Feeling more myself

What religion has done to our ideas of pleasure and quality of life should be a crime. It’s all a sin. They have made enjoyment a sin and then normalized it in our society. Our disgust for everyday people has roots here, tearing us apart until we can’t even see the beauty of each of us but instead their hateful, repressive messaging.

Just look at the seven deadly sins:

1. Confidence held by the lowly is pride, and how dare we ever lift our heads and feel good about ourselves. They will come to crush us when we do.
2. Desiring wealth–you know, that thing we all need to survive–is greed because we want what they say isn’t ours to have.
3. The whore for lust, objectified and shamed as if we all don’t have bodies that seek to feel good, to connect to others. Criminalizing our need to love and be social. Censored to be ‘appropriate’ until we must conform to their dress-codes of shame and their sexual codes of who can love who.
4. The desire for better–to be raised above a station of shit and have control–is envy, because again, we’re not allowed to want what we did not inherit. Wealth belongs to the wealthy.
5. To be fat is to be a glutton, and how we starve ourselves of nutrition, joy, simple pleasures and love as a result, keeping us week physically and spiritually.
6. Anger–that perfectly rational, powerful strength each and every one of us has to utilize so we can say enough is ENOUGH–is the sin of wrath because they want us meek, cowed, obedient. Customer service instead of a revolution.
7. To be relaxed, to sink into life and enjoy our time–our only time on this planet, and it is 100% ours to own–is to be sloth, lazy, unworthy of basic respect and dignity because they want us to die in the streets if we won’t lift a finger to work their factories. To trap us in a system that forces us from the day we are born to pay for our ability to live in a shelter, on a piece of land we will never own but always pay for, where we can grow food to live in the soil they polluted while they sell us cardboard and sand to starve on. Where they tell us that our endeavors are only valuable if it makes money, when it is in the creativity of art and play that we are finally free.

They take the human animal and strip us of the very tools we have to feel, to live, to love, to enjoy life, and to fight back, and they call them ‘sins.’ And this, my dears, is why Sadie Sins. Because fuck that repressive, heartless, hateful shit.

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Checking In…

Hey, so I think the first episode of the PATB serial is officially ready. It won’t be available for purchase just yet though. This is my first book launch in a long time, and I need to think a lot about how I want to handle it. Not even along the lines of success–I need to figure out how to do this without bringing unneeded stress into my life that will harm me more than help.

While editing this episode, I was doing a lot of research into my condition and its relation to PTSD, and the correlation is really strong. The human body has built in defense mechanisms that shut it down when it feels required. The same way an animal might feign death when a predator is about to attack, the human body has the same kind of instinctual wiring deep within the nervous system. These systems can turn off dopamine production to stop the obsessive task orientation that can occur in trying to escape once danger has passed, which in turn disrupts motor skills and cognition. It can happen in learned helplessness, or when the body numbs to pain under stress. All these conditions from my emotional and physical numbing I experienced this summer, to the low dopamine symptoms of inability to lift my arms or hold my head up, the cognition loss, etc: these can all be a result of my body having been so ravaged by years of PTSD that it is shutting down as a defense mechanism.

I didn’t realize that just sitting, thinking I was relaxed, wasn’t actually me being relaxed. My body is tight, tense, my mind races, my thoughts hate to be still. I talk a lot about not knowing how to have fun, because, for real, I struggle with it so much. I can’t let myself just enjoy; I think everything I do needs a purpose. My mind knows it’s nonsense, but this is how I live my life. I rush everything–EVERYTHING–because I can’t feel comfortable in the stillness.

Peeps, I decided to start a business when I thought I was fucking dying! Not just the author stuff, either, btw. No, that was the ‘easy’ business. Before I got into writing, I was thinking of sculpting small figures, mass producing them, painting them with airbrushes, and selling them. My arms were so weak I could barely lift them, but I thought maybe I’d knit or crochet things to sell, or create a zillion of these beautiful tree of life necklaces I had designed. That might seem super cool ‘way to fight to live’ kinda bullshit, but that was me killing myself with stress when I needed more than anything to rest. I am fucked and never saw how damn bad it was.

