Falling into step

Things are starting to settle down a bit here. I have my apartment-type area set up and have settled in. The kittens are getting used to the new digs, even nervous little Jasmine. It’s feeling like home again.

Work is quietening down too. Old manager gone, new manager picking up the reins. I run the team anyway, so the biggest change is who I have to talk to about stuff. The new manager is receptive and friendly, so no problems there so far. I’m currently on a training course, learning the other monstrous side to the software my team has to document. My brain is filling up.

I haven’t caught up with Starwalker as quickly or thoroughly as I had hoped. It’s taking me longer to get used to the commute than I had anticipated – I’ve spent at least half of my commutes dozing due to exhaustion lately. I’m doing better this week, and feeling able to do more and more writing, so I know I’ll get there.

On the plus side, I’m keeping up with Starwalker and am excited about the story even after the break. I’m at an awkward part of the story, coming up to a peak in the plot that requires some logistical wriggling. It might help if I had planned all this stuff out from the beginning, but hell, until recently, I wasn’t even sure who the saboteur was. It’s fun writing it this way, though I’m paranoid I’ll write myself into a corner. I plan to keep going as I am until it breaks, though – it’s working for now, so why not?

With luck, I’ll be able to catch up to the realtime posting dates soon. I have to restrain myself from doing interim posts in the meantime (it’s possible I will fail at this – there’s a post that wants to be written that won’t wait a week from the previous one).

It’s a relief to feel like I’m finally getting on top of things. To feel honestly enthused about something without out the weight of everything else resting on me.

I have my writing group tonight, with a guest talk by the lovely and talented Kylie Chan – I hope I get a good turnout for her. We won’t be getting into our new meeting-place until September, so things are a little weird until then.

That’s about it for my update today. Better get back to work!

Engage catchup

So, I had myself a little hiatus. Spent time with visiting family, moved house, settled in, got back to work, caught up with the backlog there, said goodbye to my manager, started training the new one in the wonders of technical documentation…. Yeah, it’s been a crazy crazy time.

Things are settling down a bit now. I’ve managed to find enough time to get back to writing this week. I’m sure that you’ll all be glad to know that a new Starwalker post is now up! (I just got done sorting it out and formatting it all.)

I looked at where the story was and decided that three weeks is just too long between posts. I’d like to keep the real-time aspect of it, so I’ve backdated the new post to be where it should have been, if I hadn’t gone on hiatus. My goal is to fill in the missing two posts as I go – I can do about a post every two-three days at the moment, energy permitting, so by the end of next week, I should be roughly up to date. (I’ll probably post them all at once, so don’t hold your breath, but there’ll definitely be at least one going up next Wednesday!)

I’m not sure when I’ll go back to my original schedule of three posts a week. I’d like to stick to once a week for a little while, build up some buffer (oh, how I miss it) and spend some time editing the Apocalypse Blog. I also have another couple of projects I need to find time for.

I’m still getting used to this new schedule and longer days. The CFS is not my friend right now, but I’m sleeping better lately, so hopefully it’ll remain manageable at least. Maybe even improve some. So while I like my return to hour-long commutes on the train, I’m still working up to being having enough energy to fully utilise it. Sometimes, it’s just too necessary to doze all the way home at the end of the day.

I look forward to the time when I can write a post in the morning’s commute, and do something else on the way home.  Edit, rewrite, plan plots. Who knows?

In other lovely news, Kylie Chan is coming to talk to my writing group next month! (Why does everything happen at once?) I’m looking forward to that, and hopefully a good-sized group will turn out for her. Fingers crossed!

Right, back to the grindstone. More catching up to do yet – if anyone is waiting on a response from me about something, I’ll try to get back to you soon!

Hiatus

Since my last post, things have slid further into chaos. Not all in a bad way, but definitely in ways that make everything more complicated!

First, I got sick. The bug going around work decided to bite me, in a low-grade miserable way that dragged at me for 2-3 weeks. Lovely.

Then, things with my family came to a head and I decided not to renew the lease on my house. Instead, I am going to move out and shift in with my folks, taking over the bottom floor of their house. This will let me help them out and avoid some more serious problems down the track.

