Musings: August

So, another month, another musing post!

July was bad. Like, really, really bad. I think I only managed to write like 1000 words over the whole month, all together. Depression fucking sucks. That’s not hyperbolic, if anything, it’s an understatement. ...I debated about including the following rant in this post, but I feel I owe you all a real explanation, not just a vague ‘I was depressed’. I don’t want to just make an excuse, even if it’s a justified one.

At first, I got stuck, debating about how to proceed in this chapter of By The Horns. How could I make 2000 words of wordless sex interesting, how could I avoid becoming repetitive, should I throw in a position change, or try to focus in on the details, or… But after a while, the original dilemma was no longer what was keeping me from working, it was the fact that I was stuck, itself, that began to consume my thoughts. Wenever I tried to write I got stuck in a mental loop of self-deprecation, I was stuck because I was a bad writer, and I was a bad writer because I was stuck. I couldn’t stop thinking about how, by failing to get this done, I was letting down everyone who supported me, which would drive you all away, which would end my dream of doing this for a living, which inevitably led to freaking out over money and how could I possibly leverage what I’m able to produce into a real, livable paycheck (because, honestly, ~$300/month is not gonna cut it, long term), wondering if I needed to get a ‘real’ job, agonizing over what could be done without betraying my principles... I think you get the general idea. It was bad. I felt like I was losing my mind, like I was on the verge of a panic attack or something, every time I sat down to work, or even just sat around without distracting myself somehow… So I distracted myself. A lot. I’m not proud. I played a lot of games. According to steam, over the last two weeks I’ve been logging an average of about 7 hours of fallout 4 a day. I ate too much, slept too much, didn’t shower nearly enough, I neglected my friends, my hobbies, my health, my commitments, my social life… and the longer it went on, the worse it became. The failure to keep up with basic tasks and obligations became further evidence that I was pathetic and lazy, and drove me further and further into depression.

Contrary to popular belief, coming out of a funk like that is not a sudden ‘oh, hey, maybe everything doesn’t suck’ kind of thing. It’s a process that starts with small victories. Last weekend, it started with laundry. I finished the clothes and thought to myself, ‘I should probably do the towels, too’. And while thinking on that, I decided I should probably shower first. And while getting ready for that, I thought, as long as I was showering, I should work up a sweat first. So I did a bit of exercise, then I jumped in the shower, then I washed the towels, and honestly, it felt good to check all that off my list. But it wasn’t just that they were done, really, rather, that I had decided to do them, and then followed through. Which doesn’t sound like a big deal, honestly, but after a month of struggling to muster the energy to brush my teeth, it felt like an accomplishment. Focusing on that feeling of accomplishment, I’ve been climbing out of my funk, bit by bit. The realization that I could post Partners was also a HUGE help, honestly. I gotta get a tooth yanked sometime this month, and without that, money woulda been reeeeeal tight afterward.

Anyways, congrats if you made it through all that. On to new business!

I’ll be posting the remaining parts of Partners for a little while, just to keep the lights on while I work through the last bits of my writer’s block. I’ll space ‘em out a bit, probably two this month, and the finale at the start of September, ‘cause it seems dickish to charge three times in one month for an older story. While that’s happening, I’ll keep working on By The Horns, then probably start on another chapter of Happy Birthday.