When you read my first books, you’re looking through a brain of a traumatized individual who didn’t like to look around at the world, and therefore had difficulty describing it in words. Who was never really in her body, and therefore couldn’t convey the weight, the sensation, the depth of concrete imagery. I couldn’t write a complete sentence without rushing because a part of me is so uncomfortable being heard and sitting with my thoughts, that I just rush to the next idea, getting through it all instead of enjoying the experience. If you ever had a conversation with me in real life, whoo, it’s rough. I can’t finish my sentences without rushing through. I can’t handle being heard by others, partly because I don’t feel comfortable hearing myself.

I have been running on adrenaline for so long, I don’t know what calm actually is. But I need to figure it out because when I fail and I start rushing again, my body shuts down. It will hit me with a fever, or take the use of my arms away and force me to fall asleep, or will make it so I can’t focus, and I’ll get distracted by whatever, because ‘whatever’ isn’t stressing me out the way the other thing was I was trying to focus on. And it’s not like ‘things’ stress me out–I stress myself out over things. I’m the one doing this shit to myself. I strive to be perfect, controlled, useful, driven and exact instead of just letting myself exist.

I think I realized just why I like shifters so much, because my inner primitive animal is fighting me for control of my body, demanding I change or be knocked out of life for a while. Ha, and no, I didn’t see that when I started writing but it sure seems obvious now. It’s important I figure this out, and as a result, I need to slow down and see where I’m creating stress. I need to find the space between my thoughts and feel comfortable sitting with me. I’m practicing mindfulness lately, and looking at an interesting read about dystonia–dystonia is the movement disorder side of Parkinson’s, but is also traced to trauma wiring the nervous system. This particular doctor has a theory that movement can rewire the brain back to proper health by engaging and rewiring the nervous system. It’s been helping; just stretching when I feel certain muscles tighten and my energy start draining has given me my movement and energy back really quickly. I can see how my thoughts trigger the flares now, how stress does, how self doubt… It’s a lot to take in, and I’m being super slow with that too because I have a habit of jumping in to new health treatments and pushing to get results like I’m running a marathon instead of allowing myself to relax and heal.

I am so hard on myself, peeps, it feels impossible to put into words because I still can’t grasp it. It’s that aspect of my personality–this rigid, demanding drive to succeed at everything including healing–that is likely the source of so much of my problems. I am terrified of looking at myself, so I DO–I run around doing things, putting these value systems on the tasks I do to feel like I’m therefore a valuable person. But if I can’t value myself at rest, I am never actually valuing me, so the vicious cycle continues. I need to find that deep compassion I can find so easily for everyone I meet and actually turn it inward and let myself be okay existing.

It’s tough right now. It’s good to finally see this big link to it all, but whoo, it’s tough to face it at the same time. There are so many things I want to do, but because I let this get so bad, I need to pace myself and do the inner work. I’m waiting for the day I’ll finally sink into my body, sink into my life, and I won’t have to question it all, just experience.

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I think it’s done… It was weirdly easy, so it’s hard to trust that I didn’t mess something up. XD Emails have been sent with passwords. Sign ups should work as expected now. I have rebuilt the shop (cuz it worked with the old software) and everything is back in there. I’ve only moved active members, aka, if you let your subscription lapse, you’ll have to create a new account, that’s all. For those who bought art and audiobooks and aren’t active, the old membership system is still in place. So if you want to download a backup, you can. You can reach your old content here.
~Sins

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

I’m Alive

Hey, I just wanted to check in with everyone. I had a few hectic weeks and I’ve been all over the place mentally– and a little physically. I ended up in North Carolina for a few days, which was actually really nice. Except for the airport and the racism; that just sucked. I’m pretty fucking disgusted with how acceptable racism is the further south I travel. It’s so common culturally, I don’t think people even realize they’re indoctrinated in it. :/

I’m working on the PATB Serial to get the first episode ready for publishing. My goal is to post some scenes from different short stories as I work on that, just to give you all something new to read, but without my brain needing to jump from past to future in the PATB series. Less confusion, less redundancy, less boredom.

I’m musing about a lot of shit lately. I might be slipping into (or squatted right down in the middle of) a midlife crisis of sorts. My birthday is on the 12th. I’m facing how I’m ‘healthy’ yet have lost a lot of passion and joy and drive in my life be it from the Parkinson’s or something else, maybe stagnation after being ill for so long? I’m not sure– maybe it’s everything. Maybe I’m just not good at sitting still, and I’m fighting a lot of guilt around that because I don’t know how to balance my life between work and living. Work has been my creative endeavors, always, and that is my passion. I’m not feeling the spark. I haven’t for months now.