When I made that decision, I had three weeks to sort everything out. One week of that is taken up by my brother’s visit (he’s around the world for my dad’s birthday), so I really only had two weeks to sort the move out.

Then at work, my manager announced that he’s leaving. One week after my move finishes, he’s off. The best manager I’ve ever worked under is leaving, and we don’t know what’s going to happen after he’s gone. The department will be restructured and we have no-one to voice our needs for us at management level. I think I’m going to have to become more vocal.

Oh, and we have some redundancies coming through, too. I heard just today that my team is safe, but for the last couple of weeks, it has been a worry.

On top of that, there has been getting the new teammember settled into her work, and preparing everything for my couple of weeks off to be with my brother and then move house. We have a big release coming up just after I get back from my leave and there’s lots to sort out to make sure that that happens, too.

Just when I thought nothing else could go wrong, the bookstore where I hold my writing group emailed me to tell me that they’re not opening late any more. So now I have to find somewhere else to hold my writing group every month. Before the next meeting. Aaaaah.

That has been the past couple of weeks for me. The good news is that everything seems to be going to plan so far. The move is all lined up – everything is booked and ready. Currently giving my brother a whistle-stop tour of the area and doing lots of family stuff. Work doesn’t appear to have imploded in my absense yet.

I am bone tired. I slept most of today in the car as we drove around between pretty sights, and I’m still exhausted. I can’t remember the last time I just stopped and rested. I am looking forward to getting rid of this house and settled into my new rooms downstairs, and then sleeping for about a week.

The upshot of all this is that there’s no room for writing. I could probably squeeze in some time to throw something together, but my head is so full of everything that’s going on that there’s no room for writing. I don’t want to sacrifice the quality or story of Starwalker any more than I already have thanks to all of these distractions, so it’s time for a break.

This is why I’m taking a short hiatus. Just for a couple of weeks, enough time to get me past this visit and moving house and caught up with all of my other responsibilities. I’m going to be pretty absent from everything for the duration. I should be back up and running by the end of the month, and will update again once I have a clearer idea of how all this stuff is turning out.

Thanks to all of your for your patience. On the plus side, once I’m moved I’ll have my one-hour commute on the train each way, and will have plenty of time for writing! Or sleeping. We shall see!

Catch you all on the flip-side.

Change of plan

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past couple of weeks. Things have not been going well for me, and if I’m honest, I’m struggling.

There are a lot of reasons for it. Work is stressful and I’m constantly fighting to keep all the balls in the air there. I’m managing more people, more projects, and tighter deadlines than we’ve had before. I’m still learning what the hell I’m supposed to be doing half the time, and every time I turn around, the goalposts have shifted six inches to the left. We’re doing all right, we’re still on-track, but that’s only because I’m busting my ass trying to make sure that’s where we are. I like clear goals. I like to know what I’m aiming for. I do not like playing catchup, especially not when it’s someone else’s fault.

There are also family-related factors at play that I don’t particularly want to get into. Let’s just say that it’s another source of concern, but not one I can do anything about (which is probably worse) except be there for them. It’s frustrating.

And then, once I’ve dealt with all of that, there’s my writing. I’m falling behind with everything. Organising my writing groups is simple – a couple of emails a month each (I have two groups), turn up and pretend to be competent, and enjoy the company and conversation. Easy, right? At the moment, it’s one more thing that I have to worry about, and the other week I started to seriously consider stopping them. Or at least one of them. But then I go to a meeting and I love it. It’s so worth it. It’s the bits in between, sending out the emails and having it niggling at the back of my head, all ‘don’t forget about this!’ Those are the parts that wear on me.

Starwalker is going really well. I keep meaning to post updates on this blog, but it’s yet another thing that I just don’t get to these days. Last month, SW had over 1,000 visitors. As in, different people, all coming to the site to read it. One thousand. And the feedback I get is amazing. People are talking about it. They’re getting excited about the storylines, and attached to the characters. I feel so lucky when I see that! I look at the stats and the comments and I’m all: “Wow. People like my stuff.” It’s a lot to get my head around!

It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever written. I’m going to all these new places with it, juggling and adjusting things as I go to make sure it hangs together, trying to get the physics right enough to be convincing. So far, it’s all working great! I have all of these plans for it, so many avenues still to travel down. It’s exciting, but it’s hard.

