I am tired.

Photo copyright Aji, 2023; all rights reserved.

Fabulous cloud formations today. No snow from, but these are the kind that presage stormy weather; they don't deliver it themselves.

And still, the forecast insists nothing before Saturday.

I am frankly exhausted in every sense of the word. I slept for almost twelve hours — not unbroken; pain always wakes me up repeatedly, but I was so tired I always went right back to sleep — going to bed a little after nine last night and getting up somewhere around 8:30 this morning. And I never, ever do that.

But the last two weeks have been sheer hell on me, body, mind, and spirit, and all due to circumstances entirely outside of my control. And because of those circumstances, my plan to stay home and catch up on thing this week was already shot completely to hell by yesterday morning. We did finally get our tree today, which is still in the bed of the truck. It'll go up tomorrow. Decorating it? Who knows? It gets later every damn year, no matter how much I try to get stuff done early, and usually because of outside nonsense. Which is why we leave our tree up every year at least through January 6th — the old way. It's the only way we get to enjoy any of it.

But I am tired. The kind of tired where you're at the point of not caring about anything, except that that's not an option. And last night's sleep hasn't even really put a dent in the fatigue I feel, but that's to be expected with multiple autoimmune diseases in full flare. And given how terrible a year this has been sales-wise, through it all I still have to make sales, of course. We've had a half-dozen now since T-Day, but we'll need to sell a lot more between now and year's end, obviously. My Patreon for the month is still down ~$250 at the moment [that's how much it was short on the December 1st payout for subscriptions for the month of November, and so far, all of those still haven't been paid]. My guess is that those won't materialize later in the month; that will be the penalty [or one of them anyway] for taking a vocal stand about the genocide being perpetrated against Palestine and its people now. Of course, we haven't brought in anywhere nearly enough sales all year across the board, even before recent developments that require a moral stand of us. It's grim.

And aside from all of that, I also need to bring in at least $6K in sales between now and year's end to cover tax prepayments, and we haven't hit the $1K mark on that yet. Normally, I would've been paying them quarterly, but not this year; we haven't had enough sales to do that, and I'm behind on everything else, too, all while my illness worsens seemingly by the day. Until those prepayments are off my desk, I can't relax, can't do anything other than push to get them covered. I really need help. As always, all the links are listed below, and sales are the most important:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (priorities now are Wings's Flex-Tape, and especially the vacuum, because mine has died a complete and ignominious death, and if I don't vacuum every single day, the dog hair takes over completely); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

There's lots of fabulous work on the site, and there will be much more in the days to come [EIGHT NEW PIECES LAST NIGHT, plus two new ones a couple of nights ago]. The way this year has gone, things will still be grim for a good while and the holidays are already here, so please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.