I’ve been wanting to do an update on what’s happening in my life for a while now. I realized that part of why I was hesitating was because I’m still so much in the middle of things.

As you probably already know, people tend to just post positive things about their lives on social media. I was falling into that trap, and not wanting to post an update until things were mostly resolved.

As that isn’t going to happen this year, possibly won’t even happen next year, I figured I should just get going on it anyway.

Writing

The good news is that I’m regularly writing. I can manage 3000 words a day most days. This is all good. I’ve gotten into cozy fantasy, and the current book I’m working on involves a young Dwarf who doesn’t want to follow her family’s tradition of working with gemstones. Her true passion? Chocolate. I expect to finish it by the end of the year with a release date mid next year.

In terms of word count, I’m right now on track to make 300K for the year. I have to keep reminding myself that’s good enough, particularly given the year I’ve had.

Exercise

I got back to the gym for about a week before my schedule fell apart. I’m going to try to get back there again next week. My husband currently has a big construction project, and instead of going to the gym I’m doing construction. Given the amount of work that we’re doing, I’m counting it as a different type of workout. The construction on what we’re calling the Tiny Great Hall (TGH) should be done by mid-October, so I will be going back to the gym regularly at that point.

Diet

I gained a lot (A LOT) of weight recently, mainly when I was in Portland and taking care of my niece. Quite frankly, I weighed more than I ever had my entire life. Because of a number of factors, the best way for me to lose weight is to do intermittent fasting. I restrict my eating window, and only eat over the course of six hours during the day, from 8 AM to 2 PM. This has been remarkably successful for me.

(Of course, three weeks after I started this and was regularly losing weight, I was diagnosed with a bacterial infection and had to go on antibiotics that I had to take twice a day. This meant I could no longer follow my eating window and my weight loss journey ground to a halt. I’m back on it, though the infection [or something] is still ongoing. Will be back at the doctor’s office on Wednesday. Hopefully I’m not going to have to go back on the antibiotics, but we’ll see.)

Caregiving

I continue to talk with my niece and do some level of remote caregiving almost every day. These phone calls frequently leave me exhausted and drained. This causes me more stress, because I’m not doing all the things that I need to be doing because it takes me hours to recover.

I’m trying to change my attitude and my perspective so that maybe these phone calls become easier. I was in therapy for a while that I ended because A) she wasn’t that good and B) I had thought it was covered by my insurance but it wasn’t, and I was paying $300 an hour for bad therapy. I’m going to be looking for a better therapist that’s actually covered by my insurance in a couple weeks. (This week I’m working on taxes and that’s it.)

I had told myself that come the end of the year I was stepping back from caregiving. I felt as though I needed to do that for my own sanity and for the relationship with my husband.

However, my niece’s healing journey has not gone how anyone expected it to. We all figured she’d be well by now. She isn’t. No one can give a date as to when she’s going to be well enough to drive and get a job. No one. So we all kind of stew and thrash. I’m learning much more about long-term patience than I ever wanted to, that’s for damned sure.

Will I step back come the new year? I really want to reclaim the time I’m spending on her issues. We’ll just have to see where she is, if she’s the one holding herself back or if it’s something else. That’s been a big part of the recent problem—her bio-mom had Issues and passed them along to her. So my niece is still learning to recognize those unconscious impulses to stay sick (so people will take care of her) versus actively trying to heal. If she can get better at that, I’ll probably stay. If she continues to actively sabotage herself, well, I can’t want her to be well more than she does.

And I think that’s it from me for now.

I feel sad that I’ve had to pull back so much from everything and everyone this year. I don’t plan on making any big changes this year, though. It will have to wait until I have more brainspace, which I’m hoping will be early next year.