For the second time in my forties, I’m spending my birthday recovering from surgery. Everything went as close to text book as can be expected and I’m recovering well, so no cool glass eye for me. But the recovery time has given me time and space to reflect. And today, on my birthday, I think I’m able to put some of my thoughts into words.
We humans seem to want to mark important dates with big changes. New year’s, birthdays, etc. We’re really good at saying that we’re going to change tomorrow. Often, the change we’ll implement tomorrow is to excuse our indulgence today. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in the last 6 months and the biggest question I’ve been asking myself is when does self-care cross the line into self-indulgence?
A friend had a great answer: if you feel better afterward, it’s probably self-care; if you feel worse, it’s probably self-indulgence. There’s a lot more to it than that, of course, but that’s a pretty simple baseline.
And there’s no better time to start than today. So there are going to be a couple changes here on the Chimerical Dark, one of which is already implemented.
Clean Freak is available for sale! I’ve been sitting on 50 copies of Clean Freak as published by Sirens Call Publications since they told me they were restructuring prior to them closing down for good. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get these books into the hands of people who would read them. After exploring some options, I’ve decided to sell them right from the Chimerical Dark. There is an order request form now available. You can see it in the banner of the site. So if you’ve ever wanted to read Clean Freak, now’s your chance!
I’ve also decided to move “13 Words” to the blog. After more than a year of writing a new 13 word story every month, getting low traffic to that page of the site, and being unable to figure out how to notify y’all when I updated, it’s time to do the easy thing and just move it here. That will be effective on May 13.
Thank you for being here, for reading my rambling thoughts, for reading my stories, and for offering encouragement. See you next week!
