the trick is to keep breathing

• ...you cant make the words you want to make
• you have too many deadlines approaching but
• youre just staring at all of them
• plinking a couple words here and there
• your daily total is 2200 words which is good and should be sufficient but
• that's over many agonizing hours such that your words per minute is like ...... 5
• you have commissions that have been due for, like, a year, lets be real
• youre still planning on doing NaNoWriMo
• youre probably depressed
• ...yeah youre depressed
• /........... (that's from a cat)
• you still dont have a steady income
• so you just cant focus on anything
• you come and make a list that's a giant mood
• .....instead of working on any one of your 15 WIPs

So I’ve been trying to get! My! Shit! Together! and it’s going about as well as you might think.

I’m functionally broke until 01 May, so I’ve spent a lot of time looking for online word jobs. Got two in my pocket; neither one is sustainable long-term, but any cash is good right now. Still working on commissions, even though it doesn’t look like it; I’m constantly writing these days while trying to avoid The Burnout.

Had the realization the other day that I took this break not so I could flail around doing piecemeal writing on the internet, but so that I could actually recover and get my house back and lose weight and stuff. So I’m trying to stick chunks of that work into the schedule as well. (I swear I’m going to try to swim today! Where by try i mean “try to make myself go to the pool”; i never forget how to swim.) That’s hard too, since then it takes up time where my brain is like you should be writing but. Hey. W h a t e v e r.

I’ve been having fun, though, too. Crown Royal and I have been hiking every weekend; we did a bit over 4 miles this weekend, and my asthma hates hills, but it was nice. Did a drinking-night rewatch of Winter Soldier last night with a handful of friends from my accidental MCU Discord, which was freaking hilarious. Lots of capslock, ranting, and swooning. It isn’t all stress.

Sometimes i wonder how i can be such a fuckin waste of space all the time lol

last night i had what must be my first true migraine. honest to god, full stop: what the fuck.

i have sinus migraines, that mostly feel like tension headaches, all stuffed and pinched and tight. i have cluster headaches, which are supposedly one of the most painful things that can happen to your head: the sharp, stabbing feeling that someone just drove a red-hot knitting needle through your eye and into your brain. but this migraine was ...jesus.

it came out of nowhere, the feeling that a giant troll had just clubbed the back of my head and my brains were about to explode out my skull. i literally thought at first that i was having some kind of strike / aneurysm / blood clot and that i needed an ambulance, my head was about to burst open in the back, i was literally dying. it wasn't the usual headache pain - like, the other horrible headaches i've had hurt, but they hurt in a more like ... cerebral way, cerebral meaning you can tell it's your head/brain that's aching, it's a separate kind of pain. this was true physical pain as if i had fallen and cracked the back of my head on a coffee table. it actually felt like i had been hit by a car. nothing brain about it, or at least not solely brain: this was my body, throbbing and ugly.

luckily the coven talked me through it, and once it started to improve i calmed down immensely, because even though it still felt like a fucking bruised and open wound, if it's getting better that means there will be an end to it: finite suffering theory.

i spent my evening laid out in my recliner, tears running down my cheeks from the pain as i tried to get water and trace caffeine in me and get my blood sugar up. i slow-cried for a constant hour and a half.

i'm used to chronic background pain: it's like someone playing loud radio static into your ear, a background distraction you're constantly aware of, but this was ... this was some of the sharpest, most awful throbbing pain i've ever experienced in this broken asshole of a body.

obviously i didn't and don't need this shit, but as it was immediately following a shit day at work where i received a talking-to about how much my health and absences have affected (read: let down) my commitments to others and etc -- and it was delivered kindly and appropriately, with maximum understanding and respect for my condition and the limitations a disability puts on my ability to contribute, but -- (a) even if it isn't your fault it's still stuff you fucked up at work and that's a crap feeling and (b) it's a reminder that you're fucking disabled and can't do what others do. oh, and (c) when one of the suggestions is, see if you can get things done earlier and beat deadlines so that even if you get sick work is in, that sounds great in principle but in reality it means the disabled person has to work twice as hard to keep up with the abled business schedule.

it was all best intent, how can i help you, i understand that you are ill and i am not saying you can't take the time you need -- but it still feels like shit to know you've failed at things at work, no matter WHAT the cause. so i came home feeling like shit from that and my body thought it would be a GREAT DAY to experiment with new and heretofore unseen methods of pain games.

i am, really and honestly, not in a great place right now overall.

I’m sure approximately zero (0) of you are aware of this, but every year since like 2012 or 2013 i come up with a tag at the beginning of the year that i hope fits the year’s theme. (It doesn’t always work, so occasionally i replace the tag, or come up with multiples.) for 2017 i have ended up with 2 tags that really capture most of the year: “fight me” and “no”.

Unfortunately in my heart 2017 has ended up being a year of pain. Physically; emotionally; spiritually; professionally; financially; nationally; politically; chronically. In every area of my life I’ve ended up hurting for most of this year. The one exception has been romantically, and I’ll start out what will end up being a depressing entry telling you all that Mike and I are engaged; we will be married on 14 April 2018, and then there will be a big reception party some time at the end of May (Memorial Day wknd plus or minus a week). Mike has been my bedrock for so much of this year, and I’m honestly not sure i would have come out of this year as intact as i have if I hadn’t had him. I call him my grounding rod, my ground wire; he keeps me balanced.

I will try to intersperse good and bad, but here’s a memorial to the year that has hurt me in more ways than I’ve ever known.

( “2017 )

Honestly, i really lost myself and my place this year. There were huge gaps and chasms I spent a lot of time and energy trying to fill whatever way I could. I spent a lot of time being tired and overwhelmed, and feeling exhausted and hopeless. With everything on top of itself, it really took until about October before I started finding handholds and climbing out of this goddamn pit.

The thing I do need to say here is that my friends and family - and family friends; you know which ones you are - have also really stepped up to help me through the low times this year, and I can’t help but love you more for it and look forward to having continued fun positive memories in the years to come. <3

Part of moving forward is archiving these things here; i have to get this out and over until I can start to look at 2018 and what I want to do and change and how to go forward.