Well, covid has made life awful. But at the start of 2020, right before it hit my area, I was at LTUE, one of my favorite conventions. I was selling my jewelry for the first time, along with my mom’s short stories and my grandpa’s novels. And as part of the Utah Horror Writers’ Association table were two calls for submission. And guess which table my mom’s anthologies were at? So I spent a lot of time with those guys. They are AWESOME. I love them. Anyway, one call was for an anthology about urban legends from around the world. Instantly, I thought of my haunted high school story. I wrote the whole thing out that day and submitted it, even though it was February and the deadline wasn’t until October.
Now, I started the story several times, but I could never get very far with the story. It either felt forced or scared the crap out of me, so I would have to do something else so I could get some sleep. I was kind of impressed at how easily it flowed as a short story instead of a novel. I could jump from action point to action point without feeling the pressure of adding length. I had my husband read over it, and then I submitted the story. It was only an hour or two.
Come fall of that year, I got a response. ACCEPTED. I cannot describe the elation I felt at my story making it into an anthology. I was finally going to be published! Little changed during the professional editing process. There wasn’t much that I wanted to add, and there was little that the publisher felt needed to change. (It was mostly phrasing stuff, which I get.) And then, in the beginning of 2021, the anthology was released. From the Yonder, volume II. And there was my story, a third of the way in. I still have my author copy right beside my bed. I still can’t believe this is real.
At Fan X this year, I sold my first copy of a book I’m published in. A friend of mine didn’t even ask what it was about, he just bought it and had me sign my story. He runs a small business, so he understands how much those little things mean. I was thrilled. Still am. (And I sold a bunch of my jewelry, too! I almost ran out of Bundy bracelets to go with my grandpa’s books, and we completely sold out of his books.)
And this was the best thing that could possibly have come out of the pandemic for me. The next bit of life update isn’t so positive, so feel free to skip it. I know I, for one, prefer positive stories during these times. We’re still struggling to afford a house, since they’ve shot up in price so much recently, but we’re still working on it. It has brought some tears, lots of frustration, and a couple of small arguments. But we’re okay.
And work has become… well, hell. I have worked in retail the entire time. And because my company donated fabric to make cloth masks, we were allowed to call ourselves “essential”. I work at a craft store, for crying out loud. Crafting is hardly essential. And when we cut our hours because covid had just hit and no one knew how it spread, people were literally trying to bust our doors open so that they could start quilting because they were bored at home. People spent up to two hours in line just to browse. I wish I were kidding. We could only let a few people in the store at a time, because of safety regulations. It was unbelievable. One woman straight up told us that she was there so that she could “get away from her kids”. … Lady, if you can’t stand to be around your family, don’t have one. (I have become very bitter and cynical about the general public in the last two years.) I have taken to calling people “Karen” when they act entitled. Not to their faces, but boy will I call them that to other people when I need to vent. Karens suddenly started coming out of the woodworks when the pandemic hit us. Everyone complained about us being open at all, not being open enough, wearing masks, not wearing masks, having homemade sneezeguards up, how long they had to wait in line, “what do you mean my infant counts as a person?”, how we didn’t have enough staff, how they had to social distance, how the whole thing was a fraud, “I can’t breathe”, it never seemed to end. I wore a mask before it was required because I had a cold and wanted to be considerate of our customers. By the time my cold was gone, the mask mandate was in full effect. But I was loving my job and my coworkers, and it was okay.
Then my entire freight crew quit within two weeks. I went from me and three others unloading the truck and stocking it to just me. And my store manager didn’t even notice that I was doing it alone. For three months. I had help to unload, sure, but then I stocked the entire store alone. And with 300-600 boxes the size of me or larger coming in each week? Yeah. (Yes, I have tested the size of the boxes we get. I can comfortably fit inside of them.) So I worked harder than ever, because my manager’s manager, the DM, was constantly breathing down her neck and threatening her job about getting everything done in two 8hr shifts. (That’s including the two to four hours of unloading. Some weeks it took six hours. One week, it was seven and a half.) So my manager was constantly ragging me about working harder, working faster. She was so worn down by the verbal abuse from her superior that she told me, to my face, that “your best isn’t good enough.” From that moment on, I started looking for other work. It got a little better when the assistant manager informed the manager that I had been working alone for three months. But I was so burned out on the constant threatening of my job, which I loved doing. (The DM regularly threatened to fire the manager, assistant manager, and me. Over freight not being done within two days. When only I was putting it away. “We don’t have enough people.” “Oh? Then just hire more people.” Easier said than done when literally no one is applying. More on that later.) Nothing panned out. And then, in March of this year, I was completely worn out. But I had help again. Two new girls had started working and were assigned to stock freight with me. We were starting to catch up. I was starting to have hope that things would be okay, that the douche above my manager would get fired for his abuse any day now, because a former coworker had (supposedly) reported him for forcing us to stay during a power outage, which goes against state law. (That was actually why two of the three freight crew quit on me all at once. The other was moving out of state, so she kind of had to leave.)