It might be time to look into hiring help, writers who are willing to flesh out my outlines–outlining being where I feel most like the creative soul I am. But money has been difficult because my productivity has been down (fucking common sense there,) and it’s just a frustrating cycle right now. Because I don’t know if it’s the answer, and finding out if it’s the answer feels like this big leap of faith. I am very good in conflict, a grand procrastinator who writes term papers in an evening and gets A’s on that shit. And I worry that’s what I’m doing to myself now. Just looking for any old cliff I may fall off of, and waiting until it feels inevitable that I’m going to tumble until I finally act.

I don’t want to be that kind of person in life, especially when it comes to my work. But it’s honest to who I have been up to this point with mold toxicity and death seeming to loom just ahead as I wrote to keep from falling into that pit. I don’t know. It’s been long years only knowing how to live one way, that way full of anxiety and fight and flight at every turn. I am as I am, yet struggle in knowing how to be this way without trauma or illness. I took all this time just waiting to see if my chemistry/my love of life would kick in already and point me where I really want to go. It’s not happening. No sparks.

It might be a midlife/newbirth crisis. >_> It might be my surroundings. I am very isolated lately with little ability to go out into the world. My car needs repairs (finally have it in the shop now) and being ill has been very effective at cutting people out of my life. I miss being around different people and borrowing a bit of their energy to spark my creativity. I miss sharing art and being good at shit and not having to feel guilty–do you know how many times I apologize for being good at stuff because I know it’s not normal for others to just jump into a field and flourish? Ugh. Self awareness is the worst. Maybe I’ll avoid creativity all together. I don’t think I’m even seeking intellectual curiosity at this point but the basic chemical reactions that are part of being a social animal. I might be happy just to hear about other people’s lives and then go home and write a crazy story… I miss conversation. I wish people could fucking understand me and talk about more than the weather or the mundane, but fuck it, I’ll take what I can get.

There is so much shit I want to do that I don’t have the money for. That could be what’s crushing me a bit. Like, I seriously want to find a software where I can create 3D renders of my characters that look 2D (because I’m not a huge fan of hyper-realism for anime style art and I want to work with outlines) and then use that shit to make elaborate interactive novels. Sculpt, pose and repeat. I mean, legit, that would be fucking fun. But I totally bet that kind of software isn’t cheap — might not even be available unless I have some crazy computer set up. Maybe this is my brain fail lately. I definitely still have creative sparks, but the projects I want to do and the way to execute them feel beyond my means. I don’t want to waste time lining the same characters and coloring them, etc, etc, when my brain already sees such an obvious shortcut of ‘just get the right software so you can do other shit at the same time.’ It’s not a lack of passion, so much as, I see that the wrong path will waste the little energy and time I have, so if I’m going to do this shit, I want to take the most efficient path.

I have about 5 different interactive novels/mini video games in my head that I can’t fucking touch because I feel held back by a lack of knowledge, and more importantly, resources. What an ugly feeling frustration is– no wonder I’ve been ignoring it. If indie creators can create elaborate handheld minigames, the software has to be out there, right? I’ve found software for turning graphics and text into an actual game, but not how to render 3D characters–not quickly or efficiently while also cheap, at least. But it’s totally out there, just closer to the video game aspect instead of the interactive novel aspect. I bet I could find info when searching there instead…

This is a big, fucking spiel of whatever. Why do I feel so defeated when I haven’t even started? This just isn’t like me. Where did my beautiful, manic self go who didn’t believe anything could slow me down?

I don’t think I talked a lot about this here, but I’ve been researching into how gut biome affects mood/behavior/personality, and I wonder if this is a symptom of my new gut biome. I might have lost something essential without realizing it. We are in reality manifestations of our biology, psyche, and environment. In the same way we react to stressors in our environment, we act in ways programed by our biology and set by our psyche. PTSD might seem like a disorder of the psyche, but the psyche has only adapted to previous memories and the biological forces that are pushing it. It rationalizes but doesn’t necessarily define. So, what if in targeting the Candida that was producing neurotoxins that were destroying my dopamine transmitter genes, I wiped out something in the gut biome that allowed me to act on impulse, that allowed creativity to flow without giving self doubt time to flood in? It was easy to discover the bacteria that created dopamine and use that to cure my Parkinson’s, but what element leads to inspiration/creativity/impulse? Where did my inner daredevil go and is that as easily programmed back in?

