I’m so incredibly behind on emails and blog posts it’s not even funny.
I’m doing my best to catch up – or, at the very least, not get even more buried under a pile of emails and notifications – but I’ve been dealing with feeling exhausted and unwell constantly lately, which makes it very difficult to do anything.
I had an appointment last week (on February 2nd) to see my haematologist to get my levels checked, so had to go have them take the blood for that on January 23rd (they want the blood taken about ten days before the appointment these days, to make sure the results are ready when I get there).
My platelets are down a bit again, but not enough that anything needs to be done about it, and everything else is in the normal range. And, when I say “normal” I mean my normal, which may not be normal for everyone else.
This means that – despite the slightly lower platelets - it’s just my body doing what it does, and all I can do is ride it out until I get to one of those times when I have some energy again. It’s just the way things are. It’s frustrating, but it’s not unusual for me. I just don’t usually need to admit to it online, since I can usually keep up enough that it’s not overly noticeable. But these days I have more I’m trying to keep up with, which makes it harder to pretend those times when my body just insists rest is the priority and everything else can wait are happening, which is the case right now.
On a more cheerful note...
One of the book formats you can get access to via Bookshare is audio (though often it’s not human narrated audio) and the most readily available digital book format provided by the RNIB Reading Services is daisy audio.
My laptop can handle the audiobooks from Bookshare, but I have to play each individual file they’re broken down in to as it finishes, which makes listening while doing anything difficult (and kind of annoying) and I had nothing I could use to listen to the daisy audiobooks on my laptop (though I expect there are things I could get and install if I wanted to use my laptop for them - but I don't).
So, I used my birthday and Christmas money towards buying a Victor Reader Stream, which – for those who have never heard of one and don’t know what it is – is a portable device you can use to listen to audiobooks and podcasts. It will also read out text documents.
Now, between my Kindle, my Orbit, and my Victor Reader Stream, I have a portable way to access digital books in almost any format.
In other positive news...
I just approved the final version of the audio version of my book, "Jelena" a few days ago, so hopefully - assuming it goes through ACX's checks without any issues - that will be available very soon.
Also, I have the link to the other author interview I did in January to share with you. So, if you'd like to check out my author interview on Writing Works Wonders - the writing podcast and call that's done via the ACB community - you can listen by clicking here.
