Now that we’ve finally made it to October, I think it’s safe to finally tell the world: September was cursed.
I mean, that’s the only explanation for quite how strange (and, at times, difficult) the month ended up being, right? I know, I know; October should, by all rights — if not all rites, get it? — be the cursed month, considering it’s Spooky Central and the place where Hallowe’en resides and all, but the evidence doesn’t lie: I’ve never had any October that felt as trying and difficult as this past month has been. September 2021 was, by no stretch of the imagination, a cursed month.
If it wasn’t one dog’s dental surgery — 17 teeth removed at once! They even gave them to me in a tiny little test tube afterwards — then it was new of a tumor in another dog, or the possibility of yet another dog moving in, only for that to go wrong in such a fashion as to be concerning and no little amount of anxiety inducing. (The dog is a lovely dog, but he’s not a dog who could deal with the house as it currently exists, put it that way.)
That’s to say nothing about the wait to find out if the lease on the house would be renewed, or if we’d all be homeless in a couple of months. It was renewed, thankfully; going house hunting in these times would be a trial too far, I suspect. There was also the weekend of wondering if the nine year old had COVID, as well, although it thankfully was just a cold.
Oh, but then there’s the work elements, too; the publication of a piece I finished weeks earlier, prompting all kinds of discourse online that made me feel awkward and uncomfortable, as well as writing new pitches, one of which was for an entire job, many if not most of which came to nothing at all, because things are slowing up in a dramatic sense when it comes to my earning money. At one point, I was getting rejections left, right, and center and wanting to just respond, look at how popular this piece is, I could be doing that for you right now.
October may not be any easier on the work front, but at least everything else is unlikely to repeat in the next 31 days. After all, what are the odds of having two cursed months in a row…?