It has been a very tiring couple of days. Those of you who know me well will know that I suffer from PTSD, otherwise known as Post Traumatic Tress Disorder. It’s one of those awkward illnesses where physically you are fine but mentally things are somewhat shaky at times. Yes, I function reasonably well and I have got a lot better over the deep dark times of a couple of years ago. People assume that PTSD comes from events such as car wrecks and military battles, and sometimes it does. However it is perhaps not so widely known that it can also come from things that seem further removed such as bullying and harassment in the workplace, which is where mine came from.
I have been having a few weeks where things were not quite all well at the circle of Jenny. It happens, thankfully not quite so regularly. It seemed to reach a peak yesterday (or should that be trough?) and I had some difficulty after being triggered by the hassle of trying to pick some people up from the airport who had left me wrong and inacurate flight information. It made me stress a lot which in turn gave me a huge anxiety and panic attack. It happens, from time to time. Unfortunately often people do not realise the thoughtlessness of their actions that around some-one with PTSD can cause such hardship.
Consequently I have got very little in the way of writing done. I’ve got just over a thousand words of a short story “The walls have ears” and I’ll be hopefully finishing that off by the end of next week. After that I’m already planning the second draft of “The Atlantic Connection”.
On the short story front, I got a rejection from Asimovs for “Three, my lucky number” which is neither here nor there because after far too long of waiting I have already sent out for consideration elsewhere. It came as a little odd though to get the email as only this morning I was at the post office posting a copy of “Bringing home the stars” to them. As they did not specify the piece’s title in the email, the first pang of fear is that they have rejected the new one. But of course the post never travels halfway around the world that quickly!
I seem to have a lot of ideas on the boil at the moment, which is extremely comforting. Ideas are any writer’s future, so having enough to ensure a steady stream of stories is good. I’ve got a few things to do over the coming months, and no doubt will be getting more short stories out there. You may notice that the portfolio section of the website goes quiet for a while and this is because I’m always sending short stories out to magazines first now and they will only appear on the website once they have been published and done the print run of whatever magazine publishes them.