Stuff

I was going through old blog notes and found a letter. "Dear Mr Writer, I would like to write to you about how much I admire you, but your beard intimidates me". I don't generally find beards intimidating, unless they're bushy enough to look like there's some small animals living in them.

I've been really sluggish this month. It's been hard to get anything done. Haven't worked on the thesis at all. I've made some progress rewriting the novel and am now roughly halfway through it, which is - not really as far into it as I was hoping. When I started working on it, I was thinking I'd already be done with the 10th draft by now. I'm starting to feel better now though, and am trying to get back to my writing routine and to get restarted on the thesis. I guess much of what I felt or didn't feel this month was be cause of the thyroid shit, and maybe the meds are finally fixing me up properly.

I got a letter from a publisher again, a rejection. There's some strange emotions associated with these letters. On the one hand you just try to be very noble about it and think "well, not everyone likes everything ... and you already got someone interested", but on the other hand you kind of begin to doubt yourself.

All you need for getting published is to get one person interested in the manuscript, and I've got that one person. All I need to do now is to show that I can learn from the advice I've been given and work hard and make the novel better. But still there's this tiny voice in my head doubting me. What if I'm really just so bad that no one will ever like my stories, what if I'm dreaming, what I'm no good at all, at anything, what if I'm wasting my time and energy, what if everyone who has ever complimented on or been interested in my stuff just has really bad taste. What if, WHAT IF.

And all you really can do is to take all that, put it aside, sit down and get to work. What if I'm good for nothing, what if - I don't know. But I guess it's better to do and see than give up now. Better to try and fail rather than never do anything. But damn how much effort it takes to hold up such iron trust in yourself.

About the thyroid stuff, then, last week's blood tests showed that everything seems to be alright. For my own future reference: my TSH was 2.2 and T3v 4, both of which fall comfortably in the middle of the standard reference range.

Oh. And I'm drinking coffee again. It appears to be essential in keeping me awake during the day. And related or not, I don't know, I think I'm grinding my teeth in the night. It's been going on for a long while now, while on coffee and without it. I wake up many times in the night clenching my teeth hard. I don't really know if it's something I instinctively do right after waking up for some other reason or if I really do grind my teeth while asleep, because well, I don't know much about anything I do when I am asleep. There was also one night when I had a constant headache. I should probably go to the dentist, but ahhh -