I have just enough energy. Which is a sad place to be, when you think of it.
I have just enough to do everything that needs must be done. But not quite enough to do the things I want to do or the things that are good for me. This is the third day that I've skipped my morning walk because I've lacked the time and the energy combined to do the thing.
Mayhem is still sick. I have just enough energy to ferry him to the doctor's after I'm done ferrying Chaos to school. I have just enough to get the resultant paperwork to Mayhem's school and to get back home.
I have just enough energy to go through with the barest minimum of stuff that needs must be done. Just enough to do a modicum of cleaning. Just enough to do my daily writing. Just enough to fill my quota of words.
And just enough to drag myself and my daughter home at the end of the day.
I do not have enough to throw my soul at agents who have no idea what submitting my work for their judgement will cost me. I do not have enough to sort nearly-identical beads into separate containers. I do not have enough to straighten out the fall of contents from the pantry that has impeded its closing for months.
I do not have enough to appreciate how far I have come, already. All I can see is my inability to do more, like a cubicle wall erected around the desk of an employee who is ranked high enough to warrant an office, but not so high that they deserve a window. All I can think of is how a teenager wrote an elaborate fantasy series that became a movie franchise before it was a finished series. All I can think of is the housewife who wrote a substandard vampire romance novel and made her fortune. And the other housewife who wrote a substandard BDSM office AU of that vampire romance novel and made two fortunes. And how I am turning 44 this year and can't earn enough from my writing to buy a meal. Per month.
All I can think of is how brutally steep that next rung on the ladder is. How easy it would be to continue on in obscurity and hope that someone finds me and helps me make it. And how tough it's going to be for me to be respected if I dare show my true self to the world yet. And how I will have to face rejection after rejection until I finally isolate someone who thinks my work and I are worthy.
I can't yet see how having a completed and edited manuscript might help. Or how having a second manuscript could help. Or how working on a third could help. I have trouble changing gears on the fly. My mind is currently devoted to the steampunk werewolves and not the zombies I wrote two years ago.
I keep thinking about how the zombies might not help. Or how someone like Shayde might make my universe a hard sell. Or how the prodigious amount of fanfic I have in findable places might make me a hard sell.
Which makes it even worse to just get through today. But I know I can. I have just enough to do so. And the hope that tomorrow might be better.