November Gloom: Too Many Storms and Rejections

November Gloom: Too Many Storms and Rejections

I’m not going to lie: this has been a tough week. The weather has been a series of emergency alerts: wind storms that knock out power, rain that brings flooding and mudslides. Absolutely no outdoor time for me this week, even on my deck or to get mail. My computer (six months old, too expensive) is on the fritz and looks like it needs replacing already. I’m worried about my parents, aunts, uncles, in-laws, many of whom had health crises this week: falls, hospital trips, illnesses, house problems. The news isn’t so cheery these days either. Three snow leopards at a Nebraska zoo died of covid. Damn it covid, stay away from our snow leopards! A GOP school district in Kansas banned books by Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Alice Walter, among others. Book burnings next? Yikes.

The time change, as predicted, has completely thrown off my sleep patterns, and I’m still fighting off a respiratory infection (non-covid) that has lasted three weeks now. I also received some really devastating rejections on my books this week. Some just feel more personal, more life-destroying, than others, right? Rejections that make you think: maybe I shouldn’t really be a writer. Maybe I should find something else and do that. I wish I had a publisher or a mentor who cared about me enough to advocate for me.

Going outside, pretty much my one area of consolation during the pandemic years, is cut off when there is driving wind and rain toppling power lines and trees and you’re running a fever anyway.

I’m still reading – in fact, I ordered some new books – poetry and some fiction on the theme “dark academia” – but not much writing and almost no submitting is happening.

Looking on Insta at friends who are healthy enough to travel and vacation in sunnier climes or visit family or go to conferences just makes me depressed, since as an immune-compromised person, I’m still not out of the covid woods and can’t even consider travel. Heck, I can’t even get over this regular run-of-the-mill sinus/bronchitis infection. My doctors can’t even say if I’m healthy enough to get a booster shot (too many of my special weird health problems interact with too many things to make any booster shot a clear win for me.)

I almost didn’t post this because I thought it would be too much of a downer. But hey, when you’re a chronically-ill, disabled person in a pandemic who is also experiencing a lot of “no” from her passion/vocation and there’s very little happy news – just grueling rounds of MRIs, blood work, doctor appointments, and even more of same- while separated from your family (going through their own stuff) and friends (also going through their own crises) then it’s just hard to rustle up a cheerful post in the darkest days of the darkest time of year. In case you ask, yes, I meditate, yes, I write down a gratitude list, yes, I’m taking vitamin D. Is this MS, SAD, perimenopause? Or “just” the length of the pandemic? I don’t know. But my reserves have been swallowed up.