Hereâs a long overdue post! Letâs pretend the last several years havenât happened. No, I canât really do that becoz Iâm a different person in a lot of waysâŚ
Okay, letâs recap what Iâve been doing. Well, first of all, Iâve been not doing much with my fannish life; not writing, not drawing, barely reading any fanfic. It was likely due to the stress of leaving my job and packing up a large house full of stuff to move interstate, then becoming chronically ill a short time afterwards.
I have to say though, Iâve never regretted the move. I now live in Australiaâs âbush capitalâ. It has lived up to the name, being both the capital city, and a wonderful bush environment. I live close to the southern end of the ACT (in antipodean terms, the further south you go, the colder it tends to be), so I get to see occasional snow-tipped mountains to the south in winter.
Our street features a regular mob of kangaroos who travel down from a large hill every evening, heading for the local park to graze. In the hot weather we leave large buckets of water out for them to drink.
When I had to give up working two years after I moved here for health reasons, I leaned into art for my mental health. It was the second year of Covid 19 and the stress, both physical and mental tipped me over into fibromyalgia and CFS. Anxiety and depression came with it. Itâs a drastically different state of being. Itâs been a very steep learning curve navigating this illness, but I feel fortunate that I didnât catch COVID, despite being in work environments where it was often spread.
So many others suffered through Covid, and some people endured long covid - not that different from fibromyalgia and/or CFS - so my own experience is hardly unusual. Weâve all gone through a LOT. Some of us are still dealing with the side effects.
So most of my efforts these days goes into painting. It was always Plan B to attempt to earn a living with visual art - I have a background as an illustrator - and since Plan A (full time employment) has failed⌠art it must be!
Itâs not easy, becoz self-promotion is abhorrent to most artists - me included, and I canât make it to many events due to fatigue, but I do what I can and Iâve had work shown here and in Melbourne. Iâd still be drawing and painting anyway, regardless of sales. It keeps me sane!
Why am I writing all this now? Actually, I donât know. Something vaguely fannish must have woken in my brain. Iâm having some plotty thoughts about writing a new part for my old Mystrade fic⌠the fact that I wrote out all these words is a pretty big deal. I really havenât written even this much for a long time.