cheat.)

There. Public posting makes it real, right?

Can we. please. have. mostly-constant. temperatures. More than five days in a row.

Lady Fibromyalgia-Arthritis Johnson thanks you.


In other nonsensible news, I may be considering signing up for a triathlon. A baby triathlon - sprint triathlon category: swim 0.5 mi, bike 15 mi, run 3.1 mi. I don't know why the prospect is so appealing -- it isn't like this body is running low on pain and exhaustion and thus has to pick up some more at the triathlon training store. This is a good idea, Sev, said no one. However, the thought of doing something stupid and violent appeals to me. It's cool.

You may have noticed I seem to have vanished off of the map. This is because my new job is absolutely batshit fucking crazy. I think I've only posted like three times in all of July?, and I send far fewer text- and email- based daily communications than I used to (it's funny how long my phone battery lasts when I am not using it!), and this is because my new job is absolutely batshit fucking crazy.

There are days my employees catch me before I have even entered the building; I swear to god they're timing their smoke breaks since they know I pull in at 7:55am every morning, because they flag me down walking from my car to the door with whatever the day's update is. There are days I don't log into my own computer until 10; there are days I don't start my own actual work day until 4-5pm when everything else has calmed down. There have been evenings I am there until 6, 6:30 pm; there are nights I bring work home (tonight being one of them). There have been absolutely zero days where I leave at 4:45pm like I am supposed to. I use my mobile so much for work the company has started subsidizing it.

Did I mention things are absolutely batshit fucking crazy?

I have no time for anything anymore. I'm basically now working the same 10-hr days I was working beforehand, with added bonus 8+ days on Fridays. Becky is joking that I didn't actually get a raise, I'm now just being paid for epic overtime; it's actually truer than it should be.

It's a common joke among the management team (who I think I shall nickname after summons, because it pleases me to think of us all as a team of eidolons), because on those days where shit has been flying off the fan at intense and disastrous rates and we don't sit down at our own desks actually alone until 4:30pm it's actually nice to stay until 6:00pm because we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow but it's quiet now and we can focus. Ditto on Fridays; Fridays have become a blessing, the one day a week I know I will be minimally interrupted and can make a reasonable attempt to churn through all of the work I meant to do during the week and was pulled away from: 40 hours in one 8hr day, that's doable, right. Siren (the manager focused more on products and projects) and I mourn the loss of our ability to tell everyone to fuck off (Siren is also new to her position) and complain about the intense upkeep we need to do to stay targeted on our underperformers; Golem (the manager focused more on mechanical aspects) and I are already planning late-night office pizza parties as we are forced into a software update we weren't consulted on and weren't a part of but are still expected to launch into our maintenance program by some ridiculously unwieldy date like September. I am lucky to be surrounded by amazing people who understand and desperately want me to succeed (although in Golem's case I think that is mainly so that he can stop working on Saturdays); I adore them immensely, even as we all joke about using and abusing each other. (I, as Operations, am the cross-sectional point where Siren's research & development & troubleshooting projects intersect with Golem's preventative maintenance & plant improvement work; this makes my life difficult but also means that they both have to be nice to me, ha.)

I am overwhelmingly, bizzarely, incomprehensibly in love with this job.

This is what I was made for. I have already, after a month-and-change: dealt with a problem underperforming employee in a way that promises to either make progress or GTFO after basically 20 years of experience and 5+ years of not seeming able to do the job; sent nastygram after nastygram until the two worst communicators in the plant specifically come to me to let me know what they are doing before anyone else even knows; solved scheduling mishaps; yelled at the EPA; called our safety director's work stupid and dumb in the same meeting (although that was inadvertant and accidental), to her face (which I realize is tactless; here's the fucks I give, because incompetence is the match that lights this stubborn Taurean fire); defended my own employees against attacks and slander and bullshit they shouldn't have to put up with from other people and been specifically thanked for doing so; learnt how to buy things within our online file management system and promptly spent $300 on hard hats to play with; improved the attitude of a supervisor who has been a negative vendetta-hound for 8+ years; redone the old lab where I used to sit into what will be usable office cubicles (although I can't take full credit for that one); made my boss say the phrase "you are right, he/she/that is fucking clueless" half a dozen times; made my boss either grin maniacally or put his head down when I walk into his office; made my boss regret his decision to hire me probably four hundred times; made people actually run from me; made changes, made improvements, made an impact. I've revamped systems and redone OPSs and made demands of our alarm management system that no one has made until now. I've let out my inner asshole, my inner control freak, my inner perfectionist: they're all running around rampant making decisions and giving orders and frightening bystanders everywhere. I'm not sorry; I was not hired into this position to be good and play along.

I am absolutely loving it which is good because right now this is my only life, my highest priority, the shit I eat and breathe.

It will not last forever. I will not last forever in this: canceling PT because I have to stay until 6 because there's work due tomorrow, not scheduling doctor appointments because I don't have the time, not working on my thesis because fuck more work; this level of intensity will eventually fade as all of the plant becomes used to this position's existence and my presence. I will burn out, the initial activation energy will be met, the workload will become manageable even if I have to light half of it on fire. It's not forever.

But right now all things Sev are absolutely batshit fucking crazy, so please forgive me if I take a while to reply to an email or respond to a comment or do anything I have told you I would do because I am running on fumes and adrenaline and caffeine and stubbornness at the mo.



HOW ARE YOU ALL