I am losing my damn mind

Today I was going to post a very snarky and rage-filled rant about Todd Akin’s asinine statement that women don’t get pregnant from rape, because if “it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Look at that shit. It’s an asshat goldmine of ignorance and verbal pus!

But I cannot do it today because I cannot focus for diddly. Not even with that glorious monument to dumbfuck shining before me like a beacon, which is saying something people.

Why am I a fruitcake covered in crazy-icing today, I pretend you ask? Because my real-life mundane academic self has released a book and I am going a bit loony about it. By a “bit loony” I mean running amok with my pants on my head insane.

I honestly didn’t think it would happen to me. After all, I have articles published in peer-reviewed hoity-toity journals. Do you have any idea the hoops one must jump to publish in a peer-reviewed journal? Seriously, I kept thinking I would have to catch a Frisbee in my teeth as a final step.

Invariably, all my writing begins with a rough draft being sent to my personal editor, the Goddess of Lobsters. The Goddess of Lobsters did not mean to become a one-woman editing machine for an American nutter, I am sure, but she was in charge of whipping one of my first essays into shape, and we became friends, which opened the door to my throwing myself on her mercy. Now I have the ankles of her friendship in a grip of iron, and won’t let go. She is too polite to kick. It’s awesome.

Anyway, I didn’t think I would lose my mind over publication. Peer-review is a much scary prospect, and I had been through that. I was so very, very wrong. The first second you see your baby, the book you worked on for more than two years, out there loose on Amazon, you can freak right the fokk out. It might as well have been the public display of a nude picture; that’s how vulnerable it made me feel.  Then I became OBCESSED with whether or not people would like it.

Oh, and speaking of “like” … you know that little thumbs-up button on Amazon? Until I became published I had no idea how important that damn thing was. I had never bothered to click it before, not even on books where I gave a glowing review, because I had barely noticed it. Now that it is above my book? I yearn for more likes. I swear this is what goes through my head: Why don’t they like it? They hate me! Wahhhhhhhh!

My god, I am that person.

I also don’t have any reviews yet. Sure, it’s a 300+ page book and has only been for sale about 24 hours … but why hasn’t someone reviewed it??? OMFG, what if it is a bad review? What if people come from miles around to write “feck this for a pile of shite” about my baby book? Wahhhhhh!!

Worst of all, I was mildly amused by these antics in my published friends when their books came out. Why were they so agitated? Their work was good. Why did they go bonkers when they saw it for sale the first time? What did they think would happen when they published? I could understand excitement and the nerves, but the derangement? Pish-tosh.

And now I am the one who is unhinged.

How the mighty hath fallen.

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