The quickest of updates. The good news is that mom is coming home on Monday (we learned today - Saturday). The "argh" news is that it should have been Wednesday. All the rooms of her flat have been painted, but the furniture is still mostly like in the new pics. I uploaded them on a dialup connection while working - sloooow, both activities. But at least there was someone else downstairs moving furniture: tomorrow it's my turn.

10. The garage as it is now. Notice where my beloved antique bed has ended.

11. Guthila still loves the old armchairs, so we don't dare to throw them away.

12. My parents' bed by the gas stove. You can see the problem.

13. At least the new tiles are nice - we can even walk on them now.

14. I don't know. Really. It's downstairs in dad's den and it scares me a little.

15. Remember the corner of the balcony as it was previously, before we tore the kitchen apart?...

16. More of the kitchen, and my desk.

17. My room.

18. The Doors. ("this is the end, my friend, the end...")

19. Got chairs?

20. My books after the bookcase was dismantled. Notice where Harry Potter and Tolkien ended.

21. More of the same.

On top of it all we've been invaded by the next wave of Goths. After I attempted to give mommy some name like Erelieva or
Amalaberga, she swished her black feathery tail and informed me her name was Fluffy. Thus I'm trying to convince her to raise her children as Romans and call them Primus, Secundus, Tertius and Quintus (I don't like Quartus). Or Prima, Secunda... The only obstacle is telling them apart. We also have the honour of being visited regularly by The Phantom of the Opera. And Guthila is more allergic than ever, but at least we have the comfort of his unparalleled intelligence.

Right now I'm doing my editing job in Romagna and it's wonderful and draining. I get back to my temporary flat and collapse. When I get home on Oct 31, I'll go straight to my parents' to help with this.

1, 2, 3, 4. Self-explanatory.

5. This was when the hall still looked more or less like itself. Now you have to understand that to repair those trenches you see everywhere, they have to remake ALL the tiles in the WHOLE flat. And empty it completely. Imagine the hall as it is now, no stove, no bed, no doors, nothing. And no tile workers either - they had to come today, and they didn't. MAYBE tomorrow.

6. If you can tear your eyes off Eu's eyes, notice the cloth over the TV to keep the masonry dust out of it.

7. The stove where it is now, outside on the balcony. For a while, the heating wasn't working either. To avoid freezing, my dad was sleeping in his office downstairs and I was sleeping upstairs at my aunt's with The Dark Presence (Gattagotha), who only approaches humans when they are asleep and then eats their feet. Now I think at least they have heating back, but there are no more beds.

8. The living r - I mean, the garage. Where I guess now all the flat's furniture is stored, with all the cars parked outside. The cupboard on the right fell on my mother a couple of weeks ago as she was emptying it. She's now at the hospital in bed with a hairline fracture of the femur, right where she had a hip replacement some ten years ago. No movement for a month, and then who knows how many months of treatment, if they don't have to replace the whole thing again. She's lucky she got away with this, and very happy she had almost emptied it of all her pretty china things.

9. My beloved armchairs, now probably thrown away - after 37 years nails were sticking out of the upholstery. Guthila the Sh*tmaker doesn't seem to mind. (Hey, not everybody can be The Great.) We took him and his sister in to give them their shots and turn them free again, but we discovered he has some sort of food intolerance - everything that goes in comes out in a hurry and in a state of... OK, no need to go into details. He can eat only anallergic food, which means he can't go out, he can't eat with the others. We don't know whether he'll be like this for life, or even if he'll have a life at all, but after looking like a wet rag for weeks he now looks like a cat and is almost as large as The Dark Presence, though he's much more vivacious and friendly and purry (and clingy) Anyway my aunt has to take care of him continuously - not that she has anything else to do...

That's it. Some tell me "take care of your life, you can't kill yourself with work, your parents don't depend on you." Uuuuh... that bed in Pic 5 is MY antique, valuable bed. Those books in the background are MY Harry Potters. I'd hate for them to be mishandled. And those cats are also MY cats. And incidentally, those are MY relatives. I AM taking care of MY life.

More pics later. Been also to Ravenna, too tired to tell about it - if you see the mandatory pic at Theo's, I look like something that would be at home inside the sarcophagus. If I really can't surface again till November, I love you all and I was glad to be a Germania scribe, albeit pretty useless. Better times will come.

(Damn, accidentally hit "cancel". Another AW pet peeve... WHY MUST THE BUTTONS BE SO CLOSE TO EACH OTHER?)

