(no subject)

[spryng]

I have booties, flannel pajama pants, a flannel shirt, and hand warmers on right now. It is officially winter and it is cold. I want to go for a run this morning, but it's 30, so I think I'll just wait a little bit until the sun comes up.

Lady's mom helped me put up the holiday decorations right after Thanksgiving, so at least we have cheerful lights and a glowing tree to make up for the darkness. It's put me in the mood of thinking about darkness and hope and my attitude. My therapist told me that I might just have to fake it to get through the next few months and part of me knows she's right.

I just... it's a lot of initial effort. And I can't definitively say that there isn't a small part of me that wants to be sad, even if it's only because then I won't have as far to fall. This past year, two years, has been a constant roller coaster of hope and depression and I think it's understandable if I just want to stay at the bottom of the coaster - the only place where I can control things.

But... I think I'll try again. To climb up to the top of the roller coaster and hold out hope. For our TTC mess. For France. For this rewrite I'm starting on. For the next round of submissions. Past performance is not an indicator of future results, and honestly, things have generally turned out for the best. Also, quite a few things are different this time around:

- I'm not stuck waiting in a job that I hate
- The France fellowship Lady applied for is 100% better opportunity for her than the last possibility
- The fellowship is on her terms and merit, not left up to someone we don't know/have control over
- If it goes through, we can drive across the country in March/April and get to meet my new niece
- If it doesn't go through, we can fly to meet my new niece
- TTC is starting again in three weeks and this time around, it's medicated, which means no room for weirdness (*knock on wood*)
- Also hoping that without the weirdness and constant wondering of what will go wrong, I'll be less stressed/depressed
- The next project I'm working on is a restructure/rewrite of an older story, so it should be less fraught with doubts and awful writing and be something I can hopefully present to my agent (relatively) soon.

Things are different. That still doesn't guarantee success, but maybe it can guarantee hope.