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Dear Diary

A 3616-post collection

Small Progress

It's the first of March, and that means that I have seven more days to live through whilst simultaneously fearing acceptance and rejection. Acceptance means I get money, but I also have the possibility of going on book tours and talking at conventions and meeting fans.

And I have social anxiety.

If I am rejected... well, I have to go through all this AGAIN, and with a different Agent-to-be. Or, as I've been starting to shorten it, A2B. Which means another three months of fearing both acceptance and rejection.

By the time I reach the end of the list (and demand my $400 back from the peeps who sold it to me) I will be absolutely shattered. Assuming I survive that long.

I did manage to get in maybe 80% of a good sleep, last night, so that's a little something on my score.

But every day I don't get a rejection is a day closer to the possibility of being accepted. And I've managed to calm myself down by being absolutely mean to myself.

Now whenever I get anxious about the whole agent thing, I remember these points:

  • I am not Stephanie Meyer
  • I am not E. L. James
  • I am a better writer than either of them (strictly MNSHO)
  • So therefore I will not rocket to instant fame and success
  • KFZ is not going to be an instant best-seller
  • I will not get any kind of notice until about five books in
  • Which is a little shy of five years away
  • By which time, I shall be thoroughly prepared to present myself however I wish
  • Besides, judging by how much my daily stories are earning on Steemit, I'm going to be niche for the rest of my life.

I want to be judged on my writing's own merits. And this is judgement of a kind, I guess. But, on the plus side, every day I practice. And every day I get better. And while everything I write may not be a winner, something in there has to be.

The shotgun principle is a thing for a reason.

I've written almost 1500 fictions to date, and I plan on writing many more than that. I'm failing as fast as I can and success has to be in there somewhere.

Gotta keep on going. And as soon as I'm done here, I have to cook myself some real food. That's the pick-me-up I really need.

Average, ordinary, everyday... disorder

So here's how things are going for me...

  • Shitty time getting to sleep, because:
  • Anxiety over the book being accepted
  • Anxiety over the animation/animatic I'm planning
  • Anxiety over whether or not the finished thing will get me hated and exiled over the fandom because someone thinks I want to make money about the thing
  • I have a tablet glove on the way and NOT being tracked by the Australian postal system
  • I have a neat fan-comic on the way that has
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...uuuuuuurrrrrgh...

Bad things I did, yesterday:

  • Talk up a big game about eating food but not actually make any
  • Consume half a packet of sugarless caramels
  • Stay up 'till eleven because laundry

The results from those bad things:

  • I'm frelling tired
  • I'm feeling a little weak [A bout of artificial sweetener-induced intestinal issues will do that to you]
  • I am not fully functioning

Worry not, dear readers, I did actually get two actual meals in. Breakfast care of the Coffee club, and bunless

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Statistics Sunday

I forgot about gathering my statistics, yesterday. And I'd eaten a rough quarter of a packet of salted macadamias before I remembered.

To quote Homer Simpson: D'oh!

So, with last week as a reference. This week's stats are:

Weight: 77.2
Fat Weight: 29.6
Waist/Height: 0.547
Blood sugar: 2.8
Blood Ketones: 5.8
Breath Ketones: 18.9

The blood sugar and blood ketones are slightly in the danger zone. I forgot to eat, yesterday, and ended up with

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Scary stuff

I'm going to spend some time every weekday learning a little about how to animate. Starting with sourcing the best, cheapest, dummins-proof animation software and learning how do deal with that.

Recommendations are welcome, by the way.

This is as well as spending some time every day doing all my writing projects, the daily doodle, and squeezing in a little good old-fashioned fun.

I'm also pondering going to Lulu to print some hardcopies of some of my eBooks. Legal obligations prevent me

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::Yakety Sax at 10rpm::

There's a party to go to in scenic Coominya tonight. There's cleaners coming today. I have to shop for nice clothes [I've shrunk and the kids have grown] and help clean the house.

