Unmotivated

So I just wrote a 700 word blog post that just upped and deleted itself, and now I’m tired AND cranky. It’s well past my bedtime on a Monday night, a fact which I mentioned in the deleted blog. I also mentioned that I probably shouldn’t be up past my bedtime, but I really wanted to stay on schedule, since I’ve messed everything up since the end of last month. Because, well… you know.

I have been particularly unmotivated of late. There are a lot of reasons for this. Grief, obviously. I miss Galahad fiercely, and I have been struggling a bit in his absence. I haven’t been able to bring myself to toss out/donate his things. There is still food for him on its shelf in the kitchen. His toys are still where he left them. I did try to start by throwing out his scratching post, but every time I tried, my stomach would revolt. As it is, it’s still in the living room. I should give myself a deadline for throwing his things away. Keeping them is doing me no good.

The primary driver behind my inability to do much beyond just go home from work and collapse on the couch to do nothing but scroll mindlessly through the same two damned apps, though, is work. Work is exhausted. There’s a lot on my plate. I don’t have much downtime. And there are several frustrations that are taking up an awful lot of mental and emotional load. The effort of restraining myself from speaking my mind and (likely) getting my fed-up arse fired is exhausting.

I want to come home and paint, or draw, or do my leather work. But I just can’t find the motivation, or energy to do it.

I can’t even muster up the effort it takes to get angry about it.

It’s not like I’m doing nothing. I am writing during my lunch hours. I don’t get many words down, and it feels like my time is up just as soon as I start getting into a flow - a source of great resentment - but at least I’m still writing. That’s something.

Speaking of The Bear, I think that I may have to make it into a series of books. I’m not too far from the halfway mark, and nowhere near the completion of the first of the three major events these characters go through. I thought I had three acts of one book, but I may actually have three books. We’ll see. My writing style does tend to start very slow as I world build, and then pick up pace towards the end. Which has me worried that maybe the world and the characters aren’t enough to keep people engaged, though very little action is happening. We’ll see about that, too, I guess.

Oh, I have done other work. The Timbercreek Incident now has a book page on my website, and has also been added to the Overdue Books website as I will be publishing it in proper eBook and paperback formats. I need to get my act together and assign ISBNs to them, hire my dream interior formatter (it’s Éric Desmarais. He’s so lovely to work with), and create a proper full book cover. I also have to come up with a new book cover for the subscriber exclusive book I plan on releasing. I have a couple of ideas. Maybe I’ll do them both and let the Starlings vote on which they’d most like to see on their shelves. There’s an idea.

Also, today’s blog post was supposed to be another entry of the deep dive into the world of The Lioness of Shara Mountain (out early 2026). As you can see, it is not. I still need to post the poll for the Starlings so they can vote on what they want to see as the next entry.

Oh, by the by, if you’re interested in becoming a Starling, and getting an exclusive blog post, voting powers, plus things like subscriber exclusive editions of the books I self-publish, art and other things, it’s only $1.00 CAD a month. Who knows? If ever I get enough subscribers, maybe I can start staying home more to work on delivering even more things to the subscribers… and be able to get my books out faster. That would be so nice.

Of course, you don’t have to. It’s just there in case you get the crazy urge to toss a coin my way every so often, for some reason.

Alright, I need to go create that poll, then shower and go to bed.

Slán go foill!