Tentative Sanity

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ooOOOOoooh! Nice shiny website.

Summary of past blogs:

Wow, I'm so insane, I hate my retail job so much, oh dear I'm still insane, this is harder than I thought, my writing's so intense right now, ooh Timothy is so sweet. . . uh-oh, still insane.

And now for the present:

Timothy is still sweet and brilliant and terribly dull for all of you to read about (we've been going out ten months now). I've now written ten novels, some of which have been rejected at the highest echelons of Australian publishing (which is....good, right?)

My sanity actually seems to be rearing its ugly head at long last.

I have left the retail job I so abhorred and I'm now working as a home tutor for three kids (only five hours a week. . . my landlords/parents - I live in a granny flat - stopped bothering to charge me rent some time ago). My debt is well over $10,000 and the only thing likely to help me is selling one of my novels (three to four should cover it, actually). Or both kidneys.

I'm extremely happy at work. It's meaningful and challenging, and something I have some kind of talent for (unlike, say, gerbil farming, or any other job I've attempted in the past). Plus I don't need to start til 4pm at the earliest, so it's no problem if I stay up writing all night.

The low workload plus the goodness of the type of work has played a big part in calming down my anxiety disorder (or whatever it is - my vote goes for hypergraphia, 'cause it's so much cooler), and Tim has played a bigger part. He's a deeply calm person, and he seems to still be around despite me literally crying on his shoulder rather more than is fair. I'm disturbed at not paying rent, but of course that moment of parental generousity takes away the growth factor of my debt, which is kind of vital (the most I've ever been in debt before was $3000, $2000 of which was due to a car crash + unexpected medical bills).

I'm off the drugs, which is deeply exciting (the process took several months) - partly because I've discovered they're slightly to blame for my recent weight gain of 15 kilos (don't do drugs, kids).

But essentially, my sanity is holding steady. I have good and bad days, and Christmas is a terrifying spectre that I'm keeping as small as possible without offending anyone. For my next trick, I'll be doing four days of Christmas work, beginning tomorrow (with Friday off). If I can get my mental barriers up and keep them up, I can do it. If I don't proceed with caution, I'll be back on drugs by the new year.

Ho. Ho. Ho.

But I reckon I can do it. As long as I do nothing else.

But my writing is clawing at the inside of my brain, and I don't know how well I can keep it in. On the other hand, writing sometimes calms me down. We'll see.

Fel

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