Today was a day.
Not a bad day exactly. More of a… loud brain day.
The book is out there. Almost Yours Again is listed on Amazon and people can find it and buy it and READ it, and somewhere in the night that went from exciting to absolutely terrifying without asking my permission. I spent a good portion of today spinning through the full carousel of writer catastrophising. Has it been edited enough? What if I got the story wrong? What if it doesn’t land the way it was supposed to? What if the people who pick it up absolutely hate it and decide to tell me so in great and specific detail?
And here is the thing nobody warns you about when you finally publish a book — you have no idea if you’ve made a terrible mistake until other people tell you. Which means there is a window of time, possibly quite a long one, where you just have to exist with the uncertainty and not spiral directly into the sun.
I am not good at that window.
I should also warn you, since we’re getting to know each other here: I am a crier. Not a dignified single-tear-down-the-cheek crier. I mean full-commitment, big wet ugly tears, sobbing, shuddering, the whole catastrophic production — triggered by the most unpredictable things. A moving book. A kind comment. A particularly good piece of music. An ad about a dog. You’ve been warned. If reader reviews start coming in and any of them are lovely, I will absolutely be a mess about it.
Anyway.
Enough of that. Because here is the thing about living the life I live — the actual physical world has a very effective way of interrupting an anxiety spiral and demanding your attention.
Jo mowed the lawn and did the edges. The place looks a thousand times better. We sorted out the chickens — filled the feed bin, filled all their feeders, made sure everyone was happy. Put the rooves on their new coops. Got the snake wire up around the fancy new nesting boxes, which feels extremely necessary given that we live in Tasmania and I would like the chickens to remain un-harassed, thank you.
And then I half-filled my garlic beds with soil. I’ll finish tomorrow — there’s a lot of garlic to go in and it’s running late. Should have been in in April, but it’ll be close enough. There is something genuinely meditative about garlic beds. No one is reviewing your garlic. The garlic does not care about your publication timeline. The garlic just needs soil and time.
I could learn something from the garlic.
That’s today. Publishing panic, chicken coops, and soil under my fingernails. Not the worst combination, honestly.
Adios muchachos.
thestationhousenotebook 