I live with an autoimmune disease and despite being on some pretty decent drugs, I still get sick a lot. I had a pretty rough discussion at work with my boss last week and while I love my job (and have been in the role for years) I do feel like I will need to find somewhere else that is better able to accommodate my disability.

Which is... really hard to deal with. I need money for my medications, rent, food, power/water, etc. so I can't drop everything and take a break like I'd love to do (I've never had a holiday as an adult). But I also can't keep going on like this, I've been given additional responsibilities that I'm just not capable of fulfilling due to my health and just generally, I need less stress in my life.

However, trying to find somewhere that is in my field and also accommodating to someone with my kind of disability needs is difficult to say the least. So many places list "remote working options" when they really mean you can WFH once a month or something and... I'm a hard worker, but that's just not enough with my illnesss.

So yeah, I just wanted to get this off my chest. I've had an intense couple of weeks and obviously if I'm between jobs at any point or having to change to a different type of role I'll likely have to cut down on any frivolous spending (aka: the type of spending I do on the crap I post here).

I just wish there was a way for me to make enough money to stay afloat without having to work myself to the point of hospitalisation every couple of months.

When you don't have a partner or family to fall back on in tough times, when it's 100% just you and then even YOU start being unreliable... what do you do? There's just no easy way to keep a roof over your head in the current world without working yourself into an early grave.

(Also I got misdiagnosed in the hospital over the weekend when someone misread my CT scan, so that's been a whole other thing.)

I just want a quiet life with my basic needs met & my health stable and even that seems like a pipe dream. I'm sure I'm not the only one in a similar situation and I've been fortunate to have been able to keep going until now, but it just SUCKS that this is where I and so many other people are at what should be the prime of our lives.

Time to go the full fuzzy hoodie. Blankets. I can only be spoken to in whispers.

I think this lack of energy or enthusiasm is because I'm up to my ears in editing the final chapter which is its own special kind of hell for me. Going back to earlier chapters to edit throws me for a loop each time simply because of the massive journey the characters have been on. The Zack from the past chapters (and it's in particular pertaining to Zack as he has the biggest character growth) feels so foreign for me. I have to get myself into that past mentality and also keep in mind what has and hasn't yet transpired in the story to avoid rewriting stuff, or giving the game away too early.

I really look forward to being finished with the massive edits I started back in October last year. And good god... When I think about how I've been editing this story since then (not even taking into account how I started writing this in 2017/18) it feels unbelievable that I'm still going at it. That I still haven't reached my final chapter edits.

I'm gonna be so glad to be done with chapter ... 26? Maybe 27? I lost count again on what the actual chapter count should/will be.

I have regrets that I didn't get this done before I resumed posting—again this is because of the weird dissonance I experience every time I go back in time to when Zack and Cloud were bigger idiots than what they end up being by the end of the story.

If the story were 'finished' I could just go along for the ride each chapter as it comes and edit it and be in that headspace. But I'm stuck treading the line between past and future.

Anyway... I'll hopefully be done with the chapter edits on this final chapter by end of next week and then I can pour all my energy into other writing projects and also pour energy into editing the chapters as they get dropped. I really look forward to that.

I know I always edit my fics as I post them—and have had to take hiatus breaks to fix my awful messes—but what I'm experiencing with this story is wholly new to me. All I can put it down to is character growth. And I do think I invest in writing character growth in all my multi-chapter fics, but this has taken it to a whole new psychological plane of existence for me or something.

This fic is going into some hinky, dodgy emotional places I really have no right to be going. But you know, YOLO. 

At 41k, the fic is ninety percent done, and on the first read with the beta, it makes sense. *insert praise dance here* 

Things that irritate me as a polytheist.

1. Getting called a weeaboo because “I worship an anime character.” Sod off and go read some bloody lore.

2. Getting called a “fake pagan” because I worship a witch off of American Horror Story. Again, sod off and go read some bloody lore.

3. Other polytheists telling me my I’m wrong because Scáthach was human but it’s “completely okay that you worship her, sweetie, because ancestor veneration is something we do.”. Yes. Yes, it is, none of that, however, means that she was human. Unless you have primary source material, which we don’t, you’re guessing, just like I am.  I’ve been researching this particular argument for a decade, unless you have compelling evidence, your opinion is unlikely to sway me. 

4. “I’m sorry, we only have statues of Brighid, The Morrigan, Cernunnos, and Danu.” 

4. “Why don’t you worship a real goddess? I worship Cernunnos the Celtic horned god of animals.” See above, and stop bloody taking Cernunnos out of context and mashing him up with other gods. Pan-Celtic culture is a failed conjecture and doesn’t even work linguistically.