It's always the little things that break you.

Photo copyright Aji, 2024; all rights reserved.

It's a hot and deadly sky. That whitish haze at the horizon? Smoke from all the fires. Down in Lincoln County, it's nothing short of a catastrophe. And it's a reminder that all it would take here is one damn spark to do the same.

It's been an exhausting, terrible week, and it's only Tuesday.

It's always the little things that break you. It's not the big, terrifying, overwhelming things; you get blindsided by them, and you put your head down and somehow you find away over, under, around, or through, accumulating various injuries along the way, and probably having your lifespan shortened by several years from all the fear and the pain and the stress, but you do it. And them some relatively small thing comes along, and it's the proverbial straw.

That was this morning. We came downstairs to a dead microwave. 

I'm guessing there was a power surge during the night, because I also spent the first hour or two this morning with my laptop trying repeatedly to die on me. But the microwave is, yup, dead. And now I have to order a new one. But we just shelled out more than we were expecting on the annual flue maintenance yesterday [not optional; no one wants a chimney fire, and especially not in these conditions]. We have to pay for our labs this week.  We have to pay for doctor's appointments next week. And next month, I'm supposed to be getting some absurdly costly imaging done. You know, to make sure that my seemingly on-point symptoms of 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 years ago have not, in fact, developed into the cancer they couldn't definitively rule out then. And also to make sure that these scary new symptoms that have no explanation are not, in fact, a symptom of such cancer[s].

I can't afford any of it.

NONE of it.  We still have to pay off our fucking TAXES, for chrissake, and they're hounding me now. And now, replacing the microwave . . . ? I'm done. I'm so tired. Every second. So much pain. Everywhere. Every second. I don't ever get any respite.  Not ever.  And I'm just . . . for tonight, I'm just fucking done.

I give up.

Yeah, I keep saying that we've GOT to make sales now.  Desperately.  I need help; I can't do this alone.

I don't care anymore. Not tonight. I'm just exhausted, and I'm done. Maybe I'll skip all the tests and appointments.  Who wants to be poked and prodded and billed ridiculous amounts for it anyway? Wings can get his done. I can skip mine.  And if I die? Oh, well. I am literally too tired to give a shit right now.

Nothing I have done for the last year has worked. Our sales have tanked, while prices keep going up, and so do our bills, and everyfuckingbody wants something from me. I don't have anything left. I've put up a bunch of new work lately, including a new pair of extraordinary Skystone earrings the other night, plus something around a dozen other new pairs in the gallery now. There's more to come, including possibly a new cuff soon [he's not satisfied with it currently] and several additional new pairs of simple bezel-set gemstone earrings, plus some small sterling silver hoops. But as bad as sales have been, I've lost hope. the rest is just going through the motions, and that might be all I do for the foreseeable, given that I can't get any traction on anything except more pain and more fatigue and more inability to function even minimally.

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (apparently the FlexTape is also the priority now, so I'm told; otherwise, Amazon cards and the filters for the air purifiers [if you need our physical address for the filters, let me know]); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

After such a grim year, this one already even worse than the last, we really need to get 2024 onto a better footing, so please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.