State of the ship

Hey everyone!

This month has sucked for my productivity.  I've gotten some stuff done, but not nearly enough.

I was hoping to have another chapter done before explaining any of this, and I should have another up today, but I kind of think that this should be its own post.  Putting big downers on chapters feels like it weighs them down, and I'd rather the comments on chapters be about the chapters, not about my  shenanigans.

So anyway, there are three major things this month that has made it a little wonky.

First was my health.  I had some sort of mouth or throat infection for a while that while not debilitating, was annoying enough it kept stealing my attention.  Stuff like that makes it hard for me to write, or really concentrate on anything.  I haven't done any reading, either.

Second was the fact that my go-to artist has vanished off the face of the earth.  I commissioned him a while ago to do some art for Jake's story, paid him almost 2 months ago, and I haven't really heard anything since.  This worries me.  To be clear, I am much more concerned about this person's health and well being than being stolen from.  This is someone I have worked with for years, and after my editor Thomas Shutt died in 2017 at the age of 25...I'm worried.  Tom was a great guy and his death definitely made me stop taking the people I work with in this industry for granted.

I don't want to find another artist for this kind of work because doing so without hearing anything (so having no news) doesn't seem appropriate, and I don't want to think he's gone, but the time is getting long enough that I really need to probably start sourcing another artist (which is a pain in the ass all on its own).

Even if/when I can concentrate, admin stuff like this takes time away from writing, which is what I need to do to actually pay the bills.

Which brings me to my next frustration of the month.

Last and more annoying, my house has been hot as hell.  Melli and I have not been able to have anyone over, even family, because most people can't tolerate 80+ (f) degree heat in the house very well.  Melli's tiny and I'm able to distract myself with projects, but it hasn't been a very good environment for either of us to actually work or to focus.

To add a little more context here, I couldn't just throw money at the problem.  If I were to buy new AC units to replace the stuff that has finally died (the machines had a 20+ year run which seems average to me), it would take a few months to get them.  I have geothermal units and I would prefer to replace them with the same, since converting my house over to normal AC would end up costing almost as much on top of those units as getting the geothermal replacements would be.  ...and geothermal units mean lower energy bills, especially in the southern US.

But anything I did would require lead times, so by the time the problem gets/would get fixed, we'd already be past the last of the hot portion of the year.

Covid has fucked up the entire world.  Don't get me wrong, getting sick and/or dying would definitely be worse than waiting for slow AC replacements.  But the Covid-related industry delays in HVAC parts means that Melli and I have had no choice but to endure the heat.  I put a window unit in her office to help mitigate some of it, but it has only been so/so effective.  The way my house is set up just kind of necessitates central air.

If you're reading this and want to offer suggestions on other things I could have done, like buy more window units, or do X, or do Y, please refrain unless you actually work in the HVAC industry.  If you're an expert, by all means DM me.  Otherwise, thank you for your concern, and I appreciate it, I seriously do...but this issue has kind of eaten up my month and I kind of just want to move on now that I've told you about it.

...which brings me to right now.  The weather is cooling down.  Finally.  What this means is that I actually got my first night of decent sleep last night in weeks, which, if you have ever experienced something like this, is like a night and day different.  My brain is literally working better right now.

I feel like working.  I'm not lethargic.

It's hard to force ourselves to work sometimes anyway, even if our own bodies are not working against us.  Chemical depression can be a mo-fo for a lot of people in this way, too.  I feel thankful that I can usually get over my depression through stimuli, or waiting in out in the case of seasonal depression.  If my issue is AC related, that's temporary, too.  If you suffer from a condition that robs your productivity, you have my sincerest condolences.

So TL:DR, I'm back to work now.  Let's cross our fingers that it stays that way.  I need all of my concentration to write SOO.  Hard LitRPG, when done correctly, requires a fully fleshed out game system in the background.  The sheer amount of information I've been needing to update my spreadsheet with in order to write SOO2 has been staggering.

Thank you, always thank you, for your patience with me.

-BC