I think the difficult parts aren’t entirely down to SW itself. It’s everything else that gets in the way. It’s shifting mental gears whenever I sit down to write, trying to put all the job-related and other stuff aside for long enough to focus. It’s sitting down on the train for twenty minutes at a time and trying to get part of a post down. It’s giving up three evenings a week to pull a post together, edit it into something coherent, and get it posted. And more than anything else, it’s the exhaustion.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – it is the bane of my life, once again. All of that stuff I’m juggling makes me stressed, and stress makes the CFS worse, and then I get exhausted and that makes it more difficult to deal with the stressful stuff. Fun, huh? It has been bad (and getting worse) for the last couple of months. I keep trying to take some time off, take a break, catch my breath, and that works in tiny portions. Unless it puts me behind with everything (which it usually does), in which case I have to bust my ass to catch up again, and I wind up exactly where I started – exhausted and struggling to keep up.

Last year, I set my sights high. I didn’t do everything I aimed to do, but I did most of it and I came out of it all feeling really good about how it went. This year, I didn’t set myself targets that were anything near as ambitious, I’m not doing everything I aimed to, and I’m still failing. A week ago, I had that thought, the one that says ‘something has to give’. I’ve been here before, looking at myself in a downwards spiral, and unless I change things, I’m not going to get out of it until I hit bottom and have to stop doing everything. That was five years ago, and it was a lot worse than it is now before I realised how close and inevitable that bottom really was. Funnily enough, the key stress- and frustration-factor then was my job, too.

That, sadly, isn’t something I can change. It’ll get better eventually and now is not the time to change jobs. I am in a really good position; the best one I’ve ever been in, professionally. I’m doing well, despite all the crap I’m handling. And more than anything else, I need the stability of that place right now.

And, dammit, I don’t give up on shit easily. It’s probably part of what’s made me so sick – I should have done this a while ago – but having dealt with chronic conditions of one kind or other my whole life, I’m stubborn when it comes to this kind of thing getting in my way. There’s a part of me that suspects I should take a proper break from all the extra things in my life – the writing groups, the blogfic, the novel that’s waiting for me to edit it, the Apocalypse Blog stuff that I promised to do this year. But even as badly as I’m doing right now, I’m not ready to go quite that far. Like I said, I’m stubborn about this kind of thing.

But I have to change something. I need some way to get back on my feet. Right now, I feel like I’m failing at everything, even though it probably doesn’t look like I am. I’m told that it doesn’t show in SW yet – but it will. A post was due up yesterday and I haven’t even started it yet. I’m so exhausted that it’s difficult to think straight enough to write this, let alone slide my brain into Starry and try to step forward with her story.

I’m not going to do yesterday’s post. I’m not going to force it and have it come out half-assed. It’s time to be realistic and cut back. I thought three posts a week would be easy, but when the CFS is this bad, it’s too much. I’ve been tossing around the idea of dropping down to two posts, but I have to be honest with myself – that’s not enough. I’m not going to stop Starwalker – mostly because it will be incredibly difficult to start again if I do that – but I am going to bring it down to one post a week. Take a proper breather in it. Not permanently, but long enough for me to sort the rest of my life out. I’m not sure how long that will be yet.

I don’t know how this will affect the real-time aspect of Starwalker, but I’ll deal with it if and when it becomes a problem. I still love the story and its characters. I’m still excited about sharing it with everyone. Hell, the other day, I was pondering an old storyline I created a few years ago and realised that it would fit into the SW world perfectly. My original planned plot just got extended by another story arc. I am still committed to making this story work and won’t let this CFS screw it up completely.

So there you have it. I’m not giving up, not stopping. But I do need to step back for a while. I’ll aim to post on Wednesdays, I think, because by the end of the week I’m usually so tired I can hardly see straight. I still have to look at the other things in my life and see what I can do about them. I need to fix some non-writing-related factors as well, like the exercise I’m not doing and how often I can’t be bothered to cook. They’re next on my list.  I have some time booked off work coming up, too, and hopefully that will help me get on top of things a bit.

Wish me luck - I think I’m gonna need it – and watch this space!

Sluggish

It hasn’t been a great week.

There was that review, which knocked me sideways a bit. Then you lovely people pulled me up again – thank you for all your comments, support, and honesty.