Somehow, I have to fit in my Instant, my novel (1000 words on Fridays!) and a doodle to up my leet art skillz sometime this afternoon.

Update: I got an email from the cleaners saying they can't come and clean. FUN.

On the plus side, I have the free

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Smooth mornings!

Hooray, I have life figured out enough that the mornings move like a well-oiled machine. Now, if only I could do the same thing for myself.

Alone, I clog up with fascinating things until a half-hour task takes most of the firkin day. And then I complain about having zero time to fart around and play games.

Sometimes, I am a complete dummins.

But I have learned a few things from some of it. Including a new word that I plan to

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Some terrifying things I learned

Thanks to my friend, RecklessPrudence, I've learned that, though autism is older than we think it is, how autistes were treated hasn't really changed so much.

An autistic child before the true rise of the Industrial age would be called a "Changeling". And, despite the entire "be kind to the fae" mind-set, a Changeling child would be horrendously mistreated until the Fae gave the 'proper' child back.

This included beatings, being held to hot items, and tying them to a chair and

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Exercising again

We went on the first walk for a fortnight, and I was just about wiped out from a walk around the block. I'm gonna regret the sprint session this afternoon.

But at least we have some stew in the slow cooker, so I don't need to fret about food.

Still no rejection letter, just yet. And I have a fluttering underneath my sternum and panic-related asthma. Hooray. Anxiety firkin sucks!

So I took a Seretide this morning to try and live normally,

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Whooopsy

We went to the movies, yesterday. And picked up a whole lot of sugar-free lollies. And made the mistake of eating huge amounts of them.

Commercially-available artificial sweeteners are usually the kind that have the side-effect of loosening your stool.

You can guess that some of us had a very interesting night.

Mayhem is going to have a very interesting day, too, because I just discovered some outright fraud on his behalf. I had told him to fold and sort, and it

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So much for that

We didn't get to exercise, yesterday. I'm going to have to badger Beloved to go for a walk come Monday. No excuses, no BS. We both have to get back on track.

The good news is that I'm still losing weight. Just... a lot slower and a lot more randomly.

The bad news is that I am still asthmatic. I needed to use Max, this morning, for a saline dose. My lungs were a little clogged, and it hurt to breathe in.

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Recruiting

I've hired new cleaners to help out with keeping the house in good nick. Yay me. And while I was working with them, the discussion meandered into diet and who's eating what. Which was an excellent opportunity to glance on LCHF and Keto.

And I also showed them Overdrive by Steam Powered Giraffe. Because they're awesome.

Turns out we're all nerds, so we can gas about our favourite nerdy stuff whilst also setting the house to order. Bonus.

And on top of

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Gaulish Swears...

So my previous queueing system decided to die. Without warning. And now I'm back to putting them in five minutes apart. Like a doof.

I hurt my wrists by doing all my creative projects, yesterday. I have learned, again, the perils of writing too much, too fast.

Any never to give my wrists a breather, I am using speech to text. It is, as always, very entertaining. Especially for anybody in peanut gallery.

Beloved saw my ranting, and though we haven't talked

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AUGH (again)

New job, new rules. On one hand, Beloved is no longer in Cubicle Hell working 9-5. On the other hand, Beloved now seems determined to work 24/7.

When I went to bed, Beloved was working on some program, as they had been all evening. The hot, fresh, yummy food I had made for them had gone stone cold.

When I got up in the morning, Beloved was still working on some program. They had eaten maybe three bites of the dinner

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Swing and a miss

Just when I get into the swing of things, the pendulum shifts and everything goes agley all over again.

Beloved is taking off in the early-early morning, before I can even badger the kids into getting their lunchboxes together. Which means no morning exercises. Which means finding a time in the afternoon to go do it.

Which hasn't happened, so far.

Tomorrow evening, we should be walking around the blocks, again. Starting with the long block and, if we can, going around

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