The State of Things

I feel like I need to take a hot minute and give a brief update because the last week has been life-changing and I do periodically read through old posts. So, hello, future me. I hope you've settled down and aren't feeling all freaked out.

Right now, I'm sitting here with a sprained left foot all wrapped up and bandages on both arms (old implant removed; new one put in). Little dude says I am "one-limbed" and he's not wrong. I am glad to have the new implant in as the migraines and nausea had cropped up again and my hormones have been all haywire, but it is painful nonetheless. The foot was just an accident. I can use it now, even though it has almost been a week, but still can't easily go down stairs or do anything that requires me to flex it (especially, as I discovered, trying to reach a high shelf by standing on my tiptoes). 

Neither of those things, of course, are the life-changing bits. Last week we found out that one of husband's business things he'd been involved in before was going to sell. We'd hoped for some years that it would and that we could maybe pay off the house with it, but it was more than that. Still getting my head around it, honestly. I mean, it's good, but I am also just feeling like a giant bundle of vibrating nerves. The hormone thing isn't helping and even though I know that, I can't do anything about it. The world is just feeling very surreal. I am both weepy and panicky and happy and freaked out in equal measures.

I also have a small writing project due on the 7th and I haven't been able to do diddly-squat since the news hit us. Tomorrow, I hope. As I've also got a short story due for an anthology by the end of the month. It's just really, really hard to concentrate right now. And I need to have a hard conversation with my agent because, given our new circumstances, I think I'd rather work on the D&D project I've been thinking about for ages rather than a new book that may or may not sell (and, even if it does, is invariably frustrating -- i.e. like the 2nd book in the one series I have coming out in May which has been one frustration after another). Publishing is in a mess. I can't say it's been making me happy whereas the D&D work I've been doing has been both more fulfilling AND more lucrative (though not a lot; goodness knows that writing is NOT a way to make a living). I mean, I like writing novels and there's nothing like the feeling when someone writes you after they've read one of your books. But it is a very shitty industry for 98% of the people who work in it. The money I've made from it is so very random (good years, bad years, nonexistent years) and considering how unfulfilling it is in the last few years, concentrating on the D&D stuff seems like a good mental health thing to do.

So, anyway. That's where I am at the moment.