I’m still around.

It’s been a few weeks since I last wrote a post. Things have been busy, or I wasn’t sure what to write here. I started on anti-depressants, for one. They seem to be working. The few times I felt I was sliding down stopped after a day or two. No week long cycles since I started them. Follow up visit was yesterday and the prescription was renewed.

I was fortunate that the dosage was right from the start. Depression’s a tricky beast, and sometimes you don’t get the right amount in your system to stop the slide from the onset. I’ve also got a drastically smaller stomach, absorb things faster, and that could be a contributing factor.

These aren’t uppers. They’re not meant to alter my mood. They’re meant to give me a false bottom to my lows, make it so I can rebound faster. Only by leveling that to something manageable (or at least shorter time frames) can I do the work on other things.

I’ve started querying publishers on my own. I’ve already received a full request from one! All the information I’ve seen says I won’t know anything else until March, but that doesn’t stop the Obsessive Email Checking.

The strike at work is still going. We’re in month 3 now. I’ve gone from full time to 2 days a week to now 1 day a week. It totally sucks, as I’ve started to look around at other possibilities. I can’t keep my son in college on 1 day a week. I’m a few months ahead on the payment schedule (there’s a monthly amount I put aside to make sure the funds are there for him), so I can be picky. Try to ride this out. I really love this job, the environment in the office, so have to hope the strike ends before the search becomes more serious.

The publishing search and strike are two major stresses in my life. And they’re both ones that are completely out of my control. I can’t force a publisher to love my writing, offer a contract for the entire trilogy. Nor can I make the union decide to accept the offer from the companies.

What I can do, what I’m striving to do, is to stop taking these things personally. Rejections are part of publishing. I’ve gotten dozens, and am likely to get more in the future. I’m affected by the strike, yes. But I’m not the one who can make it end. That’s not my job.

So much of our lives are external stresses that we take into ourselves, make them personal. It’s hard to wait, put dreams on hold. So much of what I want from life is on hold because of these two factors. Would I love to get a text today saying the strike was over, come back to full time starting Monday? Absolutely. Would I love to see an email offering a contract for not just book 1 but the entire Heroes of Avoch series? If it was a good contract, I’d probably bawl my eyes out.

Thing is, I can’t put my life on pause waiting for other people to decide those things. Instead, I have to let go of that stress, stop internalizing it. Let it be an external problem that I can put in a box at the top of my closet. I have to find my center, trust that my Goddess knows what She’s doing, follow the Path that is mine to walk.

Write more. Relax. Breathe. Burn some incense, calm my mind. Work on the myriad of other issues that I’ve internalized since I was a child. Confront the demons that I’ve shoved so deep into my soul that they haven’t seen daylight in over 50 years.

The box won’t get dusty. I’ll pull it down a few times, throw in a few new external problems that I refuse to internalize. If I’m fortunate, I’ll take out some and throw them in the trash because they’re irrelevant.

It’s a theory, anyway. Putting it into practice is the hard part.

BB/Chan Eil Eagal Orm