New Year’s Corrections

I am not a fan of New Year’s Resolutions. They always seemed to be set ups for failure and always a perverse tradition of adding stress and deadlines after what is supposed to be a relaxing period. I am certainly reconsidering that attitude.

I have a different attitude now due to some recent medical scares. My yearly physical revealed an irregularity with my heartbeat and I was sent to take a stress echo test of my heart. I was also diagnosed with my pituitary gland not producing the hormone to tell my testicles to create testosterone. I was scheduled to have an MRI of my head to see if there are any tumors. Medical science being what it is, I had to make appointments, wait, fill out forms, wait, have the tests done and then wait for the results to be analyzed. As a writer, waiting is pretty much asking my brain to conjure up all sorts of negative scenarios. I’ve been a little stressed.

This stress has made me reconsider the way I do things. I tend to create pressure for myself without the help of others. I religiously come up with a new story to post every week because I feel that if I didn’t post a story, there would be next to no reason to visit my blog every week. I also want to make more books and long stories but that 52 stories a year deadline is a killer. I put out four books last year, 52 stories and wrote the majority of a 5th book. That is pretty nice and I am proud of it but it is also exhausting. I know I should slow down but it is very hard to do so without feeling like I am lazy.

My heart echo came back and my heart is great. Today I find out about the MRI and whether I will need surgery. Even if I do, there is not much risk to my overall health. All in all I am in good hands but man, weeks of waiting for tests and results have worn me down. It killed my writing and not writing stressed me out more. I felt like I was a failure at my own hobby.

With that in mind, I am going to aim for a bit more relaxation. I can’t do much to reduce my work stress except perhaps give less of a fuck, but I am going to work really hard on not being my own worse enemy. I may recycle more pre-blog stories into the blog on Wednesdays to give myself more weeks off. I may give up posting weekly altogether if I find myself on a good streak of writing chapters for one of my books.

I am still debating what to do but my overall goal is to fucking relax. I love writing and I will never stop but sometimes I just don’t have anything written for you right now. Does that make sense?

Picture is of London Andrews because holy shit, every year needs something beautiful to start with.