I think I only come here when I'm feeling particularly poorly, when I'm at the point where I've exhausted most avenues out there in the regular world and remember the comfort I found here for so many years.
I'm going to be a sailor. I think. I have signed nothing, been told not to book flights - but the word used was 'yet'. I have a copy of my contract, waiting. Looked up flights. Found the library and the book store and hot yoga on Google Maps. Wondered how on earth one goes about moving to a city I've never seen.
The reason I am feeling particularly poorly is this: if you keep up with business in Australia+New Zealand you may have noticed that in recent months a certain retail company has collapsed. My place of work. I was brought on as a Christmas casual after months of job-hunting in a climate that, in my state, is astoundingly awful. My manager wanted to keep me on. A sudden daily stress was gone. I told my friends I would have a job to move in with them. I made plans, imagined a joyous future. And so, naturally, we are closing down. My store went a week ago. I have a few shifts at other stores, and then, poof.
But I'm going to be a sailor, perhaps. I am worried that this, too, will crumble on me. It seems the way of things.
Another factor in my mood: I wrote a novel. Late 2014 I was in Dunedin making a two-fold complaint to a friend, who retorted that I should just write the damn book. So I did. A whole novel. Drafted and redrafted: what I have now is the sixth draft, not quite polished but no longer rough. It is about as long as a Hunger Games novel, and I have asked a few friends, avid readers, if they could. They promised they would. A month, and they have not.
Another, a short story I wrote, and asked, and again. Short stories is not my forte, but it makes me wonder if I should bother attempting again. (I should, you say, of course I should, but you know. You know how self-confidence goes.)
Simply this, nervous and stressed and increasingly bothered the longer it goes. Have they read it and think it is dreadful? Are they simply too busy, and will get to it later? I keep remembering those little things that need fixing. Embarrassed that it might read like fanfiction, like a self-insert. This, an attempt at something professional? Appalling. Shameful. Hide it away.
And with work, and this (potential) job, and I have dropped out of uni (deferred, to figure out at a later date). It is so much. I would like a hug. I would like someone who reads often, and in the genre I have written in, to tell me this is good. Or to tell me that it's bad, but here is how it could be good. (I would like someone to tell me it is not too gay to be published.)
Anyway. I like it here, even if I don't know if I have anything to write that you (here, at E2) want to read. It's very comforting to be here. I hope you are all well.