Sunday, July 31, 2016

I'm Here.


I get the feeling if I don't just write this now, I'm never going to - or never get anything else done by extension, either. Long and short of it is yeah, I know. After a rather positive anniversary post in March, I haven't had anything special to report and it's looked pretty grim.

I'm still here, and I know. Things haven't been great, and the longer they went on, the longer I didn't write this, the more apprehensive I got about doing it at all, but I need to. So this isn't a release post or anything special, just a space for me to put it to words and get this off my chest. This is going to end up a massive stream of unedited conversational tone trash about my personal life and feelings. The image covers the jist of how things have been these past months.



Often times when you think something can't get any worse, you're just not thinking hard enough.

So I had the anniversary post in March - March was okay. I may have been struggling through the tail end of things but it was okay, I was getting by and things would turn around. They certainly did turn.

In April my Grandmother passed away in her sleep from pneumonia leading to cardiac arrest. She'd always said she didn't care if smoking killed, that she'd lived long enough and told us how she wanted her funeral to be done so much as over ten to fifteen years ago at least. We had 'Monster Mash' play at her service where she wanted people laughing and happy. Always one for pragmatism and dark humour from an age now long past. Passing in that sense was peaceful.

Whilst loss of family is never an easy thing for anyone, she had been living here with myself and family, who cared after her in her bad health. Her room was two doors from where I work, so we were close. I can't even think of what to say or how to put it, now. I want to say it's something I wouldn't wish on anyone but really, of all outcomes, to pass surrounded by family that will care for and see things carried out is probably the best, and while we may not dwell on it, it is something that will happen one day.

I guess the point is that doesn't make it any easier to take. The bustle from doctors and police taking her into care was just... the whole thing is going to affect you now matter how rational and necessary. From then until even now, it's really all the little things that got to me. Things you wouldn't think about or wouldn't think are that big a deal. Just little things like the 'Grannys' sticker on a biscuit jar no longer being there, or that her door at the top of the landing was always shut because there's no one there, now.

It's like phantom sense. Things you expect and still 'feel' as an everyday occurrence aren't actually there. The sound you thought you heard or person you expected to be there to greet at the top of the stairs every time isn't there. It's a really empty feeling, and suffice to say, I didn't handle writing erotic fiction through it very well at all. I've always abused the Rocky quote about how hard you can get hit and still get back up, but dealing with everything from emotional standpoint to legal and financial wasn't the sort of hit you expect to take.

To go off on a slight tangential rant - death is expensive. Seriously, you think when your life is over, it's over? The phrase "nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes" is practically cheating on infallibility when there's tax for death, and even the smallest hosted reception has costs that quickly add up. Other legal concerns and channels that need to be contacted too only really aggravated it. On the bright side, quality of said costly religious reception with poorly opinionated analogies about camping aside, it was good to have family and friends together.

So, yes. Suffice to say that was a heavy hit that wasn't so readily recoverable. Now, in the spirit of being purely honest, open and just blunt about it, I'm sure to some - maybe not you, but it's a thing I've heard before - that it sounds like an excuse. That it shouldn't matter, nothing matters, you "just do it" and produce words through sheer force or implicated simplicity because it's your job, it's what you do.

It may be, it would be nice if things were that simple, if the support and quality of life existed to be able to emulate that ideal more perfectly, but it is not. Life and people are not simple as to facilitate the simplest of gestures. In the same sense, I hate 'gendering' or trying to label an audience by some blank one-word standard. You are an audience because you are a person with your interests and tastes, not because you have or lack a vagina, they don't all share the same view and make a really bad inductive. They are neither audience nor identity, they are an organ. I just don't like it, I don't like hard laws and labels in general, chokes creative freedom.

So I wish I could have handled it better, handled it like someone I'm not, but I haven't been able to. I'm not those people in that life with their conditions. For better and obviously worse, I am myself and this is where I am, bruised and all. Now even then you may think well April was some time ago now, and yeah, it was. It's just the start of the string of ordeals that have upset me the past months, leading to this state.

Moving on into May, having received an email about broadband package deals from BT - my providor, I thought it'd be nice to upgrade to a more stable fiber line that didn't throw a fit if you tried to share a single image or upload a book cover, never mind a 15-20mb paperback cover on a 20kbps upstream. It would have been great - would. As soon as it was activated our phone line died. Being out in the countryside, mobile reception is not always stellar, so that week of a dead line was a bad start. Once the phone line's fault was fixed, it managed to kill the internet connection.

For a whole month. I mean absolutely nothing, orange light, no sync. My log file is a horror story unto itself, but the short version is three engineers were sent out. The first couldn't find a problem at the house or cabinet where both synced with his device until calling for support. Apparently the exchange didn't have enough power to push the connection a whole mile down a copper line to the house.

The second engineer was given no information and sent for no reason, finding the same result. This time he couldn't even get it to sync from the house. Third was booked a whole week after the first, which was already days after the first "3-5 working days" to fix it, who also found nothing new and was sent for no reason since a case was already open. To stop BT fucking both engineers and me around, he made sure it would stay in the right department and not get sent back until it was fixed.

For the rest of the month I was led along with "in a few days", "day after tomorrow", "3-5 working days" delay every time I called. Every booked "we'll call you on this day" callback fell through, leaving me to call and chase them up again until my account was just rolled back onto a copper line.

Now, you may think that'd be fine and great, that you'd get more writing done with no internet. That's only really true in really selective and controlled circumstances. It cut a lot of simple comforts, like the few friends I have for company while writing at any time, any other sense of social networking - not that I've been big on it, I'm just not interesting enough or the sort to constantly talk about myself to no one in particular in public every day - the radio stream I use for music or even the simple rhythm game I play on tablet every so often.