I’ve since had another review on Web Fiction Guide, which raised similar concerns to the previous one but in a much less damning way. It felt more balanced (but maybe that’s just me).

On the plus side, I’ve been getting a load of hits through from it, and more feedback is great too. My overall rating is pretty good (looks like a 3.5?), and I’m happy with that. Happy enough for now, anyway.

On top of that, the CFS has been crawling up to smother me this week. I’ve been getting sleep (which is usually my toughest battle) but still waking up tired. Worse and worse each day, until yesterday my alarm pulled me out of the middle of a very vivid (and strange) dream. I am never dreaming at that time - I don’t remember the last time that happened. My body clock knows I get up at just after 6am, so I’m at least semi-awake by then.

Today, I got up feeling like lead. My glands feel like they’ve come up, and I’ve had cotton-head half of the day. I am currently subsisting on sugar and caffiene, and wondering just how little of tonight’s work Christmas party I can be there for before I can slip away. If the party wasn’t between the office and my house, I wouldn’t be going at all. Plus, I put a dress on today for the damn thing, so I might as well use it.

It hasn’t been a good week for writing. With those things tugging at me – in a downwards direction – it was really a bad time to tackle a post about a character in a dark place. The whole thing went sideways and ended in a position that I’m not sure I can recover from. I’m writing about ten days from the end of the blog, and there isn’t time to work with that. Luckily, I’m writing far enough ahead of the posts that I have time to fix it.

This morning, I abandoned the desire to surge ahead anyway, and went back to fix the post. Basically, I rewrote it with an additional element that I had originally intended to be in there, but had been unable to find room for the first time around. I started with the new element and made the rest fit in around it, and I think it’s going to wind up better for it. I’m itching to get it finished, but I’m so braindead that I can’t bring myself to review yet another technical ticket because it hurts too much.

Instead, I wound up procrastinating by registering the Apocalypse Blog on NetworkBlogs on Facebook. Another way to share the joy! I hear that it’s a good way to advertise, and while it may be a little late in AB’s case (as it’s ending soon), no harm in trying. Those of you on FB – follow, share, enjoy!

I’ve put off everything I had planned to do this weekend, except an evening out with a few friends. For the rest of the time, I will be resting and attempting to sort out the hash I’ve made of AB this week. Thank goodness for buffer. Oh, how I missed you, buffer.

Coming soon: AB’s next milestone, and news about the next blogfic on the horizon. It’s coming soon. Hopefully not too soon. In the meantime, wish me sanity and sleep.

NaNoWriMo: Achieved!

It’s the 29th November, and I finally hit 50,000 words. Whoo-hoo!

It’s such a relief. I have been struggling all week, and my wordcount graph reflects that. Work has been nuts, with the new guy starting – I had to be in charge of inducting him and training him – and interviewing another candidate for the new vacancy we’ve been allowed to recruit for. And I had a deadline to meet on Friday, which involved much squinting at complicated spreadsheets and trying to work out if all the figures were correct.

On top of that, I’ve been out a lot and, of course, the CFS has been biting down hard. I wound up collapsing on Friday night and giving myself the night off, even though I had barely written anything the day before (due to an unplanned evening at the folks’ place, thanks to breaking trains and a dad who needed a lift home).

Luckily, the write-ins have been great for my productivity. I entered the weekend with 8k to go – not exactly ideal, but not horrific either – and wound up doing almost 4k at yesterday’s write-in. Today, I managed to get my head down and push through those last few posts to hit 50k just after 6pm.

Aaaaand, relax.

In all of my previous NaNo adventures, I have hit the target with a week or more to go. The first year, I petered out and coasted through the last week, ending on about 56k, just glad I got through it all. Last year, I was determined to get to the end of the story and powered on through to almost 70k. This year, I’m just glad I made it at all. This really is a lot closer to the bone than I like to cut things!

I guess it’s a symptom of how my year has been. More than once I’ve been up late, desperately trying to focus on an Apocalypse Blog post properly so that I can get it edited, and then post it before I fell into bed. Once, I had to backdate the time slightly to squeeze it into the previous day, as it was almost 1am when it was finally going up. (One lovely reader noticed! Despite my sneaky fiddling with the posting time. It’s so good to know people are paying attention!)

