Running On 8% Battery

Est. Read Time: 10 min

Well. Here we are again, at the end of the month. The last DAY of the month... again. Back half of the day too, no less, and with limited writing time. Normally, I'd be embarrassed or irritated with myself. This month though? I dunno. I guess I'm just too burnt out to care? Sad to say.

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Let's just say that, only 2 months in, 39 has proven itself to be a trying age for me. As I mentioned last month, I finished up July and started August covering for nearly back-to-back vacations my coworkers went on. My manager's daughter was also about to pop any day. Or so we thought.

Manager's Daughter (MD) and Son-In-Law (SIL) don't have much of a community or even in-person support group where they are currently living. Aside from paying for child care, they had no one to watch their toddler once MD went into labor. And since kids aren't allowed in the hospital, that meant SIL would be forced to stay home with their first kid instead of being in the delivery room with his wife. Which meant Manager had a vacation basically "on call" for when her daughter went into labor. She'd then shotgun her vacation time to take five days to watch her grandson while her daughter was in the hospital, recovering, and then bonding with the new baby.

The baby had shifted low in the womb and inverted so she was ready to be birthed way back in August. She wasn't due until mid-September. Everyone was convinced that she was going to come early.

Then August ended. And the first week of September passed. And the second week of September passed. MD was going to doctors appointments practically every four days to see if she was getting any further along. Her due date came and went. Each day my coworker and I would text our manager to see if we needed to come in on our day off so she could go watch her grandson. Each morning she told each of us that she would be working and to not worry about it. It crept closer and closer to the end of the month, and we were ALL getting a bit nervous.

MD was nervous because of all the medical complications that may arise from being over a week past due. Manager was nervous for the same reason, as were my coworker and I, obviously. But we also all had our own (semi-)selfish reasons to be nervous as well. For Manager, she was wondering if she could even take time off anymore to help watch her grandson. Coworker was nervous because she had a wedding to go to yesterday, and she wasn't sure if she'd have to cover for Manager instead. I was nervous because I was scheduled to FINALLY get my own vacation during the first week of October to celebrate my wedding anniversary (and generally just to recover from this summer!). I wasn't sure if my vacation would AGAIN be shortened or otherwise shifted to accommodate me covering for Manager (like it was that first week of December last year).

Then, this past Sunday, Manager waved the white flag. Her daughter hadn't gone into labor yet, but Manager was running out of time that she'd be able to take off without infringing on our requested times off. She decided to take her PTO Monday through Thursday. That way she could be there for her daughter's last check-up before being induced and HOPEFULLY be able to still watch her grandson while her daughter was in labor. All while still being back at work yesterday so my coworker could go to the wedding. Luckily, MD did end up going into labor pretty much first thing Tuesday morning! Manager had her grandson for a few days while her daughter was recovering, and he met his baby sister on Thursday.

Happy ending, but it was one HECK of a stressful September as NO ONE knew what was going on or if we were working; when would we be giving up our days off to help cover Manager's impromptu vacation?

On the plus side, I am FINALLY on my own 6-day vacation, starting today! Woohoo!

(Good thing too, because I was starting to go a bit feral and short tempered this month...)

Feral Stick Figure Violence meme
(that's the best description I could find at least)

Said vacation, and my need to recover since my birthday, are largely why I'm working on this post so late in the day today. I had slept in until noon! I wasn't feeling well last night, so my husband turned off the alarms and let me sleep until I woke up naturally. Guess I was more burnt out than I realized, huh???

Hubby and I spent some time together before I dropped him off at work this afternoon. Then I ran around doing some errands I wanted to get done in preparation for my time off. I then stopped by Hubby's work to have dinner with him while he was on break, limiting my writing time further. A trend that seems to have formed this past year: all of my would-be writing time ends up being interrupted or usurped by some other activity.

Again, normally that would make me cranky and my body itchy as I CRAVE to find time to write. The past few months, though? Well. There's a reason Hubby took over game nights and we switched from Scum and Villainy to D&D. My head has been so empty since May or June.

I've watched the conclusion of Miraculous Ladybug season 5, and that alone usually inspires me: watch Miraculous Ladybug. This season in particular somehow simultaneously has the series' best and worst writing in every single episode. The character arcs and growth were awesome, the actual plot and lore drops were atrocious and would routinely retroactively negate what has already happened in the series and it just....

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For most people, this kind of rage at the source material would inspire them to make "fix-it fics". Stories that allow the author to "fix" whatever it is they feel went wrong in the canon narrative by reworking the narrative themselves. I haven't necessarily written any fix-it fics myself, but I have teased for years now about wanting to do just that with my plot bunny "When Love Matters". Wherein I rewrite the whole series with just one fix: Gabriel Agreste genuinely loves Adrien and is a good father to him. Which means that I've toed with the concept of a fix-it fic a little bit in the past. And yet my frustration with the series didn't even inspire me to attempt a fix-it fic this go....

I'm that far gone and in that desperate need of a break. Here's hoping this week helps me recover enough that my Muse will return to me.