Well, it didn’t get better, because March was apparently going to be the beginning of the end. Lifting a lot of weight for hours at a time is bad for your body. I’d had times where I had to quit using my left arm or my right while unloading the truck for a few minutes, because it hurt so much in my shoulder. Resting a few minutes would ease the pain, and I could go back to work. Well, this time was different. Truck was already unloaded, and we were nearing the end of our shift, stocking a cart of candles and warmers. I have used my left arm to hold things while my right is used to move things for as long as I can remember, in all situations. I’m severely right-handed, so I do motor stuff with my right hand. I’m more dexterous, for the most part, with my right. My left arm was holding a warmer, or something, and it suddenly gave out. Whatever was in my arm spilled to the floor. The two girls working with me asked if I was okay. My shoulder was in dreadful pain, and I just shrugged it off as “oh, it’ll be fine in a few minutes.” I left it hanging while we put away a few more things, then we all went home, our shift over. I could not lift my arm without causing excruciating pain in my shoulder for THREE HOURS. I filled out an incident report the next morning and set about finding out what was wrong. My shoulder hurt constantly. The joint felt like it was on fire. I spoke with a worker’s comp representative, and went to the doctor. Only to discover that I was supposed to have been sent paperwork to give to the doctor. Which my adjuster had failed to tell me about. The paperwork showed up several days later, and I went back to the doctor. I called the adjuster to complain about not being informed, and she was just as surprised as I had been to learn that I could not be seen by a doctor for a work injury without the proper paperwork, unless it was a medical emergency. Which my injury was not. I got recommended to a shoulder specialist. He and his assistants checked me over, and informed me of two things: first, that I had very loose joints. Second, that it was most likely a tear to a specific muscle. They said that they would need an MRI to be sure if it was a tear, but externally, it had all the signs of this certain muscle being torn. (Not all the way through, obviously, or I wouldn’t be able to lift my arm at all. Just a small tear.) They asked what insurance I was under. When I told them it was a work injury, they went “oh. They won’t go for an MRI until we try physical therapy, first.” These people had clearly dealt with this a lot. Interestingly enough, this was the same shoulder specialist who had seen my husband for his shoulder issues over a year prior. (A year of therapy, tests, and shots, and they never did figure out why my husband’s shoulder hurt. The only thing that stopped the pain was to stop lifting heavy boxes. He has worked at FedEx for ten years now, and up until about the time of my injury, was loading or unloading freight trailers. We are pretty sure that his is an issue with some other area that is nerve-related. Possibly his neck. If he chooses to seek further help, it will still be covered by his work. The only reason they stopped was because the shoulder specialist ran out of things to try.) I was also scheduled to get my shoulder x-rayed.
So, off to physical therapy I go. It’s right by my house, my husband had been there for a while for his shoulder, they are wonderful people. They check out my range and strength, and we start on some exercises. Over several weeks, I improve quite a lot. I regain much of my strength, but the doctor puts me on a weight restriction of 10lbs. That’s not a lot. So I am now unable to unload the boxes from the truck, which can weigh well over 50lbs. (We’re not supposed to get anything over 50lbs, but they regularly send stuff that weighs 60lbs or more.) I am unable to pull boxes off of the belt. I struggle to stock certain things because they are too heavy. I can’t put paper away. I can’t pick up half of my totes of sorted stock. I can’t climb up to get batting from our storage wall or above the cabinets. I can’t even lift some of our stuffing, because we carry up to 20lb boxes. I don’t mind the excuse to make other people do some of the work, but I did feel a little useless sometimes.
