Lillie Gets Personal: Open Letter to My Readers and Publicists, Publishers and Authors I Work With

I decided to compose this open letter only about an hour ago. I'm typing with mostly my left hand because my right wrist, elbow and shoulder are aching so bad that more than a few keystrokes at a time send a shooting pain through my arm. I checked my email for the first time in 30 hours and saw that one of the tour hosts I work with wanted to know about a post I was supposed to have up today.

I had scheduled this post via Blogger on Tuesday.


Let me go backward a bit and provide a little deeply personal background:

Since spring of 2010, I have struggled with physical, financial and emotional issues. My migraines have become uncontrollable, occurring about 3-4 times a month and each one lasting about 72 hours on average. That can translate to 35%-40% of my life I spend suffering from a migraine. I've had a resurgence of anxiety attacks and hyper vigilance that I haven't had since the 1990s. According to my W-2, I'm basically living at poverty level and I let myself be treated abominably by my employers, because I don't really think I'm worth better. Which goes along with the metaphor that the reins I hold to stop myself from self-harming have been rapidly slipping through my fingers.

The two bright, shining lights that keep me going are my writing and my blog. That's it. Recently, I have become weary of blogging. Not the actual posts. Not the wonderful interaction I have with other bloggers and industry people. No, I've become weary of Blogger and it's bullshit promises and general fuckup-ery.

It took me a long time to consult with my doctor about my emotional problems. In fact, it happened just this past Monday. With the effort I have to put into being in public (I am to the point where I spend less that 20 hours a week outside of my house, outside of my bedroom), I felt rundown by the time I left, and the next day, I had to go have some blood drawn to move forward with a possible treatment.

The rundown feeling persisted, but I could no longer attribute it to the labs or lack of energy. Somehow, a virus had taken hold. By late Tuesday evening, I had an elevated temperature of 100.9 and a sore throat, joint pain and inability to focus or wear my glasses. This is still persistent today, Friday, and my temperature has fluctuated as high as 102.1.

All of my energy has been going toward getting better.

I haven't been on Twitter. I haven't been on Facebook. I haven't been regularly checking my emails or blog or chat. I haven't really even been taking calls.

What I did do, before I felt totally unable to function on Tuesday, was schedule the post that was to go up today for a tour.

Shame on Blogger for not having the scheduling issue fixed for every single blog on its platform. I depend on the scheduling feature to make sure that my posts go up when they are supposed to. I make promises to others that wouldn't be broken, if not for Blogger and Blogger's inability to get its shit together.

I feel compelled to apologize to those I work with, who this scheduling issue has affected. When I can barely stand the backlight of my laptop, my head and one side of my face are throbbing incessantly, and every swallow feels like knives in my throat, it's a shame that Blogger has made it necessary for me to have to post this.