Right now, though? I'm struggling to sit upright to type this post up. I'm lounging on my porch on probably one of the last nice evenings of the year before it starts to get too cold to linger outside too long. The sun is setting. I have lo-fi music playing. I just kind of want to sit on my front porch, close my eyes, and maybe doze a little bit more to the faint sounds of my neighborhood bleeding through my headphones.

I also haven't played Animal Crossing in ages. I'm actually dangerously close to the real world time lapping where I left the game. Just a few more weeks and I'll be a year ahead of my island. There's also Spiritfarer, which I also haven't touched in a month or so. Let alone a bunch of other games I either own and haven't started (I'm looking at you, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom) or games I've started but abandoned before finishing them (*cough*Going Under and Ori and the Blind Forest*cough*).

My To Watch and To Read lists are both so large I literally started up notebooks to list them in to keep track! I haven't touched crocheting in literal years. I have other crafting projects I have mentally sorted out, but haven't managed. My apartment is in desperate need of re-organizing, and Hubby and I have been meaning to fully re-arrange both our kitchen and dining room.

I really don't get the people who leave retirement because they're bored. I could never have enough free time to get through everything I want to do!

Point being, with my brain fried the way it is, and with so many other things - limited interactivity or otherwise mindless-task things - that I could opt to do instead, it is far too easy for me to neglect writing. I feel like I should be ashamed of that, but I'm not. I should mourn that loss, and I do, but only slightly. I do miss telling stories, but who am I telling them to anyway?

I am a writer. I know that to my core. I watch others tell their stories and I desperately want to do the same. I want my players to be just as immersed as the Oxventurers are when Johnny Chiodini runs D&D, or when Luke Westaway runs Blades in the Dark, or, most recently, when Andy Farrant ran Deadlands. (I would also love for there to be an audience outside of the players and have them invested as well, but the key is the player immersement) I want people as invested as Hubby and I were while watching Ray__C play his characters on NoPixel, or have other players itch to be as involved in the story being told as those who play with Ray__C seem to be. Even telling the "story" of building a nuclear reactor in Minecraft is something I would love to do. I want to impact people the way professional writers or showrunners have been able to do with their media. I want to take others on a journey the way that I've gone when reading fanfics or fan comics or when I've played video games.

I'll be honest - and this is probably something you've already sorted out - I don't write for myself. Not really. I know I SHOULD. And I do write what *I* want to read, and I do reread my own work fairly frequently. It just feels kind of hollow to me if that's where it ends: me writing a story I want to read, and then I read it.

I have received a few reviews where people rave about my writing, and a small handful of people who have told me that my story has stuck with them and/or they have reread it. Those reviews make me soar. They are my true lifeblood.

It feels so few and far between, though.

I guess I just... I need that COMMUNITY. I need to be seen. I need others to think of me. I need my stories to MEAN SOMETHING to people. I need that interactivity of people leaving comments or writing their own stories that I inspired or drawing fanart or... SOMETHING.

So.... my perpetual struggle for that kind of readership hasn't really helped much with regards to my writing motivation. I'm burnt out, and I don't really have any outside force encouraging me to come back to the page. It's easier for me to turn off my brain, and I seemingly have no exterior reason to fight against that easiness.

Take this blog, for instance. I don't feel guilty about lessening my updates to just once a month. I don't feel guilty about not really having much to say. I don't feel guilty about not having any writing updates. I barely feel guilty about how late this got published. If I hadn't promised myself that I'd publish an update at least once a month, I don't know if I'd even bother anymore (all the more reason why I delay until the last moment to even write these damn updates). Yes, I know there's three of you who will routinely read this blog.

Hi.

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And I don't mean to guilt-trip any of you to be more interactive than you are. But still, I otherwise feel like I'm just screaming into the void.

All year, I've been asking my readers to help me find a new font for my blog (I'm using Kalam again this month, btw). Aside from two comments when I first posed the question in January - my first blog update since October 2021, mind you - my blog has had NO interaction all year. I average about 50 hits (well, 30 per month, and then each post slowly adds the other 20), but not a single comment. And with bots being so rampant online these days who knows if all 50 hits are even people?

My AO3 notifications are slowing down. There's multiple days per week where not a single one of my stories gets a kudos on it, and it's even rarer to get a comment. Maybe once a month? Out of 49 stories? I know it's probably because my fandom is so active that it's hard to even find older content, and I don't post frequently enough to stay towards the top of any search, but still. The fact that I never seem to end up on recommendation threads doesn't help.

I am swallowed up in obscurity, and it's just hard. Ya know? It's hard to fight against that. Especially when so much of my mental energy is used to fight so much else.

I'm hoping this week does help. I truly do. October has a Friday 13th. Maybe I can pick myself up enough to think of a Plagg Appreciation Story. (The boy needs it after the raw treatment he got in the Miraculous: Awakening movie....) With any luck, some perseverance, a bit of mental recovery, and hopefully some outward encouragement, I could have something to talk to you fine folks about next month.

In the meantime, I'm just trying to recharge.

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Wish me luck.