I wish I could take a break now. But not yet! NaNo might be finished, but AB isn’t, not quite.

I’m about halfway through December. Only a couple of weeks’ worth of posts, and then I’m finished. I have tomorrow off work, to rest and recover from everything, so I plan to spend that editing the first half of December. Then I can focus on getting the last half of the month written, polished up and posted.

Almost there. Almost done. I can’t wait. I want to see the whole story, hold it in my hands as a complete thing. I’m looking forward to telling everyone: I did it. I got to the end, I got through a whole year and a long, winding story.

For tonight, though, I’m going to put my feet up, feel good about myself, and look forward with hope. It has been hard work, but it’s all working out nicely. That makes it worth it.

NaNoWriMo: Into the last week

I had planned to update this every week during NaNo at least, but once again, time has run away from me. Good intentions and all of that. Bah!

NaNoWriMo is going better and worse than expected. The ML side of things is going fantastically – we have three to four events per week, and people turning up to all of them (!!!). It’s much better than last year, and I can’t say enough how grateful I am to have help this year. I couldn’t have done a lot of this stuff without my fellow MLs.

The best part is the the wrimos have noticed and are also grateful. I’ve had lots of comments about the write-ins and other stuff we’ve got going on, all of them positive. It gives me such a boost to hear stuff like that; it’s always nice to know that your work is appreciated and that you’re getting stuff right. We do all these events so that people come together, write, socialise and, most importantly, have fun. If that’s happening, I’m a happy ML.

I am, however, rushed off my feet. There were two write-ins this weekend, and I was due to be at both of them. I wound up pulling out of today’s, knowing that there would be other MLs present to pick up the stuff I usually do there. The Chronic Fatigue is biting pretty hard at the moment, which isn’t a surprise considering how much I’m running around at the moment. Also, I wanted to get my head down and do my own writing; it’s very easy to let all the ML duties distract me from NaNo itself and writing my own novel.

My writing isn’t going to plan. I’m getting plenty done on the weekends – especially since I started taking headphones to write-ins so I could zone out and write, rather than monitoring the meeting and joining in with every conversation (I’m a social butterfly, what can I say?). However, during the week, I’m not getting as much done.

The thing I was afraid of is happening. I’ve been in such a routine with my writing this year - writing a post a day, editing, and posting it up - that it’s hard to step up the pace and write more. I should be doing two posts per day if I’m going to hit my target of getting everything up until the end of December written. Couple that with a crazy work situation – the Team Leader stuff continues, quieter than before but still busy enough that it’s sucking up a lot of my mental energy – and it doesn’t leave me with much impetus to write more per day.

My attempts to make writing time have frequently been thwarted. I managed to get out of work a little early and hoped to get in a couple of hours’ writing when I got home, and I got to the train station to find that all of the signals in the city centre had broken. I waited nearly an hour for a train, and it crawled all the way home, stuffed to the gills with frustrated commuters. By the time I got home, I was so tired and hungry that I wound up just editing and posting, then cooked and zoned out in front of the TV.

I’d hoped to have a full day to write today too, but I was so tired after being out all day yesterday at a write-in that the morning was mostly pottering around in a daze. Plus I had to sort out all my weekly chores so that I have clean dishes and clothes and food and all those small, essential things that get missed when you’re out all the time.

I swear, I need a maid. A very cheap, invisible maid. …hmm, maybe that’s an idea to shelve for a future short story.

So, it’s been a struggle. I’ve been playing catchup half the time, which is a stressful situation I have managed to avoid in my previous NaNo ventures. However, it’s not all bad news.

I’m on track with my wordcount. Almost 39,000 words now, which puts me a day or so ahead of target. If I keep going as I am, I’ll make the required 50k, probably by the skin of my teeth.

I’m not doing so well with the post count. I should be halfway through December by now, but I’m only up to the 5th. I might wind up having to write post-NaNo to finish things up. That’s not a disaster, but it leaves me with less of a break before I start the next blogfic. Or possibly no break at all – it’s hard to say yet.

