Coping

'Twas a weird week. Weather. How vulnerable I can be. This is one nasty winter. And my fall from last year is haunting me. Making me afraid. Making out of me a right wimp. Fearful of the ice under the snow. Horrified at the idea of walking down my drive from the garage to the house.

Feeling massively foolish and more than a little old-lady-ish. Disliking myself for not being more fearless, striding out, unworried about breaking bones and subsequently wheelchairing it around alone in my house with the deaf and blind elderdog for company and a port-a-potty in the living room.

All sorts of thoughts intrude: like am I mad to live out in this community. Should I listen to my city friends and move to a senior-friendly apartment by the side of a downtown glorious lake overlooking the ocean and have transit and accessible medical care and OMG a clean and ice-free parking lot to anchor my car and just a few small rooms and theatre nearby and movies and....all I need is for poor old Ansa to die as NO PETS ALLOWED.

See the temporary insanity that overtakes me?

Meanwhile, there are leaks intruding into my house from this massive icejam. You might think you're having a bad day until you look at the back of my house. This frozen waterfall extends all the way from the roofline to the ground. No one has ever seen anything worse out here. And no one has suggestions as to how to manage it. So that's my day. How's yours?

Self Doubt

What do you do when self-doubt overwhelms you? Please tell me.

I received one of those letters yesterday. So far I only shared the contents with a friend over dinner. A friend going through her own troubles. Who couldn't offer me anything as she is riddled with SD herself.

I spent a week in September putting all the paperwork together for a grant application, excerpts, letters of reference, past successes. Wads of paper. These Grant Givers don't believe in the interwebz. I was fairly confident I'd get it. It wasn't very much, enough to tide me through final novel completion, editing, first readership feedback, etc.

I didn't expect to be demolished IF they turned me down. Note the big IF. I didn't believe that big IF for a second.

But they did. By letter (quaint, right?). Yesterday. Blah. Blah. I know the drill of these letters.

And yesterday and today I lose the faith and tell myself you are one shitty writer living in fecking fantasy land.

I am way too old to be a starving artist living in a garret reusing my teabag 99 times and fighting the dog for bits of kibble once a day.