HTHRFLWRS #16 - Things Are Really Great Here, Sort Of

Hey, y’all. Been a while.

I’m sure you’ve been wondering where your dearest darlingest Heather Flowers has wandered off to! I’ve been wondering much the same. So, a quick set of updates:

• Unfair Flips recently passed 1,000 reviews on Steam, at 92% positive!! This confers no algorithmic benefit but it makes me feel nice. Thank you to everyone who reviewed my horrible coin game!

• I helped run a megagame at Pax Unplugged! That was a ton of fun. If you haven’t played a megagame before: you should! They’re a blast!

• People seem to really like my new Fallen London story (The Shape of Infinity)! People have been saying very nice things to me.

• I got long COVID and now everything in my life is harder.

That last one is kinda the big one! I’ve been learning over the past couple months how to cope with significant chronic fatigue. Fortunately, I’m far from the first person to cope with this kind of thing, so I’ve had a lot of good reading to do. I’d like to specifically shout out:

• “Notes from a Sickbed,” by Tessa Brunton. At times incredibly raw and extremely funny, Tessa Brunton moves past a symptom list to some of the truest, weirdest parts of the experience of chronic fatigue. The ending in particular has struck a huge chord with me these past couple months.

• “A Brief Guide to (early onset) Wizard Puberty,” by Shel Kahn. This one combines fantastical metaphor with a very real emotional core, and I sent it to several people to help them understand part of what I’ve been going through. A favorite quote: “Wizardry, here, isn’t about transforming your relationship with the extraordinary… it’s about transforming your relationship with the ‘normal.’”

• This one website that’s been a huge help in learning about stuff like preemptive rest, pacing, energy envelopes, and the like.

• All of my friends who have gone through this before me and have tolerated/encouraged my whining as I go through this process myself.

What does this mean for my creative output, you ask? I’m still figuring that out! I basically had a month where I was a dead body that could occasionally be shuttled to different locations, and then I had a month where I’ve been feeling a lot better but also keenly aware of my every limit and if I ever step over those limits I lose entire days to recovery. I’m not entirely sure what the next few months have in store for me!

I will say that I’m not stopping. I’m going to continue making games, though probably a different way, and probably slower. I’m going to continue writing. I’m going to hopefully update this newsletter a lot more, because I finally quit Bluesky as I promised. Mostly quit. It’s a process.

It’s an unsettling calculus, having to treat my own body as a potential liability. My body’s one of my favorite things! It lets me see the world, which is one of my other favorite things! But now, because of changes to my body, my world is much smaller.

I’ve calculated the exact radius of how far I can walk in one go, how much work I can do in one sitting, how much fun I can have before I need to rest; and, sweeping an arc, I have calculated the circumference of my life. It still encompasses my home; my friends; my loved ones; some of my ambitions (but not others); many of my hobbies (but not others); good food; good days; good nights; some adventures (with backup support); a perfectly circular cut of happiness. I am often tempted to dwell on what I cannot do: all the happiness beyond that circumference. I try not to, though. Perhaps the circumference will grow again. Perhaps it’ll stay the same size. Perhaps it’ll even shrink.

I hope it doesn’t shrink. But, if it does, I’ll still have everything still inscribed.

Best,
Heather Flowers

Question of the Week: The process of acceptance is long and difficult. What’s something you’ve recently made peace with?

P.S. After taking the medical advice of a random trans person on the internet (which has historically only gone well for me), I started taking creatine monohydrate a month ago. It may be a coincidence that it perfectly matched my upswing from “dead body that hasn’t realized it yet” to “able to help run a megagame for six hours (after sleeping sixteen hours a day for the previous two days, and fully anticipating an energy crash the next day),” but I’m not gonna stop taking it to find out.

P.P.S. The title of this newsletter is a reference to one of my favorite albums, Andrew Bird’s “Things Are Really Great Here, Sort Of…” — it’s a strange one, since it’s a cover album but I like literally every cover version better than the original songs. Fantastic feeling-sad music.