Off My Game

I've stopped writing. Like everything. I'm still banging out short book reviews for my bookstagram page, and actually got a job as a freelance book critic which is awesome, but as far as the "Leah Tyler the Writer" concept goes, I feel like a fraud. I finished my book a while back. My writer's group is receiving the last few chapters and then it will be 100% workshopped. It's past time to start shopping for an agent and publication. I even started to write a short story but never finished it. I feel like my writing just sucks. The thought of composing a second book seems inconceivable to me in my present state of maladjustment.

My health is in a strange place. Fibro is not my primary complication anymore, thank God. But I am my primary complication. My choices, my motivation, my dedication to the concept of health are all severely lacking. I've gained a significant amount of weight since my relapse in 2016. But I've been out of the trenches of that intense immune fatigue for a few years now. Covid lockdown didn't help, nor did my decision to start drinking wine pretty much every night in order to cope with said lockdown. I joined Weight Watchers to try and instill some accountability. After three months I'd lost like eight pounds, was starving, and totally lying to the app. So I quit when the gyms opened up a few months back. You bet I hit it it hard, considering the previous success I'd had in completely transforming my physical state back in 2013. Three days of intense weight lifting every week, for two months, and I feel myself getting stronger but not smaller. What the hell is going on? Besides the fact that I'm still drinking wine every night to cope with...what exactly?

I saw an old college friend last weekend and she asked me what I was up to these days. "I'm a very mediocre housewife," I said. We laughed, but I wasn't joking. I wrote a book but have done nothing with it. I'm very disillusioned with my trajectory in life right now. My ability to manipulate words into something evocative or impactful or beautiful or compelling just isn't inside me. I get angry when people call me in the middle of the day to "chat." Like whatever I could possibly be doing doesn't matter. Or my husband steps away from his home office to pop into the bedroom to "say hi and see how I'm doing." NOT WELL! Nobody takes me seriously! But am I taking myself seriously? Don't people treat you the way you let them treat you?

So here I am. We begin at the end. I started blogging in 2010 in order to teach myself how to write, so that's what I'm gonna do now. Remind myself how to become comfortable with words again. Reach inside myself and find my voice, my purpose, a spark of that passion that got me through the hardest years of my life. I'm not blogging for an audience, or accolades, or attention. I'm just a desperate woman over here doing the best I can to rediscover myself.

Thanks for joining,

Leah