I want to make this a short summary and reintroductory.
What can I say? Its been a while. Over a year in fact since I’ve updated my website.
What happened? Life. Depression. 2020. You know, the things you’ve already heard from countless other people and voices.
Before the pandemic became a pandemic, I was hit hard with post pardem depression and seasonal depression. It’s hard becoming a Stay At Home Mom after 10 years of building up one’s career. I worked hard to get where I was at. Being autistic and deaf, it’s hard to make it to the top at all. Ten years of hard work and then I became a SAHM. It was a dream and a worse nightmare.
Being disabled, something I never think about as I’m a go getter and hard working person who barely acknowledges my deficits, to abruptly become a SAHM after years of working at my career to finally have to leave it, was hard.
I love my daughter. I love my son. They’re lifes true treasures. My heart and my soul.
But working and being successful was my sanity.
I had a hard life growing up being who and what I am. I’ve had to work to get a meal. To get shoes. To have a place to live and a roof over my head. My disabilities were not something that gave me anything in life. Education? Nope, paid out of my own pocket. Meals? My own pocket. Bill’s? Yep, me. I paid for it all.
And it felt good to see myself work hard to survive in this world. And then I became a SAHM and those things that showed me I’m more than a disability, were gone.
My defecits became obvious to me. And I fell into depression. Then 2020 said “IM NOT DONE YET” and threw in Covid. Double the depression.
Staying at home, not even going to the store, and only seeing 2 young children and a husband, is something that can break people like me. I honestly had to stop all publishing efforts I had planned and all my plans for 2020 were deleted. Nuked out of existence, and I road the wave of ineptitude and self loathing.
Spring 2020 came and I felt sunshine on my skin for the first time in months. Being a new mom, zero help from anyone, I’m surprised we survived those 5 dark months.
My post pardem lasted until fall of 2020 but in that spring I was able to try and rework my writing and get that first book published.
Like many writers, you eventually just say F it and publish. You had it edited. It’s been read. Just get it onto the market and out of my word document. And that’s what I did.
I was still deep in PPD and didnt have energy to market it or learn about ads and promotion.
And like many authors who do this,my book flopped.
I published book 2 in August(just 3 months after #1 was released) and for the first time, I recieved KDP pages read. Then reviews trickled slowly in. That felt nice. A bit of ego stroking validation.
Admittedly, something I needed.
I worked hard at overcoming depression, which many know, isnt something one can actually really do. We just ride the waves and wait for calm waters.
I struggled in the current but didnt drown. Oddly enough, I finished writing and editing book 3 and released it in December 2020.
Looking back over the year, I had originally made so many plans for my writing career. Wanted to write and publish atleast a dozen books. I know what I can do, my word count output can be large. It was something that could have happened. But it didnt.
I wrote 3 books during NANOWRIMO 2019. 160K all together. I know I can write. And yet I still havent edited the last two of those books. For now, they hang in limbo. Dont know when I’ll get to editing them. They’re 1st person POV and using dictation software sort of made a lot of it jibberish.
And that, my friends, is what happened in 2020.
Perhaps in late spring of 2021, I’ll have book #4, some short stories and a few other fun things I’ll be releasing. There is always hope!
Spirit of The Ancients 