Glad to see everyone is safe. Lynn, I'm so sorry to read all about your mom. When it rains, it pours.
Here's hoping life gets a little easier for you in the near future.
Chugging along here. We've lost both our cats since October - our tabby, Mufasa, in October and Ariel, our Bengal, just a few weeks ago. In January we brought two brown tabby boys home, Simba and Bruni. They will be one year old on April 2, and boy, do they keep us busy! Always getting into some kind of mischief. Our daughters are still home from school - our choice, since I really don't trust our school superintendent to keep them Covid-safe, and we are a high risk household. (Seriously, this woman doesn't believe covid can spread in schools and if a family has, say, 3 kids and 1 is exposed, she sees no reason to quarantine all the kids, just the one with the exposure, overlooking the fact that these people live in a house together and if one gets it, they will likely all get it.) Distance Learning sucks. I mean, it's better than it was last Spring, but I spend from 8am-3pm reminding my kids to get back on the computer, don't walk out of class, log in because the next class is starting, etc. I feel more like a personal assistant than a mother most days.
The vaccine rollout in my state is awful. People with high risk conditions were promised priority, then when it got down to brass tacks, we got shoved into age-only edibility. Even essential workers like grocery store employees got the shaft. So I'm still stuck in my house, waiting and hoping I can actually find an appointment when it's finally my turn.
On the upside, I've learned to cut my husband's hair (can't do my own) and bake some killer Italian bread with my bread machine. And we've spent the last year showing the girls awesome movies like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. (The 6.5 year wait to see their reaction to "No, I AM your father!" last spring was SO WORTH the wait!)
All of this has really affected my muse. As you can see, I've only produced a few one-shot shorts. By now, I like to have an epic started and I can hardly focus enough to get the short stories down. It's hard to wrote when you feel down and stressed all the time. (I swear, the stress of distance learning my two second graders is taking years off my life.) I'm still reading and reviewing as often as possible. Mostly one-shot stuff right now, because that's usually what I can squeeze in. And even those sometimes take me 3 or 4 attempts before I get to read them fully. Some days I hear "Mom! I need help with this school work!" every time I sit down.
It's crossed my mind that the fandom is getting older and that we'd likely see a slow down or two. I'll fight to help it not to die completely - after all, I am a KComm member! But I'm also not surprised to see fewer new authors cropping up each year. Anyway, glad to see some responses on this. Makes my heart happy to "see" you guys around!