Well, almost four months of physical therapy later, I FINALLY get an MRI approved. The x-ray had showed nothing, just a slightly kinked neck, which was probably from sleeping funny or not sitting up straight when they took the picture. Four months from the date of the injury, it happens. I’m getting an MRI. My husband tells me it’s terrifyingly claustrophobic, but I’m perfectly fine. I’m half his size, and I like small spaces. They put me in the tube, and I’m so comfortable that I nearly fall asleep. The shots were honestly the worst part. I’m trypanophobic, so I don’t do hypodermic needles. I have had panic attacks from getting shots and blood draws before. They have me a rag to squeeze when they gave me the saline shot, because my husband couldn’t come back with me. I remember it ached. The second shot was the contrast, and I was pretty numb. Still unpleasant, though. Trypanophobia does not care if you can feel the whole needle, it will still make your fight-or-flight kick in. When we get the results, we go over it with the shoulder doc. I’m expecting a small tear. There is nothing. Not even thickened tissue. I thought that this was finally going to be answered, so we could fix it. Or at least know what was wrong. Not more “nothing.” Panic sets in. I can barley keep my voice steady as I start crying, trying to clarify what we know and what we don’t. I am only still at work at this point because I’m not sure if worker’s comp will still cover if I switch jobs. A shift manager position opened, so I took that, but I am still asked to lift things that I can’t lift, like shelves. We try a cortizone shot: it does nothing. My restriction is expanded: no lifting more than 10lbs, and no lifting anything above shoulder height. I have two options at this point. They can do exploratory surgery, with a 50% chance of finding anything at all, or I can go on permanent physical limitations. I, of course, opted for the limitations. Surgery just to probably find nothing? No thank you.
I was assessed for those permanent limitations last week. I can’t lift more than 20lbs without re-injuring myself. I can lift up to 35lbs with my good arm, and only 20lbs with the injured one. And that’s with difficulty. I can’t work at the cut table for more than a third of my shift without causing the injury to flare up, because the repetitive motion of measuring fabric pulls at the injury site. Keep in mine that I have been working full-time this entire time. I am likely permanently injured from a very small incident. I have a theory as to what it is. When I asked the doctor if scars would show up on an MRI, he said that they would only show up if the tissue was enlarged or thickened. If it was torn and healed cleanly, it would not necessarily thicken the tissue. Consider a phenomenon known as microtears. My younger brother had to have surgery on his wrist because of a microtear. When you put hand sanitizer on your hands and it burns but you can’t see any wounds? That’s a microcut. It happens when you’re dry, dehydrated, handling something rough, any number of reasons. Well, they hurt just as bad as the cuts you can see, even though they’re miniscule in size. If a microtear operates the same way, it makes a lot of sense. If it can be severe enough to require wrist surgery, who’s to say that it can’t cause the pain that I deal with now? Also, not all scars thicken. I have one on the bottom of my foot from 2006, when I stepped on a screw. Serious puncture wound, bit right into the muscle. It healed beautifully. I can’t even tell you what foot it happened on, most of the time. When you look at the injury site, there’s nothing to see. But if I step wrong, the muscles there yank on a sliver of scar tissue and it hurts like I’ve stepped on a screw all over again. I have to limp for a minute after this happens, because the muscles cramp up when it pulls the scar.
The point is that I think that I got a microtear or two in my shoulder. Supporting evidence; I know a professional massage therapist who took a look at the injury site shortly after I saw the specialist, and she said that it felt like two small tears. She is so good with the muscles of the human body that she can tell when a woman is pregnant. She once knew I was on my period before I did. (The blood had not left my body at the time, but a few hours later, I was hunting down a pad.) When it comes to my muscles, I trust this woman completely. (She is very much in support of medicine, which is another reason I trust her. She doesn’t do the “mind over medicine” junk that some people are into these days.)
Well, it’s late November, and my shoulder still flares up regularly. I’ve been assessed, and will soon have a permanent limitation on what I can do with my shoulder. And I have been working constantly this entire time. No wonder I still have problems. Oh! And it gets better. Remember how I mentioned earlier about the DM telling us to hire more people? Well, more people quit, instead. We got down to seven employees, at one point. We are supposed to have 30. We had to call other stores to send employees just so that we could keep our doors open. No one is applying. We finally hire someone just in time to lose someone else, because we are a skeleton crew, and we are severely burnt out. Manager is told by her doctor to take a medical leave for a couple of months, because her mental health was hanging by a thread. Other stores are refusing to help. DM is constantly on our butts. I’m injured. We get a few more people hired, but we’re still only up to 15. And that’s counting three people who can only show up two days a month, our absentee manager, and two special needs helpers who are limited in what work they are able to do. (We love them both so much. What they are able to do actually helps us out a lot. We just need more people who can use scissors.) Well, DM suddenly starts being nice, now that the manager is out sick. We’re not sure if he realized that it was entirely his fault and felt guilty, or if it’s because the assistant manager won’t let him walk all over her. Or both. It could honestly be both. Anyway, one day, the assistant manager is told to call a particular store for help. She says “okay. Sit here while I do, and say nothing. Pretend you’re not here.” So he sits there while she calls and puts the other store on speaker. The manager on the other end snaps at her. “We’ve got a note posted in our breakroom that if anyone wants more hours they can go help you!” Like, this woman flips out about it. And this is the store that the DM is CONSTANTLY telling us to ask for help when we need a shift covered. DM is in shock at this response. He looks at the ASM and asks “Is this always how they respond?” “Yeah, pretty much.” He has stopped bugging us to ask them for help. (Side note, I have had customers tell me that they refuse to shop at that location because the employees are so rude. I was shocked that they treat customers like they treat fellow stores. People drive an hour out of their way to a smaller store, just because the employees are nice here. How sad is that?)
