What I Did on My Summer Vacation (Personal Update)

**stares at computer screen**. 

**types "I'm back…"**

**delete delete delete**

**types, "I hope to be a little more productive now that…"**

**erases it immediately**

**types, "I don't know what the future will hold…"**

**highlight all/backspace**

**types, "So I know I said I'd be back but this thing happened…"**

**hits undo until all text is gone**

**types, "I'm not going to say 'I'm back' but I'm kind of ready for…"**

**close window—click box that says "Ignore" when the computer says changes weren't saved**

**sighs**

You know what….? (You don't, because it's really random, so I'm going to tell you.) Entire religions are formed around causation/correlation superstitious crap like this. And while my pagan priest ass is the last person to be giving the Spock-brow to some questionable beliefs, I'm not going to live my life in fear of telling you all what I am planning to write next because I think that only by keeping all my hopes and dreams to myself and never being optimistic that maybe maybe MAYBE I won't be pack ravaged by dingos. 

Besides, it doesn't really seem to be working. I either announce that I'm back and disaster strikes, or I hold very very still and quiet, and disaster strikes anyway. So I might as well make a spectacle out of the sheer absurdity of not even getting the full sentence of "I'm ba—" out of my mouth before a "Luck of the Irish" neon sign falls from the ceiling and lops off my right arm or something. 

I'm also not going to apologize. It's gotten ridiculous. Bless everyone who stuck with me on Patreon through the last few years as life had fun kicking me further down the stairs every time I stood up, but four YEARS worth of "Hey, I was just about to write and then this NEW thing in my life exploded like it was….well pretty much ANYTHING in a Transformers movie (anything that's not Optimus Prime)" is getting old. I'm hearing myself and thinking "Oh my fuck, Chris, will you SHUT UP!" I can write through pear-shaped—I have written through pear-shaped—I DO write through pear-shaped— but holy FUCK have the limits of that ever found me.

I spent this summer moving. Not one of those planned moves. Not a joyous upgrade (although I do like the new place). Not a carefully planned move with a careful execution. 

No…our landlord decided he wanted us gone. And since the city I'm in adopted rent control and a relocation fee (so that shitty landlords who want to jack up the rent can't just evict their tenants every couple of years), he tried to make it an at-fault eviction. Oh how he tried! We were in compliance, so nothing stuck, and we learned our rights REALLY quickly, so we knew we could have fought, dragged it out for months, and even probably ended up getting the relocation fee and maybe a countersuit. 

But Rhapsody didn't have a protracted fight in her. You have to be ready to have people threaten you, to call you names, to tell you all the awful things they're going to do, and to initiate those awful things. You have to be ready to be blamed for everything and told what a horrible and irresponsible and wicked person you are. (And since in two years, we hadn't gotten the landlord to acknowledge our repeated attempts to get me on the lease, it all had to be done while I lived in a room two towns over.) You have to be ready to come home every day to an official notification on your door demanding your contrition and telling you you have days to move. Rhapsody is a gentle human—one of the kindest I've ever met. She's barely over grief and dealing with health and parenting issues and a half a dozen other issues that make life challenging. She's trying to find a job in a field she retrained in just last year. She just didn't have the time and energy for all of it.

Every step is suddenly wading through oatmeal. You can't just pop the rent check in the mail five days ahead of time—you have to drive it twenty minutes to the lawyer's office as a money order, or landlord-fuckspork might pretend he never got it. You have to start looking for places because who knows if he's going to throw something at the wall that sticks. 

We ducked the worst of the legal bullshit (the asshole's FIRST move was hiring a lawyer), and traded a neutral reference to our new place for a month's notice. 

And then the move began. It's very different when you don't know it's coming—when you can't plan it, prep for it, get some boxes, round up a strapping friend who likes pizza, get your kids to pack some boxes ahead of time of all those toys they are totally, absolutely going to play with again. It's also different when you're moving a whole house—I can't really remember the last time I moved more than a room. Packing, unpacking. Finding movers. Figuring out when to move. You end up with piles of stuff in the new place because you need the boxes to go back to the old place and get another load (because you didn't have time to stockpile boxes because it was all so sudden), so you just dump a box out where it's not right in the way and keep going. There's trashing what can't be given away and no one wants to move—sometimes including furniture. Cleaning the old place. Unpacking. Organizing. The whole time, your life didn't slow down because you weren't able to SCHEDULE this move—it just HAPPENED, so your calls and dates and visits and trips are all still on the calendar. It didn't help that Rhapsody was having a bad flare of chronic pain and while Treble and Clef can be a little helpful, most of the heavy lifting (in this case literally) fell to me. 

From beginning to end, it was like six weeks of absolute, unmitigated bullshit.

And you know (you don't, so I'm going to tell you)…after a four fucking YEARS of being like, "Oka,y NOW I am obviously done with this cavalcade of tragedies and can get back to writing—oh I appear to be throwing up blood/getting evicted/having alien spiders hump my mouth/whatever it is THIS month," I am so fucking ready to get back to my creative life. I don't even care about "productive" at this point. I mean I CARE because that's my paycheck, and I'm going to end up having to be a human statue on Fisherman's Warf if I can't get my income back up to snuff, but really, I just want to write again.

Back. Not back. It doesn't even matter. I'm just going to do what I do. This summer sucked. And this year was hard (and I'll talk about that in another post). And the past four years have been this horrifying nightmare. But we're moved and even though I still have that last level of organizing where you're like, "Yeah it goes here now, but I think I want it to LIVE somewhere else when I have the time," I'm not going to wait another minute to get back to my creative life.