A Little Catch Up
I haven't been around much for the last year. I want to thank everyone who stuck around during this hiatus. It wasn't planned, but I think it was necessary. NaNo is here now, though, and I think its more than time I returned. I thought of playing a new character. I thought of changing locations. I also thought of coming back anonymously. None of that is me, however, so I'm bringing back my old favorites - especially those with unfinished stories - and writing more with them.
I'd like to say the site drama drove me away, but that's not actually true. I adore drama and it keeps me motivated to write. There's nothing like sheer rage for busting out a thread or ten to overpower someone's numbers on their CS. This is especially true if you think that someone is a turd OOC or IC. It's a great feeling to bring your skillset beyond theirs in a short time with just sheer writing. I love growing characters through new skill sets and new experiences. I like being able to eat someone for breakfast IC PC to PC if the need ever arises in terms of someone I don't respect. I'll admit that. I'm not modest or anything.
New characters are a whole host of fun. New locations are too. But there's always something to be said about how much better comfortable broke-in characters are rather than new ones to write for. I've had Kavala, Kelski, and now I have Tazrae. I have started a few in between, less formal and more casual, and I like them equally as well too.
But I'm not someone who lets another ruin something for me. Instead, my ruination this time was my health. I work too much and too hard, plus I'm getting older so I have health issues that seemingly grow as the years pass.
Many of you might remember I was constantly low on Iron and getting infusions. Abruptly last year I had to change providers and my new provider put a halt to my infusions because my ferritin was around 3k. Stored ferritin is supposed to be around 10-100 in your blood... not 3k. When it gets to be that high a whole number of things happen... like iron starts getting stored all over my body on my major organs. And if I store enough iron, then those same organs start to shut down.
Blood disorders suck. Mine activated OA pretty bad and everything now always hurts with me. I take meds for the OA, but they don't always keep me functional. And with the high iron, things start to go. One of those things was my eyesight. I'm not going blind, but my vision changed so drastically that I couldn't see my computer screen that well until .. well I couldn't see it beyond staring at it on my phone without glasses. It's hard to post with a phone. We got that stabilized... and I got progressive lenses... and I eventually got past that situation. But before I did, I got out of the habit of writing and into the habit of visiting with friends or watching TV after work instead of writing. I also did a ton of work with tarot and astrodice. I taught some classes, led some groups, and basically socialized irl with people that had the same situation as I did.
I still work... a hell of a lot... far more than most people. And that actually helps my OA and my blood disorder because it's a huge distraction. I don't sit around thinking of when not if my organs are going to shut down, and naming close friends godparents of my fountain pen collection so they can safely rehome them when I'm gone.
My computer also has lost a few keys. I ordered them online as a replacement, but I can't seem to get them to snap onto my laptop the way they are supposed to. I'm not using that as an excuse though because I just looked on ebay and I can buy a whole new computer exactly like the one I have for $300 bucks. That's kinda cool. My lid is also taped to the body of my laptop and held on with black electrical tape... but who cares right? I don't 'not use' my computer due to its piss poor condition. I was just busy doing other things.
I started a weekly art club at a local hard cider distiller where we'd meet and do art (and drink) once a week. That was super cool... and we are just on a bit of a hiatus due to really bad weather and the daylight savings time change coming off this week. I liked that extra hour of light in the evening. It let me roam around more and get more shit done. I was really serious about my Miz return, so I had to tell the ladies we had to wait a bit before we started back up. We had one last meeting on Thurs morning where I started a new watercolor sketchbook dedicated to mushrooms.... but that's a story for another time.
Back to my health. I'm not dying anytime soon. I don't know when I'll check out, but I can't imagine it being in the near future. Besides, even though my health is crap, I feel better than ever running around here and there. Maybe I'm just obsessed with death. I had an MRI on the 9th of October that verified I had iron on my liver. I'm not sure how we are going to deal with that moving forward, but I suspect the bloodletting will resume. Oh, I didn't tell you about that, did I?
Well, one way to deal with a huge iron load and ferritin being in the 3k's is to go to an infusion center once a week, and instead of getting iron infused, they remove 500mls of blood... week after week after week. I did that for four months solid and brought my iron down to only 1.7K instead of 3k. It's progress, but not that much progress when you really think about it. When you give blood like that it completely and utterly makes you exhausted ALL THE FRIGGING TIME. The goal was by taking blood away, my body would be forced to make more blood which causes it to pull from stored Ferritin to change it to iron to make the new blood. Genius if it really works. Not so cool, though, when it only half-ass works. Is half-assed better than riding high at 3k? I have no frigging clue. I'm going to ask though. It will be interesting if my doc starts ignoring my ferritin and pretending it's not an issue. That's what they did before when I was low on actual iron. So, I've been on break waiting for the MRI results because that needle sat at 1.7K and didn't move in 4 sessions. So... that might start up again. My PA had to consult with the hematologist working my case before my meeting then I'll know how we are going to move forward.
Anyhow... TLDR. Bad eyesight, burnout on plots, blood disorders... all kept me away. Now I'm making time to actually thread again, even if I'm going to be telling my stories to myself. I'm cool with that. I think I'm happier writing, even with a lot of drama, than I am not writing. Solos? Group threads? I don't care which it is. Solos get done more frequently and I don't have to wait for responses.
