Flora & Fauna: Micro-climates versus Magic

Image courtesy of Pexels.com

In book four, there's a tale of some deadly magic that permanently effects a community with perpetual winter. Realistically, this is something that doesn't happen in a temperate zone. Micro-climates are a thing. There can be two places that are geographically close to each other with drastically different weather on a given day. A great example is the town that is about halfway to the city from here is weird when it comes to weather. When the entire region is getting hammered with precipitation, the skies are clear there. When the rest of us have relatively clear skies, they are getting deluged like it's nobody's business.

This is fairly normal with micro-climates, as odd as it sounds. Differences in the lay of the land and how the weather moves through due to it can create pockets where the temperatures are different from other parts of the region and things like rainfall happens at different rates. Generally, valleys tend to be more sheltered from the harsh weather in winter and a bit cooler in the summer. (This is part of the reason why the Finger lakes region here in western NY has so many wineries. The micro-climate is just about perfect for growing grapes. There's a winery just down the road from us that is always doing brisk business and they're slowly acquiring more property to expand and such.)

Mountains tend to be more exposed to heavy weather and cool all season the higher you go. The windward side of the mountain is going to have harsher weather conditions than the leeward side. The same is true for hills, though to a lesser extent. Plains are just difficult places. The wind just whips right along and there is no natural shelter or windbreaks to lessen the extent of what the hard weather does. Summer time, you have no relief from the heat and winter time, you have no places where you can escape the full brunt of the storms that come. And the storms generally tend to be bigger and meaner because they've got more room to build up. There's a reason why tornado alley is mostly across the plains states of the US.

Magic in my books can alter the micro-climate. This can have devastating effects on the region where it happens. Given time, the prolonged effects of a magical change to a micro-climate can alter the weather patterns around that area and cause a cascade of harmful effects to the region. Magic can be used to put a temperate place into perpetual winter (arctic conditions) and this will gradually cause the area around it to become part of that place's state because there is no fluctuation or regulation of the perpetual winter of that location. Fortunately, magic can be used to reverse the effects. The problem is, the more entrenched the harmful magic is and the larger the range of its effect, the more difficult it is to reverse the consequences. In some regions, the effect is functionally permanent because there has not been a magic user with sufficient ability to mitigate the harmful changes present for a very long time.

AW: Morning post No. 19

I'm not sure what to write at the moment. I'm still bleary eyed and trying to wake up. I've sent the kids off to school. I've sent the husband off to work. I'm on my second cup of coffee and I did my page of writing in my morning pages notebook. I'm only doing one page in the notebook because I have a manuscript that I am attempting to finish from Camp NaNoWriMo. Theoretically, if I write three pages in it every day for the remainder of the month, I will have it completed. Now the question is if I am going to have the proverbial spoons for it.

I'm getting frustrated with the fact that I don't sleep well at night. It throws off my whole day. Nights of bad sleep catch up with me pretty quickly and I start having issues with executive function. It gets really apparent when I am depressed and not sleeping well. I'll just sit there staring around at things trying to figure out what the hell I am supposed to be doing. My planner helps when I remember where I put the blasted thing and keep it updated.

I am on the upswing out of the last depressive episode. I actually wrote a little bit of fiction in yesterday's really LATE morning blog post. I'm trying to get myself back into the swing of writing daily blog posts but it has been hard because most mornings after I get everyone shooed out the door, I'm ready for a nap. It may be because my blood sugar is high and it is making me tired. It may be because I slept poorly the night before and that has me like a zombie. Of late it has been a combination of the two. Being unconscious for three hours in the morning tends to make it hard to get your morning tasks done.

I'm trying to get my snake plant to put out new plants. I took some cuttings off of leaves that weren't looking too great and stuck them in some dirt. I can't tell if they're going to root or just wither. I need to repot my african violets because they're getting leggy. I'm going to attempt to grow another plant off of a leaf cutting. According to everything I've read, all it takes it a little rooting hormone and giving it a comfortable environment to grow in. I repotted my silver inch plant and it seems to be much happier now. I took cuttings off of my pothos and stuck them back into the pot with the mother plant. Those should root easily as well.