What this means is that the posts have swelled – as NaNo kicked in, I became more verbose, and it has been a struggle to keep the post lengths down to a reasonable level. I’ve had to split a few of them up into more manageable chunks, which isn’t ideal but it has helped fill in the posts. My rough average for a month’s posts is about 25,000 words, but November finished up at over 33,000. Whoops. Not exactly what I had intended to do!

Yesterday, I finally got to the end of November’s posts. That was such a good feeling – I could breathe again. I knew that once I started on December’s posts, I was on the downhill run – that was my own personal halfway mark. Today, I spent the afternoon writing out the first few posts for December, making a dent in the backlog. It still feels strange to finish a post and then move straight on to the next one; I keep wanting to pause and edit. While it is a good habit to write every day, it has its down-sides too!

This evening, I went over the posts for November that haven’t gone up yet. This is one bit of really good news: they are all edited and scheduled. I don’t need to do any of that over the next eight days. No more stopping to sort out the day’s post; I can concentrate on writing now. I can’t say how freeing that is (partly because I’ve only just finished and haven’t enjoyed an edit-free day yet) but I am looking forward to it! With luck, I can get my head down and make some decent progress through December’s posts between now and the end of NaNo.

Also, I think the plot is on-track to get where it needs to go. I have a good idea of where I need the group – and the story – to get to, and I know roughly what the last post will look like. So far, it’s lining up (allowing for the ridiculously long travel times that happen in the Apocalypse Blog). It’s hard to judge exactly how it’ll pan out, but I think I have given myself enough leeway to make it fit. Fingers crossed!

Right. I’m tired and have to be up early for work tomorrow. My brain is shutting down (it’s possible it did that before I started this post, but shhh, don’t tell anyone). Time to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything and hit the sack. Oh, and I have another milestone turning up soon – I must look up when that is. Whee!

Another crazy, event-heavy week coming up. Catch you all on the flipside. Wish me luck!

Picking up

I’m doing better. My last post was somewhat dire, but it needed to be said. I had been silent too long. I am immensely grateful to all of those who responded, publicly or otherwise.

At the moment, I’m in the process of disconnecting emotionally from all of that stuff. It’s not an instant thing – it’s a gradual separation, and I have to remind myself sometimes that this thing doesn’t matter, and that thing isn’t quite so important. I’m dealing with the fallout and attempting to reduce any further damage to myself or anything else I still care about, but I’m getting there. I’m like a buoy that has remembered how to float again.

I’m also sleeping better. The chest pains still come and go, particularly if I get wound up (they’re one of the more extreme and unpleasant symptoms of CFS, and only turn up when it’s particularly bad for me), but I’m starting to come back to a more even keel. It’s never great, but at least I’m not as shaky and emotionally strung-out as I was.

As I’ve said a couple of times over the past few days – I prefer my drama on the page rather than in my life. Let’s put it back where it belongs.

So, I’m picking up the Apocalypse Blog and slinging it in a new direction. Both the blog and I needed a change and a bit of rejuvenation.

I allowed a post to get a little bit romantic, after fighting to stop it from becoming sappy. I think I rearranged it about three times before I was happy. It was fun! It has been ages since I’ve had the chance to do something like that, mostly because I’ve been beating Faith down with very unromantic stuff. But it’s still there, bubbling under, and Faith deserves to have a bit of a break from being pounded on emotionally.

The other plot-stuff relating to Haven is also coming up towards a turning point. It has been a long climb, and it’s almost time to run down the other side. I just have another thread or two to get in place, and then we’ll see what the shape of it all looks like. Now that I have more mental energy to devote to it again, I’m looking forward to seeing how it all comes out.

I had two bits of bad news today. The first was from an old friend of mine, someone I haven’t spoken to in a while due to various life stuff on his end. I didn’t know how bad it was until he spoke to me this morning. I’m helping him out where I can, though it’s difficult when he’s on another continent. We worked something out, and hopefully he’ll be able to get himself and his fiancee in a more comfortable position now. I’m relieved that I was in a position to help him out.

I came across an inspirational quote earlier, which made me think of him: “Emotional security is just as important as financial security.” (P.K. Shaw) I think he’d agree with that.