I’m rambling, but eh. This is the part of me I miss. I want to find my fun mania again. It was never ‘out of control’ for me the way people would describe their creative genius. It was just a way to live without all the mundane shit overwhelming in and trying to pretend it had value. Who the fuck wants to be bored in life, really? What lie is that that being stable and in control means a lack of lust for life? Why wouldn’t you want every moment to be fun, a challenge, a new thing to learn and overcome? This weird apathy (which I fear is long term damage from the Parkinson’s) strips all the joy away until life is about going through the motions, mechanical and dull. That’s not real living; it’s fucking sociopathy when we take away our chemical reactions to stimuli. :/

How frustrating to see this as a far more difficult problem to overcome than the PTSD and mold induced Parkinson’s. Because when my lust for life dulls, my passion to problem solve fades as well, and it is so much harder to act… I guess I’ll look at the chemical byproducts of Candida. Maybe the answer is in the microbiome I cleared out.

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Catching Up

So I found myself with a numbing of emotions and sensation the last week or so directly after my PATB editing session. I have not been feeling talkative– haven’t been feeling much of anything, to be real about it XD but I thought I should check in as I narrow down potential sources and start to find myself again.

Firstly, I have a lineup of the covers I made for Wendy’s Foundling series to share now that they’re all complete. Expect to find them available sometime this summer. I’ll be linking when it happens. 😉

I’m really proud of how these came out. I can see my brain working when it comes to color and contrast again. These pushed me to be a better artist and I’m happy with the results of that challenge.

As for other things, such as a lack of emotion… I first suspected it was either Parkinson’s or mold related. I haven’t fully gotten free of my current moldy place, and it’s always my first suspect given the hell mold has put me through. But I think the end result might be drug related– supplement related for less of a sting. I have a damaged dopamine system from long term mold exposure, dopamine being the main neurotransmitter that is involved in Parkinson’s. My biggest worry was that I may have gained a level of apathy as a result of that being damaged even though I’ve reversed every other symptom. Apathy is a serious problem with Parkinson’s and it is one of those things where they know it correlates to the dopamine system but doesn’t always fix when dopamine levels are restored.

But just in case that wasn’t the issue, I started looking into the supplements I take daily, many to either repair that damaged dopamine system, support it, protect it, or clean the body of the neurotoxins the mold left in me. It looks like my high doses of NAC (cellular detoxifier) might be the problem after some research and experiments. It’s early, but so far so good. My feelings are returning and I’m starting to add in other supplements to see what happens.

What I find absolutely fascinating about all this is observing my behavior when I lose my emotions. It is so obvious how we are chemical beings who live off of pleasure and avoidance of pain, because when both were taken away from me, nothing was worth doing. I wasn’t burned by hot bath water, nor got any pleasure from completing tasks or interacting with people. It was chemical castration where I had to build habits because on a biological level, I had no incentive to do anything. No little thrill in creativity or touch of anxiety if a bill was looming. We are purely impulse to our environment (after being established biologically through our genetics, chemicals, and beliefs systems that dictate the conceptualization of the world that then affects those chemicals) and without chemical reaction to stimuli, we are lumps. Lumps that aren’t even necessarily motivated in not being lumps. @[email protected]

I have literally been framing positive habits to live by because my internal motivation drive had been suffering for months now. I was once the type of person who would stay up until the wee hours of the morning, loving every moment of the creative process, reluctant to go to bed (mostly slept like the damned) and then would roll out of the blankets and get right back to the love of writing or arting or learning the moment I woke up. It is incomprehensible to suddenly lose that drive. I had to give myself a path to follow because I had no interest in doing anything, when before I loved every challenge, every new discovery just waiting for me to find.

