Still here, more or less

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Sorry for falling off the edge of the world for a bit there…had a couple of pretty bad weeks, probably due to getting a bit off schedule with my medication. Spent most of it unable to get out of bed until absolutely necessary or rereading the fluffiest selections from my library instead of doing…well, anything. Then I decided I wasn’t making enough of an effort and when I finally made myself do that, I ended up having a very good week; finished ch47 (it was a difficult scene, lots of Feelings) and made myself get out of bed early enough to take walks every morning, which was nice.

The weather this week kind of screwed that over, unfortunately, but I have managed to write almost two thousand words of ch48. Not a great count considering I’m on vacation, but meh. Not gonna make myself feel like crap over it. Making an effort is hard work.

As for Being Medicated: the meds are helping me be less anxious for sure, and work has gotten a lot less unpleasant to deal with since I got over the initial brain fog period of adjusting to them. The depression part has been harder to kick, but since I decided to Make an Effort, I have been texting people more, and I got back on twitter again yesterday–tweeted some pix of the jewelry bits I’m making for Christmas, and of the unexpected snow we got last night. Creative stuff is still a little slow to get into, but I think I just need to get into the habit of it again. (Which is harder than it sounds, but I did it with writing, so I’m sure I can do it with drawing too. Eventually.)

In other news, it was my birthday last Friday, and I had a nice one; we went out for pizza and it was a lot of fun, I made myself a chocolate green tea marble cake, which was tasty, bought myself a bunch of books with the gift card my Mom gave me. Haven’t read any of them yet because Writing happened instead, but they’re in my library, anyway. ;p

It’s been a week of Being Medicated

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and I feel…fairly normal, I guess? Not significantly more motivated to do anything, but I did manage to finish Ch46, bringing my wordcount to 231K. Eep. Editing this beast is going to be a chore and a half, let me tell you.

I have tentatively started ch47, which has the scene that has been tripping up my brain for months now as I try to figure out how I should end it. Probably it will become obvious while I am actually writing it because I’m apparently the type who just figures things out as I do them instead of obsessively plotting everything in detail ahead of time. (I used to do this but it ends up being a waste of time because I always end up changing that one thing that ends up having an exponential effect on everything else which results in having to pause the actual writing while I revamp all my notes and try to figure out how to replot everything *flings self into sun*) ANyway I’ll be over here, staring down this decision that probably no one else but me will think anything of…

New eyeglasses imminent

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My eye appointment was today, and picking out my new frames by myself was just as frustrating as I had imagined. The place I went was pretty small, and the selection of frames they had to fit my tiny face was also…quite small.

I, uh, had to choose my new glasses from the kid’s rack. But! They are metallic fuchsia, a bit lighter and redder than my current glasses–or at least the color my current glasses used to be before I finally rubbed the color off from wearing them WAY past their expiration date. (You do not even want to know how long it’s been since I went to the eye doctor.)

Then I went to Half Price Books, because it was right across the street, basically, and looked for those reference books I didn’t find at Book People. I found Austin, An Illustrated History, which looks to be a good general history. Remarkable Plants of Texas also looks like it will be good, as it contains not just info about the plants, but their historic uses and cultural significance. Indians of Texas was on my list for the original version of Golden Wolf, so I bought it even though I’ve changed a lot of stuff since then. After I got home I realized I already had one book with a similar title that I found on Ebay last year. Oops. Oh well. I also bought some books about digital photography–a general guide for dummies, and couple of books about nature and wildlife photography–because the male lead of Golden Wolf is a nature photographer.

I should have looked at books about the Hill Country too, but I spent entirely too much money today already.

Speaking of nature photos. I went for a walk. Have a sunset.

I live for sunsets

A couple of uninspiring days later…

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So, Monday: kind of blah, but with the added bonus of having to go to work. At least it was Truck Day, aka the day I go in earlier than usual and spend a few hours checking in and stocking the week’s grocery order. I had the headache again, took some Tylenol and it went away. Still wasn’t sure if it was allergies or a side effect.

I felt tired and still kind of blah when I got home, so I spent a couple hours burrowing (aka rereading the fluffiest books I could find in my ebook library) and then I decided I had to get up and DO something, so I cleaned the kitchen. Then my sister came home from school and we talked and I felt better, because the key to feeling better is actually not feeling like you are completely alone in the universe. Love to my mum and my BFF, who both checked up on me, I really appreciated that. <3 Tuesday: A pretty good day, actually. I got up at a decent hour (for me), headache seemed to still be gone, and wrote a bit, got a good ways into that scene that was kind of terrifying the life out of me. (No really, but there was dialogue by characters who had only been referenced vaguely in the story before, and you know how I feel about Dialogue. Hey, it's hard.) Then I went to work and I'm pretty sure the Universe was deliberately sending all the most difficult people in town directly to me because ye gods, I was ready to fling things at people by the end of the day. Went home and burrowed some more. Did not get up at anything like a reasonable hour today but it's fine. No headache! :D I'm going to try to write a bit now. I have an eye appointment tomorrow, and no one to go with me, and before you ask why a 36 year old person needs an escort to the eye doctor, I'm legally blind so picking out new glasses on my own should be...interesting. Wish me luck.

Kind of blah, tbh

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Woke up at a so called ‘reasonable hour’ (for me, the night shift worker, aka ten-ish) but it didn’t take. Spent most of the day napping and reading, wrote maybe a hundred words. Felt kind of drowsy and headachey all afternoon, which could still be allergies. I feel fine now…just in time to go to bed…lol, right back atcha, Universe.

