I’m still here.

Three months it’s taken–or a little more too–to feel somewhat calmed down from the last three months last year to move into the condo. Content that I have a roof over my head, I had to spend time to get the low of the land. It is at this time, the bookshelves are put together and all my books are not in storage boxes anymore.

Rainstorms came and passed, the most rain I’ve seen since I left California, even a rare moment of having hale, actual hale, pelt against my roof and flattening the clover ground cover in the patch of dirt on my patio.

I’ve settled on three coffee shops I can escape to for reading and/or writing.

Signed up for a gym membership, but I need to change it since I couldn’t get away from the news channels (the unsavory kind).

Grocery shopping is plentiful. I can get to two Trader Joe’s and five grocery stores, including an Asian market for ingredients most don’t have.

I marked several campsites to overnight camp at in the future. Two of them are just south of Palomar Observatory, an installation I unfortunately didn’t know about until I browsed Google Maps one day. Sometime in May, I’ll do one night. Not sure about the next few months.

Roosters crow every morning in the neighborhood. I’m sure someone has a chicken coop in the backyard somewhere for fresh eggs.

It took me about two weeks to finally feel comfortable cooking in the condo. I made sourdough bread two weeks ago and am about to make another loaf this week.

I joined a local writer and illustrator group meeting once a month and even signed up to volunteer for them. This marks the first time being part of a real writing community since I abandoned DeviantART and Nanowrimo’s recent controversies.

I’ve visited two yoga studios out of five on my list, deciding where to go for the rest of my time while lining up with my schedule well.

That is just a sliver of me settling down.

Granted that the driving time is something to deal with. Where I am I’m 20 minutes away from my third place. I still haven’t driven around the lake, drive through Main Street or downtown near the minor league baseball stadium, or the Mexican grocery stores (I know I’ll go nuts shopping there). It’s one of those growing pains that still needs time to settle in me.

So here’s the state of my writing.

Right now I’m redline editing a new Snipped story. Don’t tell me how long it’s been. A small note: this idea was brewing during Ghost Factor’s inception. Ten years ago really. I now have a direction for it. If time and patience are on my side I’ll have it on Royal Road by April 20th. But this is a good distraction from my slow progress on Ghost Factor’s next chapter.

But besides the writing, slowly finding my groove again after so long in survival mode paying rent, this question came up in the back of my mind: what now? What comes next?

Over the years, there were dreams and goals outside of writing. Yes, finishing that darn book is one of them, but what else to do, to learn? There were times I’d just feel petrified about what to do. To better explain it, it’s like watching the roulette wheel, and you have one chip signifying your next chapter. You make a bet/choose your next path. The ball is a massive chance to not fall on your chosen path, meaning it’s a failure. The worst part is I imagine the beginning, the end, and the multitude of failures within several minutes of thinking about it.

Like playing chess with high stakes.

This is what’s in my mind right now. Don’t ask me to explain it, it’s hard for me to say it anyway. Reading through The 4-Hour Workweek is answering some of these questions.

But right now. I have a story to write and publish next weekend.