So the DM calmed down for a bit. I’ve been a manager (shift manager) for a few months, and I have still only received training on two things: how to close the store, and how to withdraw from the registers when they get too full. (I didn’t know that was necessary, until one register froze and refused to work until it was emptied.) I can’t open the store, I don’t actually know what we can do for customers a lot of the time. I still ask other managers what we’re allowed to do to help a customer. I have been coasting by on what I knew about the job from my previous position. I couldn’t even log in to the email for months. If anything needs to be replaced or fixed? I don’t know what to do. Really, my training has been pathetic. And I’m still working constantly. We have to stay after closing until everything is cleaned up. So I stay over ten hours for two nights in a row. I barely sleep. I feel myself getting sick from the exhaustion. Then one Sunday, just a few weeks ago. I wake up feeling miserable. I don’t go to church. I feel sluggish, and I have malaise. I wear a mask to work, even though it hasn’t been required for months. I stay eight or nine hours, my head thick with illness. My nose is clogged, and this is not a pleasant cold. I don’t sleep well. Then I go to work on Monday, still foggy, still achy, still congested. I literally wobbled on my feet while walking or standing. It is misery. I can’t wait to find another job so I can put in my two weeks, since now I’m working myself to exhaustion. Monday night, hubby drives me out to my doctor’s office, because I have run out of one of my pills, and was only just informed that I was out of refills. We’re driving by the refineries, and my husband comments about the stink. I smell nothing. He asks if I farted. No, did you? “No.” Well, I don’t smell anything. Why do you ask? “Look at where we are.” I was still foggy, so I was half asleep in the car, but I recognized the cluster of refineries.
I don’t smell anything. I laugh and joke that it’s covid, so I can finally get a few days off of work. This was not the first time I had honestly wanted my cold to be covid just to get some rest. That’s how bad the overworking got. Anyway, we see the doctor, and its someone new because my GP isn’t available until Wednesday, and I need pills immediately. I go through the usual depression/anxiety paperwork, and think “oof, work has got me so stressed that my pills aren’t enough to keep me stable anymore.” I tell the nurse all of this, and she gives me a list of websites and phone numbers for help with depression. I joked that she gave me a list of suicide hotline numbers, but it actually was kind of scary. I’ve never been suicidal, and I’m still not. So to be that concerned for my health just reinforced how much I need to get out of this job.
Tuesday morning, hubby wakes me up at the buttcrack of dawn so we can go do a rapid covid test. We go, I get the nasal swab. (Which is so much better now, by the way. When they first broke out the tests, they had to shove the swab into your nasal cavity, which is very painful when you have small nasal passages.) I got vaccinated as soon as I was able to, so I’m thinking this one will come out normal, like all the other times. Less than an hour later, I have the results; *SARS-COV DETECTED*. I had covid. I actually had covid. I got my wish. I immediately told my husband and called the morning manager to tell her the news. In the previous two days, I had been around nearly every coworker I have. I had even had my mask off around one, because she came into the office while I was getting a drink. Other shift manager calls me to get details about who I was around a lot, and other info that she has to pass on to corporate. Once she has everything she needs, I go back to bed. I slept until three or four in the afternoon, and it was like I had miraculously healed. I still had the sniffles, but nothing else. No malaise, no nausea, no nothing. Just a runny nose. And I still can’t smell, but I kept forgetting that until someone would fart or use the bathroom. I could taste food just fine. Everything smelled like clean air to me. Several days of laying in bed, and I get bored. I cleaned, I read, I slept, I played video games, I watched movies. After five days of not being able to smell, my nose begins returning to normal. After being quarantined for eight days, I feel perfectly healthy. Ten days, and I finish my quarantine. I test negative. I go see a movie with hubby to celebrate my recovery, and then I return to work a day or two later. I was out of work for less than two weeks, but I really really needed that break.
