My brain hurts

For the last week or so I’ve been struggling with some congestion– nothing serious, but my head and now my throat are swimming with phlegm regardless of whether I take my allergy meds, or cold medicine, until I hit the Sudafed. I’ve been working hard. I’m always working and sometimes I don’t know what counts as work. Do only billable hours count? Do marketing and networking hours count? How much time should I commit to my traditional publishing authors vs how much time am I “allowed” to work on my own creative projects?

I’ve been applying for jobs and working to build my business at Parisian Phoenix Publishing since I lost my job at Stitch Fix. I have not found a job, though I have substantially increased my business. Enough to live on? I don’t know. Unemployment will run out in a few weeks so I will find out. I guess.

I had the opportunity to visit with the woman who loved to ring the gong earlier this week. She arrived wearing my favorite Stitch Fix sweatshirt, the Midnight Society alumni hoodie. I also visited with Nancy Scott and filed another story with Armchair Lehigh Valley. Today “the dentist’s book” arrived in ARC format. (And the UPS driver opened the door to my house not realizing that the dog had access to the porch. Luckily, he was fast.)

My own novel has gone into design, so it looks like an April launch will be happening (official release date my birthday, May 20).

And The Teenager, who will only be the Teenager for about three months, built me an office space.

A lot of life is a leap of faith. I’m exhausted from the jump– speaking of which my fitness coach Andrew at Apex Training has been brutal in my workouts later– but sometimes you have to keep going.

I want to improve my web site, add more pages, keep content fresher. I want to gain more Substack readers. I want to make a business plan, somehow fund a larger marketing plan, write and promote more of my own books, continue my career as a journalist and transition into a memoirist and disability advocate as well.

24 hours later…

I meant to write something cohesive and intelligent and wrap this all up but it didn’t happen so here it goes as is.