Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Going radio silent for a few weeks.

  Dear Reader,

You may not be aware but I have been struggling with some ongoing mental health problems since last August that has severely impacted my life in a number of ways. I am taking the next few weeks to do some intensive therapy work to try to get that problem under control again so that I'm functional and I can get back to writing again. In the meantime, I will not be posting here because I expect I won't have the time due to the  plans for how to approach this therapy process. I hope to be back to post again and interact with everyone via my social media platforms soon. I just don't know how soon that is going to be.

Wish me luck.

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Craft of Writing: Working through Illness.

 Dear Reader,

I am a person with multiple chronic conditions. I am technically disabled due to them (but Social Security disagrees with my psychiatrist on this, screw them /rant). On a good day, I can pass for someone who is perfectly fine, albeit a bit weird. But the weird part has always been there, long before I became disabled. A creative mind is often one misunderstood by others and labeled weird. (Again, I could go off on a tear on this topic, but I digress.) It's really hard to work when you are ill, regardless of weather or not it is a chronic condition or not. Feeling rotten is often the enemy of productivity more than mere procrastination.

Currently, I am in a depressive episode and dealing with some c-PTSD fun. (If only there was a sarcasm font.) I struggle to keep up with my household tasks and my two very active children. When they're at school is my ideal time for writing but with this rotten feeling rattling around in my brain, I find I want to sleep until I feel better. (It doesn't work out that great for depression. 0 stars.) I also find myself struggling with executive function.

Now that's a term that might have thrown a few of you for a loop. Executive function is your ability to decide to do a thing and carry through on getting it done. Problems with executive function vary widely for many different reasons, like if you're so feverish that you have the focus of a goldfish then you're having executive function problems. Depending on the severity of your executive function difficulties, you may want to just put down the pen and step away from the word processor. If you have the focus of a goldfish, you are going to struggle to be coherent in your writing, to use that earlier example.

You have to know your limitations and work within the boundaries set by them. This can be maddening when you're literally months behind on work. When all you can manage is about fifteen minutes of work before your brain turns to mush on that front, just do the fifteen minutes of work. You can come back to it later when your brain is functioning a bit better (like after a nap for the poor soul with that fictitious fever). Pace yourself. 

Recognize that if you push yourself too hard when you are unwell, it only makes things worse. Your brain being mush will last longer the harder you push because you're not allowing yourself to rest when you need it. Take breaks, stay hydrated, and be patient. Even chronic illnesses will eventually get to a point where you can work at a rate that you're used to if given enough time. Let me give you an example from my own life as a disabled person. Because of my depression problems, I have about six months out of the year that I can work like a demon. The other six, I can barely string a sentence together and I suffer from dread of past trauma happening all over again despite the fact that it's been decades since the incidents in question.  This post is a bit of me pushing myself to write despite the fact that I am not doing well.

When Spring hits, the amount of sunlight my region gets up to a level that my Seasonal Affective Disorder (I hate it and I think it has the worst acronym ever.) goes into remission. From Spring until Autumn, I can work at a much higher rate. I have clearer thinking and more creativity. It's generally a much better time for me. Right now, I'm in the middle of SAD related misery and that triggers me c-PTSD. It makes everything a bucket of suck. So, I try to grind my way forward. I'm not a good example to follow on the front of taking breaks. I get mad at being ill and then try to force the situation to my will. It typically has mixed results for the task and I wind up feeling worse afterwards. I'm still learning to pace myself.

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

The Iron Lily and Dacia's War on hiatus.

 Dear Reader,

I'm suspending my serial stories until I am in better health. As of the moment, I am dealing with a rather intense bout of depression and some unpleasant complications from my c-ptsd that are making it very hard to write fiction. I've been spending about two to three hours a day for the last week doing therapy journaling. It's been grueling and painful. I am going to suspend my Artist's Way: Morning Pages posts because that is the time I have been spending on legit therapy work.

I hope to come back to these serial stories and move the plot forward. I can't do that yet, however, because my brain is rather scrambled and I'm struggling to function. It's just one of the joys of being disabled. This stuff is why August 2021 was so quiet. I was in crisis mode for several months. When NaNoWriMo popped up, I honestly wasn't sure if I'd be able to participate. Somehow I managed it, though the manuscript is incomplete as of this time.

It is my dearest hope that my spending time intensely focusing on my mental health that I can sort out the chaos in my head and maybe get back into a productive writing/creative mode. I don't know if this is going to be something that takes a month or if it is going to be a bit longer. And I really don't know how to describe it with out sounding like I've gone completely off the rails. Let it be enough to say that I am not well right now and I am struggling with creative work on most levels. It's hard for me to find the energy to knit even a little baby sweater for my niece's child, despite the fact that I started it a while back. It's that bad.

Monday, January 10, 2022

Craft of Writing: It's not retreat, it's attacking in another direction.

 Dear Reader,

Life's been hard and complicated due to health reasons for me. It has lead me to doing a new form of journaling that is hard for me. As I have been working very hard on this stuff to try and glue my head together, I am reminded of a military expression that's been thrown around in my family for a long time.

It's not retreat, it's attacking in another direction.

I'm not sure if this came from the Marines in the family or from the Army soldiers. It's one of the things that I try to apply in my life when I have to stop, step back, or otherwise change direction on a project (or pretty much anything else in my life). You're not giving up when you have to change position, you are simply changing position and approaching your problem/enemy from a different front. This little military bit of wit has been a profound source of comfort when things get hard. (Sounds strange, comfort from the military?) I haven't been defeated or failed because I had to change what I was doing. I just had to change and attack from another direction. That direction might be back forty yards from where I was initially standing, but it doesn't mean that I'm not still fighting.

Doing anything as a disabled person can be exhausting. You get a limited amount of energy to do things. The way I try to work around this is scheduling my day extensively. The fairly rigid structure of my day is somedays exactly what I need to carry me through when I'm not doing well. On other days, it is oppressive and it makes things harder. Those days, I back off and try things from a different angle. And on the days that I just can't do things, like when I had migraines for three days in a row last week, I rest secure in the knowledge that hiding behind a shieldwall for a moment to catch your breath doesn't mean that you're out of the fight. It's making a tactical maneuver to reserve your energy for when you can strike.