That's a good question. Well in November I went to PhilCon, but that's not really what I'm talking about. I have been MIA from most online activities in the recent past. This post is to apologize for that. I haven't answered email in a week, and when I did answer it, I found a couple emails stuck in my spam folder that had been there over a month. I'm behind on my reviews and still haven't finished my PhilCon article. I was late posting this month's writing challenge on Fantasy-Faction and I haven't read my Twitter feed, except in bits and pieces, in 3 or 4 days. I also haven't talked to anyone directly in almost a month (posts on the forums don't count). For all of this I'm sorry.
Some of you may know that I haven't had the best year on record. My husband was laid off in May and is still looking for work, my father-in-law passed away suddenly in August, and my kids have been sick on and off since the beginning of November. Money is tight, stress levels in the house are high, and in the late fall I redeveloped insomnia that has been keeping me up until 2 and 3 in the morning almost every night. My husband and I have also been helping my mother-in-law get a house ready for sale, all this while I'm still trying to finish my second book and shop my first.
I've been trying to work on my book, write my articles, keep my house clean, keep my kids and husband from driving each other crazy, and not really succeeding at any of it. This week I decided I needed to stop the craziness and get my life back in some semblance of order. I spent the week cleaning, organizing, and trying to help reduce the stress levels in the house. My husband was able to get one of our friends to help him with fixing up the other house and now it looks like that will be finished this weekend.
As little things get ticked off my monstrous to-do list, I can feel tiny bits of stress seeping slowly away from me. It's going to take me a little while to catch up, but damn it, I am going to catch up!
This was not meant to be a pity party post or anything like that. But ignoring people while I tried to catch up with life is not the right way to go about this and I apologize for that. From now on if my life starts getting crazy, I'm going to let people know right away and hopefully that will head off some of the craziness.
On my to-do list today is answering emails and getting everything together for my PhilCon article. If I owe you an email and you haven't heard from me by tomorrow, please poke me on Twitter. I don't think I could get through this without all the awesome friends I've made online in the last year, and once again I'm sorry I kind of disappeared without explanation. I promise I won't do it again.
Thanks for everything guys. You're the best! :)
