Like many others, I am glad to see the back end of 2016 – In short, it was not my finest year. I’ve taken to referring to it as The Year of the Bitch. Honestly, I spent virtually the entire year pissed off or aggravated about something. My chronic health problems kicked into high gear, and I constantly felt like crap, which exacerbated everything. I didn’t feel like being sociable – as many of my friends can attest – or friendly – as members of my family can attest – or witty or creative – as my lack of writing can attest – and I was damn sick of working on Yours Truly. Throw in the presidential election and the seemingly overabundance of deaths, celebrity or otherwise, and it was just an ugly year.

But some great things happened last year, too. My nieces and nephews all progressed by amazing leaps and bounds. My bestie and her partner had a beautiful baby. Work was abundant. My friends and family loved me despite the chronic bitchiness that went hand-in-hand with my chronic illness. And I made it through the edits of Yours Truly despite never wanting to look at the damn thing again. Don’t get me wrong – I love the characters and their story and can’t wait to once again share it with the world (currently waiting on a release date) but…

There’s something about a blank page.

A blank page can signal either abject terror or sheer excitement. It all depends on perspective. And since my perspective in 2016 plowed straight over optimism, this year I’m gunning for pessimism. I’ve had enough. And so, some changes are in order:

1 – Finding a new doctor is high on the list so I can at least have some semblance of order in what I throw at the wall to see what sticks in terms of treatment (one of the hazards of having a chronic illness with no set treatment is wasting time and money throwing random things at the wall because you don’t know what’s going to work).

2 – Figure how to write and be creative even with being sick – that was a huge struggle for me last year. I wasted way too much time berating myself for not writing most of 2016 due to not feeling well because everyone knows you have to write no matter how you feel. /sarc/ No more letting others dictate my rules. This is probably going to be the hardest bit – I have zero idea how to be this sick person.

3 – No more spending so much time on social media (obviously, this has been the case for a while). File previous silence under a disinterest in being social, but after a bit of thought and consideration, I realize the more time I spend on social media, the less I actually have to say.  I’m not yet sure how much or little time this will entail, but my general goal is more blogging and less other social media (though my blogs auto post to other outlets). I also don’t want to continually read drama-laden and mean-spirited posts – I have a hard-enough time maintaining my optimism and since I tend to pick up the emotional states of those around me – even online – I’m being pickier about who gets to spend time in my world. File this under self-preservation.

Hopefully these small changes will create a much bigger effect and my default will be joy and adventuresome – as it was until I got sick – rather than feeling overwhelmed, stomped all over, and generally hateful. I’m always open to suggestions, so feel free to share any you might have.

In the meantime, I wish you a wonderful 2017.

I’m cautiously optimistic.

Even with a concerted effort to stay away from the news, I can’t avoid reading some of the headlines thanks to Facebook’s Trending feature. I wish I could turn the stupid thing off, but they apparently haven’t made it so yet.

Anyway, at the top of this Trending feature is a headline that reads:

EBible Fellowship: Pennsylvania-based Christian Group says World Will End on Oct. 7.

There’s no year attached to the headline—and I refuse to click over no matter how much not knowing is driving me crazy—but I assume they mean 2015. As in October 7, 2015.

As in today.

Oddly enough, given my interest in Gothic literature, serial killers, and other things of the dark-themed, there are few things that seriously creep me out:

• Deliverance (a great movie, but still…creepy!)
• Natural Disaster movies
• Being stuck in an elevator, or anywhere else I can’t readily get out of (I’ve been claustrophobic since I was 4 and got stuck in a McDonald’s bathroom – no joke)

Number one on my list, though, is…

• The end of the world / an apocalypse of any kind.

This includes zombie apocalypses, which explains why I’m addicted to The Walking Dead (T-minus 5 days and counting…) I think I can watch the show with not getting too freaked out because it’s character driven and far more about how they navigate the new world they’re thrust into, but even if the chances of an actual zombie apocalypse are slim I still feel the urge to start hording supplies. I constantly ask myself how I would react, if put into the same set of circumstances.

But give me a Christian-based apocalypse, and I’m ready to crawl under my bed and hide until it’s over. I’m a Believer, faulty thought I may be and a seriously lapsed churchgoer, and I’m not even sure I believe in an actual Rapture, but still… There’s something unsettling about the world being in a worse spot than it already is.

In my own tangential way of thinking that led to the thought that I’ve forgotten how to be kind to other people. I’ve been so intent on protecting myself emotionally that I automatically assume the worst of other people. It used to be the other way around—I’d always think the best of everyone until they gave me a reason not to. When that changed, I don’t know, but I don’t suppose it’s wholly unusual to reach my age and not be beaten down by life a bit.

Part of this experiment of mine is to consider when and how I was the happiest in my life, when the world was a grand adventure and great things were bound to happen. That was, at least in part, when I could firmly see all the good things in the world and the people around me.

