Conference Call - July 5 '20 (Patreon)

(I have been working on this post of and on for the better part of the last week. It will probably feel a bit scattered as a result. This week was, well, it was hell.)

Hey all, Misty here! There is a lot of text below, but here is the tl;dr:

- Posted "Brain Break" another collaboration with Bury-She [Patreon][dA] this month. The  two-part, long-form caption unfolds as you, the reader, bear witness to a dramatic change in your fianceé. If you missed them, here are parts [one] and [two]. We are plotting the next piece, so watch this space for details!

- Speaking of getting work posted...  even though I am starting to get my groove back thanks to working on projects with others, I am thinking about dropping PubClub to $3 because I do not feel like I am offering $5 worth of content. More on that feeling below, but I am still working on feeling out the specifics.

- Despite being back on my feet creatively, I still feel like utter shit. I can often lose an hour or more when I stop actively focusing, so it is likely I am disassociating. I should probably see a grief counselor or something about dealing with my Nana's passing while really only having two emotional states and numbness.

- On top of that—or perhaps because of it—my brain is on overdrive and I continually find myself stuck in cycles of trying to prioritize. Work stuff, house stuff, spouse stuff, and writing all jumble together such that nothing gets done aside from the house essentials.

Anyway, let me know if you have any questions, concerns, comments, etc. either here in the comments, on twitter, on CuriousCat or on Discord.

- - - - -

Wow, hard to believe I actually got two pieces posted in June; however, I am starting to feel like five dollars is a big ask for Publisher's Club when I cannot really guarantee anything special for those will to pay that to support me.  I keep dropping the ball on projects—or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say I fail to even pick the ball up in the first place. I have more ideas than I can handle and writing them down so I can free up brain space has had a... lackluster effect of late.

My persistent exhaustion is both getting better and also worse. Now that I am taking melatonin at night, I feel more rested and more energized in the morning. At the same time, though, all it takes is me losing focus and letting my eyes close for a moment before I lose an hour or more. Which, frankly, is something that gets harder to afford when it feels like I have more to worry about than ever before.

I am fairly certain this up-tick in my pseudo-narcolepsy is owed, in part, to grief over my grandmother's passing that I have no idea how to process. This is the first major family member death I have experienced, and because it happened now, during the COVID-19 outbreak, even if I had made the trek four states away to Tennessee, I would not have been permitted to say my goodbyes. 

I mean, yeah, I was out there in February, so it's not like I didn't see her at all, but still... Nana was a big part of my childhood since my sister and I would spend summers out there with her and Poppy. That all blew up one disastrous August before my senior year of high school. Long story short, my grandmother taped my phone calls to my girlfriend, and I was honest and earnest in the most autistic way possible when I was required to make a toast in front of three dozen strangers at my father's second wedding. 

A large part of the paternal side of my family disowned me after that. 

My aunt and I have reconciled in the last few years and I never really fell out with my uncle—in fact, he chewed my dad out about making me do something like that. I am virtually no contact with my father. I return texts sends me, but I refuse to engage with him beyond that and I'm fine with that. 

When it came to Nana and Poppy, though, reconnecting was tough. Before this year, the last time I had been out that way was with Rei on our first wedding anniversary and that was in twenty-thirteen—almost seven years after the break. So there is this sense of regret that I did not try harder sitting in my chest. That feeling, however, is not alone as there are a dozen perfectly rational reasons why other trips had no been feasible.

Anyway, that is enough about that. On a less existential front, owning a house has been a constant battle with my attention span and my sense of zen. The fence we were getting installed has been a debacle—We started the process in April and the install might be done next Monday. The washing machine is now leaking like a sieve with every load and will not be fixed until after mid-month. Regardless of effort during the week, it takes the better part of a day on the weekend to deal with a week's worth of dog hair, tracked dirt, and shredded paper scattered by a certain puppy.

Work, too, has been as stressful as all get out. I turned in my huge project, so that is something off my plate, but things are hardly black makeup and stylish trench coats. We are more than a few releases behind on our vendor's platform because of integration issues on both sides. Efforts to have their platform be the system of record instead of a legacy system are on-going, but each development effort reveals more "chewing gum and toothpicks" code. Meanwhile, a major UX change is coming this fall that will invalidate a lot of the complex tricks I had to come up with to navigate a web-site generated entirely via java script as layers instead of separate pages.

As if those things we not enough, Rei is being crushed beneath all of the changes her health is requiring. Between radically having to alter her diet, there is the reality of her complex regional pain syndrome spreading to the sympathetic nerves in her right leg. Walking has been very hard for her, and driving has not been much better. She got a block this week, but that is only a temporary thing. At most, it will dull the pain for five years,
but it could only afford her a year's reprieve. There is, of course, the potential for this to be the early onset of multiple-sclerosis as it runs in both sides of her family.

Whew, that was... That was a lot. I had not intended on writing nearly this much about my personal issues, but here is a good look into what is going on in my life at the moment. At any rate, if you have questions, concerns, comments, etc. either tell me about them here in the comments, on [twitter], on [CuriousCat] or on [Discord].

Until next time, be excellent to each other!