Vacations Are Never Long Enough

Two weeks of holidays flew by to the point that I don’t really feel like I had a holiday. I have tremendous requests on my time and commitments to things in all aspects of my life right now, so much so that I’m really struggling to maintain it all. I’m looking at taking another week off in November just to get some cleaning done that I had meant to the past couple of days. (Also a week scheduled in February obviously.)

My eldest cat–he’s nineteen–suddenly went blind a few days before my holidays started. He has a whole host of issues according to his last exam–his kidneys aren’t great, his liver’s starting to have issues, his heart is wonky–but he’s been adjusting well to blindness, and I had a Pawbo camera set up in my room to monitor him while I was away. He’s managing pretty well but needs frequent meals of wet food, which I have to keep the others away from to give him a chance to eat, so life remains pretty much a circus with cats. As long as his “in and out” is normal, he’s grooming himself, and he’s not showing signs of discomfort, he should be okay for a while.

I’ve been in the worse shape of my life, so I’m building on the current fitness regime I started a couple of months ago and getting a bit more disciplined with it. I’m also back on the vegan train so I will be pretty cranky for a couple of weeks while I adjust to not having cheese.

Freelancing has become crazy busy the last six months. Which is a good thing but I’m so booked that when I have a health issue, it throws everything in the air. There is a chance I might not have to work through Christmas this year, which would be a first. Today is my first day back and I hit the ground running, but prior to my vacation I worked myself to the point I had crippling carpal tunnel pain, which I’m going to try to avoid recurring this week.

And then there’s the writing–which is not getting prioritized as I’d like and I’m going to I’m going to take a hard look at my schedule and see how I can rearrange things (and what I can cut). I got the new Zara story off to the Beta of Awesome, it’s kind of a nightmare in the first bare-bones draft form but it’ll get there–I’m looking at a wide release maybe late November depending on how long revisions take.

Saturday night I finished up a new novella I’ve mentioned on Patreon and Alchemy Red but not really here yet–it’s sort of Demons of Oblivion: The Next Generation, a spinoff that stands alone but previous series knowledge would certainly enrich the reading of it. It’s even more of a mess and I skipped part of the climax entirely. After it simmers a bit longer, I’ll go back and fix it–right now I’m not even feeling a sense of accomplishment, all I can think is “Dear god, there’s still so much more to be done.”

I poked a little at Livi 5–still sitting at 60K, I know all the things I need to write, it’s just a matter of getting all the words out. I think I’ve had enough of a break that I can go back and get some work done on it–a little distance always helps.

There’ll be a quarterly state of a union in a few weeks when I better project some upcoming release dates. For now, consider this a check in–not dead, wish I was still on holidays, currently trying to do all the things., more soon!