Bottom line: It’s hard to be hopeful and look forward to the good things in life if you can’t see them.

So…

I started the day with this:

But after drafting this post, I’m choosing this:

It doesn’t mean I won’t have to deal with the usual amount of crap life throws at me, but I can choose how I react. I don’t know that I’ll always succeed—as it is, I’m sitting here thinking “how Pollyanna of me” and cringing just the tiniest bit—but living by the idea that happiness makes the world a better place, even if it’s just my own little corner of the world, can’t be all bad.

I’ve been trying to blog for months now. Every time I sit down to do so, my mind immediately goes to something to complain about.

In the spirit of complaining, I’m calling shenanigans on the entire month of September and requesting a do-over. At the very end of August I found out my publisher, Secret Cravings Publishing, was going under. That was sad to say the least but not insurmountable. I had one book published – other authors had multiple books to decide what to do with, some of them in the double digits. I can’t even imagine. The status of From Poe to Know aka Yours Truly, Cardwell B. is currently pending. I’d originally decided to re-work it and self-publish it again. Then I decided to shop it around, which I am. I haven’t decided what I’m going to ultimately do, but it’s given me a bit of breathing space.

Then the following week my car died—10 days before my final payment. What I thought was a simple fix (read: need a new battery) turned out to be a blown fuse the dealership said was due to the jumper leads being connected improperly (I call shenanigans on that, too. It wasn’t me who jumped it, but everything’s color coded and I was standing right there…) Personally, I think it got hit by lightning (we’d had a couple of really nasty storms right around the time it died) but I don’t have any way to prove it. That was an inexpensive fix, but add a bunch of maintenance to it and nearly $500 later…

Then I got sick the following week with whatever crap has been going around and that knocked me out for the count for about 2 weeks. If snot were worth money, I’d pretty well be rich right about now. It was disgusting. Not only did I feel awful, but I also couldn’t go over and see my awesome nieces and nephews. This put a crimp in everyone’s schedule since I was due to go over to be support person so my brother could take care of some things.

Between the car dying and my getting sick, it was nearly a month before I could make it over. Getting the little ones sick is not an option.

And let’s not talk about the lunar blood moon eclipse—it was fantastic to see at least part of it before it got cloudy, but I swear it threw the universe off. All last week was absolute insanity. Electronics not working properly, internet going out for no apparent reason (I can’t work my day job when the internet goes out), just stupid, stupid things happening (including a Repo guy with the wrong address prowling in the backyard at 3:30 in the morning!)

And the constant barrage of bad has exacerbated my dismal mood. I don’t just mean things like the recent shooting in Oregon. I’m also referring to the constant hatefulness of news story commenters—that’s a sheer amount of ugliness that never seems to stop. And it doesn’t have to be a polarizing article; it could be a feel-good story and people will find something hateful to say. I keep telling myself that I’m going on a news moratorium and will stop reading article comments, but I always find myself getting sucked into both. It’s like watching the proverbial train wreck. I don’t want to watch the carnage, but I simply can’t help myself.

All of this has made me consider why my own attitude has sucked—not just for the past month, if I’m being honest—and what I’m going to do about it.

Stay tuned… I’m formulating a plan. One that won’t be fueled by complaints.

So, today’s the day when the craziness of flip-flopping between two houses and three cats starts. And it started off with a crash and burn.

The bed I’m sleeping in over at my brother and sil’s house is actually intended for one of the kids. It’s not even big enough to be a twin, so it’s a little small. And it’s on the floor not on a frame. As a result, getting out of bed in the mornings has been quite the interesting endeavor. If there was ever a time I was aware of actually being (technically) middle age, it’s been the past two weeks.

This morning I wake up and roll out of bed only to crash to the floor when I put weight on my legs. Turns out sciatica crept in during the night and it was apparently determined to try to make my day a living hell. I laughed about it at first. It’s been a while since I last experienced sciatica, but even though it was down the outside of my leg rather than shooting pains down the middle of my butt it didn’t much concern me. But I ended up getting that “electrical” shock when a nerve is tweaked that I felt all the way to my sternum. That threatened to set off a cascade of anxiety attacks, which I didn’t have time to allow to get out of control. Thankfully, getting those quieted down is pretty much second nature since I’ve had them for about 24 years, but sheesh!

When I got home and saw my Dorian Gray for the first time in 2 weeks, he wouldn’t shut up for a good 30 minutes. He had to tell me all about his trip down to my parents’ house and yell at me for being absent. Then it thundered and he went off to hide while I took a nap.

It’s going to be a busy night of laundry and work and getting to bed early since I have to be up at the crack of dawn, but with all the goodness coming (not) soon (enough), it’s worth it.

I’m off to hobble to the laundry room.

Send out a search party if I’m not back in ten…

<3