The soapwort is blossoming still out in the field out back. It's nice to see that they haven't all been mowed down. The trees behind the building aren't looking too great. The black walnut seems to be ok. But the ash leaf maples are looking real sickly. There used to be a small grove of trees on the lot behind the building but they were all cut down because of emerald ash borer beetles eating them. It looks like the beetles moved into the ash trees on this property. I hope that the one growing by the trailer in front on the west end of the parking lot doesn't come down sometime in a storm. Half of the poor tree is dead and the other half looks real bad. The landlord doesn't seem that concerned about it.

Fortunately, the big maple tree in the front yard where we have all the bird feeders is still fairly healthy. As is the horse chestnut and the black walnut that are growing along the property line. I'm not so sure about the other trees. I think they might be young ash leaf maples too. If so, there may be a reason why they're starting to lose leaves and have dead branches fairly high up. I really hope that I'm wrong about it because if they come down, they'll take down the power line from the street to our building.

A few years back, a tree fell on the line and almost pulled down the power pole. It took all day for that mess to get cleaned up. I'd hate to think about the problem that would come with that happening with trees farther down the line away from the pole. I could see them pulling the pole down and ripping the connection off of the building. It's just a mess waiting to happen. I know that I just live here and I can't do anything about it but mention it to the landlord, but the landlord doesn't seem to care too much about that. Hell, we've got a hole in the entryway that hasn't been fixed in the last year.

The landlord said it was going to get fixed but it hasn't happened yet. I don't think it is going to happen, to be honest. That is irritating.

AW: Morning (somewhere) post No. 18

I'm writing this at eight in the evening. Today has been a busy day. Small stupid things like chores and exhaustion got in the way of doing much writing. With some help from Beloved, I now have the laptop computer set up so that I don't have to unplug it whenever we need a fan in the window. I'm going to try my hand at writing something creative based on the playlist I'm listening to. (The tracks are: The theme from Harry's Game, Lady Marian, and The Fairy Queen from Clannad, as well as Pax Deorum from Enya.)

~*~*~*~*~*~

I smell her perfume on the wind and I'm set at ease. I know her. I know her better than any but not yet well enough to say I know her completely despite how many lifetimes we have been tied together in some bond. She is the one that my wolf pursues. She is the mate that calls to me in the night. We are one soul in two bodies. But, still, there are mysteries that my Brunhilde holds in this life that I would unravel. I know not why she cries out in the night. There are things she speaks of in her sleep that she never acknowledges.

I have tried to urge her to unburden her heart to me but to no avail. I could command her to confess with the supernatural powers that are at my command but that would be cheating and she would consider it perfidy on some level in the lover's war between us. My patience, however, is growing thin. I would be content to let the mysteries lie if they did not eat at her soul.

My Green Maiden withers slowly as she struggles with her inner demons. Her eyes that were once so bright with laughter or fury now are brightened with unshed tears at random times that make no sense. Someone has wounded her in such a manner that she has not yet healed from it despite the fact that she bears no mark upon her breast, they have verily struck her heart and smote it in twain.

I would kill the person who did so a thousand times over for the crime if I had the power. I think, however, she would interceed for mercy upon them. My Green Maiden is of a tender heart and loves deeply and freely. She would protect those whom she loves with her last breath. It is something I admire deeply about her. At the same time, this self same love can be twisted and abused by some vile creature to make themselves a harbor against rage and fury.

I know that this is possible. Some would have accused me of doing the same in the harsh games we play. Little do they know that the only place where she finds true bliss is in the rush of combat. Be it amorous combat or the game of arms, the Green Maiden is not at peace except when in action. This is why she can not sit still. Her spinning wheel hums a song as she works in her office, spinning thread blindly as she reads reports. Her hands are ceaselessly in action. Knitting, crochet, lace making, or weaving, my wife is always at some manner of work. When not doing that, she is gardening, cooking, or training. Somehow, she is always in a storm of action only to be still when she is asleep. But she does not sleep deeply, so she is not truly still.

Only when I exert the strange gifts that Awakening has given me can she be driven down into dreamless, deep sleep. I fear that my lovely girl is going mad.

AW: Morning post No. 17

Memories are strange beasts. They're stories that tell us about ourselves. We'd like to think that the narrator is reliable but they change and morph much of the story for the sake of protecting our sense of self from the ugly realities of the situation. And false memories can be implanted and cultivated so that we are sure that something happened a certain way when the factual record is entirely different.

