Are my Wednesdays cursed?

Last Wednesday I had an incredibly shitty day and I wrote about it here. This Wednesday I spent the day in crippling pain. The kind of stabbed-in-the-hip-with-a-rusty-breadknife, 50-point-IQ-drop, can-barely-spare-the-brain-cells-to-speak sort of pain that people really don’t want to hear about when they ask you how you are. It was the kind of pain where sitting hurts, standing hurts worse, and laying down is by turns either much better or much worse.

And then my chair broke. My writing chair. The only chair in the house from which I can type and put my feet up. I was too tired and sore to work out what was wrong with it so I went to bed. This morning my other half tried to fix it and found out (by sitting on it) that the central post it swivelled on was completely sheared off.

So my writing chair is broken beyond repair. I have no money for a replacement. It’s NaNoWriMo in five days. I don’t even know anyone I could borrow the money from. I can’t ask my mother. She’s still in hospital and she’s gong to have to spend thousands on handrails and a stairlift so she can go home.

The most annoying thing is that I should have a chair. Local Councils are supposed to supply equipment to disabled people who need them. I used to have a rise and recline chair that was perfect for my needs but I had to give it back to the Council when I moved. In my new area there are so many people who need them that the Council only lends them to people undergoing end of life care at home.  You need to be literally dying to get a comfy chair.

If you’re wondering why I don’t just go and buy one of these fancy chairs it’s because the kind I need starts at £1800. That’s why I had to pay for a cheap and shitty one that lasted just under two years and now I can’t even afford a cheap and shitty replacement.

So here’s my Ko-fi link. But don’t feel bad about not clicking it. Even if every single reader clicked through and donated the cost of a cup of coffee I still wouldn’t have enough to buy a new chair. I’m only doing this so that when I complain and people ask me if I’ve tried asking for money on the internet I’ll be able to say yes.

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A day in the life of a Spoonie

Let me tell you about how yesterday went.

I woke late in the morning and debated having a shower. I wanted the shower, I probably needed the shower but I didn’t have the shower because I needed to save the spoons for getting dressed and going out. I eventually persuaded my aching and uncooperative body out of bed around lunch time. But only because I had an appointment.

I had spent a week trying to get an appointment with a GP at my local practice but ended up settling for an appointment with a nurse practitioner. It’s not that I have any problem with nurse practitioners it’s just that I wanted a potentially complicated problem diagnosed and I think that’s something that doctors are better trained for.

I walked to the surgery even more slowly than usual because my left ankle decided to be a whiny little bitch. It was swollen and painful and it was like walking on a leg that has a spike through it. It’s the kind of problem that I often have to deal with and while it doesn’t stop me from going anywhere that I really need to be but it does slow me down and make me regret being alive. In the end I was only 3 minutes late which is not bad given that I’d got the time mixed up and thought my appointment was 10 minutes later than it actually was so in my head I was 7 minutes early.

Because my appointment was with a nurse practitioner I decided to shelve my original plan of saying something like “my hands are messed up and I’d like to know why” and risk raising the spectre of self diagnosis with “I think I might have rheumatoid arthritis in my hands and I’d like to find out and maybe get it treated while my hands still work”. The nurse asked my why I thought that and I was able to answer with some reasonable basis for my hypothesis – pain in my fingertips, leading to swelling in my finger joints, and hey this finger is crooked and no longer bends properly also my mother has rheumatoid arthritis.

I left with an appointment in 2 weeks to get blood tests and another one a week after that to discuss the results of the tests with a GP. The nurse also told me to try a low dose of ibuprofen to deal with the inflamation.

So I hobbled home and got some ibuprofen on the way. I don’t normally keep it in the house because I’m asthmatic and on the whole asthmatics should avoid NSAID painkillers like ibuprofen.

As I entered the pharmacy to buy the Ibuprofen I passed an older white man who said, in a petulant tone, “You’re welcome”. At first I was confused. Was he talking to me? There wasn’t anyone else around? I hadn’t asked him to do anything. I hadn’t spoken at all. He did stand back for a couple of seconds to let me enter before he left. Was he expecting me to thank him for waiting two whole seconds to leave the pharmacy? For allowing someone with a walking stick and in obvious pain to enter instead of pushing past me to get to the carpark? Who knows.