Well, I’m already back to being desperate to find a different job. I have applied to more jobs in the last few months than I ever have in my entire life. Someone at work reported my to the DM for eating lunch with my husband. … Yeah, you read that right. And it’s perfectly within the rules to do so. If I am the only manager, I am not allowed to clock out or leave the premises for my lunch break. So he brings me food, since we only have one car, and I can’t drive anyway. We sit in the unused “classroom” section of the building, since someone complained about him being in the breakroom with me, even though it is technically allowed. Well, this person also complained that they can never find me on the floor. While I am recovering the store or pulling online orders. And we all wear RADIO HEADSETS FOR COMMUNICATION. Clearly, someone does not know how to ask me where I am. (One coworker actually thinks it’s the mean lady that sells the sewing machines, since she doesn’t have a radio and apparently hates me. She is rude to me when she does bother to talk to me, and has actually been so rude to my coworkers that several of them quit because of her. I have yet to figure out who to complain to about her to make something happen.) The assistant manager was the one who had to talk to me about these complaints, and she was as shocked as I was, because not a soul had said anything to her. No one complained to her about any of this. She had seen nothing happening that was worth complaining about.
That was the straw that broke me. I had spent so much time and energy trying to help my coworkers, especially when they were only being partially trained, and I was literally working myself to injury and exhaustion because I cared about my coworkers. They were the only reason I was still working here. And they were reporting me for stuff that was either perfectly acceptable or stuff that I wasn’t doing. (I got reported for saying “it’s someone else’s problem” about something I wasn’t trained on. And am still not trained on. I also got reported for saying things that I never actually said, like “I don’t have to be nice to customers.” Which I can’t even think of why I would say anything similar to that. I did once say that I had nothing nice to say to corporate, and this person told corporate that I said that about a customer. So lots of mixed truth and fiction.)
Well, I have lost all loyalty, and am applying for jobs each night until I hear back from someone. For how many places are desperate to fill positions, they are pretty terrible about checking their inboxes. There’s one that I applied to about two months ago that still has not looked at my application. (Indeed tells you when the hiring body checks the application when you apply through their website.) Another place, I applied two ways, just to make sure that it went through. Like, I’m applying everywhere. Why is no one getting back to me? You can’t complain about being understaffed if you don’t even check the applications you’ve received. My current job? The other managers check it daily. (The ones that have access to it. I am not one of those.)
In short, I am looking for a less stressful job. When you are stressed to the point that you break down in tears, unable to function, at least twice a week by a job that pays $12/hour (after three years of raises) and expects you to work better than three people in the same capacity, it’s not worth staying. If you are on medications that are supposed to prevent such breakdowns? Even worse. I was hoping to be out before Thanksgiving, and here I am still. If I can’t find anything by the end of the year, I may just put in my two weeks anyway. My physical health is wrecked. My mental health is in tatters. No job is worth that. Nearly four years, and I am still treated like garbage. My entire staff is treated like we’re not trying, even though we are only fourteen and are supposed to have 30-40 team members this time of year. We should have been shut down for lack of staff months ago. Only one person has been at the store longer than me, and she’s the assistant store manager. And she has developed health problems that should put her on disability, so we’ll see how long before she quits, too. I’m not going to stick around for her, much as I love her. I’m already broken.
It may sound like I’m whining, or like I’m being dramatic, but sometimes you just need to vent. And I’m not exaggerating. We are a skeleton crew, and corporate keeps acting like firing us is a valid threat. They don’t care about people, just money. They didn’t even tell anyone when I exposed them to covid. Several of my coworkers found out after I got back to work. They were pretty pissed about not being told that they were exposed. (I get that it’s not a requirement to inform the employees who it is that is sick, but someone needs to tell them “hey, you may have been exposed to covid, just so you’re aware.” I was around them for two days. It’s a miracle that I didn’t get anyone else sick. Not even my husband caught it from me, thankfully. But they still deserved to be warned, in case they wanted to get tested or take extra precautions.) I’ve always tried to see the best in people, so sometimes I’m seen as naïve when I get disappointed in others. But I got lucky; I’ve had really good managers and bosses in the past. People who were honestly good people and cared about their employees. This is my first time experiencing such blatant disregard for the welfare of the people keeping their store open. (It doesn’t help that corporate won’t let us offer competitive pay. We pay more than any other location, and still can’t get people to apply because we’re in a wealthy area with tons of retirees. No one can afford to work for so little when it costs so much more to life in the area.)
