seen from Azerbaijan
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Yemen
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Switzerland
seen from Switzerland
seen from Türkiye
seen from Switzerland
seen from Switzerland
seen from Switzerland
seen from United States
seen from Switzerland
seen from Türkiye
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
first day of vacation and I have successfully:
completed a dentist visit with minimal tears
been a job reference
done 4 loads of laundry
all the vacuuming
sometimes you have to do the boring stuff to get to the fun stuff, and if i have to take paid time off to accomplish the bare minimum of being a functioning human being, then that’s what I’ll do.
[insert rant about how housekeeping used to be considered a full-time job]
giving yourself permission to *not* do something can be very freeing to get other stuff done. I told myself that it’s okay that I’m not writing a single word all weekend (mostly because I wrote over 10,000 Very Official words at work this week, plus all the emails and the meetings, and i am fucking done) and that somehow freed up the mental bandwidth for me to start on the big decluttering project that’s been lingering since February.
motivation is weird.
as to the rest of it, i have to go get my laundry from the basement in half an hour, then i have to go over to the pharmacy, and then everything is officially over for the weekend and i can sleep all day tomorrow.
one more week until vacation.
all righty, I just emailed my favourite podcast a topic suggestion, i need to go lie down. i’m not used to this whole “engaging with content creators” thing, even at their suggestion. Even though I, too, crave any sort of reader feedback, so I get it.
Time for more coffee.
So this is my 25,000 post on Tumblr.
Also, and this is most likely serendipity more than anything else, it’s the sixth anniversary of when I first published Hands of Clay chapter one.
I’ve been thinking a lot of when I started writing Hands of Clay, and what the world was like then – I can’t say it was a simpler time, because life is always complicated, but it’s easy to look back and think that things were easier, less painful.
A lot has happened to me since I started Hands of Clay – new job, new car, a myriad of surgeries and medication changes and dealing with depression and anxiety. Right now, I’m doing better than I was, and I think that I’ve been doing okay in spite of everything in the world right now.
Having said that, I’m a different person than I was six years ago (we all are) and wrapping up the end chapter of Hands of Clay is reflecting that. It’s bittersweet, giving Bucky and Steve and the kids a happy send-off in their AU 2016, knowing what the reality of the world and especially the US has been in recent years. Maybe it’s best to do it now, knowing what 2020 holds, and being able to look back at better days.
In the end, this was always going to be a story about finding happy endings, and how family is a choice we make every day, and how you have to work for the things you love. Maybe that’s how this one wraps up for me.
I’m further into the chapter now, and am making progress, and hope to have it up soon.
Thanks for your patience, and here’s your moment of zen (from a recent trip I took to the Nitobe garden at UBC in Vancouver)
so Hour of the Wolf chapter 46 will be up either tomorrow or Tuesday, depending on how this afternoon goes. It’s a long weekend in Canada and so I have Monday to finish things up before a 4-day work week. I was initially going to take Tuesday off as a vacation day but things at work have been so *weird* that I don’t really want to risk it right now. None of this is particularly relevant to writing, just life in general.
Anyway, have a picture of a flower I took because that’s all I do these days, go for solitary walks while listening to TAZ and snap flowers:
things i’m doing in an attempt to stay sane
we just ended the first full week at home, and I woke up this morning feeling so gross. it’s weird, because I can do a full two-week vacation without leaving the house, just writing, but this i so different. Probably all the anxiety and how sick to the stomach I’m feeling all the time.
but I’m trying to do some things to keep in better spirits:
not sleeping too much - it’s easy when i don’t have to commute to work, to stay in bed until right before i have to login, but getting too much sleep makes me feel worse than not getting enough.
trying to get my steps in - i live in an area where people can still go outside if they’re practicing social distancing and i have gone on three walks today in deserted side streets. During the work-from-home week i was taking a bunch of small short walks, mostly to try to alleviate the four-day panic attack I was having, and it did help.
watching positive online content - i’m catching up on my youtube subscriptions and some netflix, stuff that’s generally positive fluff. Maybe I’ll put the Lord of the Rings in the queue to watch again.
trying to eat enough - when I get caught in an anxiety spiral, I tend to stop eating and then feel progressively worse. I’m cooking from home a lot more now (as everyone should be) and at least I can focus on foods I like. The local greengrocer’s has a lot in stock (at least for now) so I’m not at risk of scurvy.
I haven’t been able to turn my brain to creative works at all and that is grinding at me, in spite of some previous posts about it, but this is such a strange time and when the work I do is giving me daily panic attacks, I have to know that the writing-for-fun can wait.
stay safe, everyone, and stay as healthy as you can.
i got the job
i start Jan. 20
It finally occurred to me why the guy who delivered the mail at my work looks so damned familiar. He looks just like
only our mail guy wears a cowboy hat, a look i feel that Doctor Who failed to capitalize on in Twelve's era.
