New book deal, end of 2009

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2009 has been a very difficult year, mostly because of new health problems. CFS/ME wise I'm doing well, but the hypopituitarism/adrenal insufficiency and the resulting trigger points have made life extremely difficult, resulting in immense pain, often not sleeping much at all for weeks (and problems resulting from that), muscle wasting and other, even worse forms of deformation - and of course being a prisoner in my home. There has been a lot of grieving for lost quality of life, lost function, lost abilities - things I will no longer be able to do. Sometimes coping has been very, very difficult. Already having a serious life-threatening and functionality-restricting illness doesn't make it easier to get additional ones. And I'm still being stuck in this hellhole of Finland, which in itself is equivalent of slow, painful death.

Luckily some good things have happened too, although fewer than in 2008. I failed to reach most of my goals for this year, but I don't feel like I really failed (much), except for my novel (after 20 years you tend to get a bit impatient). It's more like life threw me stuff I couldn't really foresee, so I still achieved many things that weren't on my list. Career-wise quite a lot of good things happened. Having my first book published by a proper (and well-respected) publisher was nice, as was signing the contract to have the Finnish version of my CFS/ME book published next year. A dream come true after years of work on that project.

2009 plans/goals

Original plans

[X] learning Dutch Could have made more progress on this front, but still it's going pretty OK.
[_] finishing my sociomedical essay collection Uh, not quite. I had planned to work on it in the fall, but the Twitter book screwed up my plans.
[/] a new awesome writing job (in the negotiation phases) Got it, but sadly it hasn't yielded me any after the first half of the year.
[_] get CFS/ME articles published in Finland Didn't succeed, but should have much better chance next year when my book comes out.
[/] paid photography gigs (bands, decoration etc) I had some photos published, including some photos of famous bands and artists, but by bands I had originally meant photographing bands for their websites or CD covers.
[/] self-publishing the English version of my novel #4 Done.
[X] writing novel #6 Still editing it, but yeah, I count this one as accomplished
[/] financial independency (one can always dream?) Not quite there, but got close, and could say I achieved this in May and December, if it makes sense.
[_] getting a publication deal for novel #5 (-"-) Judging from some of the non-form rejection letters I got it was very close, but sadly "very close" isn't enough.
[_] traveling to Great Britain Had to cancel this plan pretty early in the year.
[_] moving to the Netherlands Held out hope all the way until November, but no such luck.

Additional goals (from July)

[X] getting a book contract for the next Finnish version of my CFS/ME/FM book Succeeded.
[_] more medical copywriting assignments No, though ironically I did get an offer less than 24 hours after posting this - but I was on holiday so missed the opportunity.
[_] finish a few dozen poems Well, I almost finished one.
[X] avoid the swine flu Success.

Highlights of 2009

the trip to the Netherlands (even though it further worsened my homesickness)
publication of my Twitter book
signing a publication deal for the Finnish version for my CFS/ME/FM treatment book
winning NaNoWriMo for the second time
new kinds of awesome job opportunities (e.g. medical copywriting and Twitter training - both for major impactful companies)
my Italian friend fogbank visited Finland for the first time in three years
trips to our summer cabin
Altparty
getting to interview my favorite band
inosine and tyrosine (improved functionality on some fronts)

Bad things

not getting the hell out of Finland
myofascial trigger points
adrenal insufficiency worsening
other complications of hypopituitarism
not getting a publication deal for novel #5
not getting a great job I really could have used, was qualified for and thought I'd get (openings like this crop up once in 3-5 years at most)
friends being very ill (e.g. one of my very few friends who wasn't disabled got epilepsy and lost his job as a result, another one who had previously only had mild CFS/ME got gravely ill and spent weeks in a hospital, still very ill despite tens of thousands of euros spent on various intravenous medications and therapies - luckily he's still alive, at least)

2010 plans/goals

get the hell out of Finland (of #1 importance)
finish my CFS/ME/FM book
finish my essay collection (I've been working on it since 2004, so it really should be actually finished some time)
painting, doing other kinds of art (I don't think I did any acrylic painting in 2009, whoops)
write some non-drabble short stories
set up my new blog (was supposed to do this at the end of 2009, but ran out of time)
get on TV to talk about my book/Twitter
more articles published in print magazines
have a paper published in a medical journal
speak at the LDN conference in Scotland (pretty much confirmed)
write another medical textbook (and get it published)
get novel #6 published
write novel #7 (or at least the first draft)
get a column in a newspaper, magazine or a major website
learn more Dutch
learn the basics of Spanish and perhaps French

Of course, solving the hypopituitarism/trigger points problem would be quite nice, but not a realistic goal and the former list only contains realistic goals.

Hope everyone (out of the about three people reading this) has/had great holidays and a great new year!

P.S. Fuckings to DA admins who still haven't fixed the bugs in journal HTML. Considering the speed at which they usually fix bugs it might just be finished by 2015.

EDIT: P.P.S. More fuckings to DA admins for introducing even more spectacular bugs into the journal code parser, forcing me to stop using HTML tags.



Works in progress
a painting
editing novel #6
a scifi drabble
a horror short story
four haiku
my sociomedical essay series
some poems

Works finished but not yet submitted
a scifi drabble
55-word fiction
five ASCII pictures
some fractals
an acrylic painting
a digital painting
a whole bunch of photos

Works I wish to start in the near future
plans for novel #7
an ASCII picture
some poems
some crafts
henna tattooing
molding clay sculpture

Non-art/DA TODO (inconclusive)
a musician interview
blog posts for my book's website
the new Finnish version of my CFS/ME/FM book
a new blog
studying Dutch
a medical study/presentation
some query letters and pitches
articles for several different websites and online publications
content for my Finnish CFS/ME site
some stuff for my website

My preliminary schedule for the following months
31st January medical paper deadline
5th February interview gig
8th February tweetup
8th February record release party
28th February book manuscript deadline
7th March friend's birthday party
9th March freelancer meeting
25th March Twestival Helsinki
3rd April my birthday
23rd-24th April LDN conference



I was interviewed by , read the interview in <a  href="radicalpuppy4.deviantart.com/j…">his journal.

wrote a poem dedicated to my ASCII art. It's quite good too!

I've set up a discussion thread for my sociomedical essay series on my forum, please read it and contribute if you have any  opinions.



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