May 2021 Life Update (Patreon)

Living in Los Angeles with the people I moved in with isn't working. It's not drama, it's not something scary, it's just me finding out stuff about myself that I didn't know going into this situation.

Problems:

1. Rickety apartment -> all the work in it was done by a landlord who is old and very tired of handyman work. Many things, like the stove and refrigerator, just don't work right and that provides a lot of distraction at times.

2. Soundproofing -> The way the air returns to the HVAC system is through gaps under all the doors. The floors of this place transmit sound really well too. Therefore, I can hear everything going on in the apartment unless I turn on white noise. Problem is that loud white noise on all the time makes me feel anxious. And it's often not enough. The max decibels you can leave white noise on for hours and not hurt your ears is 60. Intermittent sounds are often louder than that.

3. I Work in a Cave -> Only place in the house that is quiet enough where the white noise works without being a danger to my ears is the back of our walk-in closet. I've set up a little office back here and I'm writing in it now. There is no window to the outside and I have no good way of looking at something other than my screen or LED lights and I'm getting eye strain from it.

(Earplugs and ear protectors cut down the overall noise, but funny enough, they cut down the white noise more than the noise from people doing stuff in the apartment. I have no idea why I hear stuff better with them on than with them off. I've always been incredibly good at hearing and identifying faint sounds. Very often, this is not a plus. Heh.)

4. Always on Call -> Living with the trans friend I'd been helping is super difficult. I'm trans, myself, and I'm already trying to keep myself sane and happy. The added load is really depleting my reserves. I keep having two choices. Choice A: help her work through stuff so she doesn't have an emotional upheaval and have no time to myself. B: not help her and then get interrupted by her having an emotional upheaval.

I do not blame her for having these. I get it, being trans is incredibly frustrating and hard. I don't even call this drama because I've felt the way she's felt and it makes sense. Problem is that I grew up in a family where I was abused when people got that upset. When she explodes, I don't feel safe, so I check in with her frequently and sometimes have long conversations where I help her work through her feelings. If I let her explode, I get even less work done because I'm so anxious I can barely think. When we weren't living together and I could get space from her upsets, things were so much better.

5. Access to Silence and Nature -> I thrive on silence and nature. It's how I depressurize and I didn't know how important these were until I started living in LA. There's sirens, helicopters, and a ridiculous amount of cars. I've never lived in a city that was this noisy all the time and I've never lived in a place where it's so hard to find a forest or natural area. We are nowhere near nature. It's concrete for miles and getting out of the city is lots of time in a car. Other cities, or even just places near LA, like Pasadena, I feel way less tense in. Where we live now is the wrong place for me.

Conclusion:
With all this being the case, even though I live with people I love, I'm going to have to leave or find a way to not be here for long stretches of time. I went on a trip to Las Vegas to get away for a couple days and I was twenty minutes from the astoundingly beautiful Red Rock Canyon. During the three day trip, I hiked over twenty miles and had an absolutely wonderful time. Las Vegas is so much quieter than it is here, I felt so much more at peace. I completely ignored the reasons people normally go to Vegas for. XD

That was the last bit of data I needed before writing this post. The living situation here is so counter to my needs, that I'm going to have to live apart from my loved ones. Now that I'm trans, I'm so much more comfortable with myself that I actually crave true alone time. It's the first time in my life that I've felt this way and I need to explore that as well as just get away from this situation.

Temporary Solution:
My aunt's offered a little house on her property in New Mexico as a place I can call my own for as long as I need to. She, and her husband, are two of the most caring, progressive people I've ever met. It's quiet on their little ranch and it's a place that always recharges my batteries.

The current plan is for me to spend the month of June there and then see how I feel. During this time, my main focus will be my writing because I have so much that I want to write. I've never been more inspired than I am right now and I desperately want to get stuff out of my head. Every part of Remiel's next book is just sitting there waiting to be put on paper along with fun little things I thought of that I think y'all will have lots of fun with.

After I get there at the end of the first week of June, I'm going to have to get a couple odds and ends to set up my writing area, but then I'll be off to the races. Half of Remiel's last chapter was written when I was in Las Vegas, even though I was hiking multiple hours a day!

I can't thank my aunt enough, I can't thank every one of you enough for supporting me, and I can't thank my poly family enough for understanding that I need time away. Sometimes when it looks like life's about to settle down, something goes up in smoke. But that's okay because I love what I do for a living and I know how to hang on to happiness even when my dreams catch fire.

Side note 1: there is one amazing thing about LA and that's the healthcare here. They have the best trans healthcare I've ever seen. I'm planning to find a way to take advantage of it even if I spend a fair amount of time away. But even that isn't working right at the moment. I'm having some rather hilarious problems getting insured in CA that have been tying me up on the phone day after day for a week. Yes, this month has been a slice of hell. But hey, I still got a fair amount of writing and worldbuilding done.

Side note 2: I've been working with Starvin' on our collaborative project, the one y'all voted on last month, and it's starting to get some momentum. It's gonna be an 8-part TF sequence with two characters, a full background, and a story to go with it!