I am now happily writing on my beloved laptop, saved from the brink. Still messily reinstalling everything so it could be a while before I come back online, also because... the brain.

Changed medications, did a lot of talking about my "shell" (call me "Shellhead"! Sorry, Iron Man reference) and though I get very confused by these issues, I feel I might be going somewhere and I'll try to simplify:

- Consequences of anxiety in my family during childhood:
1. driven to "protect" them and be responsible for them, to the detriment of my personal development, being forever attuned to the needs of others.
2. creation of a "shell" - my fantasy world, and the inner child - where I feel safer. Even when I'm at my family's: there are still traces of remaining tensions, and sometimes I deal with them, sometimes I don't, but still it's safer than the outside world.

- The shell prevents experiences: or rather, I do things, but they don't "stick". Example: I did get a car, I used it intensely at first, I got out of scrapes on my own, but instead of being stronger and learning from this, I got more and more scared to the point that the very thought of getting the car makes me panic. Same exact process for dating, working, catching planes etc. (Only thing that ever worked: living alone. I'm not stepping back from them. I might visit my folks as often as I can, but this home is my shelter and I'm proud of it.)

- Why does this happen? Here begins the confusion. It could be that experiences - getting a job, a partner etc - would make me less available to my family. In fact they press a lot for me to get out of my shell. But unconsciously they want me to stay close to them? Or is that my ingrained belief? (cfr. the "voices" in my head, alternatively encouraging or berating me.)

- How to solve this? By not thinking about solving this. (The first rule of Fight Club: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club.) Here the reason/emotion dilemma comes into play. I try to solve things using the former while I should use more the latter, but the latter is stuck inside the shell. So what? So keep calm, don't force yourself, study the shell and the emotions it gives you, and let's see what happens.

I have my doubts about it, because it feels very self-indulgent, doing things only when I feel like it, and such. I guess there is a middle way in this too. Keep calm, don't force yourself... but the dishes don't wash themselves.

The world could not afford to lose this.

The briefest of notes, since I should be doing some RL work (work? what's that? I seem to recall the sound of this word...). Dad told me they've recovered all the data on Iunia (my laptop. yes, I'm weird.) Can't wait to get my hands on them again, print everything and make copies: one on my main external HD, one on various DVDs and Flash cards, one in a safety box, one in the Pentagon vault, one sent to the space station by the next Shuttle or Soyuz launch... LESSON LEARNED!!! *jitter jitter*

(this post keeps becoming shorter and more venomous because I keep losing it ALSO BECAUSE OF THE BLOODY AW WINDOWS WHICH OPEN ON TOP OF EACH OTHER WHEN YOU LESS EXPECT IT! There!)

Somewhere in July: Stopped taking medication for controlling rage, after it has been perfectly useless in my office situation. Also weird pains in my knees. Had to go to the doctor today, if my laptop hadn't... see below.

Jul-Aug: Parents' house flooded. Situation controlled now, provided one doesn't use the bidet, which is a Continental luxury anyway. House about to be torn up from the foundations to replace the pipes.

Jul 26: Finished "Deathly Hallows". Having nightmares to this day.

Aug 8-9: Delivered translated book 8-9 days late, with much stress, shame and feelings of unworthiness. Gained 5 kilos. Lost 2 as of today.

Aug 11: As foreseen below, the someone who was sort of around found a sane, unscarred partner. Not jealous, because never in love, but lonely and scared. If YOU read this, it's nothing I would not tell to you personally, and probably will.

Aug 12: Nice tour of Romanic churches with beloved but sentimentally unavailable friend.

Aug 14: lost pet, the third this year. Decided to spend holidays quietly at my parents' house while they were by the seaside. Now having sea withdrawal crisis. Never in my whole life spent holidays far from the sea. Did lots of gardening.

Aug 16 or so: tried to attend the Renaissance Faire. Overcome by headaches, nausea, low blood pressure, you name it. Possible cause: interference between Zoloft and beer. Chosen beer, canned Zoloft. Much better. Also because Zoloft was being pretty useless, since for weeks I'd been waking up at dawn, in a sweat, hands shaking, heart hammering, scared out of my wits by... nothing. Way to work, Zoloft.

