I'm glad I got to see Panic live the times I did. They were one of the best concert/tour experiences I've ever had and the memory will always be really special to me. I'm bummed out that I'll never get to have that again, now, but am trying to see the positive side that Zack offers. I'll really miss you, Panic v.1.5. Thanks for the good times. And my sympathies and good thoughts are with those on my flist who've lost their band. I'm so sorry, guys. *muchlove*

Other news: I've had a lot of sleepness nights lately, tossing and turning re: the trashy vampire novels. I'm so anxious and nervous about this. It's sort of sick. I'm so scared they're going to muddle along and sell ten copies each, which might sound like ordinary author-fear but it's not like I have an actual publisher with promotional money or even a print run backing me up, you know? They're just e-books.

The only book I know of, off the top of my head, which made it big after an initial online release is 'House of Leaves', and I'm not so stupid as to think my pathetic little vampire nonsense about teenagers and punk shows and folklore is anywhere near the realm of House of Leaves as a work of fiction.

I'm eight thousand words into book four and the writing itself is fun, because it's always fun, but I'm so tired, you guys. I'm tired all the time. It's winter and it's cold and I never have any money, and I look at my site and it tells such a lie, it makes me look like someone who's actually doing this writer/pop-culture thing and making a go of it, rather than the reality of a total failure who lies awake at night and hates herself for sucking so hard.

I'm trying to write another book at the moment, as well as book four, an unrelated novel that I entertain vague and doubtlessly futile hopes of really selling for real money someday. And so when I'm working on book four, there's a little resentful voice in the back of my head demanding to know why I'm not using the energy on something legitimate, or at least on this other book. And I hate that, I hate it so much, because I genuinely do love writing the Wolf House books, even if they're hardly high art or even especially good.

They make me HAPPY, and I hate that my brain will never let me do something for very long just because it makes me happy -- why can't that be a good enough reason? Why does it have to matter to me so much whether or not anyone else ever gives a shit? Someone I have a lot of respect for told me that I'd shot myself in the foot by committing to this series, and lately it's sure felt like I'm dragging along a damaged limb.

Augh. I don't know. It's been a really rough few weeks and I should probably be kinder to myself, but right now I just feel so useless and pathetic and the books are going to fail so hard and then my heart is going to break, and I'm not sure if I'm strong enough right now to deal with a broken heart. I'm so tired.

I remember irradiatedsoup talking once about how odd it was for her when Princess Diana died, because it was just after her own mother had passed away and it was strange to watch the world be so upset over someone they didn't know personally when she was trying to mourn someone she'd been so close to.

I've felt a little like that in the past couple of weeks, because the papers are wall-to-wall Michael Jackson while I've been so profoundly sad about losing my grandfather, the man who was the only adult male in my life for a huge portion of my childhood. It's been harder, in some ways, than losing Kat, because I was so much closer to Joe and loved him as much as I've ever loved anyone in my whole life, ever. But when Kat died I lost my shit and ran away to America for three weeks to follow a band and wrote a whole goddamn memoir about how fucked up I felt about it, and now with Joe I'm just... carrying on and going to work and writing and listening to music and feeling bummed about a band I liked splitting up. And with Kat I felt like, how do we survive this, how do we go on when the world has all this terrible darkness just underneath the light we make?

And being able to survive it, being able to go on, even though there's this hole in the world where Joe was... it's been so hard but I feel like a sick heartless freak that it hasn't been harder, that I'm not drifting moorless this time, that I don't feel lost.

Except that, you know, I just accidentally ruined my passport because it was in a bag that caught caught up with a pile of laundry, and when I found out that it'll be more than $200 to replace it I started crying, which is pretty much the dumbest of dumb reasons to cry. So maybe I'm a little wobbly, even if I'm not a mess.

I hate being unhappy so much.

Edit: and my father just emailed me, and I hate that it feels like a betrayal to Joe when I feel how much I love my dad and how grateful I am for him, and I hate that it feels like a betrayal to my dad when I think about how much I loved Joe and was grateful for Joe. I wish something still made sense.