That I had to take my tablet to the window and perform dark rituals to get a weak hotspot connection so I could log a little time in that and tell people I wasn't dead was hardly an ideal state. I got things done, even rearranging the room some, but that was the worst a month could possibly be following the previous, and did nothing to help my exasperated and depressive state.

"But it's the end of July! You just suck, why do you try so hard to live?" -Said probably no one other than me and the weight of my own frustration and anxiety. Yeah. The short of it is I do not always make the best of decisions, and have no one to second-guess, support or correct them. So sometimes I'll stagger and struggle where I probably really shouldn't.

Even after my connection was restored, I've had to really hound BT all month with complaints that have gone unanswered and calls that once again failed to follow up on their "booked" callback to get compensation and refunds against being charged for installation of a service they had no capacity to provide without heavy construction work and maintenance to fix it being over capacity. This is talking ~£80 they wouldn't have given me if I didn't adamantly chase and demand it, since it would never be offered out of good will alone. Not a great feeling, and to finally have sorted that out has felt like a big weight lifted off my shoulders.

I've managed to write and release something to the fan community I mentioned previously, something I'd been sat on for some time due to not being happy with it at all. Getting that fixed up and released felt good, and acted as a good step up, if not something I could make a big deal of as activity here. I even have a couple things backed up but didn't want to release more of the same title after such a break, so I've been editing my way through Huntsman and Lusty Dark Elven Maid to finally release those as novel format books.

That, again, is not something I can just post up as a quick release to fill a blank gap in time. "The risk was calculated, but man am I bad at math". Beyond all this, honestly, to go back to the line about taking a hit and getting back up, I'm not staying down but it's difficult to get back up. It's been difficult to get back on top of it, to get into the routine again.

I wish it was that easy, I wish the passing of hours and days didn't scare me in a sense of helplessness so much, but that's how it is. I don't care if I'm not someone else who'd handle it better, it hasn't been that easy for me. No doubt, I'm suffering for it and accept that I've been in a much better state - that's what makes it so frustrating to have fallen off this hard. When people say "just write every day" as the advice they all heard from someone who heard it from someone, this is why. When things really put you down, you may have nothing and no one but habitual routine to pick you back up.

When that routine and life in general gets thrown off this badly? You just have to endure and fight back up or cut clean and leave. I may not be the best at dealing with it, but I'm not going to be some hopeless bleeding heart over it beyond however much I have been, either. I know it hasn't been a good situation, I know I can and should do better.

For what it's worth, I'm not giving up, but I am here.

8 comments:

  1. I want you to know that I absolutely fell in love with your writing when I came across your story Daemonique: Darkfall. Aside from being one of the most tantalizingly written pieces of Dark Erotica I have ever read, you put the narrative and the character development /before/ the sex. Thus, the sex was like fine red wine to a perfectly cooked steak of character development and engaging narrative.

    I am so sorry to hear you are struggling, but I want you to know things will always work out for good. It's so undeniably, infuriatingly cliche, but an oyster produces a pearl through a process called 'irritation'. :)

    With love and care from Australia,

    Addie

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  2. Oh gosh I realized that I had already introduced myself in your 'About' section. How terribly remiss of me! And here I was sitting here musing - "I could have sworn I had already posted on here, lavishing her about Daemonique."

    Well, one can never express /too/ much love!

    ... unless it's obsessive, borderline-stalking...

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    1. Haha, I did get to thinking "It really is a popular success! ...Ah." but it's still great to hear from you! Certainly one frustration with it all is that I can't get through everything as fast as really great people deserve, so knowing that people are still out there is really something. Thank you!

      Still really glad you like Daemonique, too! Character and plot development absolutely comes first or as a big part. For better or worse it's hard for me to do things on the shorter or thinner side, I always want epic fantasy backdrop for the erotic scenes! With more history and character, scenes are always stronger and have more impact too, I think. Tend to run a lot of emotional monologue so it's important, haha.

      I keep rearranging my queue a lot but more of Daemonique is something I'm looking to get back to soon. Have a pretty clear vision for carrying on and finishing the second story arc. It's a really dear series since it was some of the first and a sort of foothold into expanding and building the world for all my fantasy realm stories, whether or not they're even in the same era. Have a rough timeline to help keep that in order, but yes.

      I think with everything said and done now, August starting over a new month is a good start point for serious improvement. In part because it marks a new month on my monthly log sheet that I'm going to go back to using!

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    2. I'm curious, are you familiar with roleplaying? Have you ever dabbled in it? I know I would adore the chance to write with you some time.

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    3. Hah, several years, yes! Was a good deal of my writing before I found and got into publishing here, largely with someone dear I lost touch with years ago. I've been largely focusing that creative time into writing alone since but it's nice, having that more immediate interactive style, too.

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    4. Likewise! Nine years, myself. It's formed the backbone of all my writing talent. These days I dwell on Tumblr with the plethora of talented writers there (the URL of my name is actually my tumblr blog).

      If you, perchance, needed a leisurely alternative for your writing, I would absolutely love to roleplay with you sometime. I'm 24 and I live in Australia and, if you wanted to get in contact - you can email me over at cladinmidnight@gmail.com

      I know it would be an absolute pleasure to write with someone whom has such a similarly dark and erotic mind as myself. Here I thought I was all alone. :)

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  3. By the way I hope things have gotten easier in your personal life. I know when shit hits the fan it's incredibly difficult to maintain motivation and inspiration.

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    1. Yeah, thank you. That's really it, bulk of it was that the weight and doubt gets heavier as time goes on, but helped to write it out and hear from people. Working on getting back up and doing what works for me, think that was something easy to lose track of, too.

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