Late Aug: nice trips around the countryside and shopping with both aunts, to prepare for dad's birthday. Playing with the Goths. Smaller male very ill but now maybe recovering. Larger and larger female unapproachable. Don't want to give them names, or bad stuff will happen. Gave them only generic, descriptive names: Guthila (the litthe Goth) and Gattagotha (the Gothic Cat). Probably wrong grammar, and how the hell do you say "cat" in Gothic?

Aug 27 or so: bought "From Hell" on discount - double disk, yay! Jack the Ripper more relaxing than contents in my skull.

Aug 29: parents came back. Immediate nervous breakdown. Dad's 70th birthday ruined forever in my memory by how ill I was. Scared that it was wrong to take away the medications: scared to start them again. I've come to this decision: they give me something that works, fine, I'll take it, but otherwise I'll keep my pain, thanks. If you have a headache I'm not going to tell you "Here, this will make 20% of it go away." I don't want to be happy, I want to be NOT IN PAIN. Luckily my therapists seem to get my meaning. More visits next week.

Sept 3: back in Milan. Some quiet days. Worked a bit in the house, put up flower vases and stuff. Made the mistake of hoping again.

Sept 10 (this morning): laptop crashed. All data possibly lost. Luckily I had saved my texts, or I'd be in the psych ward, raving about dragons and horses. But all the rest could be gone. All my work on the Gothic, Saxon, Latin texts, the Thidrekssaga translation... all the recent pics, including the little Goths. ALL MY RAVENNA PICS. Bless Phen - right last night I sent him a batch of very important Pseudo-Avanzi frescoes, unbelievable stroke of luck - but I didn't send him the most embarrassing and fun ones...

All of the above is stupid and trivial compared to real great tragedies in the world. And I'm sure I overlooked lots of good moments. But the "It could be worse" approach never worked on me, because my brain just refuses it. Right now I feel like I'm holding so hard to sanity that I'm going mad. Last night I had to change my desktop picture which depicted the little Goths all curled up over each other, because I feared that if I felt too much love for them they would die. What happened was that all their pics are possibly destroyed. There cannot be a connection, can it? Then this morning I woke up in a bed of dried violets. I was puzzled and really a little terrified of having lost it completely, when I remembered that they probably were in the book I was reading last night and slipped out. OK, but where do they come from? I seem to vaguely remember someone giving them to me, but who? When? And why did I put them inside "Identity in Ostrogothic Italy"? My brain is falling apart.

By now I live in almost constant terror and pain. Friends and fun are a tiny relief (when not sending me into a paranoia delirium) so I'll try to stick to it. I'm fighting. Heart is bolder. But God, how much it hurts.

No, not a new theory. An update. So I'm piling lateness upon lateness, since I had to deliver the translated book by last Wed, I promised it by Fri, I promised it again by today and now, being barely halfway with the re-reading, I've simply stopped opening my publisher's e-mails. Meanwhile I think I've lost at least 2 groups of RL friends - even the best can't be patient forever with someone who never shows up for anything - but that's not the most pressing issue as I'm here at my parents', working 24/7.

Issue 1: The Goths. A migratory people, looking for lands, alternatively being fed by the locals in exchange for border protection, or just coming in and conquering. Now we have four of them. My great-aunt found the similarity and the nickname. Dad is large, blond, blue-eyed and with faint stripes. Mom is black, with a sleek head and an enormous fluffy Persian-like tail, she looks like a cross between a tiny panther and a squirrel. The children, about 2 months old, are just little grey striped things. One is smaller and lighter, but I can tell only if I see them side by side. They came through various neighbouring gardens before settling, guess what, in ours, maybe because they barely need to make a peep and they are showered with food. And the kittens go "mee, mee" - the smaller one especially - whenever Mom and Dad are probably having some private quality time together. When this happens at night, it's disquieting, even though I know they see ten times more than I do, and even at 2 months they can survive better outside than I can anywhere. So picture me in the middle of the night running outside barefoot and crawling through the grass to pretend I'm a fellow feline, and going "mee, mee, come home, little Goths."

Issue 2: The buckets of water. Those I'm hauling day and night because first the shower pipes in the floor burst and the plumbers tore up one bathroom and are barely replacing the tiles (last time I saw my toilet bowl it was lying upturned in front of the garage), and now - as of tonight, 11 pm local time - my dad came into the kitchen and said "We have a problem," I swear, he didn't say "Houston" but that was the tone of his voice. He reported water dripping abundantly from the ceiling, more or less where the second bathroom upstairs is. So we filled all available recipients and shut off the water in the whole house. Tomorrow we'll have to call the plumbers and hope that they are available to tear up the second bathroom. Luckily we have a large garden with many hedges, if the Goths are willing to share.

