When you work at home, the people in your life pawn off all of the errands on you. Even though my family is aware that I am not wasting time at the computer, everything is pretty much up to me, whether it has to do with taking someone in to the doctor/dentist, dealing with the accountant, helping my kids learn to drive, repairing vehicles/the house, dealing with the school, and on and on it goes. On top of this, I haven’t been up to full health, so I’ve been struggling to get to the computer anyway. I also deal with little things here and there with my books that have nothing to do with the actual writing part of things. I know I’m seriously behind on emails. I am just so swamped with everything else that I just can’t get to it. And it wasn’t like I was quick to answer emails in the past when I was doing good. So it’s even worse now.

In short, I am way too stressed and overwhelmed. The rising prices on things has not helped one single bit. I realize some of you are on fixed incomes, and I feel like I’m in the same boat because I can’t even save $100 in my savings account. I am the primary breadwinner in the family, and you’d think that would get my family to pitch in to help, but it doesn’t. I have spoken to my family at length on this, but it has done no good. I am left to the final resort, which is to go on strike with my writing. I think that is the only way they will realize how important my job is around here. They seem to think that it takes no effort to get these books out. I wish I could just snap my fingers and have books written up in a few days, but writing doesn’t work like that.

So I am going to stop writing. I’ll still upload books to Radish. That is my current full-time project. It takes a while to separate books out into episodes. I’ve been at this for a month and still have over half of my books to put over there. I’ll still engage online with people. I’ll still gather my tax info so I can meet with the accountant every quarter. But I’m not going to write.

I know the other flipside of the coin is that I just don’t take care of the house or meals. I tried that. That did not faze these people. They were fine living in a pig sty and living off of junk food. All that scenario did was stress me out even more. I need a clean house, and I need good meals. Those are necessary for my sanity. The only thing I haven’t tried yet is the writing strike.

I don’t know how long this will last. I already have Suitable for Marriage up on pre-order. At this point in time, that’s my last projected book to go out there. I have a couple of books on pre-order that I will just keep bumping back. I am thinking that when these people around here realize how much money won’t be coming in, they’ll finally step up to the plate. That’s my hope. All I know is that I can’t keep going on like this. I am going to end up running myself into the ground, and I’m sure that will do even more damage to my health. I love my family. Really I do. But sometimes you just got to say “enough”. And I’ve had enough.