Adulting like a pro

When you’re so busy procrastinating at work that you forget to go home in time.

You want to know the funny thing? Ever since i stopped having panic attacks, the thing that scares me most, that ends up getting me closest to having a panic attack again, is the thought of the panic attacks coming back.

The thing about writing minority characters is that i never feel like I’m good enough as a writer or a person to do them justice, even when they are my own minorities.

You fuck up writing a white straight man? Make them too stereotyped or too weird? Make them too perfect or too broken? Nobody is going to fucking care. It’s all good. It’s one individual in a parade of other white straight men.

When you write a minority character though, they end up pretty much representing every single person in that minority. They end up being viewed as your personal opinion of that minority. They end up being analysed and critiqued and judged for *being* that minority, rather than being just a character you wrote.

And so I have queer characters and trans characters and non-western characters and female characters and disabled characters and i love them all, and i write them because i love them and because diving into their worlds is so much more interesting to me than diving into the worlds of straight white men, but i don’t dare publish. I don’t date show people. What if i didn’t do them justice? What if i offend them? What if i got it wrong? It’s not like they can just put it down, shrug and move on to all the other fiction doing a better job at representing them than i do….

And there's a chance at more representation... Gone.

Today I went walking

About seven months ago, I left work one night and crumbled. That was the first day of my burn-out. It was not a fun seven months. Some parts are simply hazy. I hardly remember them at all. Other parts - the panic attacks, the crying, utter helplessness, the frustration and the anger - I remember crystal clear.

Through it all, the song above was my anthem. It drove me on. it gave me courage. It made me cry and made me laugh. It helped me to get up and take just one more impossible step.

And today I walked. Today I forged a new path, simply by walking. This Monday I started my new job. It was terrifying. Still is. But I got up. I took a step, and another one. I kept going. And here I am, going forward. Forging my own way. Not a way I'd ever have thought I'd be walking on, but a good way nonetheless. And where I walked, from now on will be a path.

Me and my amazing, hot date tonight.

Best date I've been on! First we fooled around on the couch, but now we've gone to bed together, and I'm sure we'll end up sleeping together before the night is out... Or not. I'm sure this one could keep me going all night. It's just that good.

(Its name is Warbreaker, by Brandon Sanderson, for those who really want to know...)

I excel at the art of hitting light switches with my nose because my hands are full.

That feeling when your story just completely ran off on you and it’s off the rails now and you’ve got no fucking clue where it’s going but you’ve got heaps of adrenalin rushing through your veins so you’re just going to run after it and follow because what the fuck else are you supposed to do?