I’m hoping that has now recovered, or will fully once I’m certain I’ve found the correct source of this issue. I miss who I am when I feel. I seriously hope it’s not related to the Parkinson’s given there are few treatments if it is. I suppose time will tell…

So a little note if you’re seeking escape from any kind of suffering. It’s good to remember full escape from suffering to the point you can’t perceive emotions is antithesis to being alive. Stress is positive — essential for motivation and drive and creation — as long as it’s in safe doses. We are reactionary beings of impulse. Even I, an introvert who can stimulate my cerebral cortex into action without needing external help, still needs chemical reactions to happen in my brain, otherwise there is no enjoyment of life.

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Neurotic writing: Clarity vs Flow

Okay, so I just spent the last 2 weeks getting Episode #1 to fit a more mainstream writing style. Short, concise sentences with a lot of adjectives removed. Direct simple sentences. And here we are. I fucking hate it.

I don’t like the flow. It’s gone. The flow is gone. But does it fucking matter if people can’t understand my long, run on sentences?

Am I fucking myself over by 1) deciding flow is more important or 2) deciding clarity of thought is? I spent days on each scene when I first wrote them to ensure that ideas were conveyed clearly with flow, and then spent a few hours for each scene to slice those sentences up to compromise with a style of writing that I don’t even subscribe to. But I’d be a fool to think my brain is anyway the judge of this shit, right?

I like decisions. I like basic answers that I can then go, okay, writing conform to this so I don’t have to overthink shit (like I am now.) I don’t even know if this is coming from a place of ‘artistic integrity’ so much as just plain fucking reality of I don’t like how I write when I write the way main stream books expect writing to be.

What wins?

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Wendy’s Latest Cover!

Did somebody say yellow? (No? Just me, I guess. >_>) OMF, I figured out how to use yellow in an image. It never happens, never. I think the mold toxicity seriously damaged some certain aspect of my brain, and color was in the mix. But no more. ♥♥♥ Something must have healed recently cuz not only do we have some lovely yellow shades in here, but it’s not covered in black either. Fucking winning. (My standards for winning, if you haven’t realized yet, are pretty fucking low. But still–Winning!!! XD)

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Hey babes,

So, for starters I saw Brea has her latest book out, and it looks super fucking adorable—crazy adorable! <3 So I’m smacking it at the top here for anyone who needs a sweet pick me up this weekend.

His Bewildered Mate by Brea Alepoú

True mates are found in the most unlikely of places.

Rhy, a weretiger with a heart so big, that when an elderly woman comes in looking for her lost cat, Mr. Fluffkins, Rhy knew he had to help. He had no way of knowing that it would lead him to his true mate.

Dillan (Mr. Fluffkins), has lived his whole life wishing he was more than just a cat. He never felt right walking around on four paws. He tried to be a normal cat; tried to talk to other animals but it wasn’t possible. They couldn’t think in full sentences or communicate. It was more of feeling they had then what they thought. He watched television, so he could studying humans and what they did. He wanted to interact like humans. His owners showed one another so much love and were always doing something together. Dillan ached to have what they have.

Love, loss, and tender moments. A dream to have the one person that completes you.

Warning** Slow burn. This book is shifter Mpreg pregnancy is mentioned in this book. this is the first book of the series. The series will need to be read in order, as new couples will be introduced but old one’s stories will continue. They will be intertwined. This is a HEA.

What’s up?

I have spent the last 2 weeks really chill. Very calm. Even got a tooth infection last week, but I’m doing really well. Just calm, chill, trying to get used to realizing my body has been tense as fuck forever. I put some blue fairy lights up in the porch I’ve been using as a writing room, and it’s like hanging out in sapphire while listening to some great, calming music. I’m obsessed with Metric at the moment, the album “Grow up and Blow Away” usually playing in the background.

I haven’t had a single Parkinson’s symptom since I started this calm down experiment. When I notice my stress levels rising, or that I’m pushing myself too hard, I stop, I relax, I unwind the rock my stomach has turned into, and I’m good.

Amazingly enough, because of this, I’ve stopped thinking of myself as sick. I haven’t been thinking in terms of I have Parkinson’s or mold toxicity or even PTSD. I’ve just been thinking, oh, that feels stressful on my body. Let’s not have all that stress. It’s doing good things for how I think about myself, where I’m not labeling myself with these pretty big, unpleasant illnesses 24-7, and I’m not narrating giant hoops I need to jump through to be allowed to feel okay. It’s just about not stressing.

