It’s My Birthday or I’ll Cry If I Want To

So, it’s that time of the year again. I apologize for the long wait, but things have happened that took away from my free time, and for several months, I felt like I could barely breathe, let alone post to my website. Still, I wanted to keep up the traditional end of the year recap, so here it is.

Well, I can’t say things have gotten much better for me. In fact, some things have gotten worse. Back in July, I got an offer to work at another local law office, and since I missed it, I went for it. I managed to get the job, but it didn’t go like I hoped it would. I put everything into it, but my best ended up not being good enough. On top of that, with the change in income, I had to get new insurance…which caused problems with my specialty pharmacy and getting the medication that I basically need to be functional. Then, when I finally got everything straightened out with that, I got fired. I’m not sure I want to continue on in the legal profession as a result. Mostly because of the time of the year, finding something to replace the lost income has been difficult, but I’m trying to get unemployment, though that might be a struggle of its own.

So that’s a lot of the reason I didn’t do NanNoWriMo this year. I also couldn’t think of a good plot for a novel. That, and pretty much no one from my usual group was doing it, so that really took it out of my motivation. I’ll look into it this coming year, but I’m not going to promise anything. I’ve got other irons in the fire I need to tend first.

Yeah, this year has been just about as positive as I thought it was going to be, which is to say, not really. Though the future without an income of my own is a little scary, Tim assures me that we can make it with his income. It just hits the depression even harder as it tends to reinforce the old standby of “no one wants me.” I know it’s not completely true as Tim and I will have been a couple for two decades in the coming year, and I do have some real friends, but other relationships have been kind of rocky otherwise. The gut punch is that on top of the depression I’ve basically been fighting since I was a kid, I’ve got a life changing disease that is encouraged to have a large network of people you can depend on to help you through…and I think I can basically count my support system on two hands.

It’s not all completely doom and gloom though. Being out of work allows me a little more time to do some of the things I enjoy, like video games. I picked up some new ones, so I need to psych myself up to play them, or push myself to get into the backlog, but I’m working on it. Tim and I are playing Pathfinder with some friends, which has been fun, sporadic though it’s been with trying to get everyone together for a session. I’m playing something different for me, which is a half-orc paladin. While lawful good, it’s more of a Batman sort of a mindset. I’m also trying to get myself back into more regular writing, though I took some time to help a friend with his novel. I started up a fanfic mash-up between two of my loves in life: Star Wars and The Legend of Zelda where it is the plots of original movies but set in the Zelda universe. I’m thinking about posting it here as a weekly or so serial since I think there may be some interest in it. I got the idea from one of my shirts (which I am wearing today) that has Link and Ganon fighting, but visually, it’s done like the iconic lightsaber battle in Empire. So I wondered what that might actually be like. We’ll find out how successful I am.

At least today hasn’t been a total waste. I started off feeling the weight of my depression, but Tim took me out to breakfast at a local “diner.” (I say it this way because I’ve been to proper diners on the East Coast, and they have a certain feel this place almost has but doesn’t.) The food isn’t exactly that exotic or the menu changing, but it’s good, and the staff knows us, so it’s a friendly place. Our biggest concern was physically getting in. Our section of the county got hit with a bunch of ice that covered the roads yesterday. We had like 82 car wrecks over the day, and it didn’t really melt off until today. Fortunately, enough had melted off that we could move around just fine outside. I also got a 2018 Breath of the Wild calendar from Tim and a Roku stick. I got a new TV for our bedroom since Tim got a PS4 Pro, so I inherited the previous PS4, and about the only place to put it was our bedroom, and the TV in there was a CRT. So, I have access to watching things on the PS4, but I usually have it covered to keep the dust out of it, and if I want to watch something in the morning, I generally don’t want to get out of the bed and uncover it to do stuff. The TV has Netflix built in, but sometimes, I want other options. Anyhoo, we went out to dinner at a local steakhouse, where I had what used to be my usual birthday dinner (beef stroganoff, but this made with prime rib), some pretty good spinach and artichoke dip, and since I got stuffed, a piece of red velvet cake (My favorite) for later. The rest of the day has been pretty slow and quiet, but I’m not complaining about that. No news is good news, right?

As the year comes to a close, I once again hope the next one is going to be better, but if history has taught me anything, it probably won’t. I keep getting told that its pessimism, but trends tend to be more realism than anything else. Hey, I’d love to believe things are going to get better, but when they don’t play out that way, I don’t want to fall into the cognitive dissonance where reality interferes with beliefs. I’ve got enough problems with that anyway.

While things might be on a downward spiral for me, I still would like to wish everyone a safe and prosperous new year. See you on the other side!