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spryngI like how this time last year I was all like "I'm going to start regularly journaling again!" and then...
crickets.
But it's 2020 now and I've re-found my rhythm - or at least, a rhythm - and maybe I can try again. Between not taking as many photos and not journaling I feel like I'm losing so many details.
So here's to trying again.
In 2019 I:
- went from a flexible, at-home dayjob working 3 days a week with 4 days of daycare, which meant I had one full day to write and one full day to spend with Lady Jr, to working 5 full days a week in an office where people frequently have meetings instead of lunches and many of the websites I use to get writing work done or communicate (i.e. gmail, gdocs, slack, etc) were blocked. This was really difficult to adjust to, especially since I started this job in January and I had a book coming out in March.
My one hour in the morning before Lady Jr woke up became the only time I could get any writing-related work done - so basically I went from having 26 hours to do writing work each week down to 14. And yet I kept trying to do 26 hours worth of work.
- went back to therapy. Probably related to the above!
- got on anxiety medication. This one was weird - I got a cold in August and took dayquil to avoid taking off work and noticed that my constant, high-level anxiety abruptly decreased to something more manageable. I was able to send emails! I was able to avoid catastrophizing! I brought it up with my therapist, who pointed out that antihistamines have the side effect of being an SSRI, so I took allergy meds for a month to see if it would keep working and it did and it was amazing. I saw a psychiatrist in October and went on real anti-anxiety meds then and it's been lifechanging.
I am not stupidly paranoid about stuff all the time! I can actually respond to emails in a timely manner! I'm still working through a giant backlog of shit I've been avoiding/putting off because I just couldn't deal with it at the time, but I have confidence I'll actually get there now. Whereas before all I had was panic. So.
- survived a two year old's massive tantrums and received a threenager for my troubles. Seriously though, Lady Jr is great. I miss my extra time with her, but daycare is good for her. And our worry that she'd never talk was, like usual, completely unfounded. She's a chatterbox now. My favorite thing is when she says "I love Asha! I love mama Kai! I love Lady Jr!" because I wish we all would include ourselves in our list of things we love.
(Asha is Dr Lady - somehow Lady Jr started using another kid's name for Dr Lady and we just ran with it)
- let go of the future. Just a little. We might move in 2020. We might not. We're in a good place right now either way, so we'll just see.
- wrote 3 short stories, trunked a novel, and started a new one. I still feel like I don't have anything to show for the year, writing-wise, but maybe that's okay considering the whole fulltime job and releasing two other books and parenting a young child thing.
- released 2 books! I hesitate to say published, since I wasn't the one doing all that work, but it was very distracting to have to navigate two releases in one year. Awesome, yes, but I felt like the burden of the marketing was on my shoulders and so I was constantly running in place, trying to find ways to market and get interviews etc. Gee, why was I so anxious this year.
- became old-hat at this whole author thing. It only took 3 years of being pre-publication, but after going to 4 conferences/conventions and sitting on a bunch of panels and having people actually approach me and ask me to sign their books and having a friend call me out when I referred to another author by their first name ("you're on a firstname basis with authors?!") I realized this has all very suddenly and not so suddenly at all become my life.
It's hard to remember that just a few years ago I would have been over the moon to even talk to any of these authors, and now I'm friends with a lot of them and it's just... life. Although there are definitely still authors I get heart-fluttery about and if they ever talked to me like an equal I'd probably faint.
- basically lived on Twitter. It's where all those author friends are and even though having to work in an office has been great for me socially, no one there writes or even reads. I do need to get off of Twitter and meet more authors in meatspace, but I don't foresee my twitter use being much less next year. Not while I have another book to promote (June!!) and not while yelling about queer books gets such a wonderful response. I am going to use it less, and try to not waste my precious early morning writing time on there, because it is hella distracting.
- gained a lot of weight. Having less time to get writing-work done meant using the time I'd normally exercise to work instead + stress + lots of sweets in the office = weight gain, who knew. That's one of my few goals for 2020, though, is repriortizing exercise and returning to a lower carb, more paleo way of eating. We'd let it slip partially because it was so difficult to cook with a baby and then a toddler, but Lady Jr is playing more by herself now or will sit and watch a movie while we cook, so we really have no excuses left.
And now it's almost 6am and I have a short story deadline coming up (wtf, when did I start writing short stories, how do I have a deadline) so I should probably write.