Learning to write calmly

I updated a couple of fanfics on the website the last two weeks. I also added these really quick to read dates so you can see the last time a story was updated at a glance. What else… I’ve had a few breakthroughs on the writing front. Now that I could see that I was putting so much pressure on my writing, I was able to kind of side step some of that pressure. But only some.

Last night I had a mini epiphany about a big issue with my creativity. I had been digging up these outlines I have of stories I want to make—I love these stories—but I feel so overwhelmed every time I look at them. I don’t know if you peeps remember what happened to me a little while back. Instafreebie had decided to feature Blackthorne and I had a mini freak out. The book wasn’t well put together. In the matter of a week, I made a new cover, and started editing the 100,000 word book, rewriting large chunks of it. And I was killing myself—I was still sick, and here I was breaking myself over something stupid as fuck. And once it was pointed out to me, I stopped. I let it go… and I haven’t looked at editing Blackthorne since.

It was all or nothing.

I have this habit where everything I do is climbing a mountain. It was why I stopped digital painting. I know what it takes to get to the end of a polished, highly realistic painting. I know the steps, I know the hours on hours put in, and I know I can get to that ending and have an amazing product. But I don’t want to do the work because, unlike normal people who can pace themselves and do other things while they create, I’m a fucking psycho who wants to sprint to the finish line right at the beginning of a marathon. I don’t know how to balance my creative endeavors. It’s why they always seemed so rushed—I was rushing to get everything down before I became too exhausted to keep the pace.

I have no idea how to be anything else, partially because this habit was created out of me being stuck in PTSD mode. My body cannot survive that type of creative process. Plain and simple. But my psyche cannot survive a world without creativity either. So I need to figure out how to flow, how to pace myself, how to have fun, how to stop and be able to start up later after doing something else. I have to stop trying to be a writing machine—I’m too organic to be any good at it. XD

Right now, when I look at all the stories I want to write, all I’m seeing are mountains because that’s what I turn each project into. I’m hoping if I can see that each project is just a little bit of calm time spent enjoying myself—you know, a nice walk instead of an exhausting climb—I’ll start looking at creating differently.

I guess we’ll see how it goes… The last few weeks have been amazing. I didn’t even think I could get this far in just relaxing. I feel like a different person, someone I didn’t even know was here, allowed to exist. I thought it was normal to feel super alert all the time. Now, I can see it was just PTSD that I thought was normal. Life the last few weeks has been feeling a bit like being drugged and happy (without the drugs) because I can be alert in the world, in my life, without being tense at the same time. I just never knew it was a possibility until now.

Hope you’re all doing well! ^.^

 

Hey peeps,

Ugh, so the first episode of the Paranormal Academy For Troubled Boys serial is ready to publish. Why ugh? Because I’m trying to figure out how the fuck to post this story without burning myself out during the process.

I’ve been realizing some big stuff this summer. One is how I’m an overachiever who undervalues herself so much I couldn’t even tell I was an overachiever. Two, that I’ve locked down my subconscious so well in the need to ‘adult’ that I haven’t allowed myself to daydream or think about stories that aren’t about building the Sadie Sins brand—aka, this is why writing is no longer fun. I’ve been so focused on trying to turn my writing into a living that I lost what I loved about writing, which was the fun, crazy ideas.

Thirdly, and probably most damning, I found a connection between my health problems and PTSD. A big connection. :/ We’re talking psychosomatic death feigning, learned helplessness, and dopamine suppression as the brain forces the body to ‘give up’ a fruitless task to stop it from neurotically obsessing until it breaks. I realized that living with the anxiety PTSD gave me for over 30 years had turned me up to 11, and when I ‘got better,’ I only calmed down to something like an 8. I’m still stressing myself out, I’m still holding onto twisted values that keep pushing me to do, do DO! And I have become so used to this stressful drive, that I couldn’t see it, like, at all.

I’m a control freak (okay, I already knew that) but I didn’t see how bad it really was. Because I was the crazy fuck who, when I thought I was dying, decided it was time to start a business just to pass the time. Yeah, my body was so sick, exhausted, and burnt out from my overactive immune system responding to everything, but I decided to ‘push through’ like a WINNER and ignore all that. Because I am fucked in the head and only just now seeing the extent.

