Things that have been fucking me up.
1. I went a solid month with NO days off. I was stressed, exhausted, moody, and doing NOTHING productive for myself aside from just showing up to work each day.
2. I had worries about losing my job. That just made me worry more about finances, taxes, etc., and drew my attention away from what I should have been doing. It made me eager to relax at the end of the day instead of writing.
3. I spent any free time moving furniture from my Dad’s house. This was also a sad walk down memory lane, as the furniture we moved belonged to my grandparents and father. My stepmom had to sell her house because my dad left her nothing. She couldn’t afford the mortgage on her own. So it’s a good thing, but it’s also really bitter sweet. It’s the house where my dad died. It’s the house where my grandmother died. Furthermore, it’s the house where we used to go for Xmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, etc. It’s pretty tough to deal with. So there’s a lot of emotional shit going on.
4. Whenever I’m stressed and just have way too much going on, my immune system takes a bizarre nosedive. If I don’t get sick, I somehow injure myself, or force myself to take a break. This time I wrenched the fuck out of my neck. I was in a flexiril/vicodin coma for 2 days. I came out of that, but now I’ve been in a migrainey, tense, hazy loopy phase for about 2 days. I’ve also been worrying about what the fuck that all means (holy shit! did I have a stroke? is that an aneurism? what are the signs and symptoms???), and that’s certainly not helping me relax either.
So right now, I remain in this weird state of waiting for the other shoe to drop. It happens quite a lot. I spend time feeling like every minute of happiness or focus is stolen, and that the chaos is just around the corner. My life has been cyclical enough like that to make that apprehension very real for me. When things are good, they’re great, when things are bad, it’s just one shitty thing after another.
Sadly, I’ve been sitting at about 28,800 for about 2 weeks now. That last 200 words was just SO elusive. I sat down, looked at the words, tried to come up with the next scene, and just could not summon it forth. Granted, I was mostly horizontal with the neck thing, but still.
However, that’s not to say that I did nothing. I worked a lot on building a map of the town. It was just WHAT I could focus on at the time. I procrastinated productively. And I think that I’ve noodled how the town is laid out.
This morning, Phantom’s present for me came in the mail. He bought me a topo map from the US Geological Survey of the area where I want to set the story. It was simply the most inspired, thoughtful, supportive gift I could have imagined. He honestly wants me to succeed, and he knew that it would be perfect for what I needed.
He’s getting it. He has his flaws, but he really is THE ONE PERSON who gets me and gets what I need. He’s also suffered long and hard with me feeling like shit and him having to take care of things around the house. I’m NOT nice when I’m feeling shitty.
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Now I’m realizing that I need to focus on him. We need to spend some time together having fun and being together. I wanted to take a roadtrip to the previously mentioned area this weekend, but the sad truth is that it’s going to be 91 degrees out. I just can’t get excited about going out somewhere to sweat.
So now I’m trying to think about somewhere we can go that won’t involve being out in the heat. All I can think of is places *I* want to go. Like the new age book store, or to go see Pirates 4. I think I need to ask him what HE wants. It needs to be about him this weekend..
In the meantime, I WILL write those 200 more words. And many, many more. 🙂