But here's to more long-form journaling in 2020!
crickets.
But it's 2020 now and I've re-found my rhythm - or at least, a rhythm - and maybe I can try again. Between not taking as many photos and not journaling I feel like I'm losing so many details.
So here's to trying again.
In 2019 I:
- went from a flexible, at-home dayjob working 3 days a week with 4 days of daycare, which meant I had one full day to write and one full day to spend with Lady Jr, to working 5 full days a week in an office where people frequently have meetings instead of lunches and many of the websites I use to get writing work done or communicate (i.e. gmail, gdocs, slack, etc) were blocked. This was really difficult to adjust to, especially since I started this job in January and I had a book coming out in March.
My one hour in the morning before Lady Jr woke up became the only time I could get any writing-related work done - so basically I went from having 26 hours to do writing work each week down to 14. And yet I kept trying to do 26 hours worth of work.
- went back to therapy. Probably related to the above!
- got on anxiety medication. This one was weird - I got a cold in August and took dayquil to avoid taking off work and noticed that my constant, high-level anxiety abruptly decreased to something more manageable. I was able to send emails! I was able to avoid catastrophizing! I brought it up with my therapist, who pointed out that antihistamines have the side effect of being an SSRI, so I took allergy meds for a month to see if it would keep working and it did and it was amazing. I saw a psychiatrist in October and went on real anti-anxiety meds then and it's been lifechanging.
I am not stupidly paranoid about stuff all the time! I can actually respond to emails in a timely manner! I'm still working through a giant backlog of shit I've been avoiding/putting off because I just couldn't deal with it at the time, but I have confidence I'll actually get there now. Whereas before all I had was panic. So.
- survived a two year old's massive tantrums and received a threenager for my troubles. Seriously though, Lady Jr is great. I miss my extra time with her, but daycare is good for her. And our worry that she'd never talk was, like usual, completely unfounded. She's a chatterbox now. My favorite thing is when she says "I love Asha! I love mama Kai! I love Lady Jr!" because I wish we all would include ourselves in our list of things we love.
(Asha is Dr Lady - somehow Lady Jr started using another kid's name for Dr Lady and we just ran with it)
- let go of the future. Just a little. We might move in 2020. We might not. We're in a good place right now either way, so we'll just see.
- wrote 3 short stories, trunked a novel, and started a new one. I still feel like I don't have anything to show for the year, writing-wise, but maybe that's okay considering the whole fulltime job and releasing two other books and parenting a young child thing.
- released 2 books! I hesitate to say published, since I wasn't the one doing all that work, but it was very distracting to have to navigate two releases in one year. Awesome, yes, but I felt like the burden of the marketing was on my shoulders and so I was constantly running in place, trying to find ways to market and get interviews etc. Gee, why was I so anxious this year.
- became old-hat at this whole author thing. It only took 3 years of being pre-publication, but after going to 4 conferences/conventions and sitting on a bunch of panels and having people actually approach me and ask me to sign their books and having a friend call me out when I referred to another author by their first name ("you're on a firstname basis with authors?!") I realized this has all very suddenly and not so suddenly at all become my life.
It's hard to remember that just a few years ago I would have been over the moon to even talk to any of these authors, and now I'm friends with a lot of them and it's just... life. Although there are definitely still authors I get heart-fluttery about and if they ever talked to me like an equal I'd probably faint.
- basically lived on Twitter. It's where all those author friends are and even though having to work in an office has been great for me socially, no one there writes or even reads. I do need to get off of Twitter and meet more authors in meatspace, but I don't foresee my twitter use being much less next year. Not while I have another book to promote (June!!) and not while yelling about queer books gets such a wonderful response. I am going to use it less, and try to not waste my precious early morning writing time on there, because it is hella distracting.
- gained a lot of weight. Having less time to get writing-work done meant using the time I'd normally exercise to work instead + stress + lots of sweets in the office = weight gain, who knew. That's one of my few goals for 2020, though, is repriortizing exercise and returning to a lower carb, more paleo way of eating. We'd let it slip partially because it was so difficult to cook with a baby and then a toddler, but Lady Jr is playing more by herself now or will sit and watch a movie while we cook, so we really have no excuses left.
And now it's almost 6am and I have a short story deadline coming up (wtf, when did I start writing short stories, how do I have a deadline) so I should probably write.
But here's to more long-form journaling in 2020!
