davidgillon | In which I have rejection issues (Reply)

So I'd no sooner gotten over Disabled People Destroy SF rejecting my fiction submission, than I got a rejection for my non-fiction submission - "didn't work for me". I suspect it may have been too confrontational for their liking. Turns out two rejections in relatively quick succession seems to double up on the effects. I was expecting the self-doubt and the depression, but the anger was new. Not quite sure how to deal with these other than to keep trying and seeing if I can build up a tolerance.

Damn, I really wanted to crack that market. Well, I want to crack any market, but that one particularly mattered to me.

The depression meant I was late getting back to my sister with my input for the next meeting re Dad's care funding, which meant she ran into various issues, and ended up with the two of us on the phone to each other at half past midnight last night, which is not an ideal time for discussing the technical minutiae of the CHC Decision Support Tool (though I suspect they'll be fairly freaked just by the fact we've looked it up and run through it ourselves). It turns out there is actually something more depressing than running through a benefit assessment form for yourself - running through it for a family member who can no longer handle it themselves.

One unexpected benefit of all of this was that when I went to open up the Word file for the DST, expecting to have to use Word Online, my desktop said "Hang on while I install Office" (or words to that effect). I'd worked out a couple of weeks ago that the desktop and laptop somehow had two different Microsoft accounts with the same email address, and when MS asked which one I was trying to use managed to get the desktop logged onto the laptop account, and that seems to have made the difference the next time I tried to open an Office file. I thought I was going to have to buy an additional license for the desktop to cover it (Word Online is too slow for anything but a backup), but clearly my Office subscription either covered the desktop under the main license or included a spare license - score!

When I should have been looking at the DST I was actually playing Ark. Which turns out to be very good as a distraction, but not so good for my wrists, which are stinging through overuse. I've had this before with other games, if I cut down on the amount I've been playing then they should settle down relatively quickly (but note the 'if'). I've also taken measures to cut down what I'm doing within the game by (quite literally) pitching two thirds of my dodos over the compound wall. OTOH I've now tamed two triceratops (Tyrone and Teri), which make good pack mules. Fortunately you can leave those tied to a hitching rail near a feeding trough and ignore them until you need them. I've also tamed six parasaurolophus (-opholi? Para, Ventura, Mara, Alpha and Omega and Lara) for riding. I only intended taming a couple of parasaurs, but Mara and Lara both spawned on my doorstep and it was easier to tame them than do anything else, while Alpha and Omega turned up as Mara and Ventura's egg. What started out as a separate barn for the dodos (their squawking was driving me up the wall) has now become a dodo barn/general hatchery. Alpha and Omega worked fine (incidentally they have a particularly evil-looking colour scheme - black scales with orange highlights on their spinal ridges), but Tyrone and Teri's egg Treo dropped dead on me shortly after hatching. I'm now working my way through my stored fertile dodo eggs, but any hatchlings without interesting colour mutations get pitched over the wall - essentially I've turned into a breeder of overgrown budgies.