"It is deep January. The sky is hard."

Wallace Stevens

Let's be brutally honest: this has not been the best start to the year. At the beginning of January we lost Fergus. On Saturday my laptop died. And yesterday my bank account got hacked, and a substantial amount of money was stolen from me. I guess if you believe that bad things always happen in threes, then I'm clear for the rest of the month, but since that's only a few days, I can't feel all that grateful.

Some of these bad things are fixable. My laptop more than likely just needs a new power supply, which is hopefully winging its way to me from Germany this week. As long as I have a working laptop by the weekend, I'll be happy...ish. With DARK DAYS releasing next Tuesday, this is a bad time to be without my faithful machine. I won't even talk about the anguish of lost writing time *dramatic swoon*

The stolen money should be reimbursed by the bank this week. I have had to cancel my bank card and online banking, which is...mildly irritating, as I now have to ask Kyle every time I want money. Hopefully I'll have a new card by the weekend. I can live with the inconvenience, but it is inconvenient, and it's really hard not to be angry about this, the laptop, and January in general.

But it's also really hard for me to stay angry when being angry gets me nowhere. I've done everything I can about the laptop and the bank situation. I can't do anything about missing my cat except miss him, so that's what I'm doing, and there's no point being angry and sad.

I'm trying to channel my energy (and my spare time, which I suddenly have a lot more of since I can't get any writing done >.<) usefully and do what I can to prepare for DARK DAYS releasing anyway. I'm really excited about this next chapter in Lola's story, and I can't wait to share it with everyone! I'm also reading a shit-ton (thank you, R Lee Smith and Mick Foley, for writing mammoth doorstopper books), and trying to lavish some attention on the snakes, who are decidedly unimpressed by my efforts.

But really, I'm just looking forward to January being over. I feel like February owes me. Deadpool had better not be disappointing, that's all I can say.