Yes, I groaned when I saw this topic
from Jeff. Sighs, it's been a year. :( Well admittedly, I'm mostly
thinking about November and December- the large personal catastrophes
have overshadowed what happened in the months before. Health issues
with both mother and mother-in-law, change in job situation for my
Master. Of course these all have huge attendant stresses and none is
resolved yet. We even had the rare large disagreement- I hate to say
"fight" because I doubt few people would look from the
outside at the disagreement and label it a fight- voices were never
raised, no swearing happened, no violent physical contact happened.
Specifically looking at the "best/worst" part, I was led to
thinking about my Saturday "joys/sorrows" post on Facebook.
For non-Unitarian Universalists reading this, let me explain this
basic ritual of community that UUs engage in in most if not all of
our congregations. Whether it's lighting a candle at a specific point
in a service, dropping a stone into water, or some other action,
usually with words from our minister or another teacher, we share
joys and sorrows in our lives. Because I'm a lifestyle submissive and
while UUs tend to be rather open-minded about a lot of stuff, alt sex
people (especially polyamorous and kinky people) find less to no
welcome or support, depending on what part of the country and even
from one congregation to another. I go to the online UU church,
Church of the Larger Fellowship, and I struggled with what to call my
Master when sharing a joy or sorrow that mentioned Him, so I stopped
sharing as many joys/sorrows; now I do it in my status message so I
can tag if I want, refer to Him as "Master" for my comfort.
It seems now that all the "best"
I can think of is matched by a "worst." Like I competed in
and won "Camp Nano" (like Nanowrimo but in your choice of
April or July; I did July), but I failed to complete Nanowrimo- too
much IRL stress. However, that is balanced by the excitement about my
Nanowrimo WIP by the people who've read snippets of it on my blog- so
I'm pushing to finish it ASAP and hoping that Blushing Books (who's
my first choice to submit to as I mention them in it) accepts the
submission and publishes it. I learned a bunch more about
self-publishing, made friends with a guy who does great work, but my
Master losing His job means there isn't the money to use those
services at the moment- and I'm hoping on two book releases in the
next month. I've had a great year with author blogging- the schedule
has been a great help- but it seems I still worry about how many page
views, how many comments, how to increase both, and what all the
blogging is accomplishing- as I have only a free ebook, I don't have
any "it's helping me sell books" to weigh the usefulness of
blogging by that.
My 13 year old dog has lost a few teeth
this year, but that fact that she's still alive, happy, and not
having accidents inside the house balance out the teeth lose.
However, it's at the point of "she's very old." Then there
was Xion- the more recent rescue. We didn't have him very long
because he was already old when we adopted him and yeah, it was very
hard when we had to put him to sleep because his body was just
failing. But he was a very loving dog. After the vet put him on a
diet (3 cups of California blend veggies, 1 cup of boiled potatoes,
and 2 cups of dog food) and Prozac, he was even more loving.
 |
| This isn't Annikka, but her cat Reidar enjoying a fuzzy blanket. I missed stories of what he was doing too :D |
Then there's Annikka Woods. I'm not
sure where friendship, beta reader, and writing friend all began,
ended, overlapped etc. Nanowrimo was difficult in many ways for her
too and when she was AFK for weeks, I started to get really anxious.
But thankfully one day, she got onto Facebook, explained what had
happened. So now my Master is again hearing "Well Annikka
said..." lol
Now I'm going to move on to thinking of
2014- I can't handle too much more of 2013, too many bitter spots. I
want changes to slow down. I'm talking major changes here- I'm
looking at becoming caretaker of my mother-in-law (who had a stroke
and now needs constant care.) I want my Master to find a good paying
job that He also enjoys. I want at least two books published, if not
more. I want to find another LGBT book hop to take part in so that my
writing can get out to that audience (yeah, I write BDSM erotica, but
rarely with straight people.) I want to see continued and improving
success at the two gaming stores that make up a large portion of my
Master's and our teen's social life. As I shared on Tymber Dalton's blog, where doing so could win a signed copy of her book "The
Denim Dom," when I think of 2014 it's about "sharing."
Often several times a day, author friends and acquaintances will say
(especially on Facebook) something like "you're such a good
sharer." Part of "writing in community"- I swear I
remember Anastasia Vitsky using that phrase first and she probably
even has an archived post about it on her blog- is that sharing and
it's an important activity to me. Sure, in part, I hope if I share
other's posts, when they see my promo posts that they'll then share.
But it's larger than that. I don't see myself as in direct
competition with these other authors so seeing them succeed too is
only a good thing to me.
