Compensations.

Photo copyright Aji, 2025; all rights reserved.

No sleep last night. None.  Zip, zero, nada. Not stress; certainly not caffeine. Just pain, and the damage that lupus and RA do to the neurotransmitters in my brain that make sleep possible in the first place.

And for once, I don't even resent it particularly [okay, well, let's say "not as much"], because being up long before dawn means I got to see that. Up there. No filters, no edits, nothing; that's what the sky looked like this morning. Plus a rare morning rainbow in the western sky, only the third one we've ever seen here [and two of those in the last couple of weeks]. So for once insomnia had its compensations.

Of course, now I'm dragging so badly I can barely string two words together.

Yesterday was supposed to be a day to catch up; nope. Too much pain and fatigue. So, today, but nope. No sleep, no ability function. This is why I can't work for anyone else; because my body literally would never cooperate. I have almost as many sleepless nights as those with sleep, and thanks to almost a year of a brain med, I'm sleeping better now than I have for most of my life. Even with nights like last night.

But I can't afford any more of these; I have GOT to get caught up. I've also GOT to bring in sales, and I've got to do it regularly, at least, if not actually daily. The holiday creative season effectively begins on October first, and we will both be running 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, until the end of the year. He also has to finish the last half-dozen or so commissions that are in the works before he can turn his attention to cranking out holiday inventory in any real way. And we need to bring in sales now, both to cover his work building new inventory and simply to meet all the costs of this stupidly expensive year [on top of last year being the same; hell, last week, set us back about $1K i cash, between the repair and he guys and scrips and medical stuff]. If we could just continue to make regular weekly sales, we'd be fine . . . but we need to make those sales now, and so far, that's not happening. There's a lot of gorgeous new work up, but I've got to sell it for it to make any difference. This kind of stress is also not helping my health. I need that to change now, and fast. And to that end, links are here [with the LaminaSaver back on the wishlist, because Miika goes through it at a rapid clip]:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here [priority at the moment is more of the LaminaSaver for Miika];
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

And we do still need to make those regular weekly sales, so please share all of the links. We really do need this to be a better month than what we've had so far this year.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2025; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.