Got home. Now in absolute agony. Like incoherent with pain levels of agony. Decided that it was a good time to try ibuprofen, and also paracetamol (acetaminophen for American readers) and tramadol (synthetic opioid). That succeeded in killing most of the pain but then my eyelids started swelling up in a clear allergic reaction to something. Maybe the ibuprofen but maybe just pollen, I do have hayfever and I had just been outside.

Which was when I realised that I hadn’t bought any antihistamine the last three times I went to the shops. Because I’m a fucking idiot.

We searched the house in the hopes of finding some antihistamines somewhere but there were none. Which meant that one of us had to leave the house and go and buy some. And by one of us I mean me. I’d just spent more than a week trying to talk my spouse into leaving the house but social anxiety and agoraphobia is a nasty combination and the fact that walking anywhere causes them terrible back pain doesn’t help.

So I went back out again. Yes I went back out on my ankle that felt like it had a spike through it. Now with added swollen, horribly painful and not really working very well eyes. And I walked back to the pharmacy where I had bought the ibuprofen.

When I got there it was full of bastards. No, not really. Just full of people. That’s just how it felt to get there and discover that it was suddenly packed with people all of whom were in the queue ahead of me. And the reason for the queue was that the pharmacy was short staffed. So the queue wasn’t moving much. And everyone in the queue ahead of me wanted to complain about the queue. Which meant that the staff had to explain, yet again, about the staffing issue and then apologise for the wait before they could begin to deal with whatever the customer actually wanted.

And of course all the time I was waiting i was standing. On my ankle with it’s imaginary spike through it. Eventually I got to the front, spoke to the pharmacist and she sold me eye drops and tablets that I could safely take together. And then I just had to get home.

I’m fine today. Well fine-ish. Ok it was gone 3pm by the time I got out of bed, I still haven’t had that shower and it’s going to be days before I’m able to do much in the way of housework but I’m not actually dead and apparently that counts as a win.

Everything is terrible.

It’s not just my imagination, is it? We are all fucked. And not in the good way. Politics is fucked. The climate is fucked. The economy is fucked.

In theory it’s not too late. All these problems are fixable. Even the climate. We’ve fixed similar problems in the past. London fixed its killer fogs. China fixed its population growth. Europe fixed its acid rain problem. The world reversed the damage to the ozone layer. It’s not too late to reverse some of the damage, reduce some and prepare for the rest.

But that’s not going to happen. Have you seen the people in charge? Those that are competent enough to do something either lack the will or the power. Our politics is so badly fucked that it will take a generation to fix it and by then it will be too late to do much about the environment.

I don’t think we’ve destroyed the planet. We might have made it uninhabitable for humans but I don’t think so. As a species we’re pretty adaptable. I do think we’ve destroyed our current civilizations though. We might be facing a huge collective loss of technology.

Most of us alive today will probably live through horrible and traumatic change. Our lives are going to be a lot harder and much shorter. I say ‘our’ but since I’m reliant on modern medicine I don’t expect to live through any kind of societal breakdown.

Of course I could be wrong. We could turn it around. We’re pretty smart when we’re not being incredibly stupid. There is still time for someone to come up with something brilliant.

I wish I could believe that it would happen.

One foot in front of the other

I am not having any fun.

It’s worse than that. I’m having whatever the opposite of fun is, the Anti-Fun possibly, and I’d really like it to stop

Everything hurts, doing anything takes an insane level of effort, judging by the weather someone has opened a portal to hell over Scotland and the rest of the world seems to have gone nuts while I wasn’t looking. It’s hard to believe that there’s any point in doing anything.

I have done some things recently but I’m pretty sure that nothing will come of any of them.  However, since I’m typing anyway, I might as well type an update about the few things I managed to con myself into doing.

I decided which of my novels to attempt to pitch at Bloody Scotland. I even wrote a bunch of 100 word pitches for it and picked the best one with some help from my spouse and one of my friends. However I haven’t sent it in yet. I don’t know if there’s any point.

I’ve been working out with weights a bit. As much as I could manage what with my health and this insane weather. I have no idea if it’s making a difference or not.