I've been thinking about memory a lot of late with all of this writing about my history going on. I honestly don't know what to think about what I've been putting down on the page. Some of this material comes from a period that I don't consciously remember and I have blocked much of it out because of how awful it was. So, I sit down and look at what I've written and try to determine the veracity of it. This is very difficult when you have been gaslighted into believing that you are untrustworthy for many years simply because you are female.

It's been almost a decade since I was dealing with the people who did that. But it is still something that echoes. I second guess just about everything I write. I learned a trick. The first response I have to a situation is my response, the second one is the conditioning. Thus, the first thing I write is likely to be the true memory where as the rebuttal of it is the false memories that were pushed into me at a young age to cover up the monstrosity of my youthful experiences.

I don't know what I'm going to do with the manuscript when it is finished. I have come to realize that I am revealing where all the bodies are buried and that there has to be a good chance that I'm going to see some painful repercussions from it. Still, something inside me says I should finish this manuscript and publish it. Because it's a story that's been trying to come out of me for the last two decades. I can't fight it anymore. It's just caused me too much pain to resist writing this stuff down.

At the same time, the process of writing it is excruciating. Who wants to look in the face of their memories of being sexually assaulted at a young age? Who wants to stare down the memories of people you trusted cutting you down emotionally on a regular basis because they scorned you for the accident of your birth? No one wants to admit that horrific things happened to them. At the same time, I think the only way I am going to find healing from it is if I write it all down and do something with it.

I have one notebook full of this stuff. I have a second notebook almost full. I wasn't planning on writing this stuff when I grabbed that notebook. But this is all that seems to come out right now. It invades my sleep. I have been having nightmares that are both surrealistically symbolic of what happened and straight up memories of what happened for months now. I'm on medication to help me sleep. But it wears off around two in the morning and that's the witching hour for me. The Hag of Horror rides me and I'm left in the morning exhausted.

I joke about how I am powered by coffee. But rare nights where I get a decent night of sleep, like last night, the coffee isn't as needed for me to function. I still drink it copiously but that is because it has become a comfort food in the face of all the stress I'm dealing with. The fact that it is low carb means I can drink just about as much as I want, as long as I remember to shotgun water after.

I'm struggling with my blood sugar levels right now. They've been high in the morning. I've been trying to find ways to bring it down but it's not working so great. I get lethargic and grumpy when my blood sugar is high. Put that together with a bad night of sleep and I'm not the happy, cheerful mom when it is time to get the kids up and put them on the bus to school. I am finding that I have to wait to eat breakfast, so I get to be hungry on top of all that. So, I am left sitting around for an hour trying to figure out what to do with myself as my kids are trying to play and get ready for school at the same time.

I will admit, though the kids will screw around in the morning, we've yet to have missed the bus. That is at least one positive thing going on here despite the fact that I'm a grumpy zombie in the morning. I've started doing some of my charity crochet in the morning because writing is difficult. I have a box that is just about full of hats for the preemies at the hospital in Elmira, NY. The spinning guild is donating to them this year. I'm stalled on the scarf that I've been knitting for the homeless because I am bored with the pattern. My mother-in-law suggested that I turn the scarf into a cowl. It's almost long enough for that. I think I'm going to do so and then use the remainder of the yarn for a scarf in a different pattern.  Yesterday, I made some bad still life sketches of empty jars. I'm not going to upload them because they're almost stick figure bad. I may go back to them and try to add in more details. But, for doing the image based off of nothing but memory, it's not too horrible.

AW: Morning post No. 16

So, for the first time in weeks, I actually get to type this post in the morning. (It may be 11:30 but it is still morning.) I am frustrated with the fact that I am stuck in my creative work. I did the  poem-a-day challenge last month. Because of depression and other issues, I found myself writing a week's worth of poems once a week. I am disappointed because I used to write multiple poems a day. Writing one poem a day for a week wasn't a big deal. I wrote prolifically before the bipolar and my c-ptsd got worse. Now, I spend my assigned time for writing avoiding it because what goes down on paper hurts.

I thought that doing a morning blog for fifteen minutes would work better. I tend to type faster than I write by hand. (And I am less likely to get writer's cramp this way, which isn't a bad thing.) I am still encountering the painful themes. A part of me says I should get to work on something else because I'm wasting my time writing this post. I have another part of me that says no time spent writing is wasted. No writing is worthless. It is the process that matters. The end result is going to be what ever it is going to be despite my efforts. It is like growing a plant. You throw the seed in the dirt and then do the work of watering and weeding. The seed grows on its own and you just witness the process.

