May – Update

So last month was kind of a hell of a month for several reasons. I had found out that I was being laid off from my job at the beginning of April and so was the rest of my department. The next three weeks were taken up with interviews, applications, and making sure everything at my day job didn’t suffer from my highly distracted focus. It’s important in customer service to make sure of things like that.

As luck and a whole lot of prayers and well wishes would have it, I landed a great job at the end of April and I started it May 13th. Training went amazing and now I’m deep into the thick of and loving every minute. I miss my old coworkers but we’d been seeing this coming for a while. We just didn’t know when. The adjustment period has been better and certainly shorter than the last time I switched jobs. However, between that and some other family shenanigans going down, it’s left me pretty drained and kind of brainless. Exhaustion is the eater of creativity and weakener of walls against depression. So it’s been recuperationville for me a lot the past month.

This month, however, I’m working to get back in the swing of things. So there will be more frequent posting and some actual reviews from the media I’ve seen recently and also some of the books I’ve been reading.

Whirlwinds and Summer Days

This summer has been more active and there has been more travel this year than in previous years. Some of it good and some of it less so, but specifically the last two months have been one whirlwind after another.

We’ve had some awesome family visits – both Roomie’s extended family and my siblings from the other side of the Equator which was fantastic! We got to have the Fourth of July with my siblings and parents which hasn’t happened in a while and it was truly very awesome. We also introduced my brother in law to the wonders of 1776 and got to spend some time with some really amazing old photos which really only proved that yeah, we’ve pretty much always had this level of sass.

Then there was Hypericon, which if you were at, you probably saw me or my Roomie running around all over everywhere, as the Programming department of the concom. I am thrilled to say that, with a few small exceptions, the con went off exceedingly well and the programming was well-recieved and the quality of guests and panelists were amazing.

It was such an incredible relief to see a year’s work of hard work be executed well. I am incredibly grateful to all the people who I badgered or in one case, shanghaied into coming as panelists and featured guests. It brought a level of class and awesome to panels and workshops that was just superfantastic.

Roomie also went off to her residency for the MFA program she’s enrolled in and that was a lot of running and doing all the things before sending her off to the airline gate ( this was during Hypericon too, so if you saw me on Sunday and I was sort of a space cadet at you, apologies! I’d gotten around 4 hours of sleep total) and off to grown-up summer camp.

Then the AC in the house decided to break that evening, running around looking for contractors and repair people that could work around my work schedule was interesting to say the least. It is still not totally fixed, but we know what the problem is and it should be fixed by tomorrow.

In between doing all of that, the day job has been super crazy as well since it’s summer and vacations among other things are happening. So there’s been a lot going on. So much that my poor ASD brain hasn’t been able to cope as well as I’d like it to, which is why the radio silence from here.

I am trying to be a little better about the home/work/other work/con work balance than I have been, especially with the limited amount of spoons I already have. Compromise is one of my least favorite words, but slowly I am working to destigmatize it in my own head. It’s a great word when dealing with outside life and other people, it’s only in my own head and body that it’s a not great word. A lot of it has to do with forever needing to compromise with my brain and body due to the chronic pain issues…and I know that, but still sometimes knowing that intellectually doesn’t make it hit my less rational and more emotive self.

I have been reading though and writing some. More reading than writing and there’ll be a post about everything that I’ve been reading or re-reading as the case may be. I’ve delighted in some new stuff and picked up old favorites again. There’s something decidedly comforting about picking up a book you’ve read over and over, It’s akin to a warm blanket on a cold night or seeing an old friend.

Tell me about your summers, good or bad, if you like in the comments.

On the Other Side Of February…

Having a day job is a blessing most days, but damn if sometimes it can get in the way of writing. Especially when it comes to having the energy to actually sit and write. This goes double for when you are disabled.

So yeah, when last we left the Lone Ranger, we’ve had some truly horrible family news that I’ll go into detail later on when I can, suffice to say it’s a situation that all too many people are familiar with and who I deeply wish that no one ever had to go through this. I have also lost not one but both the laptops that I had been using for writing and working. Both of them were definitely older than laptops generally live, one was five years old and one was closer to ten years old, both had linux on them, and bless, I do love that operating system. Both of their screen died completely and the drives are being sketchy, so plugging in a separate screen to get stuff off them isn’t working as well as I hoped.

So I’m writing this from a shiny new Dell Chromebook style thing. At least I had some of the tax return left.

But in the writing realm, it’s been a little harder of a slog than normal. The depression has been hitting very hard. February is historically a horrible month for me, so really the best part of the month was getting to see Black Panther. I can’t wait until I get to see it again. It was…indescribable how much everything was so good and so necessary and so brilliant. I need this to have its own separate franchise – it was that good.

I’ve also been reading when and where I could. Sometimes being too tired to write also means too tired to read. I have a stack of books that deserve longer reviews and I’ll do them – it just may take some time. Two of the books I’ve read have been Gray Widow’s Walk and Gray Widow’s Web by Dan Jolley (full disclosure, I know Dan in the way that panelists at cons know each other. You sit on more than one panel together, etc. ). Also, these books are fantastic, I couldn’t put them down and blitzed through them so fast and then re-read them. They’re fast paced and fun and horrible and amazing in the same ways that comics are, which isn’t so much a surprise since Dan’s also a comics writer. These books have a kickass female hero, a fascinating set of twists and turns, and his prose makes me sit and gasp or laugh or just marvel at the sentence structure (writers who read other writer’s books get hung up on weird things, what can I say?). Anyways, these books are awesome. So if you like Black Widow or Wonder Woman or Jessica Jones or Shuri…give these books a try. I think you’ll love them.

There’s a third book on the way too and I am EXCITE.

The other major thing that I did this month was write and submit a thing to a place and maybe it’ll get in and maybe it won’t, but I’m super proud of myself for submitting it. It was non fiction and pretty personal which just made the submitting jitters that much worse. More on that when I can.

Update: Patreon Shenanigans

So in an update to this post, I am deliriously happy to report that Patreon has acknowledged that they done screwed up and that they are not actually rolling out the updates to their fee structure that they had announced.   So I am thrilled they are being not evil in this particular way.  However,  they have burned a lot of trust and I will be continuing to watch and research other alternatives in case something like this goes down again.

You can read their apology post here.

So currently on Patreon is the story of why my mother has a Russian Motherhood Medal and then the December short story will be posted soon.

Any Patreon alternatives you want to drop in the comments, I’d be appreciative.