So it’s been a crazy couple of years, as you can tell. On a positive note, I am currently editing a novel for my mom’s publishing company, Carlisle Legacy Books. Have I talked about CLB before? I know I mentioned inheriting my grandfather’s literary estate. Well, Mom bought back the rights to his books and publishes them herself now. The previous publisher had somehow managed to add typos that were not in the original manuscript. And we have all of Grandpa’s notes and papers, so we’re planning to eventually publish his unfinished projects as well. Anyway, this guy that I’m editing for, he was a friend of my Grandpa, and also wrote a book about his experience with true crime. He was a bank robber, once upon a time, and wrote about how he broke out of his cycle of crime. He’s a sweetheart, and completely reformed. Well, he wrote a fiction story about a serial killer, and how he almost gets away with it. We are publishing his autobiographical story, so he wants to publish his fiction with us. I’m even getting paid for it! It’s slow going, but it’s a fascinating story, and I can’t wait for it to be polished! It has a lot of potential, and I want to get to the meat of the story. The big issue is that it was written on a typewriter and scanned into the computer. I can’t edit text when the computer thinks it’s an image. So I have to type it all out, which is why it takes so long. There are some big tangents that need cutting and/or polishing, but like I said before, the story is fascinating. I really want it to reach the public.
Hm, other notes… I don’t think I ever mentioned the nerdy discord I joined. It’s for a musician whose works I adore, and a lot of the other fans there are really young. And they are a variety of gay, so I’ve been learning a lot about how to be sensitive to their different views of gender identity. Being straight and actively religious means I don’t naturally understand why a person would choose those paths. But the kids in this group are really patient, and they are willing to explain things to me, and have real discussions instead of “agree with me or you’re wrong!”. It’s really nice. So I’ve learned how not to be insensitive by accident. It’s made it easier to use preferred pronouns for those who are picky about their identity. (I’m easy- I look like a girl, and I identify as the sex I was born.) I have noticed that some of us who are straight tend to struggle with “they/them”. I definitely struggled with it at first. Then again, the first person I knew who wanted to use “they/them” changed her mind every week, and then would yell at you when you called her the old pronouns before she had bothered to tell you that she had changed her mind yet again. (She was legitimately crazy. And started changing her identity only after dating a friend of mine for a year. They were engaged for several months when she started insisting that she was an enby. Then she changed her name. Then changed it back. Then decided she was male. Then genderless. I honestly stopped keeping track. She was toxic, and would scream at you for daring to believe differently than her. She dumped my friend because he couldn’t keep up with her bipolar gender identity, and she would scream at him for calling her “he” when she decided that morning to be “they”. Or the time she went back to being “she” but super bisexual. Honestly, she would scream at him for not doing a chore she hadn’t asked him to do yet. So yeah, it it really hard to get used to more than two gender pronouns when I finally met a real enby.)
Anyway, that was a while big tangent. Point is, awesome group, awesome music, and I love them. And I love that they respect my values and different views, just like I respect theirs. It makes it easy to skip drama and just geek over what we all mutually enjoy. Like kitties, D&D, and (of course) Paul Shapera. I’ve thought of doing album reviews for his stuff, since it’s become such a huge part of my life.
Oh! I almost forgot! I started streaming on Youtube! I was gifted with a copy of Dream Daddy as a joke, so I decided to share. I did not expect such heartfelt story from a game that was made by Game Grumps. When I am able to get enough time to play, I stream it. It’s a blast. I call it “Stream Daddy” because I’m clever like that. Hubby and I have talked about doing other videos, too, and we’ve talked to a friend about doing a series called “an idiot learns”, where he tries out different hobbies and crafts that his family and friends are always pushing him to try out. He came up with the title, and I think it would be great. We came up with the story for a comic series together once, but I’m super slow at drawing, so it didn’t get very far. Anyway, he’s clever, and entertaining. And it could be a really fun thing to do, if covid ever ends. (That and my hellish schedule are what has prevented us from doing it so far.)
I think that’s it for big life updates. I’m still a Ghostbuster, and we did some stuff for the new movie, but I was only able to make one of those events due to work. We did Fan X with them again, and it was awesome. And now, I have a novel to write, since it’s NaNoWriMo. Until next time!
Writing Legends 