I just am afraid of what fruit these seeds are going to bear. I have people that this project will discuss and I hide their names but I know if they happen on to the post that discuss their actions they're going to know it is themselves I am talking about. It's dangerous ground to be working on. I know that some of them have threatened me in the past for just keeping a private journal that discussed anything about their behavior towards me. At the same time, there is the emotional trauma of having my journal used against me in court with things I had written blown out of proportion and taken out of context in an attempt to put a feather in the cap of an ambitious person at the expense of the happiness of my family. (That situation eventually ended out well, but it was traumatic for pretty much the entire family. I almost gave up writing after that experience.)

I am struggling to write because there is so much pain there. I am struggling to make art because there is equally great amounts of pain there that I just don't know how to process. In the midst of it all, I am trying to juggle the 'real world' issues of managing my household, raising my children, and generally staying on top of my chronic health issues. I feel like I am past my prime and that there is no hope for me. I know this is my depression speaking. It is a terrible feeling. Having the repeated echo of a well intentioned therapist telling me that I shouldn't be so focused on my writing if it is painful and that I have time to just not write and that I should focus on other things if writing isn't making me happy in my ears is like trying to work as someone is whispering to me how bad everything is.

I try not to think about it. I am going to start a 'burn' book where I write down these things and literally put them aside when I sit down to work. It's kind of like the brain dump from the bullet journal system except this is a brain dump where you write down all of the awful things rattling around in your head that are distracting you from your task. I may literally burn that book when it is filled. I haven't decided. But, maybe the act of physically putting it down on paper may work to make it get out of my head long enough so that I can do things like finish editing book four and get it up for purchase.

I don't know why the one therapist is the one that I focused on. Perhaps because their comment came in the midst of that year of hell where things were traumatic and difficult for my family. Perhaps because it came at a vulnerable moment and it was just like the comments that [redacted] made about my writing. I don't know.

AW: Late Morning Post No. 15?

Today has been a busy writing day but not in the fun way. I haven't touched book four's final revisions in the last week because life keeps getting in the way. I spent my day working on therapy oriented writing. Then I was doing more word vomit/therapy writing on the manuscript from April's Camp NaNoWriMo. I honestly don't know if I am going to finish this thing.

By the time I had most of that done, I had to be on duty as Mom. The kids got home from school all excited to play outside. It was a good afternoon for it, not too hot or humid. While they were playing, I was doing housework. It is now eight thirty in the evening and I finally got to sit down and do some blogging. I wanted to hit all of my blogs but this is the only one I have time for today.

I'm frustrated with the utter lack of performance of my book about how to be psychic. I don't know what I'm doing in the sense of marketing. As such, I know that I am overlooking something obvious and I'm sure if I just knew that one thing I'd actually reach my market. It probably would help if I wasn't such a social-phobe. I keep hitting the same wall on all of my social platforms.

I'm depressed and I am struggling not to let it get to me. I'm less depressed than I was a few weeks ago. I guess that is progress, but, I am still not well. That makes me feel as though I would be a burden or that my posting about depression would make me an attention whore in the eyes of my audience. The only reason why I am blogging about it here is because it is literally the only thing on my mind right now aside from why the hell can't I write about something pleasant or literally anything other than my past trauma right now.

I have no therapist so I have to use my journals. It is exasperating and exhausting. I have one where I have been writing about my fractured sense of self and my dissociative issues due to complex post traumatic stress disorder. I have another where I write about my day and mood issues there. And then there's this manuscript that has just turned into a continuation of a previous one which was a full notebook of word vomit about past trauma. I started that project wanting to write some light and fun erotica. I got three pages in and then I just had it stop. No inspiration. No ideas. My plots and plans all looked flat and useless. What I had written felt false and useless. So, I did what the greats tell you to and just started writing whatever I had in my head at the time.

That shit got dark fast. I find myself feeling some despair over the idea that I may be just stuck writing about this stuff for a long time and possibly go years before I finish this book series. All because my disabled brain can't hack the emotional labor of dealing with the fall out of a lifetime of repeated trauma on top of the emotional labor of the Great Work of my book writing. Or should I say, I can't handle the emotional labor of the Great Work on top of all the trauma processing I'm doing.

