Lanterns are both a light at the end of the tunnel, and, y’know. A thing that burns.
And I think I’ve pushed myself into burnout, albeit, not quite so severely as I might have if I wasn’t paying attention to myself.
I think I’ve caught it early, and I already show signs of recovery – lots of ideas making me excited about Quicker than Blood – but I also show signs of being extremely… brittle and fragile, not very resilient to the psychological and practical knocks and dings of day to day life.
So as much as ideas are bubbling up in a way they haven’t for awhile (Deserted city built to house refugees during the Eurasian war now purely occupied by scrappers pulling it apart to sell it! Events that risk restarting the cartel wars! Cops wielding batons coated with gengineered jellyfish tissue! Cancer cures resulting in people resuming carcinogenically risky behaviour! Gengineered guard wasps that attack anyone who don’t wear your cologne!!!) I really, really need to not push myself too far.
Part of me wants to immediately hit the grindstone and tweak things so I can include all of this stuff right now immediately, the other part of me is recognizing it’s taking me 3-4 times as long to get through my usual to-do lists.
While I haven’t gotten nearly as much done this past month as I’d have liked to, I have started having the kinds of revelations that I know result in better books. And it’s been a hot minute since those sorts of revelations have reliably been part of my life.
So, I’m going to keep taking care of myself, and do my best to nail this burnout. I think I’m already quite far along that path, but, ultimately, we will see how things go.
In the meanwhile, as ever, thank you all so much for your support while I get my shit together.
Hope to have more interesting news for you next month!
