Eventful July

July was an eventful month, between my new job and attempting to participate in July Camp Nano. It began with me losing my first position due to the client's desire for a guard with a law enforcement or more extensive military background. He's done this to my boss before, requesting to have such a guard sent out, but refusing to pay the money they're worth. You know what I was getting at that position? $11.15. Peanuts, for a security guard. Granted, the wage I was first offered, $12.50, isn't much better, but it's not bottom of the barrel. 

Anyway, that one fell through after my second day due to the client's demands. I was not unhappy to see it go, even though it pretty much left me unemployed until my boss could find me another position. She did so quickly, and I've been working steadily for over a week now. My first full week even included a day of overtime, and I was not unhappy about that! 

So, work is going well so far.

Writing, on the other hand, hasn't been going so well since my new position started up. The first week or more, between my transit schedule and my work's hours, I wasn't able to get any writing done at all. I eked out just a bit in longhand a couple days last week, but it wasn't enough, and it didn't feel like writing, because it was in longhand, not typing.

However, I've now got permission from my on-site boss (not the same one who found me this post) to bring my laptop and accompanying peripherals. So that's what I've done. I'm typing this up on August 3rd at around 05:50 in the morning while at work, in fact. If things go well, I'll be posting this on Thursday night while I'm at home after another week with overtime. 

As always, there's more detail in a post on my Patreon. Just sign up at the "Kneecaps" level.

Major Life Change

I think it was in 2006 or 2007 when I applied with Social Security for their Disability income. At the time, I was misdiagnosed and on the wrong medication, and I was having difficulty holding down any job, never mind one with a decent wage. I really needed the boost, and my mom found a Social Security legal advocate for me. He came to my apartment and "helped" me fill out the application for disability. Basically, what he did was ask me a series of questions so he could fill in the blanks himself. It was due to his advocacy that I ended up being approved for SSDI. Even when I was sitting in my living room answering the advocate's questions, though, I had in the back of my mind the promise to myself that I'd be on SSDI only as long as it took me to get mentally stable and back into the workforce. 

Over the years, especially since around 2018, I've made efforts to get back into working. For various reasons, my efforts failed. The biggest reason was that I was not as ready to do so as I thought I was. I'd put applications in places, but never follow up on them, and rarely received calls back from those applications. After a few weeks, my enthusiasm for working would wane under the influence of fear of working again, and I'd give up for a few months before something would inspire interest in working again. 

All of that has ended now. On the 29th of June, I applied with a company that provides solutions for clients seeking to protect their premises and such. I've done security-guard type work a couple times before. Once in the mid-late 90's for a company in North Carolina, after I graduated from Job Corps; I had to quit that job unexpectedly due to my living situation imploding. Later, in the Navy, I performed watches and such that included making patrols and logging events. I've always found security officer jobs rather easy, but not so boring that I'm falling asleep on the job, even if I'm up on a third shift after being awake all day the day before. 

I'll be starting my shift on Monday, and it's a full-time position. This is going to cut into my writing time a great deal, so it'll take me a few weeks at least to get into the habit of coming home and settling in to write. I'm also considering switching my writing time to the mornings before work—basically getting up at 03:00 or so to work until 06:00 before I have to start getting ready for work. We'll see what happens. I'm hoping to be able to at least keep up with the new writing schedule I set up since I was hired on at the security company.

As always, if you want to know more about what's going on, I'll have a post on my Patreon blog for those who are willing to sign up for the "Kneecaps" level.

After the Hiatus

For anyone who's followed my blogs for any length of time, my hiatus since October is nothing new, but for those who are new, it probably felt like I dropped off the face of the earth. I typically go on an involuntary hiatus in the latter half of the year, and the end of 2020 was no exception. My sleep schedule going haywire was only the beginning. 

On November first, I joined Nano. This was not a well-thought-out decision. In fact, I'd already decided not to participate. After the past month and a half, I have no recollection whatsoever of what I wrote on for the event. It could have been anything from a mundane gay romance to my primary project, DH01. Just don't ask me. Maybe I'll remember someday. I just can't right now.

At the end of November, my wife, her sister, our friend Varick, and I began a frantic collection of funds in an attempt to move into better accommodations. Varick, Tess, and I were still in our government subsidized apartments, and Tess's sister, Kaitlyn, was in danger of being forced into homelessness. Unfortunately, we weren't able to gather all the funds, and so had to abandon our plans to move.

Following that catastrophe, I dropped into a depression that somehow included writing almost daily. I think I was using it as a way to escape things at the old place. It was cluttered, dim, and stressful for all of us, cats and humans alike. Not exactly a happy time, and my psych doc even stepped in to get me another medication and a light box to help boost my mood.  

Then, at the end of December—the 31st in fact—when we got word that the second Economic Stimulus Fund would be coming in early January, Tess and I decided to contact the complex we'd tried to get into at the end of November. We knew we could pay all the fees for the deposit with the additional $600 and still have enough to live on for the rest of the month. And, in the process of negotiating with the management of the place, they told us of a January move-in special where they cut the first month's rent in half. 

