Saturday, December 31, 2016

A Farewell to 2016

The coming March will mark the fourth anniversary of when I began making a public name publishing erotic fiction, and it's annually then that I look back over the past year and reflect through incoherent and disjointed stream of consciousness ramblings, but this year I'm changing it up a little.

As the world winds down the last hours of 2016, I want to cast off everything that it's been and leave it behind. I want this to be the last post of 2016 that goes to the annals of history for posterity, but is otherwise left there for a fresh start.

The short of it and the important thing to say out in the open is just thank you. Thank you for sticking it out with me, and thank you for always being the best of readers. Here's to you and a new year of brighter paths and success for us all.

There's a bunch to cathartically reflect on and get rid of, and I don't want it to take up that much space on the index so there's more after the pagebreak, and I'm going to dedicate the rest of the new year to forgetting it.



It's been a rough year, one that I have personally lost a lot through, one that's severely damaged my sense of routine and productivity. I've said it before but when you're in it alone, you're in it alone and picking yourself up isn't always so simple.

The year started off okay - things had promise, I had a number of things in mind, was working on commissions to tide over the silence. Then my Grandmother whom lived here passed away. That really kicked things that were already a bit off balance out from under me. I've talked about it previously and I don't want to dwell on things depressively, but yes.

Then soon after, in trying to upgrade my broadband package, I lost it for near over a solid month. A month of getting engineers in that couldn't find any problem and chasing up the problem until they realized that the exchange was over capacity and needed heavy maintenance, so just maybe rolling me back to a stable line would be the best idea. A month of stress and upset later, for the most basic and obvious rollback option.

That really did not do wonders for my system or routine. I got that off my chest earlier in the year, started picking myself up and then... our elder dog of sixteen passed away, because sure, why not! Really though, she'd lived a good life, had become increasingly frail and was at home in her sleep. It was okay, but yeah.

I'd considered making a passing comment on twitter to not worry, no one else was likely to die this year, so maybe I can get back up, but as an introvert that overthinks everything, it got choked and dropped like any number of posts I never make for some inane doubt or concern. I tried being more verbose and broadcasting expected progress, but when that too failed and died, I lost it again under my own doubts and fears of how bad everything I do or don't manage to do must seem.

I am not a great judge of estimates, but then I didn't think to take death into account multiple times.

I'm not playing the bleeding heart though, at least not in earnest. At the end of the day, I've certainly been the one to pay for it, as money through the year - especially after the thousands my Grandmother's funeral cost, which wasn't fully covered in her life insurance coupled with the lack of her support to bills - has been really rough. That's just how it works, if you can't manage, you drop off and die, too. I know that, I know I've done better in the past and I know readers deserve better, which is what's made every day so frustrating.

But you know what, I can't think of anything else. No, I can. Holy hell, oh yeah. Just when you think everything has finally stopped hitting rock bottom and nothing will reasonably die? AllRomance eBooks "shuts down" and decides it "can't" pay anyone for Q4 2016. Like wow. Not just me, this is a gigantic 'fuck you' to every author and customer that's ever used that storefront. Especially considering some of the disgusting history resurfacing that I can't even bring myself to read in full.

This coming from a legal business entity, not some scammer on the street corner, the sort of thing registered with the IRS, the sort of thing you pay taxes on royalties from, and something of this scale can just up and kill itself too, betraying thousands of readers and authors at once in confidence of not being legally prosecuted? What a world.

Now, with everything all said and done, that's all in the past. That all belongs in 2016 now. Except for the ARe fiasco, cause we couldn't just have things be simple, thanks for that one! Aside from the ARe case, which very much makes itself an issue for 2017 by becoming a reality now, the rest is history.

I want to put it behind me. I want to use the new years to forget how shit it's been,start and see improvement in what I do. Improvement in my daily life, maybe improvement in my capacity to manage social media. In retrospect, it's a similar desire and time as what pushed me to start publishing - a low point in life I found a path to turn it around and give me something to move forward with.

Every one of you that's supported, read and taken an interest in what I do over that course have made it all possible and deserve the best going into 2017. I really hope it's a better year for everyone, along with that 2016 was a better year for you all. Take and live with all the good memories made, and I'll do the same to make sure I can really make every month as full and special as it really should be.

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