I lost my word count writing streak on Wednesday. I was so depressed that I really wanted to quit. I had no energy left. I went to bed. After spending all afternoon holding back the tears, I really wanted to cry myself to sleep. Of course, then the tears wouldn’t come.

It’s truly devastating to be told that the last 13 years of your life have been hijacked by a company who won’t play nice because you’re going to take your business away from them. I’ve spend less than $100/year with them between all my domains. Certainly this small amount can’t be worth that much to them. They can’t possibly be making that much after paying the domain Registrar for the renewal. Really? You’re going to be a baby over a few dollars at most?

But I have learned a very important lesson — never let someone have full control over the name on your domain (the Whois listing), and never let them be able to lock your account without you being able to unlock it. Yes, I will be doing things differently in the future. I’ve learned my lessons. No matter what happens, I will take those lessons with me. And, if that little piece of advice above helps someone else, great. If you own a domain and you have no idea what I’m talking about there, go dig around in your site and learn. Purchase a domain from someone else just to see what features they give you or don’t. Teach yourself, learn, observe, Google questions that arise. Don’t let all your domains be held by one company. Read the Terms of Service.

Yes, I am working on a backup plan. If I’m going to have to rebuild, I rebuild. It means that all writing is probably coming to a near-complete stop and that really is bad (in fact, if you’re a reader who really needs me to put out more, this really ought to upset you). I have to focus on Prince of the Ruined Land. That is quickly becoming priority one. Then, I have to rebuild the interior links all of my books as well as on the covers – print and ebooks. I have to redirect websites. I have to go into a ton of websites and update email addresses. On the bright side, this is probably a good time to set up the imprint lines I began considering at the end of last year — I considered this for the different age levels of my books. Since I’m getting so many, I don’t always remember what age they are appropriate for when I’m under pressure at a show and have a million questions coming at me at once. There’s also my newsletter to update. New banners. Business cards Updates to all of my websites — new directs for them (books, comics, art).

Do you see now why I was so depressed?

13 years.

So many things created. So much out there in the world.

All because one company doesn’t want to do right by their business.

Mind you, they are the ones that messed this up to begin with. If they could have just renewed my domains every year without letting them go down for days every time, I wouldn’t have been irritated enough to take my business away from them. But now that I’ve chosen to and announced it, they want to put me in a vice and show me has control. Well, they got me. Only because there aren’t decent laws to protect people from this kind of crap. Yep, I’m over a barrel. And because a few people pull scams, those of us that are being honest are the ones that get burned.

I just wanted to crawl in a hole and never come out.

So I went to bed.

Then I woke up at 5:30 the next morning, ready to get back to my normal routine of audio work and drawing. Let me tell you how much that irritated me. The last thing I wanted to do was get back to work. I tried to bury myself in my blankets and go back to sleep. I swore I was not going to get up until I needed to get up for my day job.

But the voice in my head kept nagging me to get up and get to it.

So I did.

When I wrote this for my blog, I still wasn’t happy about it and I wasn’t sure that  I didn’t want to give up. There really was a part of me that wants to write only for a very select few audience — you know, the kind that you have to be invited into. Another part of me wants to just keep putting out on my blog. And yet another part wants me to chuck everything to the wind. I don’t know. I knew the next few days could be interesting.

So that was earlier this week and now I sit at Sunday evening filling out the rest of my Monday post. Yes, it was a few interesting days. A roller-coaster really. But I started making decisions yesterday after settling in to really consider my options over Thursday and Friday.

Today I’ve had many interesting revelations too. Since this blog in getting long enough already, I shall continue my thoughts tomorrow.

Let’s see how my irritated sorrow reflected in my numbers.

Fiction words written last week: 1,907 words – wow, it’s been awhile since it’s been this low.

Blogs/Newsletter articles/non-fiction written:  4,285 words – okay, this also includes part of my Loki story, so that explains why this one is high. But I’ve also spent a lot of time blogging this week rather than writing.

Writing month to date total:  9,870 words words — my writing streak for hitting my daily word goal is now at 2 days (because I also didn’t get much writing done on Friday), but I did continue hitting the weekly goal for the last 10 weeks. I always did tell myself that hitting the weekly goal was more important that the daily goal, just because I do know that there are some days when I don’t have the opportunity to write or because I know I will be too depressed to write. Before failure, my daily streak reached 63 days.

Writing year to date total: 76,638 words

Drawing/painting last week: I spent about 2 and a half hours working on Rockin’ Life and Weblinks.

Audio: I spent 3 hours recording and editing audio.