I can't tell this to my publisher.

No, really. Don't read this. I won't name names, but those who know me personally – yes, YOU there! – would understand way too much.

I'll start with the gripes. It'll take another review (and a re-reading) to analyze the many good things of this amazing book and saga, and this true hero – in the classic sense of the word – and well-rounded good man that is Harry James Potter. Now I need to get something really heavy off my chest.

I hated the wholesale slaughter. Yes, JKR had warned us. And as an author myself, I'm no stranger to killing off loads of characters. In my Western saga I had created characters just for the sake of killing them off at the end, and of course this made them extremely endearing and pissed off the readers by the time I offed them months later. Some still want my head for a certain thing that happens in "Terra Incognita", my Moby Dick prequel (hey, it's better than it sounds). I'm currently writing "The Horse on the Wall" which revolves around the terrible suffering and untimely death of the loveable, brilliant protagonist. I've been taking pains to add a prologue that heavily hints at the fact that Iacopo dies at the end, or I fear it would be too much of a downer for most readers. But an author has reasons for doing what he/she does. Or should have.

The sensitive reader's reaction is my first reason of griping, and as such I understand it's the most groundless one. Yes, an author cannot concern him/herself too much about upsetting the readers. JKR wanted to show that war is ugly and that it can hit anybody and cut large swaths in your life. I'm divided on this one. I love war stories, and I adored book 5 (Order of the Phoenix) as a war novel. I may have explained elsewhere the reason why: because I'm interested in studying how human beings react among the worst horrors that can happen, and finding strength in how they manage to survive. Still, this time I had the precise feeling that with all the suffering in this world, I didn't need to suffer also in my imagination. It's a personal matter, and as I said, meaningless from the point of view of literary criticism. But then again most of what follows will be, even though I might find more solid ground for my complaints.

There is a larger picture to consider. This saga is possibly unique in the history of literature. It grew as its child readers grew up, and now its earliest fans are quite ready to tackle a final book that might shock even adults. But what about those who start now, when it's a fully formed 7-books saga? It has this hybrid nature, it starts (apparently) as a light-hearted child fable and ends in a very adult nightmare. Despite the cynics' opinions, children read a lot these days, I see it in those I know. A child could devour the whole series in a month and end up scarred for life. Hopefully there will be adults to guide them along, but it's not to be taken for granted. Yes yes, we had Bambi and grew up sane... or did we? The news of "counselling groups" for traumatized HP readers has been welcomed with sneering jeers. While I definitely criticize exaggerations, I also have a newsflash for "normal" people: SURPRISE, there IS something like mental suffering, lucky you if it's never happened to you, but don't presume to judge what can be just a tantrum and what instead is the seed of a full-blown depression that can bring to disease and death. Maybe don't send a grieving child to the doctor straight away, just to get rid of the problem, but don't dismiss him as "too sensitive", "it's just a story", "get-over-it" either. We all should have more compassion towards each other, no matter the age. It pays off.

I'm not blaming JKR, of course. This hybrid nature of her saga is what sets it apart, it was inevitable, and she dealt with it wonderfully. It's just that I'm reminded of something that the writer protagonist of Stephen King's "Bag of Bones" writes in the end. I don't have the book here, but it goes something like this. He's just suffered a horrifying loss and discovers he doesn't have the heart to write such scenes anymore in his books. That's a bit like I feel now, even though that's not strictly my case.

Another general consideration. I've heard the saga being criticized because it glorifies rebellious youth and the adults are all stupid, bad or useless. This is unfair and factually wrong. However, by the end of DH, I definitely felt that the older generations – especially the "middle" one, James and Lily's, incidentally my own (and JKR's) age group – have run their course. The world belongs to teenagers. Hey, thanks! The HP saga is so fascinating also because it depicts a whole new world in all its details, economics, classes, usages. I had loved OOTP also because it finally brought to the fore adult characters in which I could identify myself. (Once again Harry is an exception: in my view he has been a grownup for several books now, through suffering and loneliness, and I'm perfectly content with identifying with him.) That's also one of the reasons why I did not like Book 6 (Half-Blood Prince) that much: after the premise of OOTP, I wished to see the adult world explored more in depth, and was disappointed.

