One of These Days

Ugh this year

It's a thing I believe we can all come together and agree on: 2020 has sucked major ass.

I thought this year would be better for me creatively. It had started out that way and then things happened. Matt got sick the day after our anniversary. He was immensely sick for three weeks. We assumed—at the time—that it was the flu. He hadn't gotten his flu shot and I had. I had gotten sick half way through his illness, but mine was incredibly mild. I could still go to work, I just had congestion, a cough, and felt like shit warmed over. Then came my cat's vet appointments, which almost didn't happen thanks to my one cat flipping his absolute shit about getting into his carrier. I will totally blame that on me. I normally kept them in storage (our apartment is tiny and we have very little room to keep things) and I would usually bring them inside a couple of days before the appointment so they're warm and smell like the house (their appointments are usually always in January/February). This time I had forgotten them and brought them in the morning of. Chance basically went feral. I'd never seen him act like this before. He wouldn't let me get near him, he was snarling, hissing, striking out, pooping and peeing. I felt awful because he was freaking out. I finally tossed one of my large towels on him and was able to grab him. I made the appointment, even though a bit late. I had called ahead and explained.

Then Covid hit the following month. I work at Costco and I'm sure many of you heard/saw/witnessed how insane Costco was during the early stages of the Covid panic. We were no exception.

So, all of that has just straight up killed my creativity. All of it. For writing, coloring even!, drawing, Photoshop, everything. I finally got something in the mid to late summer, which was why I was doing the journal entries. It was a little bit, but not enough to work on anything. Then September hit and I was feeling it a bit. Then it was gone again.

I've gotten really frustrated because I WANT TO WRITE. I have ideas! But I sit there and nothing comes out. Everything I write feels stupid. I even tried in October to do the Upgraded members contest the official one by WdC. I had an IDEA and I merged it with a short story idea I've had for YEARS. I even had the twist! I got a few paragraphs in and I just couldn't. do. it.

I didn't end up even doing the contest. I knew I wasn't going to do NaNo this year, but I miss doing it. I want to do it just because of the frustration I've felt this year for not being able to write. Hell, I've tried to write variations of this journal entry and it's been hard to form...my ideas and what I want to say into words on a screen.

Anyone else feel this way?

I wish I had been lucky to have had to work from home, maybe I could've gotten a lot of writing in. It hasn't helped either that I've been seeing the statistics and especially this month and last month seeing everything SHOOT up and Indiana has been no exception. Our governor has been awful in dealing with this pandemic. He basically opened everything back up and everyone (or nearly) has assumed life is back to normal. We've just hit over 8k cases in ONE DAY. We've had quite a few cases at work even, one working in the same department I did. I went and got tested (even though I showed no symptoms) and it was negative. I've been wondering, the more I've learned about Covid, that Matt probably had Covid back in the very end of January, early February. He had a lot of the same symptoms, including no sense of smell or taste. It had kicked his ass even AFTER he was "better". I've also been stressed at the thought that it's only a matter of when, not if, of contracting Covid and all of this is always on my mind, even when I try not to let it.

Never mind that this is the time when everything happened with my dad and then my mom. October through January 5. So all of that is on my mind too, even if I'm not actively thinking about it.

Sigh.

I'm going to try and fiddle around with my 13 Curves WIP and see if I can at least fiddle around with some backstory, since I didn't really finish much of that before. I have some ideas there and I want to work on them a bit. Maybe I'll get some satisfaction there.

I hope everyone else is doing okay.