Where have I been? · 3:03am April 16th
Where have I been? Short answer is dealing with very stressful things then getting sick.
Long answer:
I am carer (and now driver) to my parents. No other family member has taken this on no matter how I have asked/begged for help in the past. Over the past twelve months, we've been going through the lengthy process of getting government in home assistance for my father in particular. His Parkinson's and related dementia have greatly accelerated in the past three years with an even higher spike on the dementia side in the past say fifteen months. We are genuinely watching him disappear. Jumping through the hoops and getting all the paperwork done for the government has been an absolute nightmare, especially just after I dropped the previous chapter of A Deer Named John. It truly does feel like the departments in question go out of their way to prevent people accessing this system, including kicking us off the process through absolutely no fault of our own for two extra stressful weeks.
I am not kidding or exaggerating. We actually had to get help from our Parliamentary members (both state and federal) to help with some of the worst of it. It has been insane. Even had to bite down when my mother couldn't fight it anymore and force my way through on her behalf when I wasn't doing well myself. In the last week or so before the end of March, this (mostly) got completed. Unsurprisingly, I had been pushing too hard and my body crashed with a bug for a few weeks. Just as I really started to come through it all, this past weekend, one of my mother's cats was bitten by a juvenile Eastern Brown Snake (late in the season here) which pretty well unloaded all of its venom into him. There is a lot to the story of that two days but, the good thing is, I got him treated in time. He is alive and, other than a couple of shaved patches on his forelegs, you can already barely tell what happened to him. We got very lucky.
Throw in a major health thing for me coming to fruition in the middle of it all which I had been on a waiting list for two years after encountering an unethical doctor in my first attempt properly dealing with it in previous years.
So, yeah, I'm very burned out right now. At least physically.
Writing-wise, I've been flooding my brain with as much stuff for inspiration and mental fuel as I can (depending if it has been well enough to do so at any particular time). Has caused some unrelated side projects (three different TTRPG campaign proposals for my friends, any of which would be my first GM attempts). I will be looking at John again soon. One of the two most important scenes is pretty well completed, I'm just not happy with the exact flow through what is written of the chapter. I may have to write the second half as its own piece temporarily just so it exists and I can work out how to bring them together. Still being mentally harassed daily by another project but that isn't for this site and, unfortunately, may end up being a story I take to my grave no matter how much I love it.
For those wondering what the TTRPG campaign proposals are, they are a short Fallout one, a long Fallout one, and what looks like a long Transformers one.
So, yeah that's an overview of a number of things. There were more but these are the major things I feel. Will be getting back to John when I have come down from the stress of the snake incident as it is still very fresh.
Exhausted,
Tael.
I’m sorry to hear you’re going through all that. I can’t imagine how emotionally difficult it is to have to take care of your own ailing parent.
I'm in the situation where I'm probably going to have to move to where my mom is to take care of her (and it's just physical disability). In the middle of nowhere, as far as research institutes go, so I'll have to find a new job that let's me work remotely-since I do bioinformatics work, that's probably doable, but even so it's been stressing me the hell out. This is all just to say I can't imagine how stressed out you are, considering how much this bothers me and how much worse your situation is.
Remember, your writings are a gift to us, not a duty, so you're not failing us if real life takes your time and energy.
As a side note for DMing a game-that can be a sizable time commitment. I've spent ~2-3 hours preparing for every hour of game time (but I'm not that great at doing ad hoc characters, so I like to have names/personalities/etc pre-planned, and make battlemaps for roll20 etc.) If you're better at impromptu characters and encounters, it would be substantially less time commitment.
5777092
Thank you and you have my sympathies at having to switch jobs in order to do so.
On the care side, you may want to see if there is anything in the way of assistance packages offered by your Government for home care. A large part of the reason we went through the frustration and extreme stress after we learned it even existed was to be able to access help with caring. In our case, we can now, if needed, get transport assistance for his medical appointments when there are tight time constraints, maybe assistance with bathing as physical ability decreases, someone can come and sit with him if we the carer(s) genuinely need a break. You will need breaks. You will probably feel guilty for needing/taking them but you will need them. Not taking them properly is part of why I burned out health wise.
Simply, just see if there is anything that can help. Truth be told, our journey into this was two years of snowballing to this point with a lot of metaphorical hitting our heads against the wall, but before that, we didn't even know there were services or even the assistance package potentially available. And we were doing so from the point we were already metaphorically drowning. Unfortunately, some of the process may be brutal. Having to be honest about what my father can and can't do mentally and physically in interviews in front of him was heartbreaking, especially when you have to account for, okay, this is what they can do now and it may be small but in a month they may be not able to do more and this is a sign of that.
For 5777025 as well (thank you), the strangest part, at least for me, is that you not only are their carer, but, at some point, and you may not realise it at the time, the dynamic shifts and you become the parent. It is not always an easy thing to grasp and I struggle with it frequently. No matter how much help he needs or what has been stripped away from either physical or mental deterioration... he's still Dad. He just needs the help now.
I know they will eat time which is why I'm trying to build as much background structure as possible. Building them is more me trying to get these ideas out of my head in order to focus on the stories I want to be actually writing but these keep getting in the way of. It is unfortunately a side effect and necessary evil of flooding my brain with things to munch on for writing. I know which one I would like to try first, considering it is the shortest time commitment to see if I can do it, but it is also the one I have the least idea of how to structure. This is probably because, despite my posting of more shorter than longer pieces on the site, I struggle with stopping them growing too much. A Deer Named John is an example of this. The longer Fallout proposal is also an example of this as it was meant to be the original short one shot.
Also on the time front, this would only be me running them on occasion, as we have a long going campaign that takes that time slot we set aside. These would be more for if, there is for whatever reason, that one can't run, but we are all still together on that night.
Today I have only two messages on feed, the little world icon on fimfiction. Your's here, and this one >here<. Curiously I could not add that as an embed even though the link comes from this websight.
i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/006/039/shrugging-pinkie-pie.jpg
Anyway, I wonder if you'll see a pattern here between these two feeds. From this, I do. It's like taking a pulse on the whole world. Not really that universal but you probably still get the idea.
My point is you're not alone in this struggle. I hope telling you this somehow makes you feel better.