I keep writing in circles and going over the same ground but revealing more details as I do so. It's painful and I don't enjoy writing it. But I have no other way to get it out. I attempted art journaling to express it. That didn't work so great. Because I'm blocked on the artistic front just about entirely. I haven't drawn a sketch of a live subject in almost ten years. It isn't because I haven't had opportunity, I just haven't had the heart to do it. I don't know why. I could be drawing the the birds that come visit our range of feeders in the big tree out in the front yard, but I can't seem to do it. I struggle with my fictional plant sketches because I feel like they're just not good enough for daylight.

I know it is all tied together. I know that some emotional trauma is keeping me back and all of this writing is part of the process of excavating and healing that trauma. Knowing that is how the process works, however, does not make it easier.

Book Review: Smoke and Mirrors

Title: Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Avon, 2005
ISBN: 0380789027

I did not have the paperback on hand so I can not review the quality of the physical book. As it is from Avon, I'm sure it meets or exceeds industry standards because Avon puts out good work. On the Kindle format version, I found it easily readable with the typefont chosen and the spacing of everything. The division between chapters/stories in this book flowed naturally. Everything was well organized and a delight for the eye.

To get to the meat of the matter, I have to say the text was a delightfully dark read. I especially loved Mr. Gaiman's take upon the world created by H.P. Lovecraft. There is not one but two short stories set in this world and it was just wonderful to see how he treated it. I would go into greater detail about the other stories but then I would give away plot by accident. I have enjoyed Mr. Gaiman's approach to longform fiction. This introduction to his approach to short form fiction was exceptional and I look forward to reading his other collection of short fiction, when I can get my hands on it. The plot of each story was unique and not formulaic, even those dealing with the well established world of H.P. Lovecraft's invention. Some of the darker tales had twists that were unexpected. The bittersweet tale of the magician was excellently well crafted and haunting. It is perhaps the best example of how Mr. Gaiman can turn a story's plot on its ear with out breaking the story at all.

Originally Posted: 6/7/2019

AW: Morning (somewhere) post no. 14

I am not doing very well right now. Writing has become a struggle, as has almost all of my creative efforts. I am moving from a mixed episode into a depressive episode. I don't know if this is going to be a serious situation or just an annoyance. I haven't been sleeping well again. I am so tired of waking up at 4 am in the morning from some surreal nightmare.

Last night (or should I say this morning) it was of having a large aquarium of exotic fish and one of the fish was eating the others. The fish that were being eaten had fins that looked like the wings of butterflies and the fish that was doing the eating looked like some prehistoric deep sea monstrosity with human style teeth. I'm pretty sure that my dream was warning me to keep my dreams and goals safe from depression. It's kinda hard to do that when the depression is sucking the light out of the very room.

I'm not sure what else to write. My dreams have been surreal nightmares. Like having to paint the apartment but I had to do it barefoot and the floor of the apartment was covered in broken glass. I'm pretty sure that's a reinterpretation of some past memories and present anxieties mashed together. In the months leading up to my wedding, my parents told me that I had to repaint the house to get it ready for company. And I was expected to do this on my own with out help from anyone. At the same time, I was still working on my wedding planning (which was steadily going off the rails behind the scenes) and trying to find employment. It was insane.

I've been still working on the manuscript from Camp NaNoWriMo. It started out as I was going to write light fun fiction. But I got stuck three pages in. So, I did what any enterprising writer did, I just wrote what came to me. I figured I'd get my plot back on track after a few pages of word vomit. This turned into my writing, well, continuing to write the narrative of all the awful garbage that's happened to me. (I filled up one notebook this. I figured it was going to be a multiple notebook project. So I picked up two more identical notebooks. Seems darkly humorous that I wrote the next segment of this project during Camp NaNoWriMo where as the first segment was attempted during NaNoWriMo.)  I anticipate my next free writing in the long form is just going to be more of the same.

I can't say that I find any catharsis in this. It's just word vomit. I cycle around topics and retell particularly hurtful things multiple times revealing more details with each iteration. I don't know what I'm going to do with this thing. But it seems to be all I can write at the moment. It hurts. I don't like it. But I want to write something different. I keep hoping that maybe I'll be finished with this vomiting up my traumas with each page I write but it hasn't happened. I am mournful and depressed with it. I've lived through so much awful stuff.

