Tasakeru

This won’t be pleasant to hear, but I have to be honest: I haven’t written a word all month. Not one damn thing on Tasakeru or Shattered Skies or anything else. I haven’t filmed anything of the replacement episode of Silent InvenTOYry either. April 2019 has been a creative dead zone.

I feel awful about this, especially since yet again my Patrons will be paying for another month of no progress. But frankly, I feel awful about a lot of things these days.

The short version is, both my parents and my dog are elderly. They’ve all been having health problems over the past month or two, particularly my mother. Every time some new one manifests, my chest goes tight and I wonder if this might be it, the moment when everything falls apart and the downward spiral begins. I can’t enjoy the escape I get through my creative efforts, because as I said: those aren’t happening right now. I’d take a break from it all, but I’d feel guilty about that too. I can’t even lose myself in my favorite fiction for long, because past experience has proven time and again that life loves kicking my teeth in the moment I begin to relax. My anxiety is probably unfounded, but that’s the wonderful thing about chronic anxiety: it doesn’t care whether what you’re afraid of is plausible or even possible. The doubt and fear and second-guessing never entirely goes away, no matter how much I want it to.

I’m not the most mentally stable person in the best of times, and this past month has been the antithesis of “stable”. So while I’d love to have some updates on Tasakeru, Shattered Skies, and SI for you, or even share my thoughts on Avengers: Endgame, right now there’s nothing in my head but fear, weariness, and the usual horrific guilt and self-loathing. My sole comfort is that there isn’t much of April 2019 left… if I can survive a few more hours with what’s left of my sanity intact, I can see my therapist tomorrow and work on making May an improvement.

– BHS