All Medical All the Time

Gah. No wonder I write fiction. Real life has too many medical procedures.

Dog is going to the vet this morning. I've lifted her a few times. It's okay. Not great because my strength isn't back yet, which means the incisions hurt and my lower back twinges, but it's doable.

My husband would love to help. We both love this dog to pieces. He's not a jerk, but his boss is, so figuring out a mid-day vet appointment and the corporate politics is a huge pain in the ass.

Even if he could figure out his boss' weirdness, he can't help now anyway.

Guess who stepped on a nail right about the time they needed a new tetanus shot? For extra fun, it all went down after hours.

Yep, my hubby was in the ER until 4am last night. His day is all borked up now.

And we are all short on sleep.

Me more so than others. We are ALL tired. The kiddo from summer camp, the hubby from his ER visit. As for me, I haven't been sleeping well since surgery. I'm restless. I wake up a lot. My eyes are closed, but I'm not really asleep. And this is with taking something like a Tylenol PM. At first, I thought it was all the drugs, but those are surely out of my system by now. I read somewhere that the stress of surgery can mess up sleep so I wonder if that's it?

Either way, at this point, we're all just limping our way to TGIF.

 Musings on writing to follow...

Fear of success. I had an interesting insight recently. Let me see if I can write coherently about it. Note, no quality sleep and I've yet to caffeinate my brain this morning so this may go south quickly.

I started writing for money in a genre I didn't care about, so it wasn't threatening to me. I didn't need or want to be a HUGE NAME AUTHOR in this genre, it was just a paycheck, a throwaway. I would tell people, "I write the genre of my paycheck," and then laugh. I didn't notice any fear of success until a short story I wrote sold 15,000 copies and earned me $5,000. The next month, it sold even more. At this point, I knew I could make a living. That writing was a real thing for me.

Eeeek.

As the industry changed, I switched genres, angling myself so I was more marketable and kept going. This new genre also wasn't one that I'd ever wanted to be a HUGE NAME AUTHOR in so any performance anxiety was fleeting. Also, I didn't have a breakout book for almost a year. It's hard to worry about success when failure is looking much more likely.

(It's funny how, no matter how the writing is going, there's angst on all sides. It's never gone and endlessly morphs to fit a writer's current circumstances.)

Then things went well enough that I realized, I could probably do well in any genre. I have a voice  that people are willing to read.  More importantly, I get marketing. I know what it takes to build a brand and sell it.

I could go after the genre of my heart.

Cue fetal position.

Now, it's going to sound like I'm going off track, but stick with me. There's a point. Maybe. Honestly, I'm not so sure I make any sense. I can't tell anymore. I really just want to go to bed, but have to keep myself awake for the vet.

My kiddo is a perfectionist who falls apart at the first obstacle. Yesterday, I tried hard not to show my amusement at the fit she threw over practicing piano. In loud wails, she told herself the following things:

1. I can't play piano.

2. I will never play piano.

3. I hate piano.

She focused solely on the failure and her feelings about it. She resisted my best efforts to coax her into a forward motion that would yield a productive piano session. I guess six is too young to understand you have to move forward no matter how defeated you feel. You pick up your hand, put it on the keys and bang away as best you can. Hard things don't get better if you walk away.

She doesn't get that. Sometimes I despair that she ever will and fret about how she will cope as an adult who falls apart at the tiniest hardships. (Although, apparently, in public/school/camp she's much more composed and capable. At home, we get a version of the kiddo that has a lot in common with a tornado siren that has an electrical short. When she lets her hair down, it screams*.)

So the point is, I have to ignore any feelings about success or failure. They don't matter. What matters is doing the work.

Do the work.

Just do it. (Ah Nike, such an unsung sage.)


*Some of this is the neurological stuff she has. She can't moderate emotions as well as kids without neurological stuff. At least she keeps it together in public, but doesn't hold back at home. Usually she's so cute in the extreme, it's hard to be annoyed. Usually. And yes, we do all the parental things parents are supposed to do to guide her and give her coping skills/appropriate social behavior.