My body is trying to stop my self destructive patterns by literally stopping me flat. And I thought at first, whoa, that’s crazy. How could I even think that about myself? But then I started practicing mindfulness again, started really looking at what happens right before the Parkinson’s flares and the messages happening in my mind. I had a flare right after a bad driving scare—literally life and death response. Then I had a flare when I had the house to myself for a day and then my bf came home and I realized, nope, I’m not okay with sharing a bedroom indefinitely—I want my fucking space! But it wasn’t until I faced that feeling that the flare stopped just as quickly as it started. I started getting a flare when out on a long walk, and instead of ‘suffering through’ like I normally would, I stopped, stretched, regrouped my emotional core, and the feeling passed and my energy returned.

So yeah, it’s me. I’m stressing myself into sickness.

I figure it’s like this…

My body got used to breaking after 5+ years of mold toxicity and low dopamine, and now that everything is ‘fine,’ it has decided certain triggers—thoughts, emotions, behaviors—are going to start that cascade effect all over again. The neural pathways are still there, set deep into my brain and nervous system. It’s not the smell of mold setting me off anymore, but when I feel emotionally trapped in a situation. It’s not dust mites or cat dander, but when I ignore that my muscles are tensing and I don’t relax my body as needed. I don’t have to worry about pollen anymore—I got a little pill for that. But I have no pill for the stress I weigh myself down with when I put too much expectation on myself and the simple things I do.

It’s such a contradiction to who I am in so many ways. Because I know—I KNOW— the value of a person is in that they exist. That’s it. If you exist, you are already worthy of compassion and respect. You don’t have to do anything or achieve anything or have a buttload of wealth or be super nice to be valued. You exist and that’s enough. I know this, but my subconscious is still running on old trauma wiring that tells me that I can only be worthy if I do things, and I have to do them really well, and people have to like them, and if people don’t like what I do then that means they don’t like me and I must be a terrible person. And how do I know if people like what I do? Well, what does society tell us? We learn that unless we have great wealth, we are not valued by society, that we are worthless enough to die outside a hospital with no one caring. Not being wealthy means you’re a lazy, worthless person who just isn’t trying to contribute to society, right?

It is difficult to be a human in this world of humans that was crafted around the idea that people are only valuable if they appear to have succeeded in life. Even as I know that these ideas of success are absolute nonsense, a lower part of my brain absorbs these messages and pushes me to survive by these irrational rules. It’s exhausting. I have spent years unconsciously trying to gain self worth from something that has absolutely nothing to do with my worth—and it hasn’t helped that the self improvement industry sells these ideas to us like they’re spiritual enlightenment. Really, think about it. We don’t have gurus like Ghandi anymore who discarded his worldly possessions and his ego to do what he could to help the world. We have CEOs swearing if you reach enlightenment, you’ll be wealthy beyond your dreams, you’ll be valuable to society, recognized for your greatness and intelligence. You’ll win the human lottery if you just figure out how to be spiritually, physically, mentally, and motivationally perfect. Discard your want of worldly possessions and you will be able to hoard all the shit you want in a giant mansion. If you overcome being an overachiever, you will be able to DO MORE THINGS! (not fucking joking; this was the message that smacked me over the head when I started looking up how to stop being an overachiever.)

I need a mental break from myself and this fucked up world

One of the things I noticed when I realized what the fuck I was doing to myself and how destructive the messaging surrounding me was that I started to be able to let my thoughts wander. I allowed myself to be bored. I’m thinking about stories that I don’t see much immediate financial gain in, but I do see fun in the journey of writing them. But this is not an overnight process. I have been wired to break myself at every turn—just the crushing guilt of not publishing in months has been brutal—and I need to find ways around that through habits, healthy messaging, and a fuck ton of mindfulness. I need to exposure therapy myself out of perfectionism and need for control.

Under it all is this little, vulnerable voice demanding if I just do everything right, I will never be hurt, I will never feel alone or sad or like a failure. If I just plan enough, stress enough, double/triple check until my eyes bleed, I will be safe. It’s a very sad, lonely voice who already feels like a failure and is just projecting it onto everything I do. It is very tiring to live this way, so driven to achieve something where I can’t even notice that I’m breaking myself out of poor self esteem. I don’t know how to relax—all those years stuck in bed and I never learned how to relax, just how to ignore the pain and exhaustion I was feeling. Really, it’s seriously sad to even think about.

