Finishing Fics... Finally

Man, I hate underlying psychological issues that just keep coming up.

This keeps creating problems in my life, and I have got to figure out how to get over it. It's like... a pathological avoidance issue, and I *recognize it* and why isn't that enough to make it *stop*?

Basically... if I get behind on something, or leave something undone, or am unable (for whatever reason) to do something for long enough, I get so embarrassed/feel so ashamed for not having dealt with it *already*, that I become increasingly unable to do it... even as the original issue just snowballs into worse.

A big one that's finally mostly been sorted out was my dental stuff. A decade+ stretch of no insurance that meant no professional dental care, overlapping with several years living in my car that meant very little routine personal dental care... and my teeth were fucked. Years later, when I finally did get dental insurance through my job, I felt too guilty about how long it had been, and too scared of how bad it might actually be, so I just... kept not getting care. Years later, I finally went in... and yeah, I needed a lot of fillings. Somehow I had avoided needing anything more drastic than fillings, though if I'd put it off longer, it would only have gotten worse. If I'd taken care of it years before, when insurance was first available to me, it could have been far less bad.

In the past, this is how I had medical bills from an ER visit sent to collections. I was so embarrassed that I couldn't pay, because I wasn't insured, and was living in my car, that... I just kept ignoring it, never even tried to get on a payment plan of any kind, and just let it go to collections and fuck my credit permanently.

A current one is the truck. Vehicle stuff makes me inordinately anxious, typically due to cost. So many times, when something has gone wrong enough to need fixing, it's been so expensive that we can't afford it, or can barely do so. Preventive maintenance then gets trapped in the same anxiety of "what if they find something else wrong?"
I've been smelling a coolant leak for a couple of months, and have just... not done anything about it. I finally asked a coworker and his neighbor (both of them car guys) to take a look at it, and despite really wanting to put it off until after the holidays (because I love having a justification to put the dreaded thing off), we set up a time, and they looked at it on Monday. There is a crack all along the radiator, and it is *hemorrhaging* coolant all over basically everything under the hood. More worryingly, the truck was basically entirely out of oil, which was damn close to being catastrophic, and not even something I'd been even slightly concerned over. (And my coworker was very nice when I told him that I was embarrassed, but also gave me The Look about not taking the care that I should.)
[This does frustrate me mildly, because I do almost literally no driving, and just sort of leave it to Alex to keep an eye on things like that, but I need to be checking it myself.]
We need to replace the radiator (plus unrelatedly, it needs the pump for the windshield wiper fluid replaced.) They'll order the parts, give us a break on the labor, and get the work done as soon as possible. They also want to ultimately give the transmission a flush, as well as replacing the differential fluid. (Which it should get - we're over 200k miles at this point.) The same work would likely have been needed if I'd gotten it looked at right away, but putting it off only made it worse, and meant that the oil got that much closer to being catastrophic. We'll be able to afford what needs doing, but it was *so close* to being something that would have been disastrous.

The same thing happens about much lower-stakes issues, too:

Last year, I had taken so long to get some editing work done for a friend, that I just... kept not working on it, not talking to her, and stewing in my guilt over it for months.

One I vaguely mentioned a month or so ago: looking at things like... books I want to read. There are a lot of classics that I want to read, like Tolkien and Le Guin, but because *I feel guilty that I haven't read them yet*, I've put off reading them *at all.*

Basically, this is a STUPID pattern, and I wish that knowing it was stupid was enough to make it STOP.

I'm trying to make sure that I push through when I recognize it happening, and so far the most major disasters have been avoided. Eventually taking the plunge to deal with the thing has almost always been significantly less bad than the knots I tie myself in for weeks/months/years beforehand, AND YET.

It sucks and I hate it.

A baba yaga house this week. I like the cool colors. I bought this sticker from an artist's booth at the Spirits and Spirits event, but I forget the artist name. :(

This was a good week! It felt very strange to be to December already, but mid-week we got our first truly "winter" weather. Glad to have gotten a few things done, like starting that project with my mom. Also very relieved that my dental appointment went better than expected. I felt relatively on top of things, despite struggling a bit with the weather. (Cold, grey days make me very tired.) I kept going on reading, but at a slower pace than hoped.

Goals for the week:

• I finished reading The Spite House
• I started reading A Conjuring of Light
• I went to my dentist appointment
• I went to my mom's house to start her declutter project
• I continued my WIP outline
• I worked on my reading page
• I did not work on my pin boards
• I did not make my phone call
• I posted my reviews of the books I read in November
• I posted my writing goals for December
• I did my tracking grids for December
• We did not start on any holiday decorating
• I did my getyourwordsout check-in: 8233 words written in November, bringing year to date to 100981

Tracked habits:

• Work - 4/7 - I took Wednesday off for my dentist appointment
• Household Maintenance - 3/7
• Physical Activity - 2/7
• Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 5/7 - one day of over 1000 words, four days of over 500, with one additional day of under 500
• Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
• Meta Work - 5/7
• Personal Writing - 6/7
• Other Creative Things - 3/7
• Reading - 7/7 - I did finish The Spite House and started A Conjuring of Light, plus read bits of my ebook side-read; Taylor and I finished reading Queen Demon; Alex and I finished Dead Silence and started reading The Sundog.
• Attention to Media - 6/7 - Sunday we watched a livestream and then some of the Broncos game, plus some reviews in the background; Monday had some storm chasing in the background, and book reviews later; Wednesday we watched some storm chasing (in Colorado, even), and a review later; Thursday we half-watched the mediocre Whisper of the Witch, and then I fell asleep during Fostered, and woke up partway through Rounding. The latter were okayish horror/thriller things; Friday I half-watched Troll 2 (the newer, Norwegian one), and Terminator 2; Saturday we watched a paranormal thing, and later reviews.
• Video Games - 0/7
• Social Interaction - 6/7

Total words written: 7112 on outlining, book reviews, and my writing plan