OK, you may tell me it's always been about Harry, Ron, Hermione and a few friends their age. But JKR did add the adult element. She did give it a lot of importance. And then she dropped it. I admire her enormously for the immense, wonderfully detailed world she created, but in the end she could not possibly keep up with all of it, she had to concentrate on something to the detriment of something else. Once again, I can't blame her for this. Still I feel that as an adult reader I've been led in a direction that I found satisfying and that was suddenly changed under my nose.

Then there's the fact of JKR's declarations before and after the publication of DH. Careful now, we're getting into specifics. She had said for months that at the last moment she had spared one character and killed two who were meant to survive. This was already disquieting, but I understand, she was trying to prepare us. Then a few days ago she revealed who the characters were. It struck me as extremely callous. The deaths are heartbreaking, and one could have found some comfort in the thought that it was always meant to be like that in the grand scheme of things. Not so – it felt like it amounted basically to the tossing of a coin, no matter that she said she cried while writing the deaths. As much as I love her, I think she should have kept these comments to herself. It's as though I published "Horse", this supreme monument to friendship and art enduring after death, and then revealed to the newspapers: "Yeah, actually I meant to kill Altichiero off, but at the last moment I decided Iacopo would make a better corpse." (Not to mention more historical – though this will be the topic of a "Horse" entry.) It would overturn all the delicate balance between the two and make it essentially a random choice between cardboard, interchangeable characters.

The two "victims" had already been shortchanged, being introduced as very important – one especially – and then living the rest of their brief life behind the scenes. And they died behind the scenes. As I said, I understand that with so much material JKR had to be ruthless about what to show and what to leave unsaid. I also understand that the importance of the characters might have been different for her and for an overenthusiastic fan. But one of the victims had been a poster child for tolerance, very inspiring and meaningful. You'd expect for him to live on and fight for his uniqueness. Or at least that his death were more related to such uniqueness. I mean, it's as though the movie "Philadelphia" showed the fight for Tom Hanks' character's rights without showing him for half of the movie, and at the end they said "oh yeah, by the way, he's dead."

Oh well... so it's off my chest. Now back to the translation I've promised for Tuesday and I'm still 6 chapters short...

This time I didn't go to the capital. I didn't visit imaginary friends or actual relatives either. Too burned out. I went down there for another week of work, and work is all I did, also because I was physically ill half the time.

The job is going fine. I feel more assured and I know editing is what I do best, beside translating. It works like this: my friend and I sit at a desk with a computer and go through all the chapters in her book. I'm helping her streamline it just as earlier I've worked on it on my own for the main editing. The fact that she notices she's a lot better at it is a great satisfaction. I hear myself giving advice or asking for corrections with self-reliance and knowledge. I've often felt that I write certain things more or less at random, that I know my way is better but I can't explain why. That's not true. I'm able to give a stylistic explanation for every suggested change. I'm not used to hearing myself make sense and actually helping people.

I'm not happy, of course. It's a quandary. I'm so used to stuff going wrong that I don't dare to be happy about things going right, in fear that something will take it away as it has always happened. But this way, every progress is meaningless, if I can't build on it. I try to build on the new experiences I'm having, the good things I'm doing, but secretly. Trying not to say it aloud, and trying to keep it hidden from the cruel part of me who has fun in belittling the defenceless inner child.

Then there are objective problems. Because, as I said the other time, I am that child too, trying to survive in a very hostile world and hiding from a frightful gaze that denies me peace. That gaze is just a ghost, the way I see someone who most certainly didn't mean to hurt me that much. Maybe that's what I need to do, to understand the gaze is not real, not within myself. It's not an enemy. It's something that exists elsewhere; it does not want me to be unhappy; and anyway I am something else from it. I don't need to change it and it won't change me. If only I could believe it.

I pick up every mood like a crazed TV set. Whenever my friend is displeased about her work, I cringe and feel my tension begin to build. As usual, I both recognize myself in her and fear her reactions. Since I feel I need to cheer her up, I'm terrified that it will end like with the OTHER boss. There is a difference, I hope. When I tell my friend that it's not as bad as she feels, she usually believes it. She does not go on a rampage of NO NO NO IT'S THE END WE'RE RUINED WE'LL ALL DIE AAAAARGH. I still feel uneasy that I should cheer her up when I'd need cheering up myself. This is not right, but I think it depends from having being shot down in the past by the old boss every time I attempted a smile. Instead, she listens to suggestions, as I said. If she is worried, I manage not to dry up. I just try to talk about stuff that is going OK or about practical solutions, and she does cheer up a little bit without me needing to put my emotions too much on the line. If I were my normal self, I know I'd make people better by my natural cheeriness. I can't really do much about it.