I am continuing to wear compression garments for my Lipoedema. They seem to be working but I’m currently awaiting new compression leggings. I was measured for them on the 9th. The manufacturer still hasn’t got round to making them. I don’t know how long it will be before they do get round to it. I had to make phone calls to chase things up. I hate making phone calls.

I am so bone tired that I need a new word for it. Exhausted just isn’t enough. Neither is knackered. I am heartsick of the continued burden of existence. I see no point in anything.

I’m trying to persuade myself that I’m excited about the new series of Doctor Who and the trailer for Shazam. I haven’t seen Ant Man and the Wasp yet. There’s Captain Marvel to come. And there’s Infinity War part 2 next year. I haven’t read all of Ben Aaronovitch’s excellent Peter Grant books yet.

You’ll notice that there’s none of my stuff on that list. I’m not even pretending to care about my own novels. They are important to me. I love them. I just can’t muster any enthusiasm for the idea of showing them to anyone. What’s the point?

Dispatch from planet pain

It’s been a while since I wrote anything about living with a chronic pain condition so it’s time for another update. What fun!

The thing about a variable condition like mine is that while the pain never truly goes away it can sometimes lull you into a false sense of security by being less horrible for a while. And then it comes back full force and you remember why your life sucks.

I’ve been having shoulder trouble for a few weeks because I had dared to enjoy myself by playing video games. I cut right back on that and stretched more and just put up with the pain which is how pain management actually works. It doesn’t solve the problem it just helps you to live with it. Which usually means living less.

That’s not the pain I’m writing about now. Though now I think about them my shoulders do feel like I’m wearing lead epaulettes and I wish they’d stop.

Today I woke up and rolled over in bed and I really wished I hadn’t because it feels like some psychopath filled my pelvis and lower spine with broken glass. Holy crap it hurt. It’s still hurting. It’s hurting a bit less because I’ve taken paracetamol (acetaminophen for American readers) and vaped some CBD (cannabidiol, and yes it is legal in the uk).

What I want to say is that if you know someone with chronic pain and you see them smiling and moving around and apparently fine that doesn’t mean that they’re not actively in pain right now. It just means that compared to how much pain they have been in it’s no biggie for them.

If you also have chronic pain and you’re wondering about the CBD here’s the details. It’s legal in the UK. In the US it’s more complicated. In theory it’s legal at the federal level as long as there’s no THC in it but local laws vary.

I get mine from CBD Life, which is a UK based company though they do ship to other countries. I can recommend their vape liquid and their customer service but I have no first hand experience of their other products. That is an affiliate link. If you buy stuff from them I’ll get money off my next order, because I do buy and use their stuff and I want to buy more.

 

And if you want to buy me a coffee, because coffee does help with pain management, you can do it through Ko-fi.

It’s never just one thing.

So in my last post my laptop had died and I discovered that I’d wasted 3 months preparing for a nonexistent competition. How can things get worse?

The good news is that my laptop is fixable and for a reasonable fee. The bad news is that after paying for that and buying Scrivener for the iPad my spouse and I went to the optician to get our eyes tested. I need new glasses and my other half needs two pairs (distance and reading glasses) and my eyesight is so bad that my one pair costs more than both of theirs.

I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. I dread to think what that’s going to reveal.

In addition to being impossibly broke yet again I also have to work out what my writing plan is. Until the debacle with the nonexistent pitch competition my plan was to prepare my current work in progress for the competition then when it failed to garner any interest I was going to query it while trying to fix whatever is wrong with the first one then pitch a third novel at Bloody Scotland in September.

I suppose I could still do the parts that don’t involve the nonexistent pitch but it’s feeling pointless. I can’t work out if it’s my usual terrible self esteem talking or if there’s something wrong with this plan that I’m not letting myself see. There’s this voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me that this can’t possibly work because that’s not how my life works. And it’s not wrong about my life so far. It is kind of insane to expect anyone to value anything I do enough to pay me for it. They never have so far.

I hope I’ll be back with a new blog post about Infinity War soon but it probably wont be until I get my repaired computer back. In the meantime if you want to donate to the fix the computer fund or the actually be able to see fund then you can do it via Ko-Fi. Yes it says that you’re buying me a coffee but I’m allowed to spend the money on something other than coffee. Also coffee is a vital part of the creative process.

