Hello fellow internet! It’s me, Maureen! I don’t expect you to KNOW this but I have not really updated Tumblr in SEVERAL WEEKS. (Come to think of it, it’s bordering on months. Or month. Month? Look, I don’t know what “time” is.) I was off doing several things, not the least of which was making a lit conference at GeekyCon.
“But GeekyCon was WEEKS ago!” you cry.
I know, my friend. I know. But I’m back now and I want to talk about HENGE-BUILDING and SPOONS and EXCITING NEW THINGS. Because it’s…let’s not say fall. Let’s say Summer 2. Summer 2!
But first, we must speak of henges and spoons. Well, WE don’t have to, but I am going to. One time, I was hanging out with my friends and we were in a lovely house in England and the day was so lovely that I realized the only thing to do would be to get all the spoons and make a Spoonhenge out on the lawn. I care about the details, so I worked with a bunch of photos and got some tape and made AS NEAR TO A PERFECT REPLICA OF STONEHENGE as I could. It was, as you can imagine, extremely majestic.
Little did I know that I was sending FUTURE ME a message. I send FUTURE ME messages all the time, as you are certainly sending messages to FUTURE YOU.
Without rehashing all the details, this last year has presented a few physical challenges. The summary: I had some surgery in November that was a simple enough procedure, but something went wrong as I came out of it and I developed a bad infection, and after that, a case of what we will refer to as Neurological Uh-Ohs. The Neurological Uh-Ohs were pretty bad back in the early part of the year and required lots of hospital and doctor time, and I lost about five months. Then things improved a bit, and I could walk around again and do a bit more. But then the pain kicked in. My tour and appearances were canceled because I was not stable (or in any way able) enough to go.
In short, I lost a lot of time. Five months just went zooooooooop, like they had never been there. I started to recover a lot of things that had been lost, but I also learned that neurological stuff is slippery like an eel full of eels. I am certainly better than I was! SO MUCH BETTER. But as for the question, “Is it better? Did you fully recover and it’s gone now?” No, I have not fully recovered. I make progress over time! As to whether I will ever 100% recover, that’s not known. But I can absolutely live with how I am now. All improvements would simply be welcome. This is 600% times better than it was in January, when I could not really get out of bed and had trouble breathing and my big accomplishment of the day was getting to the living room sofa to side-eye the Today Show.
And as I came back, I learned about the spoons. Do you know about Spoon Theory? Many lovely people online told me about it. If you don’t know about it, you should totally read that post. In short: when you have an illness or condition, you realize everything takes energy. EVERYTHING. Showering. Getting dressed. Getting something to eat. Each of those things is a SPOON. Before, I seemed to have hundreds of spoons to get through the day! Then suddenly I had just a handful of spoons. Over the year, I have accumulated more spoons, like someone who goes on weekly IKEA runs. I don’t have hundreds of spoons, but I have many more than I did. And now I know to Value My Spoons.
Maybe you have limited spoons? My friends, we have to take our spoons and build a Spoonhenge for ourselves. All of our spoons are magnificent! Even if you have ONE SPOON, you can raise a tiny, spoon-sized flag on it. ONE SPOON HENGES ARE JUST AS GOOD.
People who know about the Spoons call themselves Spoonies. We even had a Spoonie meetup at GeekyCon so that Spoonies could tap spoons. This was the official Spoonie pin, which I wore proudly throughout the con. Now it lives on my desk:
There’s a lot of learning along the way, because as you feel better there are a lot of moments of OH HEY I FEEL GREAT I CAN DO THIS and then you run at those moments and find A Limit. The learning process can look like this:
But that’s okay.
And there’s a lot of impatience. I had been working on SO MANY THINGS when this all happened, so for months now I’ve been picking up where I left off. This often meant that I could only do ONE THING AT A TIME. I couldn’t, at one point, be online AND plan for a conference. At the conference, I couldn’t walk the miles of conference center (no joke it was miles) AND present panels, so I rode my BADASS MOBILITY SCOOTER. (And I would be HUGELY REMISS if I didn’t mention all the help I got from my assistant Felicity Disco and Nurse Erin, lit volunteer and Actual Neurology Nurse who would make me sit down and eat crackers.)
WHAT THIS ALL MEANS IS…
There’s a lot of stuff coming up. I’ll be doing it all IN STYLE. There are MANY EXCITEMENTS, and I’ll be talking about them in time, as I switch various systems back on. I can say that I will SOON be announcing A VERY EXCITING NEW BOOK SERIES, which I have already started. THIS IS SOME VERY EXCITING NEWS FOR ME.
Of course, the fourth book in the Shades of London series and the third book in the Suite Scarlett series are COMING.
There may also be SOME OTHER THINGS I cannot say anything about yet. ALL IN GOOD TIME. I will also likely be turning all my ONLINE SYSTEMS back on full-blast. Summer 2 is going to be a very exciting time. Summer 3, the one where the summer comes in the form of white sunshine flakes, will also be very exciting. If you want to be the FIRST TO KNOW these things, you can sign up for my Secret Email Letters. (I don’t send these very often, in case you’re like, “OH NO NOT SOME EMAIL THING.” It’s seriously about twice a year.)
I will also be doing a few appearances, including NerdCon.
I will see you soon. And no matter how many spoons you have, IT’S ALL GOOD. THAT IS YOUR SPOONHENGE.
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