Mea Culpa

A State Sanctioned Plea for Patience

Remember that time I talked about those books on burnout? I should be consulting them myself and take my own advice because boy do I need them.

I still owe you some thoughts on Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler. I still owe two friends comments on their drafts. I still owe one interview draft to a friend for this newsletter, and different interview draft to another.

The thing with surgery that no one tells you (or in my case, am delusional enough to pretend won’t apply to me) is that it takes time to recover. And heal. All annoying things that require patience and slow movement. While I feel I’m at about 90% of my pre-surgery capacity 90% of the time, I still get tired more easily. I’m still building back my endurance. I still have scars on my abdomen. Oh, did you know planks are hard? My abs hate me right now.

This is also to say nothing of the fact that I still have to work for a living, keep myself alive, and tend to my mental and physical health, which as I just mentioned, is recovering from surgery. This isn’t a cry for sympathy, it’s a mea culpa to my more perfectionist tendencies and my stubbornness when faced with immovable realities.

I take on too much. I do not need to. The world will not end if I send out a shorter newsletter, or take a little longer to get some things done. I’ve built it all up in my head. You’d think I’d have learned this lesson by now, seeing as I apparently titled another newsletter this same thing about a year ago.

Doing Too Many Things

I genuinely believe most people are kind-hearted and are doing their best, just as I am right now. Which I hope means you’ll understand that I don’t have anything new to share. Today my best means a shorter newsletter so I can have more time to write my novel (yeah I’m doing that, too, along with everything else) and catch up on my email and do my laundry. One day I hope to make a living solely from my words, but I’m not there yet. So everything must compete with my limited time and energy.

If you believe in any kind of ordering of the Universe, then it’s teaching me to be more patient and process things. I hate it. It’s the worst. I turn into Pingu the Penguin, angry at literally everything, when I have to do things in smaller steps instead of all at once.

I have never even see this show and this penguin conveys so many of my daily feelings.

So no, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke. Just a note to say I’m thankful for your patience and your presence here, and I will try to have something more interesting and book related next week. And get more than 7 hours of sleep a night.

---

No New Books™️ Challenge

I’m sad about things and exhausted by life which usually means I’m about to do something stupid and buy a lot of books. There’s a special edition sale from Owlcrate that goes live today, and maybe I’ll buy it unclear tbd I’m sad and things are nice.

• Longest streak: 38 days (January 1st - February 6th)

• Last streak: 6 days (February 27th - March 4th)

• Current streak: 28 days (March 5th - Present)

Mug Moment of the Week

This week’s Mug Moment of the Week is from Illumicrate. Yes, that’s how they got me - they occasionally have mugs.

You know it’s bad when you can see the mug related detritus in the background. But the mug in the foreground, this is called the Banked Fire mug and is inspired by The Priory of the Orange Tree. I haven’t read it, but am aware of it. Like most books, to be honest. This mug came in their August 2023 box, and while very lovely (the colors are really bright) is a tad small for my needs. I love all of my (mug) children equally.

T.S. Eliot says that April is the cruelest month, so may your Aprils be kind, and I’ll see you here next week for actual book content.