I finally slept last night, and it felt amazing. I could have easily stayed in bed for another two or three hours, but that 9-to-5 is calling to me (well, 7:30-4:30, but you know what I mean). I was worried that I was getting sick–surgery recovery, medication changes, not being able to sleep, dehydration, occasionally feeling slightly feverish, and some occasional nausea (while eating, so I wasn’t eating as much, either. My COVID tests were always negative (still are, this morning), so I have to put it down to simply being exhausted from not being able to sleep, because this morning I feel good, if a bit sleepy. Everything was dragging ass last night when I got off work; but I made myself run the needed errands on the way home, and thus today I am really delighted to know that I can come straight home from the office and get caught up on some other things. I also did some chores, despite feeling like I was at death’s door by the time I got home. (And I am so glad I bought that wagon; it makes life so much easier and I will continue to use it even after the brace is gone and my arm is healed.)
Insomnia is the worst. I don’t know how people who have it chronically manage, seriously. One night is bad enough, but a couple of nights in a row is enough to completely derail me, so I cannot imagine having it every fucking night. I mean, it wouldn’t really take much to drive me over the edge anyway–I always have such a delicate grip on my sanity as it is, without having further contributing factors. I was too tired to read last night, so I figured doing chores was the right way to go with everything last night. I did think about the new book I am writing, so even though I didn’t add to my word counts yesterday, I did think about where the book needs to go, and thinking about what I am writing and puzzling out the plot and where the book needs to go next counts. We also finished Big Vape last night, which was really interesting and made me think about a lot of things, and started A Murder at the End of the World while we wait for Prime to drop season two of Reacher, which is finally launching this Friday (huzzah! I love Alan Ritchson, and have since he first appeared as Aquaman on Smallville), and of course the bowl games are also starting this weekend–but there really aren’t many this early that I care about watching; most of the bowls end up serving as background noise while I do other things–clean, prune the books, write in my journal, read, edit pages–but seriously, now that I’ve slept well for one night, I feel like I can conquer the world again, and I’ve not felt that way in a very long time. It’s a nice feeling, really.
This year has been, as I said, a rollercoaster that doesn’t seem to be coming back to the station any time soon, and this wild up-and-down ride this year has made me reflect on who I am, why I am who I am, and reset my brain and attitudes about a lot of things because once I realized oh this is why you’re like this and that and so forth I could dissect, and rethink those attitudes–a lot of which was childhood training about how to approach life, which I inevitably took to extremes. Be humble and don’t brag became self-deprecating to the point that I would think or say things about myself or my career that would be horribly offensive if said by someone else…because in my chemically-unbalanced brain, criticism won’t bother you as much if you preempt it, which is the same weirdly off mentality that led to the complete lack of self-esteem about my body and my looks and my intelligence and well, pretty much everything….which means that I was always looking for affirmation from others, and when it didn’t come, it simply confirmed the negative things I was thinking and/or saying about myself.
There’s nothing wrong in being proud of yourself; as my friend Laura says, “Sing out, Louise!” because the obverse of the way I think about negative commentary (“need to fend this off by beating them to the punch”) also works the other way–“If I don’t believe in myself, why would anyone else?”
And I am proud of myself, and the writing career I’ve somehow managed to blunder and stumble my way into. As the tarot card reader told me when we first moved to New Orleans twenty-seven years ago, I did become an author but it’s nothing like I ever dreamed of, imagined, or considered possible. I’ve written so many books, short stories, essays, book reviews, blog posts, and edited so many anthologies that I am not even sure how many there are now–and it’s even more than most people know, because there are pseudonyms I’ve never publicly claimed and books that were ghostwritten or work for hire under a veritable plethora of other names. I think my last six (!) books (Royal Street Reveillon, Bury Me in Shadows, #shedeservedit, A Streetcar Named Murder, Death Drop, and Mississippi River Mischief) are some of my best work, and the last few short stories to come out (“The Rosary of Broken Promises”, “This Thing of Darkness”, “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”, “Solace in a Dying Hour”, and “The Ditch”) are also some of my best stories. I am very pleased with how I’ve grown and developed in my writing, and I want to continue to grow and develop and keep getting better. My biggest fear is that my best work is behind me and I’ll keep going, getting worse with every new project until finally no one is buying anything I write anymore. I’d still write, anyway–I’ll be writing on my laptop on my death bed, and they will have to pry it from my cold dead fingers–and probably self-publish or something.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines on this cold morning in New Orleans. Have a marvelous Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in later.
Queer and Loathing in America 