There’s also the Shop Of Doom. It’s still closing on May 8th because nobody is buying anything. Which is a pity, I have a couple of the t-shirts and they’re lovely, but I get that they’re pretty expensive and not to everyone’s taste. At least I tried. Having tried is not as much consolation as you’d think. It really doesn’t ease the sting of failure much at all.

Cursed

Let me tell you how my weekend went. On Saturday I took my son to see Infinity War. I was traumatised, I tell you. I’ll talk more about it in another post.

Then I got home to work on my pitch submission and found that my Laptop would no longer charge, probably because the internal socket for the power cable is damaged. So I tried to use the remaining battery life to put in a hurried submission. I did my best and I got something that wasn’t as good as what I would have had if I’d had more time but might have been good enough and I tried to send it in. I filled in the form on the website and it sent me an email with a link to a service to upload my files to XPONorth’s dropbox account.

And that link led to a discontinued service. A service which, according to the copyright date on the page, was discontinued last year. So I emailed XPONorth. And posted on their Facebook page and sent them a message using Facebook Messenger and tweeted about it and mentioned them in the tweet. I’ve heard nothing from them. But I know they’ve seen at least one of the tweets because the official Twitter account liked it.

It would seem that the Writers Pitch to Publishers and Agents event at this year’s XPONorth has been cancelled. But they didn’t do anything sensible like taking down the webpage, disabling the online form or changing the automated email. I have wasted three fucking months preparing for a non existent competition.

And of course my laptop is dead. I hope to get it repaired but that means spending money I shouldn’t be spending. I’m typing this on my iPad which means I’ve had to delete a bunch of apps I was using so I could fit the WordPress app and the Scrivener app onto it. Oh and I had to buy the Scrivener app so I could try to continue work on my novel only the app version doesn’t have the split screen feature that I use to re-write with.

On Sunday I went to Dundee to meet my mother for lunch and chat and a bit of shopping. Well, she shopped. I watched her shop because I need my money for repairing my laptop and buying expensive writing apps.

For some reason my Mother had her laptop with her. I don’t know why she had it. She never mentioned to me that she had it even when I told her about my laptop having died. I only know she had it because that evening, when I was at home, she called me to ask if I remembered at what point she lost it. Well obviously not. If I’d have known that I would have told her at the time.

I’m cursed I tell you, cursed.

If you’re feeling like donating to the ‘repair the computer assuming it can be repaired’ fund then you should use the Ko-fi link. I can’t add it while I’m using the iPad but there should be one on the sidebar or below this post or you could go back a couple of posts to get it. You could also find the link to the Shop o’ Doom in an earlier post. It’s still closing on the 8th of May. Assuming I can close it using the Shopify app.

Exactly how hard do I have to Art?*

*The title of this post was brought to you by this wonderful Chuck Wendig post, ARTING HARD LIKE AN ARTFUL MOTHERFUCKER

There is a myth in the creative industries that I always think of as,

“If you build it they will come.”

Which is just a fancy way of saying,

“If you art hard enough eventually people will notice and the transformative powers of capitalism will turn the attention into money.”

This is not a lie but it’s also not true in any useful sense. Let’s look at the problems with it.

1. Building it isn’t free.
2. People have to know about it in order to come.
3. Even when they know about it most of them won’t come.
4. Some of the ones that do come will be dicks about it.
5. You can’t pay your landlord in exposure.

1. Building it isn’t free: Some of you might be ready to jump in and point out that I’m a writer and writing is free. No it’s not. It is one of the cheapest ways to art but it’s not free. I need food, and a device to write on and electricity to power it and internet access to get whatever I write into the world. Even if I wrote with pen and paper, and stole the pen from Argos, and scavenged the paper from recycling bins, and photographed it on a borrowed phone, and posted it using free wifi; I’d still need food and a roof over my head. Also there’s a limit to how many times you can borrow a phone.

2. People have to know about it in order to come: The internet is full of people trying to get other people to look at stuff. Any budding artist is just one more voice in the cacophony. Maybe you get lucky and a tweet goes viral? Perhaps someone famous happens on your work and boosts it? Or neither of those things happens and the same ten friends see everything you do and nobody else ever knows about it.

