One of my movie reviews hit 5100 views today. Not sure how I feel about that. I know that's a weird thing to say. I wrote it on vacation last year and I never let on publicly how sick I felt when I was writing it. I do stuff like that to distract myself. Another one has more than doubled in the last 9 months. So has my blurb thread. I like keeping track because it helps me stay focused on crash days. Or crash weeks. Or months.

July sucked. I finally have my blood pressure under control, though, so I'm expecting August to get a little better. I hope the tests are over again for awhile. Having 4 big different cancer talks and scans of every organ in my body including my brain in a year's time blows when you're juggling so much other stuff in and out of your body, but so far so good, and all I have to do now is keep ignoring feeling dizzy and out of sync and stay focused.

I talked to several different people this summer about what I'm writing, and I honestly didn't have a perspective on what a huge undertaking this is until I got real time feedback. My deadlines, although well intended, were set from inexperience. I'm still swimming through my daily aspie spoonie stuff with all kinds of real life family challenges going on around me, and I have to keep reminding myself that two years ago I was nonexistent on the internet despite 10 years of blogging because everything went private. Everything that is searchable now was constructed together piece by very slow piece because I am patient and persistent and determined. I have made it through STUFF. I truly didn't expect to still be here.

I used to private blog. I used to put this kind of stuff where people couldn't see it. I used to dump all my bad junk into a bin with a lid on it, and I decided that the only way I can truly move forward is to rip the lid off. Because of that, every little bit these boring assessment posts show up, and it looks like I'm a self-obsessed loser talking to myself. What this really is, as I have learned through the years, is discipline. This is me gathering myself up on a stupid bad day/week/month and using my writing skills to evaluate my progress, to remind myself that I'm ok, and that all this big stuff that feels like it keeps dragging me down is nothing new and feeling impatient only slows me down further, because frustration turns everything negative and then I feel like I can't do anything right.

I love August. I saw a whole lotta tweets yesterday bumming out about August 1st coming, whatever that means. I have never felt that way. I love autumn, I love Halloween, I love holidays, I love all the colors and food and football. I feel very lucky that I am HERE. I could very easily not be here today. I'm glad I get to see today, no matter what happens or how much it might suck somehow.

They say butterflies can change weather all over the world. Still writing.