Onwards

Sometimes, life starts feeling kind of overwhelmingly grey and ugh and bleh. Sometimes, a nice gentleman comes to your house to inspect the air conditioning unit only to notice that your water heater might be running a CO leak. Sometimes, you get a CO detector, and you measure the levels, somewhat hoping that you’ve been poisoning yourself ever-so-slightly, and that it would explain why you’ve been feeling like absolute trash the past few months.

Sometimes, the CO detector reads a crisp zero.

Sometimes, you can’t blame your problems on a gas leak.

In May, I went to Iceland because I needed to simply not be in London. I was hoping to hike the bleh away. Nature heals the soul, right?

On the flight over, I passed out twice, threw up, and then nearly passed out a third time if not for the nice flight attendants of Icelandair throwing ice packs at me, lovingly. Then, I got sick on day two of said Iceland trip. Didn’t stop me from hiking through rain and wind. Although, the youthful glow was just sweat from running a fever at this point. All in all, I spent a glorious week outdoors, experiencing no social media and very little human interaction that I didn’t specifically ask for.

Heal the soul it did, or at least slapped a human-sized Band-Aid on it.

Then, I returned, and my life promptly returned to shit, mostly because I went back online. Because you see, social media was designed to be addictive, and I, regardless of how I dress it up, am an addict (although my drug of choice would not be Instagram, but here we are). I am the cocaine rat that keeps pressing the proverbial lever for more proverbial cocaine until it dies of exhaustion (pour one out for the rat). There is no world where I retain the same brain and develop a healthy relationship with Instagram.

So.

Given how we are currently in a recession and, hence, in a deficit of healthy brains that I could acquire, I will be significantly reducing my time online. No, not reframing my relationship with social media or trying to find the Middle Path. I will be significantly reducing my time there. I’ll still keep the accounts, but I’ll be elsewhere. I’ll be here and at in-person events. I’ll be outside.

Mostly, I’ll be at my desk, writing.

Social media has rotted my brain. Not in the everyone has a great life but you kind of rot, but in the I must know what everyone and everything is up to all the time kind. A long hike in Iceland was the first time in the past five years that my mind simply went rock, another rock, ooo another rock instead of the usual what discourse and/or crisis will I stumble upon today? I’m not good at filtering this kind of stuff, not at all. Asking me to get good at it is like asking me to learn to drink in healthy doses (it doesn’t work. I’ve tried thrice now, trust me).

Over the past month, I’ve been pulling away from digital spaces and focusing more on the physical ones. The wildflowers I planted in the front lawn are blooming and need tending to, my friends are visiting, and the weather has been cool enough for some nice runs (and then the heat dome came and it wasn’t, but whatever). I’m starting to plan out my 2027 writing projects, and some for 2028. The noise in my head is slowly dying down. I’m reading for fun and not for work again. I’m thinking of painting my bathroom a bright yellow.

I envy people who can do things in moderation.

There is a strength of character to moderation that I’ve never had. Maybe it’s genetic. Maybe I’ve never cultivated it. Maybe it was just too hard, and I gave up. But my brain works in binary. It either does something 100% or not at all. It makes it easy for me to sit down and hammer out a book in a month. It makes it very difficult to be normal about things. It makes me a good worker, but not a well-rounded person.

It’s the thing that makes me check my Goodreads ratings on repeat, even if I’ve checked them a minute before. It’s also the thing that makes me finish my long runs even if I am clearly missing a toenail.

Unfortunately, I can’t just quit social media (ostensibly, it is needed for marketing purposes), but I can make it very difficult for myself to go on it. Delete the apps. Deactivate accounts. Maybe this time it will stick. Maybe the noise doesn’t return, and I don’t feel crappy all the time. Maybe we simply did not evolve to have handheld screens that espout terrible news at us at all hours of the day.

Maybe no one should be on social media at all.

But for now, all I have are minutes scattered across the day that I would have spent ruining my mood that I now spend on looking at wildflowers, and yes, showing off pictures from Iceland.

Writing News:

I actually have some writing news about my October book! It is now available for pre-order anywhere books are sold! Am I going to do pre-order goodies? Who knows! Currently, I am too deep in edits to even think about it!

I also (drumroll please) have a release date for The Starlight Samsara, my direct sequel to The Iron Garden Sutra! It will be out on February 23rd, 2027, and you can add it on Goodreads to keep up with updates! The book is finished! It is being typeset! I might even have a cover soon!

Space Scandal is steadily going on Patreon, if you would like to check it out! I’m not sure what the endgame here is, but for now, new chapters will keep going up!

Many more exciting writing updates will be coming your way as soon as I am allowed to speak about them!

….and that’s it!

Phew! That was a lot! Thanks for sticking around to the end!

Cheers!