And thus our Great Move began. 

With all of us combining our funds, we got the three-bedroom apartment we wanted. Even better than the one we were shown in November, this one had a ramp down to the ground-floor apartments, which are actually half-buried in the ground. 

I'll include more details in my Patreon post, including pictures, for those who are interested. The lowest Tier, "I Lost My Kneecaps, So I Can't Crawl Now", will grant you the ability to read the post. Expect that to be up by the weekend. 

A Wild Month

 It's been an interesting month-and-more here. My sleep schedule went haywire, and it threw off a whole lot of other things and I ended up falling into a depression.

Part of the past month, I've been working on the dreaded gay romances I love to hate. I think I'm noticing a pattern with these. Anytime I fall into a depression or struggle with my mood status, I turn to writing the gay romances. It's something I've only just realized happens. When I'm stable and not depressed, I find it easier to focus on my speculative fiction and rarely touch the gay romances.

Also over the past couple months, my wife and I entered into debt consolidation. We weren't horrendously deep in debt, but it would have taken a lot longer for us to crawl up out of it than it will be with the new—single—bill to pay off our debts. I'm looking forward to having this all taken care of within the next few years now. 

One of the things I'm looking into is starting up an Etsy store. I'm going to sit down with my wife, who has far more experience with businesses and such, and see about hammering out a business plan. This is in place of me getting a job with another company. Why? For several reasons, one of them being I need a more sedentary position because my body just can't handle me being on my feet all day. I'll keep y'all updated on progress here and provide more details in my Patreon posts. 

So that's where things stand right now. 

My Patreon is Now Fully Live!

Following about a week of work on my Patreon and its accompanying Discord server, everything is finalized and live! Hit the Patreon button in the sidebar to check it out. If you'd like, sign up for one of my tiers too!

After I did the original setup of my Patreon, I came up with more ideas for rewards. Since I wanted to expand the tiers and the numbers of rewards they offered, this was good. As much as I wanted Patrons when I first set things up, I'm glad I didn't have any. Right now, as things are, I see the Patreon page as its final version. If I change anything besides posts, it'll most likely be the Goals bar. However, I'm not really planning on changing anything, so there's that. I really don't want to.

The Discord server that goes with my Patreon page is called AEP's Hall of Patronage. Right now, it has a few honorary members, simply because they've all supported me in various ways for years prior to me setting up this Patreon stuff. I have two moderators, which eases my mind, especially since Jam—thanks for agreeing to be a mod!—is usually signed into Discord whenever they're online. My wife Tess is also a mod, but she's not always on, so I need to discuss that with her, though I won't force her to be constantly on Discord if she doesn't want to be; I mainly enlisted her aid in verifying and setting up things for the Discord.

Now for a little trivia: My favorite tier title is the fourth one, though the second one is a close second. #4 always brings a bit of a smile to my face though. Go check and see what they are! 

Changes are Afoot

Well, though I'm not actively writing on Discordant Harmonies 1, I'm still making progress on its background. Due to some worldbuilding I've developed over the past week or so, I've changed Chraest's name to Aelyshthar, finally given the star system it's a part of and the indigenous race names, and conlanged just enough to make what I have of things linguistically logical. 

This meant I had to create a new alphabet, which you can access by joining at the "Boy My Feet Are Really Worn Off!" level of my Patreon; the link is in the sidebar. I'll be posting something a bit more substantial for the "Why Don't Airplanes Wear Capes Too?" level and above later on, hopefully this morning after finishing this post—if I can just remember what the heck I meant to post in the first place. (And I've been so excited about posting my first higher-level Patreon post, too!) 

In addition to these changes, I've started preparing articles for posting to an interactive wiki-type web app called Archivos. At this time, I've got two articles written and am doing research on volcanoes to bring a little more realism to the worldbuilding of the planet. My friend J.A. Marlow is helping with what knowledge she possesses and suggestions for interesting and informative documentaries for me to watch, and I plan on researching more and looking up some books about it—ebooks from the library if I can find them. I'll be adding this information to a more mundane wiki as well, but the user interface is a bit more difficult to figure out and I don't want to start setting that up until I've got a number of good articles written. Neither of these will be accessible until after the launch of at least book one of my DH series. 

Oddly, I'm really enjoying this hiatus away from my story. Yes, I want to get back to it, but it's not tearing me apart this time around. I'm not sure how well I'll keep up with this blog, my Patreon, Twitter, and my articles for the wikis when I'm interested in my story again, but I'm determined to do better about it this time. And no qualifiers like "We'll see how that goes." I'm going to keep up with things this time. 

Patreon!

So, after years of considering getting a Patreon account, I've done so. My page is up, and I've got one Patrons-only post so far. 

I've been kind of looking forward to this step in my writing career. Years ago, I knew I wanted a Patreon account, and I've held off 'cause I haven't felt ready for it on a mental/emotional level. This is a lot of responsibility for me to take up. But here it is—just scroll down a bit to find the link in the sidebar.