Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

Migraine Wednesday.

Woke up with one, which, ugh. I miss when I used to get them right before my period — I could at least plan on it? Now it's like, "well...good luck?" as they're apparently linked to the weather, and not consistently at that. :|

I always think I'm overestimating how much they suck, and then it's like, no, 'pain you can't ignore' is a 6 on the pain scale, so for you to go, 'this is not only something I can't tune out, it's keeping me from doing stuff' is probably a sign.

Slept most of the day off and on. Had sort of thought it was coming, because I'd dealt with Weird Formless Anxiety off and on all weekend, so having it hit Wednesday was like, yeah this tracks.

(Weird Formless Anxiety is gone now, for the record.)


I swapped projects at work because otherwise I was going to quit, and the difference in attitude about going to work is like night and day. Suddenly, everything is fine? I'm sort of — well, mystified, about this, but I'll take it, I guess?

Also swapped what the intern is working on, and he's happier, too. So, pros and cons?


County fair last night. Went to cheer on the champion goats that'll be at the state fair at the end of August/early September. Dunno if we'll actually make it up to the fair this year — we always mean to, but whether or not we do is sort of a mixed bag.

Went out to dinner afterward, one of the local breweries. I wasn't driving (for once!), so! Tried one of their new beers and liked it enough that I bought a four-pack. Super-exciting stuff. (It's a rice lager; was really dry/crisp and very low ABV, which makes it sort of perfect for summer.)

At dinner, we ended up talking about nothing in particular — there's an art show tomorrow we're hitting up, and local friends want to see us tomorrow evening, so we're planning on it — mostly was like, "how's stuff been" (because I have been working later than usual and Max has been dealing with pain-stuff that means he's been going to bed earlier than usual; we haven't had a lot of overlap, feels like), and making a plan to go on a hot date Monday (!).

...said "hot date" is going to be "going to see the 'Naked Gun' reboot", grabbing dinner beforehand, but, you know.


Creative project stuff continues. I realized, talking to a friend the other day, that I have written over 220k words in the last two months. Roughly half of it is good? Ha. It's...divided into roughly three parts, per the super-vague outline, and I'm on part 2 of 3 and writing it has been like pulling teeth. After writing the first bit felt like I was simply dictating the story as it was being told to me, this has been Less Than Fun, but what can you do? sigh.

I have at least gotten one (1) real review on AO3, not just someone going, "oh hmm what if I offer to do art of this thing for you", so that's fun.

...I also realized that I have essentially zero shame at this point and so posted the "this is basically smut with a tiny amount of plot attached at the front end" thing I wrote for a friend sometime last year, because, like.

I don't know that I'm proud of it (it's basically completely unedited...), but I'm trying to be better about recognizing like, "it is normal to want recognition and validation for something you worked on even if it's imperfect and difficult to explain", so. My therapist would be proud?

(My AO3 username is the same as it is everywhere, in case anyone is like, "where the fuck are you posting this?" The tags aren't a lie, have fun!)

I think it is a testament to how far I have come about stuff that instead of obsessing about how it's not "good" enough, I'm going, "well, before I wrote this I hadn't really written anything explicit, it turned out well in the sense that the person I wrote it for liked it, it succeeds on those merits and I don't need to try to edit it further or work it into something 'perfect'".

So, yeah.

Of course, actually posting something to AO3 leaves me going, "I promised Sharon I would write that weird Baldur's Gate fic for her, I should maybe...do that?" and, well.

We shall see.


Here's fingers crossed that someone at the art sale tomorrow has a Weird Little Guy I can buy to keep the last Weird Little Guy I bought (at the art sale two years ago, natch) company!