There is also the chance that I'm actually a bit stronger in withstanding the moods of those around me, but this is always risky. Unfortunately my experience is that there is no line, however thin, between "yay, look how well I'm coping" and "nuclear meltdown". I just can't know. At most I'll manage to look back when this is through and say "Hey, I didn't blow up," and it won't mean a damn thing because I'll be still in time to blow up with some other job. To quote my mother: "You'll screw up wherever you go." I know this is not true but I forbid myself conscious hope.

All of this while I'm giving up some medications on my own. YES, I've been among doctors enough that I know at least I have to do it very gradually. But I'm a bit disappointed in my witch-doctors. The mood equalizer (or whatever) didn't save me from that awful panic attack that led me to quit my old job in fear and anger. No matter that most tell me I had to do it: it was and still is the most hurtful and painful way I could have chosen. So what the hell was that medication for? Yeah, I haven't killed anyone yet, big way to work. So I'm giving it up, and weirdly when I feel anger I have this rational reaction: "No, now that I'm not taking the stuff anymore I have to control myself," and it's a feeling which has some strength. We'll see about this too, but I wonder, will I always be powerless before my mood swings or will I sooner or later hit on a way to control them?

Lately I cry much more and feel like I'm dead inside. Let's see what happens by doing without some meds. I know it can get worse. I'm just hoping that at least the experiment will give me a better understanding of these treatments. Some say that I should not think the medications are so powerful as to deprive me of emotions and feelings. Well, if taking them away won't give me my heart back, I'll start taking them again and know that it's not their fault. I just hope I won't break too much stuff in the meantime.

I've discovered something about the crying, too. Whenever I cry hard, it's about my family. I miss them so much. The inner child is dying to spend time among places and people fit for a child, and to FEEL sometthing, damn, even though it's just childhood memories or petting a cat. It's possibly wrong, I know. I had a talk with my friend, who comes from a much worse family experience. She finds it awful that I, as an only child, would like a large family. I told her how I lost a brother before he was born. She advised me to go as far away from them for as long as I can. When she told me this, I did start crying in the middle of a crowded bar and just could not stop, until I had an insight and caught my breath.

Maybe the sadness depends from my depression that makes me feel like I'm about to lose all my family tomorrow, like I feel with everything else. If I were less depressed, I'd be less obsessed with my family. So it must be something else. I must not leave my family to be healed, but first heal. My family remains another quandary, though. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around my wrong mental habit: that if the inner child makes experiences, the family suffers. It's quite possible that it's due to having tried to "fix" my family for all my life. Maybe it's that cruel voice inside, the one I have to peacefully dismiss. But if I still can't understand, I'll just stop looking at it directly and hope I'll catch some meaning out of the corner of my eye.

Sometimes I catch glimpses of very intense feelings, past loves and interests. They give me the measure of how dead I am now. I'd do anything to recapture those feelings. There was someone recently, who was sort of around. It was nice. But I felt nothing beyond "nice". I tried, but I couldn't fake an attachment I didn't feel. So this someone was less and less around, up to disappearing completely, because there's a lot of normal, available people in the world, so why waste heartaches with the freak? It was a sad disappointment, the loss of something that was beginning to be a small comfort in my life. What I would have liked to say was, "Look, I like having you around, but I feel absolutely nothing about you, so would you mind sticking around a bit more while I try to feel something?" You can't very well say this to someone. If I felt even a tiny little bit, I'd fight for it, I'd speak out. But how can you drag someone into your problems while knowing you have absolutely nothing to give back right now?

Now I'm going home and I'm objectively pretty worried. I have a book to translate within July and I'm quite late. No wonders, when I've lost so much time with the hospital job, and I'm wasting time with this editing job too, even though this is much more constructive. And right now I'm writing this damn St Helen's Memoirs on the train instead of working. Yeah, but what can I do if I must make order in my mind or go crazy, so many are the thoughts – some with razor sharp edges – whirling around in my mind? Anyway I'm almost through with long translations. It's clear that it's not my thing, because I delay too much while trying to survive. The Marvel magazines every 2 weeks are fine: proportionally, better being 2 days late with one of those, than 2 weeks late with a book. I'm finishing this book cycle – 3 years at the most, one for each book – and then it's over. Long-distance plan.

And don’t mention Harry Potter...