Hello Again My Old Friend

It's January 3rd and I'm starting to write this at 3 a.m. So I guess that answers my question, new year same me. I stopped blogging in August after I got hit with another health hiccup. I kind of stopped doing everything involving other people except going to my monthly book club. Talking to strangers about a neutral topic is fine. But people I know, well, it's too hard to be sick and an actress at the same time. I'm weary of the game, pretending I'm okay regardless of what's really going on. Like, who has that in them after fifteen years? Not me. But who only wants to hang out with strangers who don't really know who you are? Ugh. Reality.

Unfortunately the mental result of withdrawing from people has been pretty catastrophic. So once again I'm forcing myself to reach out. Untangle the mess that is my life. Let people know I'm alive. I did manage to do something worthwhile in 2019. I wrote a novel. After my stint in the ER in August, I decided if I were to perish I needed something to show for myself. So I shut out everyone and everything and wrote for like 15 hours a day, six days a week. I'm now in the process of turning the rough draft into a first draft and boy did I do a rush job! But the essence is recorded and I have the raw material ready to be formed into something beautiful.

This isn't the book about a girl who gets fibro that I set out to write nearly a decade ago. I already wrote that book twice and made so many mistakes I needed to start over a third time. Which proves I can effectively sit here and write books to myself for the rest of my life and accomplish absolutely nothing in the real world. Scary thought. Starting the same book for the third time was awful. I was weary of my characters and bored with their choices. Then I realized I was telling too much story in one story. Sweet relief! Still passionate about my original idea, I decided to write the prequel. This book is about a famous feminist in her 60s who decides to look for the child she was forced to give up for adoption as a teenager. Little does she know, her daughter looked for her decades ago and did something terrible.

In order to sell this book I have to edit my rough draft, get back to writer's group, reignite my social media, hire some test readers, edit more, solicit an agent, deal with epic amounts of rejection, land a publishing contract, promote the hell out of me and the book, deal with epic amounts of criticism, and somehow be lucky enough to have all of this actually happen. Exhausted yet? I am. How on Earth is a woman who can barely function as a nonfunctional housewife supposed to do any, let alone all, of that?

So here I am. Ground zero. 2020. New decade, new promise, new hope. I have to rebuild myself from the ground up. I had surgery the week before Christmas and am still a little under from that. My lifestyle habits are atrocious. Admitting all of this is embarrassing. And incredibly liberating. Laying myself and my dysfunction out once again is proving cathartic. Hopefully taking this blog along on my journey becomes an effective tool to help turn the ship of my life around and stop spinning my rudders in the muck of sickness and isolation. 

Thanks for joining,

Leah