And yet, I say that I didn't have it half as bad as some one else. I tell myself that I still at least had both my parents. I tell myself that I had my brothers and my extended family. I tell myself that we had good times too. I tell myself that that bad relationship in high school was awful but I eventually left the guy. I tell myself that the bad relationship in my twenties was awful, but I eventually kicked that guy to the curb and he eventually got caught being a bastard and is in prison where he can't hurt anybody now.

But it all feels like pat lies and platitudes. I feel massive guilt for the truths that I am writing. I feel horrific guilt for the fact that I am even writing it down. I don't know how to handle this. I probably need a therapist but that's something beyond my abilities right now. No one will take my insurance and the one who was working with my psychiatrist's office is no longer there because they've moved on to another practice.

I'm sick of writing about trauma. I want to get back to writing fiction. There the people who do horrible things eventually get their just reward for being a pack of bastards. In real life, that doesn't happen so much.

AW: Morning Post no. 13

I feel like I should title these things a bit more than just a number. I've been depressed or in a mixed episode for the last two weeks. It corresponds pretty strongly with the weather being crappy. I am right now feeling anxious because my eldest child is off on a field trip wherein he is rafting down the mighty Genesee river. He's not the strongest of swimmers and a bit prone to panic when things don't go exactly as he assumes they should. Hence my deep feelings of concern. Still, as Beloved said last night, he is eleven and they've got people chaperoning this trip who know him well and the trip is run by professionals. It doesn't make the anxiety go away, but it makes it easier to argue against it and see it as irrational.

I'm kinda mad at myself because I haven't been keeping up with any of my writing. I have been getting a little bit of crochet and fiber arts project work done, but mostly I have been sleeping and just staring at things trying to figure out what the hell I should do with myself. I know this is symptomatic of my anxiety stuff kicking in and this is why I'm on medication for it. At the same time, these psychiatric medications slow my brain down and makes it harder for me to think. This, in turn, makes it harder for me to do stuff like write and make art. Just yesterday, I had to rip out about a third of a scarf I am making because I kept messing up my stitch count and it was tapering down to a point. Brain fog is a hell of a thing.

I'm trying not to be mad at myself. I'm trying to write and do things as best I can. The problem is, if I can't perform at my peak abilities, I get anxious and upset. This leads me to thinking all or nothing about the project. I don't have many UFOs around (unfinished objects) but those that I do are because my anxiety about them is getting in the way. Unfortunately, some of my UFOs are pretty important ongoing projects that I really should be working on a little bit every day. Therapy writing is important when you are trying to make sense of the chaos inside your head.

That perfectionist all-or-nothing thinking is my anxiety at work. The drive to do and be the best at what I do is my anxiety at work. It tells me if I'm not performing at peak levels then I'm not good enough to even try. It sucks. I'm not sure what to do about my anxiety. I've a few ideas but I'm not sure which one is best.

One is to keep a 'burn book' where I log my anxious thoughts as they come up. I'm not sure if that's a good idea because it may lead to a cycle of more anxiety. Another idea is to have a physical representation of my anxiety that I treat as a separate part of me and try to figure out what they anxiety is trying to tell me / teach me aside from 'SOMETHING IS WRONG! THERE IS DANGER HERE!' all the time. The third idea is to log anxiety triggers and thoughts through out the month to find out what the connections are and what triggers I can avoid. I have a feeling, however, that most of my triggers are PTSD related and are not going to be resolved by avoiding them. I mean, washing dishes triggers my PTSD but they have to get done every day.

Unwell, again.

Dear Reader,

I have been struggling to get things done and work on my writing. I realized that I'm in a mixed episode that falls more towards the depressed side of the ledger. I am having a hard time focusing and I'm super anxious. It is not something that encourages getting work done. I'm disabled due to mental illness and times like now I am forced to admit this is not something I can ignore and simply push through.

In an attempt to be brutally honest with you and myself, I must admit that keeping up with daily blog posts on multiple topics is too much of a strain right now. I'm struggling with stuff off-line like keeping up with the household chores at the moment because of how my brain chemistry is off kilter. I genuinely and sincerely wish that I wasn't feeling like a complete failure because I'm sick. It has me feeling like I should just delete this blog and give up all of my hopes and dreams of being a 'real' writer.

Depression and a laundry list of bad experiences come together to act as the exact opposite of a cheering section. It highlights all of the possible negative outcomes. It convinces me that everything is futile and all that I have accomplished thus far is simply luck and vanity.

Scumbag brain is a hell of a drug.