Good morning everyone. I just posted Chapter 14 of Facilitate Your User. Keylee and Paul are still getting to know each other and Paul is starting to realize just what Keylee means to him.
Today’s picture is an old one and also from the trip I took with my family to Disney World several years ago. My brother in law sent this photo to me today and I decided to use it. This is my niece walking hand in hand with me at the end of a great day at the Magic Kingdom. We were all exhausted and my legs kind of felt like Jell-O at that point. We were all going back to the condo to change into our Halloween costumes because we went in October and were going back to the park for the Halloween part of things. If life ever gets back to normal and you can afford it, I highly recommend visiting Disney in October. It was a lot of fun and the park looks absolutely amazing. My niece was so young here (I was also a . . . cough . . . little bit younger too).
Work is still crazy busy. Honestly, I don’t even know what to think about it anymore. I keep thinking this is a good problem to have but some days you just want to put your head through a wall. Either that or unplug the phones for a while. I think reception would be up for that one. The phones are driving everyone nuts. With COVID protocols in place, every client that comes to the clinic has to park and call. Honestly I’m not sure how the receptionists are managing without some type of chemical help. It’s a race that is caught somewhere between a marathon and a sprint.
On the writing side of things . . . first of all, I started posting one of my fan fiction stories to AO3. Eventually I’ll get them all there but I want to edit the chapters and dear God . . . there are some long chapters in those stories. They take awhile, especially when I’ve got so much else gong on. I’ve decided (at least for now), not to put them on this website. From what I understand, they should be pretty safe on AO3 and I think two spots is plenty for people to see them if they want. As far as trying to get original works published . . . I think I’m going to start exploring self publishing more. Interestingly, now that I’ve started paying attention, most of the books I purchase, read and really like, are self published. However, I think my dream of being able to go to part time as a vet and make up the rest of my income with writing is, to put it impolitely, is bat-shit crazy. If anything, I have a feeling I’ll have to keep working full time to support my writing habit. That makes me incredibly sad but I guess we’ll just have to see how things pan out. I love writing, creating worlds and characters and I can’t imagine giving that up and I’m to the point where I really want to share those characters and stories with the world. Maybe no one will read them, or at least very few. I’ve often thought of myself more as a storyteller rather than a writer. The whole process really plays havoc with your self esteem and in some ways, maybe it’s better that I didn’t try doing this when I was younger. I don’t think I had as much wherewithal a decade or so ago.
As always, I hope you are all faring well and keeping safe and sane. It’s a tough world out there and I fear it is only getting tougher. For those of you in the U.S. we’ve got election time coming up and I’m afraid things are going to get ugly . . . very, very ugly. I try not to get too political on this site, but sometimes my fears leak through.
MJ May
veterinarian and fiction writer 