Chapter 1.

One year ago I launched into an entirely different career. One with no financial guarantees or security. I was going to write. I left my secure but stressful job as a nurse, twenty five years at the bedside seriously burned me out. I wanted to write. I had made something a name by getting published in a few independent anthologies.My goal was to finish and publish a novel that I was working on without the stress, anxiety and distraction of working at the hospital.

I had the full support of my husband who has always believed in me. Nearly thirty years together, he has been my greatest champion. He has always seen far more in me than I believe in myself from the day we met. I was a single mother, he was just a year out of college and beginning his career in engineering. We have made a good life together, I knew it was risking financial security by cutting my income for writing. He did not see it that way, we could manage. I was free to write.

I made a solid plan. I had a rough draft, and outlines for two more novels. I would start on New Year’s Day 2019 with revision. My goal was to finish by March 2019, then start querying. I had a list of publishers, and my written query letter. I was going to write for a few hours early in the morning, break to do real life things like walk dogs, clean, laundry, exercise, cook; revise in the afternoon. And it all went to shit.

I did not write a single word. I got nothing-I mean NOTHING done. My wide open day was a summons to go on the internet at dawn, and not come up for air until it got dark. I had to take small breaks to walk dogs, but otherwise, I was all in on social media, infotainment/news, political platforms, and celebrity scandal. Time just melted away. January became February. Hours and hours gone. Gone. No writing, just me and the internet. I followed whatever my feeds on Facebook and Twitter fed me. Buzzfeed, Slate, Huffpost, Atlantic Monthly, and my personal black hole of brain squandering, The Daily Mail.

It wasn’t good. I knew it. As soon as I got up, I’d log on and jump in. My brain was mush, and before January was out, my body was mush too. I gained ten pounds because I added a couple of beers as a way of finishing off my busy day of internet surfing; alcohol eased the guilt of not actually doing anything day after day. I destroyed my thought process in places that wrecked intentions, ideas and my ability to write.

February. I was spending more time on bad politics, mass shootings, and stories about power and abuse. I tried to rationalize this on 1. how could I focus on my writing in this world of imbalances? and 2. I had all the time in the world to write my novel. The January plan became a loose and open-ended guideline. Replaced by my new routine, which was crap. I began with topics that outraged me; stories that framed my personal wrath against everything I found wrong in the world, then off to shout about it on Twitter. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. I was a lunatic. Thank God I have a small following that put up with (or more likely) ignored me. I have no idea what I was trying to accomplish but believed I was doing something. In reality, was I was losing days, falling down dark rabbit holes, and drinking way too much.

At the end of February, 2019, we began the huge project of remodeling our kitchen. This had been years in planning and saving, and we were finally doing it. It was all very exciting until the actual demolition. It turned out the literal gut of the most essential room in our house brought on a physical and mental gut in me. I fell apart.