A New Blog
May 29, 2024
I’ve spent the last month essentially in a Writing Cave, trying to tack as many pages onto my book as I could before submitting the current draft to literary agents and publishers in the hopes of getting a Magical Book Deal – only to discover a few snags with this plan:
Primarily, I do not know any literary agents or publishers. Plus, my imposter syndrome muddled with incredibly high stakes, which I’ve placed on both conceiving this book as well as changing my entire direction in life to center on it, turned this highly focused time into a highly stressful one.
Additionally, I planned to take this time to really rest and recover, something I haven’t been able to do since my Crohn’s flare last fall. I had appointments scheduled with my Crohn’s doc and Pain Management team in the first week of this “sabbatical” - only to discover that my health insurance was somehow now in the wrong name, meaning my insurance couldn’t be billed, a.k.a. I couldn’t afford to see my doctors.
With the appointments postponed indefinitely, I made phone calls and journeys to offices, all of which passed me off onto others, and amalgamated the already stressful situation into a full-blown nightmare. One from which I only now seem to be waking up…hopefully. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed and still waiting to see my doctors.
Honestly, the fact that I managed to write at all, while sorting out my means of sustained existence, should feel like an accomplishment in and of itself - and yet this time still feels lost. I wanted to find backing truly just to keep a roof over my head so I could continue to write. I had a plan for marketing, researching metrics, peak hours, and the best ways to share my story on each platform – and haven’t had the spoons (or energy) for any of it.
I’ve also learned a lot about my Chronic Fatigue in this time, one of my many diagnoses that gets lumped in as a concurrence of the others. For one, I found that my fatigue doesn’t just appear when I have very notably overextended myself; instead, it is always there, just more subtle. It’s been a juggling-while-balancing act to manage it and everything else that has popped up in the last month, leading me ironically to a new idea:
Like in the Maths, here are the givens:
I’m writing a book
My body tries to destroy itself
We living in a society based around money
I’m alive because it’s profitable to our society
I still can’t eat food*
*Understandably, this last one makes everything more difficult.
The Premise:
One day, during my Writing Cave spelunking time, I decided to try having lunch. half breakfast sandwich on a bagel.
It was quite tastyyy— I woke up four hours later.
Still holding that damn bagel.
With my plan for the day taken out of my hands and replaced with a breakfast item, I texted a friend that I was foiled by a bagel - and immediately thought, “damn, if I didn’t already have a title of my memoir.”
Thus, in realizing how hard it is to finish a project while under a deadline and hurdling over the red tape of bureaucracy that stands between you and your health, I thought:
“What if I wrote a book about how hard it is to write a book!”
See: “irony.”
And thus, I’m compromising on a blog.
I had one a decade ago as I bungled my way through the changes in my life post-college. This will be a bit more focused, centering around “Unremarkable” and my efforts to complete and publish it - so I can finally begin my real goal: changing lives.
So welcome to Foiled by a Bagel, a blog about struggle, trying and failing, and searching for pride in what you’ve already achieved.