I found myself in a profession that has a lot of excuses to give into that perfectionist voice. I’m not just talking about editing and ensuring my grammar is perfect along with spelling and comma placement and every pointless fucking rule in the English language that rears its head. (If you have a visceral reaction to hearing that the rules to our made up language are pointless, you might want to see if you’re dealing with perfectionist issues. Not joking.) This self publishing shit is about pattern recognition, algorithms, SEO for keywords, genre trends—there is so much fucking minutia in publishing your own books that can really trigger that obsessive voice in my head to DO THINGS RIGHT, which then in turn freezes me because it’s just too much stress—gotta get the ARCs out before the book goes live, gotta start marketing and setting up networking to coincide with the release date, gotta create the perfect blurb hook, gotta space those book releases 3 to 4 weeks apart before you fall off the Amazon front page from the KU new book boost—There is a lot to this process that just screams for perfection while whispering if you do it right, if you hit it the right way, you will be rewarded and never stress again. You will win the book lottery where you will finally be recognized and rewarded for killing yourself over fucking fantasy.

It’s a misery fest for my already fucked up mental stability. So I gotta find a way to balance this shit so I don’t self destruct. It’s like poking at a pimple until you realize half your face is swollen and you have a giant bloody wound in the middle of your cheek because you can’t just let shit go.

I don’t know how I’m going to handle this, I’ll be real. Part of me wants to throw the book on Amazon and not anything else, just ignore it. That seems self destructive in its own right where I can only do something by not being part of the process. I’m considering a preorder, something where I can force myself to slow down and take a month or something so I won’t be allowed to overwhelm myself by trying to do it all in one moment. I know nothing about preorder stats and ranking, so I can’t fall into the pattern recognition game of NEEDING TO DO IT RIGHT! I don’t know what’s right for it, so it will just be what it is, a way to give myself a break.

The book is done, the cover is made, it’s all edited, I just need to create some space between me and the actual publishing of the book so I don’t fall into the shit that hits me after every book release.

Learning to be idle

So… yeah, that’s my crazy rant of the week. I’m facing the fact that I torture myself over everything and in doing so, have lost all sense of fun and enjoyment in what I do. It has been on such a subconscious level, I couldn’t even see the connection to the apathy, the exhaustion, the emotion = body stopping. It has slowed me down—I don’t want to think of getting past overachieving as a way to achieve better productivity—but the truth is, the psychological shit I’ve been weighing myself with has absolutely resulted in a level of writer’s block. And it’s fucked, because I designed my website to get around the pressure of self publishing and freaking myself out!

It’s all in my head. =_= I will carry this with me no matter what I do until I figure out how to let it go. I’ve been reading some essays on the wonderfulness of being idle, trying to get into a mindset that is so alien to me after all these years. But that too could be the PTSD. When you’re running from your own thoughts for years, giving space to think can feel overwhelming too.

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer and not being an obsessive, neurotic wreck. ^.^ The crickets sound amazing just buzzing in the quiet night.

Hey babes,

Guys, I totally missed the fact that ICE raids were happening this weekend when I sent out the Newsletter talking about covers and visual novels and damn…

I’m so sorry. I’m living in my own little world of illness and creativity, and I’m really fucking privileged to not have to personally worry about this. The news is so full of misery that I can only tune in so much. To all the people with family, friends, loved ones and acquaintances facing this hate based ethnic cleansing currently tearing through the US pulling families and communities apart, my heart goes out to you. Please stay safe, and stay strong.

You are worthy, just like we all are, and I’m so sorry that you have to live in fear based on something as wholly insignificant as the place of your birth. Humans keep making these inane, insane rules and then point to them like they’re supposed to mean a fucking thing. No wall or border or culture or language or accumulation of wealth can separate the fact that we’re all human, all deserving, all equal of being treated with respect and dignity. I hate that it’s the worst of us running the show, while the best of us are just wondering how to fucking cope with it all.

Remember, don’t open the door. “An ICE deportation warrant is not the same as a search warrant. If that is the only document ICE brings to a home raid, ICE does not have a legal right to enter a home.”

Stay safe. You’re loved even if these bigoted fucks make you feel anything but.