'Tis the Season

You'd think yes, but actually no....

This could quite easily double up as my end-of-year roundup, but we'll see.  Basically, we're at my Mum's for Christmas, with everything that entails, and I need to write something.

Because that's how things work now.  I write.  I've had my little tablet since just after my birthday, and if I'm honest, it's been pretty revolutionary.  I needed something that I could use in the evening while my phone was playing audiobooks to get the Chap to sleep, and something that wasn't the computer.  Computers are too easy.  They make my habits easy.  But my tablet is crap enough to make my habits really hard to do, leaving just typing stuff as the only realistic option.

And it's brilliant.  I've found an outlet for my stories that doesn't involve late nights and dangerous behaviours.  Wattpad is great.  I've found a friend.  I've got two long books about half-done, and the feedback I'm getting on each chapter is really positive.  I think that might be one of the things I need in order to keep going.  I need feedback and support, which is why my Flickr behaviours are so addictive.  I get sucked in by favourites and comments.  It's dangerous.  But not with writing.  I still get nice comments, but I can somehow manage to get to bed before midnight.

And just this month, when it looked like none of my stories would be ready for publishing, I took a short story and put it through Smashwords.  It's over there on the right, just under my profile stuff, available to buy, for something like 75p in our money.  Smashwords is also great, and I liked it so much, I wrote another short story and made it available for free.  I'm developing unhealthy behaviours with the stats page, hoping that I might crack 100 downloads before Christmas, but at any rate, I'm having a very positive experience.  The plan is to get the HGS thing in shape in the New Year and upload a chapter book for a coupla quid.

Like we're about to form some kind of
 Power Rangers Voltron Mega Zord kinda thing,
which me and my siblings could probably
actually do if it came to it

And so it is in a good place that I find myself at the end of this year.  There's a blog post to be written about what's come out of therapy recently and how it relates to my Cinderella thing, but I'll save that for another time.  Spoiler alert:  I had a horrible childhood with enough privilege to paper over the cracks.  It'll take some working through, but in the meantime I've come to spend the festive season with the very people who caused it all, and I don't feel bad at all.  These people, aside from one obvious exception, are the people who will ultimately see me through.

LMW

Make Good Art

Does this picture really need a caption?

It's been a bad year...

Let me fess up:  I'm in a bad place, and I'm not handling it well.  2016 can officially get to fuck, for so many reasons, and while therapy is going well, it's a regular slot at the start of the week during which my anxieties are poked and prodded.  Current massive crisis detailed below.

This post is pretty much a list of what's going on at the moment for me, and how much of a mess I'm getting myself into.  Also, some vague and misapplied wisdom from Neil Gaiman.  Ready?

My head is not right (Old Blog)

All this will become clear

I haven't actually died, but I continue to get weirder and weirder.  My inner life is a very interesting place to be right now.

Quick roundup of news before we get down to business:

Work is little better, but progress is being made, slowly but surely, and it looks like the whole place is going down the toilet anyway, so my concerns of having a bright career future at such a fine organisation are dwindling.  My new manager is a cowbag.  My old manager is properly wonderful.  My emails are evil.

A friend who goes by the name of Joanna came to visit.  Good chats, potable beers and general positivity all round.

Christmas looms.  I mostly have all the presents.  It should be a good one.

Now, down to business.  This is a long one, and it ends up in a very troubling place.  It was quite hard to write all this, but it's even harder trying to live with it.  Bear with me if you can, but this post carries a severe Weirdness Warning.  Credit should go to my therapist, who is really fucking good, but the results of his inquiries are pretty much as follows:

My head is not right...

Fingers crossed (Old Blog)

This is my greatest fear

Well, it had to happen sooner or later, and now is as good a time as any to take a voyage around my father.

TL;DR:  My father is one of my triggers, and one of the main reasons that I'm so panicked by my own addictive behaviours.  He's also the reason Furiosa and I are so intimately familiar with our own psychologies (and each other's), and also why we're both so literate in self-reflection and therapeutic verbalisation.

My father's addiction is alcohol, and for the past 30 years I've watched him slowly slide from functional human being into almost complete obsolescence.  I have no idea how he's even alive, and this week it looks like he's beginning to gear up for one of his trademark stunts.

He's been such a dick about not having his bank card that the decision has been taken to let him have it back, knowing full well that he'll be drunk for several weeks, possibly months, with worsening health problems, trips and falls which will have him in and out of the Sad Old Man ward at the hospital.  I have my fingers crossed that this time round it will be different, so that's where the post title comes from.  I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the whole thing, but be warned:  you might be more than a little surprised by the time I'm done.

So, let's take some time to explore how I'm currently feeling about my alcoholic father, shall we?