Off My Glass Menagerie

It might be time to retreat to a cave for a while. The world’s on fire, and the stress is very bad this month for other reasons. It takes a concerted mental effort to keep repeating “this is just a professional change and could indeed work out very well in the long run” while most of me is running in circles screaming, hair afire and pants smoldering. (Or is it pants afire and hair smoldering? Either way, it’s not comfortable.)

So I’ve been eating ice cream, crying (sometimes from stress, sometimes from sheer rage, other times because I might explode otherwise) and dumping out reams of a vampire pr0n trunk novel loosely based on Eugene Onegin. (At least, the story starts near Onegin… but then it gets weird.) It’s probably the healthiest response given the size and scope of the problem, but Lord if it doesn’t make me feel a bit like I’ve gone off my glass menagerie.

Not that I was ever very secure upon that perch, indeed. We’re all mad in publishing.

Anyway, it’s a sunny Thursday morning. I had the windows open a bit to change out the air in the house, and the dogs are very interested in the prospect of walkies. Boxnoggin suspects there might be a run later, too, and that excites him. We’re upping our frequency but not our duration or intensity, and I’ll go far more slowly, push much less, when he’s trotting alongside me. I’ll shove myself right over the edge and into meltdown, certainly, but I wouldn’t dream of asking that of him.

Dogs. They save us without even trying to.

Today I have decided I must absolutely get back into the swing on the paying projects. The trunk novel will have to wait. I can even use it to make the paying concerns jealous, so to speak. I seek solace in work far more than is probably healthy, but it’s served to keep food on the table so I suppose I can’t complain.

So, my chickadees, I’m off to the races. (Or the walkies, and the gentle run with a bouncy, fuzzy primo uomo, as the case may be.) Be kind to yourselves, please. If your March is anything like mine, we both need a little tenderness.


Today’s subscription day, and there’ll be the open thread over at Haggard Feathers. Ah, Thursdays–never a dull moment.