Some Personal News, 6-30-2015

To all of you who were expecting a blog post last week, my deepest apologies. I've been going through a bit of a crisis. I've been under a lot of stress, which led to me in the ER with a panic attack a couple of Saturdays ago. as a result, I've been placed on some new medication which has calmed me down but seems to have fried my creative circuits.

This sucks in so many ways it isn't even funny. I've only just become acclimated to the meds after two weeks, during the course of which they left me nauseous, sleepy, jumpy, or irritable. I've been told that I won't have to be on them for the rest of my life, so that's something, but writing has long been my escape, and now I can't even rely on it.

Here's a brief rundown of stressors that I've been dealing with:

•  After resisting for the longest time because of crippling dental anxiety, this year I started the ball rolling on getting my teeth fixed up. This hasn't reduced my dental anxiety any, but I've found a guy who will put me completely under to get my mouth renovated. This will take a couple office visits, but at least it's better than the couple dozen the previous dentist quoted. Downside: It will be expensive. I will have help in paying for it, though, so all that's left is the appointments themselves.
• I will be moving in August. The two places that my roommate and I are looking at won't even accept rental applications until the beginning of July (!) for a move-in date at the beginning of August, so I'm still stressing about that for another couple of days. Moving isn't going to be much fun anyway, but due to various overlapping reasons, it needs to be done.
• I recently was involved in a car accident on the highway. The car still works, but I'll need some bodywork and a new paintjob all up the left side after getting sideswiped. Fortunately, my insurance will be paying for most of it, leaving me responsible for the $500 deductible.
• I recently had surgery to remove a cyst, and discovered that I am allergic to something involved in even latex-free steri-strips. The surgeon suggested I might be allergic to the stuff that he used to make the steri-strip stick better, which I think is stupid, but I can't help that right now. I had a hell of a rash at the site, but I have a prescription for an ointment that seems to be clearing things up. Yay!
• There's a possibility that I have an anxiety disorder, which completely fails to shock me. I'm on the waiting list to get a psych eval, but I might not even get in to see the psychologist until September. In the meantime I just have to chill and be patient.

In good news, Hungry as a Wolf is still on track for its October 31 release date, and I've been churning out a bunch of outlines so that I will be ready when my writer's block finally clears. This might not happen until the dust starts to settle around September, but I'm looking forward to getting a chance to freaking relax already. I've been dealing with my various crises one at a time via assembling the components of a pirate costume to potentially wear to the St. Louis Ren Faire next year, so that's something to look forward to.

I'm still looking forward to being able to write again.