July books: 4/6 (Reign of the Fallen)
Good evening, squiders. My major stressors are essentially taken care of, but I’m still having a lot of anxiety as this is an era of change. (I’m switching jobs, and I have now taken care of telling my old job and finalizing the details on the new job.) I’m sure everything will be fine once I have settled into my new role but for now everything is a bit…weird.
This is really the first time I’ve turned in notice at a job with the full two weeks and all that. I’ve done intra-company transfers, and I’ve straight out quit. And I do like my current job, and my coworkers, so there is a lingering sadness to the whole thing.
Creating through upheaval is doable, but you’ve got to make changes in your expectations. In 2020, when my spouse was going through cancer treatments (and lockdown and all that jazz), writing fiction just was not working. So I worked on nonfiction (and created the Writers’ Motivation Series) until I was ready to move back to fiction, and even then, I wrote a lot of horror for the next two years, which I fully believe was a trauma response.
So, yeah, everything is a little uncertain right now. Things are weird. My current coworkers and I have had a couple of awkward conversations. I don’t know how long it will take me to settle into my new job, so there’s some anxiety about that.
So, while I am not doing anything especially taxing right now anyway (as it turns out the critique marathon is the 12-week one, not the 8-week one), I need to remember to give myself grace for the next few weeks. Let myself focus on lower energy things. More joy, less stress.
I’ve still got to do my critiques for the marathon, but it’s not as intensive as it has been in the past as there are fewer people participating this time.
But other than that, I think we shall read, or game (House Flipper WAS saved in the cloud, all is fine), or draw and paint, and slowly work through my story ideas in the hopes of organizing ideas into stories, and continue on my morning pages.
And if all that really happens is reading and movies, well, that will be okay, too.
What are your go-to activities when life is uncertain, squiders?
