So, yeah, f&q my life...
Sitting here trying to process that my royalty cheque was my worst-case scenario amount. Worst. Case. Scenario. I need to come up with around $15,000 in extra funds to make up for it. I certainly cannot hold out for the autumn cheque; I will run out of funds by then.
This has hit my self-confidence. Torpedoed it. The only good thing is, my brain and heart are still in so much shock, I can't grasp the obvious conclusion, that I cannot hold an audience, that I cannot engage readership, that I fuqing suck at writing.
So yeah, I guess disassociation is a good thing.
I found out when I checked my email while I was waiting in the doctor's office. I'd had my blood pressure taken, so after I spent about 2m just saying, "Fuq me," over and over, I went out of the room and asked one of the nurses to come take my blood pressure again, because a morbid geekery part of me wanted to know what this news, this icy-hot-spreading-doom-sensation news was doing to my vitals. I went up around 5 points. Yes, I'm that much of a nerdgeek.
...Did I mention I thought I'd had a heart attack early Monday morning? Paramedics and everything; they said from the description of my symptoms and the ekg readout that my heart looked perfect, that it was probably GERD...and the doc told me that if I can lower the stress in my life, the GERD will go away.
And my roommmate hasn't made supper, so I can't take the counter-acid medicine I'm supposed to take half an hour before my biggest meal of the day, and my gut is churning and my throat is burning...and I need to come up with 15k.
So I've got this plan to do a serialized story, and do short stories, and try to do direct sales through Payhip. I'm going to be spamming the hell out of links all over the place...when I'm not being paralyzed by doubts and fears. On the bright side, I've got a big chunk of the story already done. I just need to find a way to get it edited, to get it formatted, to get it posted online.
I feel kind of like a rat in a maze being probed by electrodes, zapped by electrified maze floors, and forced to swim over and over, until I risk drowning, until I just want to lay down and die. Except I'm not suicidal, so that part is really annoying. It's ironically amusing.
Ha.
Haha.
Right.
$15,000. That'll get the stress to go away. $20,000 would help the stress to go away. $500,000 would REALLY make it ALL go away. But I'm like, I'm not sure I should even buy a single lottery ticket, ya know? Of course, when you have so little to work with in your budget, why save anything? Except...
I'm still going to get my hair redone next week. Last time I did it, I realized it was the first time in a LONG time that I felt like myself again.
At least my cousin is quite willing to rub my back (just now) and tell me, "You can do this...you can do this!" And some other very nice things she said, too. ...Which is a very nice step up from grudging comfort from the other roommates. (Mood went from "crushed" to just "stressed" which is good.)
So, yeah...