It seems like the universe is continually conspiring against me getting this blog going the way I’ve promised. It isn’t. It’s just life with it’s ups and downs. Since I last updated, my Mom had a mild stroke in the middle of March and made a miraculous recovery. However, she couldn’t stay alone once she was released from the hospital. That meant I had to come home temporarily. My job wouldn’t give me paid family leave since my Mom is actually my ex-mother-in-law I’ve lived with for the past thirteen years. I understood; so, I elected to use my vacation instead of taking an unpaid leave. Not ideal; but, workable. Again, things were stacking up; but, they didn’t seem insurmountable. Not yet.
In the midst of this mess, the world got Covid-19. Like most of us, that led to a whole new can of worms for me. Things like my hours got cut at work before I took my leave, my paid vacation suddenly became unpaid furlough when our hours were cut even more, and finally my employer closed temporarily due to a stay at home order for all non-essentials. Like millions of other Americans, I suddenly found myself with no income struggling to get through to unemployment for weeks with little success.
Anyways, if the world’s current craziness wasn’t enough, my Mom had a sudden, serious Potassium crash on Sunday. She ended up back in the hospital until they got her stabilized enough to come home. I brought her home late Tuesday afternoon. She’s slowly recovering her strength and doing well. However, I’m having to do far more for her temporarily than I did before this happened. So, once again, my time isn’t my own.
In the midst of all of this, I did try to write three blogs. I failed miserably. I just didn’t have anything positive or edifying to say. I do now. As much as it sounds like I’m complaining, I’m not. I just want you to know I’m writing from the same kind of challenges so many of us are suffering at the moment. As overwhelming as the last five weeks have been, a lot of good has come out of it.
First off, all things considered, my Mom is doing wonderfully. I finally got the overflowing “junk” room otherwise known as our den/living room restored to it’s former pre-renovation glory. I cleared the garage of unnecessary “garbage” and neatened it up. I replaced the box springs on my bed Hurricane Allie destroyed as a puppy. While my bedroom isn’t fully set up, it’s getting there. So, like the people in my neighborhood working on their yards, I’m slowly getting things accomplished. Just inside instead of out. I’m also taking care of my Mom until she can take care of herself again.
Added to all that, I finally got around to editing and reposting a contemporary romance I’d posted on Amazon a couple of years ago and pulled down. It needed a serious overhaul for a lot of reasons. I also found my cd’s with all the novels I’ve started/completed over the years when I was packing up my old bedroom. The significance of this is I lost all of that work when my computer crashed unexpectedly six years ago. I thought I’d lost twenty years of work forever. While I kept the hard drive, I haven’t had the extra money laying around to pay someone to see if it was possible to retrieve any of my work.
I still thought all was lost even after I found the cds. In a dumb moment I started to toss them since my last two computers didn’t have built-in cd readers anymore. Thankfully, I didn’t. I bought an external cd reader instead. Honestly, I’d forgotten they even made those things until I started to throw those cds away for the second time. Fortunately I remembered reading about external readers when they were just coming out. I don’t think I put two and two together because I’d forgotten I’d made those backup cd’s years ago before Cloud and the like existed.
Thanks to resisting two “stupid moments” I now have a completed historical romance to edit plus three other novels in the series to complete. I also have a completed romantic suspense I’m going to edit and submit to a major publishing house. That one was a third place finalist in a Romance Writers of America contest a few years ago so it’s worth submitting after a good edit. I also have several other historical novels in various states of completion on those discs – seven or eight novels total. I’m still pinching myself to make sure this really happened. It did.
I guess the whole point and purpose of this blog is to say hold on and don’t give up hope. Good things are happening in the midst of all the trauma and drama. Grab a hold of those little things that give you joy. Appreciate your family and your pets. Appreciate having too much time for a change. Know this will end and things will get better in time. Find the little positives and cling to them when all of this seems too much. If you’re a person of faith, don’t lose it. God knows what we’re going through. While my journey through years of a personal hell brought me back to the Christianity of my youth, everyone’s journey is their own. I respect that.
The point of this blog is to say stay strong, cling to the little things, don’t lose hope, keep fighting, and we’ll persevere in the end.
Calla
Tori Lennox Author 