It relates to the second bit of bad news I got today, too. It’s family-related and I don’t want to get into it right now, but it’s more saddening than stressful. I’m doing what I can to ease things, even if it’s just being an ear when it’s needed, and offering a spare bed. It’s not a problem I can solve but that doesn’t mean I can’t help the people I love.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another at the moment. But I’m okay. I’m healing. Things aren’t great, but they’re getting better.

If you want an image to take home with you: My heart is as big as a star and covered in bandaids. They’ll fall off when they’re ready.

Bruised

The last two weeks have been hell for me. I can’t remember the last time I was this stressed, strung out, hurt, and inclined to cry.

As I’ve mentioned before, the team leader I’m replacing at work has been having complications with her pregnancy. The week before last was a huge deadline for us – the delivery of a three-year-long project. In the middle of it, the TL announced that she had preeclampsia and had to go into hospital straight away.

The good news is that she’s doing okay – she was due to be sent home this weekend, still pregnant (she’s at about 31 weeks now). I went to see her the other day and things are going okay there. Everyone is relieved about that.

Still, I was left holding the can to deliver this project’s work, with barely a clue about what was required as the TL was training me as we went. So the week involved a lot of scrabbling around for me, desperately trying to make sure that a) I knew what needed to be done and b) someone was actually doing it.

We made it. I can hardly believe it, but we did. I have an awesome team there. Big huge relief, big fat tick for all of us.

But I couldn’t relax. The TL had been training me on the delivery process, but we only do that once every few years – all the stuff that comes in between was going to be handed over after the deadline. Which meant that last week I had to figure out what the hell to do next, because nothing had been handed over to me. There are lots of tiny pieces scattered around that I have to make sense of.

The TL was good enough to email me from hospital, sending me stuff that I needed to know. But still, it was stress city. I’m still not sure exactly how many balls I’m supposed to have in the air there, apart from ‘a lot’. I feel like I’ve had no breathing space.

On top of all the work stuff, the communal writing project I’ve been putting together went sideways. Badly.

The day before the TL went into hospital, one of the project’s writers attacked me in a meeting. I won’t go into detail, but suffice to say that a couple of members of the group believe that they should be able to do whatever they want and to hell with the rest of the group, and they didn’t like it when I said that wouldn’t fly. Rather than trying to tackle the problem and work out a solution, spending two hours trying to shout me down was the option they chose.

I was shaking by the time they left. I don’t give under that kind of pressure and I don’t put up with bullying, but I wasn’t in any shape to handle an attack like that emotionally.

If it had just been one of them, I think I could have dealt with it. But it wasn’t. I spent the rest of the week in isolation – two of the group decided to stop talking to me in favour of the ringleader. It wasn’t a good week for me for so many reasons.

Then it got worse. I tried to speak to the ringleader to straighten things out and he refused to talk to me. I had the other two ambush me after work, so that they could tell me about how selfish and unfair I’m being, and how unhappy they are. They weren’t interested in my side of things. It had turned into a whole drama of the sort I thought I’d left behind at secondary school.

It was all way more than I was prepared to put up with. I spent half of last week worrying about what would fall on me next, where the next attack would come from. My CFS was so bad that I was having chest pains most days – stress makes it worse and this was a pressure on me all of the time. I felt like I hadn’t smiled in forever. Worse, it was showing – I don’t tend to show that kind of stuff in public, but people noticed. I was just too tired to pretend any more.

I put a lot of work into that project. I set up the world, the concept, the wiki, the forum, and the website, organised meetings, and helped others plan characters and plot stuff. I did it because I love writing and I had a group of friends I wanted to share it with.

It had got to the stage when I dreaded someone bringing it up in conversation. I didn’t know what was coming at me next, what other thing would go wrong. This thing that I love wasn’t fun any more – it was so terribly far from fun. I couldn’t see a way to salvage it, and I really didn’t want to try. I don’t give up on things easily – I work hard to make things go, but this wasn’t worth it. It just really wasn’t worth it.

I waited until after my Creative Writing Group meeting on Friday night to end it. Most of the group was there and I was determined to do it right. I wanted to do it in person, not by email, which can be read in so many ways. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I was trembling before I even started. I got through it, even though the ringleader walked out halfway through with great protestations. I said my piece, I explained my reasons, I named no names (in an attempt not to make it worse), and I almost broke down.