Chill and a bit foggy

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So! It’s Day One of Being Medicated. I feel…fine, I guess? Despite feeling sleepy while I was sitting here blogging last night, I did not drop right off to sleep. When I opened up my shower to fetch my facewash so I could wash my face before bed, there was a giant scorpion in my shower, which seemed…inauspicious. I flushed him and finished getting ready for bed at around two, but it was closer to four before I actually got to sleep. Slept fairly well, it seemed like, then woke to a possibly poorly strategized nine-thirty alarm.

Stayed in bed until just after eleven anyway, finishing Glitterland by Alexis Hall (for the fourth time) because why wouldn’t I reread a book with a clinically anxious depressive protagonist right now? It’s a good book, though, same author as the Kate Kane series. Beautiful writing, one of those polar opposites attract sorts of romances that don’t seem quite plausible but you end up rooting for the couple anyway, and it has some extremely on point observations about depression.

I felt remarkably chill all day, but my head was in a bit of a fog for much of the afternoon, and I had a slight headache, both of which could also have been put down to allergies, since I did wake up slightly stuffy. I had plenty of time to write before work, but wasn’t very productive. I had some trouble focusing.

This carried over into work, because I had a hard time remembering the customers’ orders in the drive thru and spent much of the day spacing out at my register. Managed to write a little, like, a page worth in my steno pad, but even though I have a pretty clear idea of how this part of the scene should go, I had trouble making myself write it down. This, sadly, is not atypical, so it might not have anything to do with the Zoloft.

I sincerely hope this stuff isn’t going to make me even spacier than I already am. I don’t know if the world can handle that.

My head felt clearer and the headache went away as the evening wore on, but I remained spacey all day, and a bit detached. I didn’t feel anxious at all, but since it was atypically quiet for a Saturday, with none of the upsetting variety of customers, I don’t know if that means anything.

Anyway, I hope tomorrow will be more productive. I have wasted my drawing time tonight blogging now. *flings self into sun*

I am now, officially, medicated

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I was prescribed Zoloft for my depression, and I have just taken my first dose. I finally achieved the unlikely combination of being tired of not having the motivation to actually do any of the things I want to do, and a day in which I actually felt well enough to make the phone call to my doctor’s office to ask for it. I was offered meds back in March (I think?) but I said I wasn’t sure then.

I don’t know if I’m sure now. I am very anxious about this, but the paperwork assures me Zoloft also works for anxiety. Convenient. I will try to document my journey into (hopefully) better mental health, or alternately, into the Land of Horrible Side Effects, whichever it ends up being. Supposedly if I take it at night it should help me with my sleep issues. We shall see. I have been medicated for about ten minutes so far, and I am starting to feel rather sleepy already. Probably I should go get ready for bed now, but I feel like I should at least talk about something more cheerful first.

I am still (yes, still) dragging along on ch46. This middle scene was supposed to be short, but it’s proving informative, as worldbuilding goes. I had to come up with names for side characters, but I was at work when I got to that part, and somehow the constant running around is frustratingly inspiring. (Frustrating because I have the attention span of a gnat and the memory capacity of an antique floppy drive. I have no idea how many conversations my characters have had while I’m too busy to write anything down, but it is one of those scary-large numbers with lots of commas, probably.) Anyway, I am pleased with how it’s going, my tendency to go on and on and on, etc, notwithstanding.

Goblin Fruit

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I bought these strawberries three days ago, and they have been sitting on the top shelf of my fridge since then, unattended by my usual wash-and-put-in-an-airtight-container-treatment, and they are still as perfect looking as strawberries can be unless you actually grew and harvested them yourself and now I’m horribly afraid I’ve come across a carton of enchanted goblin fruit that will put me in the debt of the Fair Folk or something equally fraught after eating them. So if no one hears from me in the near future, that might be it.

(Or it might just be the antidepressants I’ll be taking starting tonight. I am hella nervous about this.)

But seriously, these strawberries are like, unnaturally delicious.

I woke up this morning

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to some small bitey thing biting my ear. It itched for nearly an hour, so that wasn’t exactly pleasant. Still not a bad day. Slept in a little because Wednesdays are generally busy, but managed to plugged away at ch46 a bit anyway; this scene is more emotional than I expected but I’m liking it.

As promised, here is the inked version of page two of ‘cold’.

Still not inking to the standard I’d like but only practice will make that better. Not starting the third page tonight because I have a doctor’s appointment early tomorrow, so I need to go to bed early, bleh. I wish I had a job with normal hours. -_-

Pretending to be a real grownup

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I had a reasonably good day today! (I mean Tuesday, not Wednesday. Working evenings messes up my sense of days, lol.) Slept later than I wanted, but there was housework, and phone calls*, including scheduling an eye appointment for the first time in *mumblemumble* years, a doctor’s appointment to discuss medication for my mental health issues**. I also worked on AFWT. I’m in the beginning of the middle scene, which should be short, but I think I’m gonna be looking at a longer than average chapter again…

*sigh*

Anyway, I have a comic page to ink! Preview pic tomorrow, hopefully!

*I really, really hate talking on the phone, sometimes the very idea of making phone calls makes my stomach curdle. Apparently this is not an uncommon anxious reaction, which makes me feel, if not better, then less like a freak.

**It makes me feel positively paradoxical, however, that I have to have a superlative mental health day to get myself to do something about my mental health issues…

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