What a month it’s been! Our beloved cat of eight years passed away suddenly this month, and I hit a low point in my personal depression battle when she passed. it was, briefly, the worst I’d felt since the events that led to my mental breakdown and withdrawal from public life in 2008, when I took on a more hikikomori (shut in, hermit) role.

And it took Neko-tan’s death to make me realize I am absolutely tired of being so afraid of everything that I’m too paralyzed with fear to even open my front door unless heavily sedated. Plus, HELLO? kids learn through doing what their parents do! Mimicry! I will NOT let my child grow up in the shadow of a woman paralyzed by fear. 

I will not be afraid anymore.

Ok, grand self-analysis over, onto writing things. Rent as always is due soon. So I thought I’d write a collection of short erotic stories and self publish them. (Sex still sells, after all.)  And my brain  was like, “Oh! Smut! Lets make each story really long! And then connect them! And make them violent! And set in the same techno fantasy alternate reality world that your other books are written  so that you can’t use a Smutty Mcpensmutname! Also, lets make them a NOVEL!”

Dammit, brain. You used to be really good at writing short stories. 

Brain: “Pssh, yeah, short stories filled with cliched nonplots and cardboard characters with no depth! Now I write novel length stories filled with cliched nonplots and cardboard characters with no depth! Ha! So there!”

So we’ll see how that goes. On other fronts, life at home is stabilizing. We need a new apartment come September, which means I need a source of income. Preferably stable! 

Every piece of computer tech in my house went crazy while I was sleeping. Mac pro? well the GPU is dying, also the power bar blew out the outlet (Aging apartment with a STILL RUNNING leak in the master bathroom from upstairs, YAY) and once that happened I had to beg my mom for power cables, just as the apps i use for writing on my phone say 'NYA NYA BOO BOO" and go haywire. So no wifi. No net, no music. That's alright, (See first paragraph.)

I am so lucky to have a roof over my head. To have a computer! To have a smartphone! to have wifi! It wasn't THAT long ago that I was homeless in the City, sleeping in trees in the park, terrified for my life. I am so much better off now. 

So long as I can somehow get the rent paid, get the electricity paid, get the net paid. 

It's surreal. I'm on the constant verge of being without a home again, every month, and yet, I'm so much better off than I used to be, recent setbacks and all. A loving family. A badass group of friends and supporters. Proper meds! Medical care! Thanks Obama! and oh yeah, a new novel in the making. So that's cool. Now if I could just get a proper job that'd be awesome.

It helps now that I know things I didn’t used to, like how to see a reality where I can see my potential, instead of just negatives. a reality where I can in fact, do the things I set out to do. Crazily enough, that reality is taking shape. It’s a lot of internal work that many might not be able see in terms of tangible results, but I will say this. It’s going to be a great day today, and I’m going to go outside with a grin on my face. 

No more fear.