I had intended to come straight home afterwards – I knew I’d be a mess – but the half of the group not directly involved in the drama insisted that I stay. They made sure I was okay, and it took a while for that to happen. It felt like an hour before I stopped shaking and teetering on the edge of crying at any moment. But they were so good.

They didn’t know a lot of what had happened – the last thing I was going to do was drag more of them into it and make it a huge fight between all of us. I don’t play those kinds of games. That’s why I stopped it when I did – to preserve what little was left between us all. They had seen enough in the meetings to know what had caused it for themselves. By the time I came home, I felt a lot less alone in all of this. I am so grateful for them.

Now all that’s left to deal with is the fallout. Those involved in all the bitching that went on behind my back say that they don’t want this to ruin any friendships. Again, that’s why I ended the whole thing, but it’s going to take some work from everyone to mend what’s been damaged.

I’m bruised, all the way through. Every time I think it’s finished and I can start to move on, something happens to poke the bruise again. The stress has made me so sick that I’ve spent most of the weekend on the couch, attempting to recover – and even in that there has been poking. I’ve lost a project I cared about, and friends have turned against me. I just want a break from the pressure now. I want it over.

I know that this crap has been affecting my writing, and that makes me feel even worse. The Apocalypse Blog has been strained of late – I almost missed a few days, but it has been my one escape through all of this shit. And I was determined that they weren’t going to fuck up my perfect record for me.

It’s been really hard to get into the mood to write – even today, I’m writing this because my brain doesn’t want to click into Faith mode. Sometimes it has been the one time when I didn’t think about the project and all the crap that was being slung my way. Other times, it was hard to see past the pile of crap to the blank page. Most of the time, I struggled to get something down.

I’m hoping that this week will be better. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to sleep properly tonight, and that AB will come back on track and pick up pace again. I have so much planned for it. I’m hoping that this whole unpleasant business can be finally put into the ground and we can all move on.

Hope with me – I could use the help right now.

Flagging

So much for updating this more often! Bah.

Things are crazy right now, and I’m struggling to handle it all.

Work is running up against a deadline and the pressure is on there to get everything done in time. That’s not going to let up until the end of the month at least. Coupled with the work I have to get through, I have to pick up the team leader stuff as I go too.

My desktop fell down and refused to get up again, so I had to go get a new one. That’s left me having to deal with Vista (argh) and incredibly poor this month. I can’t do half the stuff I was hoping to.

NaNoWriMo stuff is picking up again. I’ve been tossing ideas around for it for a while with some friends, and it looks like its going to be a busy November for us MLs. Currently trying to line up what we need to do before it all kicks off.

I’m trying to put together a new project, and that is proving to be more difficult than I had anticipated. Communal writing projects are never easy, and between that and my natural habit of wanting things like this to work, I’ve wound up in charge. On the one hand, it’s good fun – I’m getting some fantastic ideas for it, and the enthusiasm of the group is great. On the other hand, nine people is a lot to coordinate and there are headaches involved with that that are currently dragging me down.

Then I have my writing groups to organise (2), the writing festival next weekend to sort out meetups for, an author’s talk next month to get everything in order for, and an upcoming family reunion.

Then there’s the Apocalypse Blog. I’m struggling with that. With everything else on my plate, the Chronic Fatigue is biting hard. So many things to think about and not lose track of, so much running around in my head. It’s hard to sleep or rest.

It all leaves me with little energy to devote to my beloved blogfic. I’m keeping up and posting every day, but I feel like it’s getting strained. I can’t tell how the posts are coming out half the time. I’m fairly sure that it’s suffering, though, and that frustrates me to no end.

On top of that, the story has just hit one of the big markers and I have to get my head around how to handle it. It’s not always easy after a day full of everything I’ve just listed. My usual commute writing time is short and sometimes non-existent if I can’t get a seat.

So, yeah. I’m flagging. Running on empty right now. I’m gonna have to start making some hard choices if it carries on like this for too long – best to put one ball down before I start dropping several. Problem is, I don’t want to put down any of them.

Before anyone panics, AB is not one I will put down by choice. I’m committed to it, and it’s the only part of everything I’m doing right now that’s just for me. (And my readers, of course.)

Bah. Anyway. I should go get myself together for Father’s Day. Time to go hang out with the folks. Post atcha later.