3. Even when they know about it most of them won’t come: You’d be amazed at how hard it is to get people to look at your stuff. Even when your stuff is finished. Even when they know and like you. Even if it’s the kind of stuff they like. Even if they’ve said they’ll look at it. Most of them just don’t. Maybe they’re worried that it will suck and then they’ll have to tell you that it sucks or lie to you and watch as you make a fool of yourself. Maybe they’re just busy. Maybe it’s just that tendency to underestimate the people you know because how special can they be if they know you?

4. Some of the ones that do come will be dicks about it: Everyone knows that you should never look at the comments. That’s because people are dicks in the comments. If you do attract the attention of someone other than that same ten friends who look at everything you make then eventually someone is going to be a dick about it. They will complain that you’ve made it badly, or that it’s the wrong sort of thing, or that you’re the wrong person to be making it. And if it’s visual art there’s a good chance someone will steal it. And if it gets stolen and you object they’ll be dicks about that too.

5. You can’t pay your landlord in exposure: I have no idea how to monetise art. Every attempt I’ve made has failed. Some people seem to do it effortlessly. Maybe you should ask one of them. Or better yet ask one of those people that you can see working at it because they have skills rather than privilege. Maybe they’ll have some useful advice. I can’t help. I’m stuck here trying to write better because it’s all I know how to do.

If you have enjoyed this bitter rant on the subject of creativity why not prove me wrong by buying me a coffee with Ko-Fi. Or pop over to the Shop of Doom (only open till May 8th) and buy yourself something nice.

Things are not going my way

Gentle readers I beg your patience while I rant for a bit. The last few days have not gone well and the next few aren’t looking great either.

I’m having a major Fibromyalgia flare up. For the last three days I’ve had a muscle spasm in my back so bad that the pain has gone through excruciating and into exquisite. I’m taking Tramadol, Paracetamol and vaping CBD and I still can’t bend without screaming. There is no comfortable way for me to sit, stand or lie. Part of the spasm is over my left kidney and if I started pissing blood it would be a relief because a kidney infection can be treated, kidney stones pass, even kidney failure can be managed.

Fortunately that’s distracting me from the sudden appearance of a hole in one of my back teeth. I think a filling might have fallen out. Or maybe a bit of the tooth has cracked off. I already had a dental appointment this week so that’s lucky. I’m trying really hard to believe that it’s lucky but it’s hard to think straight over the screaming pain from my back.

I’m still not back on my usual eating plan because of difficulty getting the shopping sorted. Between trouble with deliveries and the problem with my back and my spouse’s anxiety being too bad to do the shopping for me I’m having difficulty sorting out a coherent meal plan.

I’m having trouble getting anything done. I started this weekend with a book I’m wanted to read, a film I wanted to watch on Netflix, a film I’m trying to see in the cinema before it leaves a podcast I’m trying to catch up with and a novel that I’m trying to finish writing. In all I managed 15 pages of the book, neither of the films, 3 episodes of the podcast and about 2,000 re-written words of my novel. That’s pathetic.

And the worst of it is this feeling that my life is slipping away from me. Time is passing and I’m not doing anything with it. Precious seconds of my life are ticking by and I am variously paralyzed by pain, or depression, or indecision, or just lack of basic organisational skills.

2018 Diet Update 4

Before I begin my update I have a message for the various diet and weight loss blogs that keep liking these posts and following this blog. Please stop. This blog is not for you. I regard the entire weight loss industry as predatory. Fat people are not necessarily unhealthy. A person’s size has nothing to do with their value as a human being. 95% of all diets fail and the 5% that succeed only do so by the most meagre definition of success.

I’m not dieting out of any hope that my life will improve or that I will look better or feel better. I’m dieting to prove my doctor wrong. I’m dieting because that’s a thing I have to do if I eventually want to get surgery for my lipoedema. And I don’t have to like it. In fact I hate it. It makes my life so much harder than it needs to be and my life was already pretty fucking hard.

And now we continue with our regularly scheduled update. This week I lost 0.2kg (200g or less than half a pound). That doesn’t seem statistically significant to me. On the other hand it’s not weight gain so I’m not complaining. I had to take a break from my push to 100 squats because my knee objected.

I also had an appointment with the Lymphoedema Nurse to check on my compression tights. She’s suggested replacement compression garments with lower level compression and in a different design. The hope is that they’ll be easier to get on and that I’ll be able to wear them all day.