Since my trip to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, I’ve been thinking a lot about ghosting. Being ghosted and doing the ghosting. I think we can all agree that being ghosted feels like crap. You have no idea why someone decided not to talk to you anymore, why they would drop off the face of the earth without an explanation or a goodbye. Maybe it’s easier to understand if you’ve done the ghosting in the past–we all have reasons why all of a sudden we would stop talking to someone. I have done the ghosting and have been ghosted and neither feel particularly great.

My appointment went well–all seventy minutes of it–a timeframe that I most definitely would not have been granted here in Fargo, ND. She asked me to start at the beginning of my troubles, and I did. She gave me an exam, consulted with a dermatology specialist, and we came up with a plan. It all seemed to easy, too good to be true, but it’s too early to know if it is or not. I didn’t expect a magic bullet–I’ve been suffering for three years. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it took that long to find some normalcy, though she did assure me that I would start feeling better in the next couple of weeks. I go back for a ninety day followup at the end of May, and I thank God I have the resources to do that. I know how fortunate I am that I had the means and support to travel, but it’s pretty sad that I had to resort to that in the first place.

Anyway, so I’m not proud to say I’ve ghosted people, and not just because for the past three years I’ve been dealing with a health issue. Back when I first started writing (and unfortunately, publishing) I was really involved with Writer Twitter, and I met a lot of really nice people and made a lot of friends, some I still have today (though they’re more acquaintances now). But like anything, networking and friendships need to be kept at a moderate level, and I reached a point where all I was doing with my time was talking to people. Culling relationships to make room for the real reason why I was on social media to begin with hadn’t been on my mind, but some of those relationships made it easy. I ghosted one friend because everything was about her. Her books, her writing, her life. Friendship needs to go both ways, and frankly, after a couple of years, I got tired of supporting her with nothing in return. Looking back, I should have been grownup and told her I wasn’t getting out of our friendship what I needed. Being a grownup is difficult though, and I took the coward’s way out. She let me go easily enough and maybe she didn’t care I faded away. At the beginning of our friendship she said she had trouble keeping friends, and I had no idea why, but after a couple of years it became apparent. If someone tells you they have a hard time keeping friends, believe them. Why will come out soon enough.

I ghosted someone else because he was involved with so much drama on Twitter, I honestly thought he was going to drag me down with him. A stalker latched on to him and he ended up having to leave Twitter for good. We corresponded by email for a bit, but I didn’t want my relationships to be about drama, I wanted to talk writing and publishing. I stopped responding to his emails which was probably for the best. I think he dropped offline all together and his last book was published in 2017. He’s unpublished all of his books, which is really too bad. I own all his paperbacks. He was a good writer.

I don’t have a great track record with people in my real life, and I probably sound like a horrible person. I haven’t had the energy to keep up with anyone, like my friend I used to run races with back when I was running instead of writing. We’ve been friends for twenty years, but dealing with my stuff, I just couldn’t. I texted her recently and she gave me a short text back, but if I want to try to salvage that relationship I’m going to have to apologize and explain. I probably won’t have any energy for that until I know this treatment is going to work. There are other people who haven’t heard from me in a long time, people who have emailed me or messaged me on Facebook’s Messenger. I just get tired, and though I know I owe them responses, that’s as far as it’s gotten.

I could argue that I got carried away with my writing and let it take over, and that’s pretty truthful too. Once I started writing, almost ten years ago, I didn’t care about anything else, and still, to this day, no matter what the reason is behind it, I put in 30-40 hours into my books a week. Hiding from COVID and my health issue, yeah, but it’s also just a mental thing. I’m obsessed and not in a good way. I never found balance, and since I started my pen name, it’s gotten worse. All I care about is writing, and my relationships (and health as I’ve gained some weight) have suffered.

But, I’ve been on the receiving end, too, coworkers who have turned friends who have gone, or are going through, their own stuff, just decide to drop off. One coworker is doing that to me now–I haven’t heard from her for weeks, and she knew my Mayo appointment was important to me. Not a “good luck,” or a “tell me how it goes.” It hurts, and I know my behavior has hurt other people. If she ever decides she wants to start talking to me again, I’ll have to decide if it’s worth it. Like the people I’ve ghosted, you break trust, and she’s hurt my feelings. At this point, I doubt I’ll want to talk to her ever again, because what’s that saying…with friends like that, who needs enemies? I’ve gotten along fine without her, and it’s obvious she doesn’t need me, either.

I think the moral of this whole story is we know who we want in our lives and who is expendable. No one likes to think we aren’t important, but no matter what we’re going through, we make time for the people we want to keep close to us. Surprisingly, I haven’t alienated everyone in my life, and I would have to think if that was deliberate or if the people I have kept worked a little harder at keeping me in their lives. Not that I’m proud of that, either. Like I said, friendship goes both ways and I would never force someone to pull more weight than me in our relationship. I try to reach out as much as someone is reaching out to me. So, take from that what you will and apply it to your own life. Mediocre relationships aren’t worth the energy–sometimes it’s easier to be alone. You make that choice about people, and people make that choice about you.

Do I have amends to make? Yes. Will I make the time when I feel better? I hope so. Feeling normal seems like a pipe dream, though, and if I truly do make progress, maybe that will be the boost I need to reach out and at least explain. Then if people don’t accept my apology, it will be what I deserve and nothing less. I’m okay with that.

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As far as author news, I realized I didn’t have any Amazon ads going (all the end dates came and went), so I decided to create a few new ads. The auto placement ads do really well for me (which tells me my 7 keywords that I set up when I published and my categories are on target) and I started getting impressions the next day. I also did some for Canada and the UK, but I’m going to have to watch those UK ads–they spend like crazy. I did ads for the first in my Lost & Found trilogy and the first in my rockstar trilogy. Read through really is the only way you can make any money if you’re spending money on ads.

I did the new Sponsored Brand ad for my Lost & Found trilogy, where now you have to choose a graphic to go along with your books. This is how the display looks in the ads dashboard. I don’t know how it looks in the wild, as they say, and I doubt I’ll bump into my own ad.

I was surprised they suggested comparing your books to others’ because with the Sponsored Products, you can’t mention other authors in your ad copy text (that I’m aware of, correct me if I’m wrong here). I’d already bought the graphic from DepositPhotos for a TikTok video I didn’t end up creating, but I think it fit perfectly with the background I chose for my books (I think they are both LA at night). We’ll see if they make any headway. I think the covers are working better, but I don’t read through my reviews to see if the edits are making an impact. I may not know that anyway as I never had a negative review saying my writing sucks. Here are my stats for this ad:

The left column is impressions (20,321), the 2 indicates clicks, the $1.44 is spend and the 209 is supposedly the page reads in KU that that have been attributed to the ad (though I’ve heard that’s not accurate). I’m not sure why I’m spending so much for a click–either I forgot to change the default bid, or I forgot to change the bid to dynamic down only. Either way, I’m going to have to keep an eye on it so it doesn’t get out of control. I don’t mind spending money as long as I come out even or ahead, but I’m also running FB ads and those use up a lot of money too. I like seeing the impressions though, knowing I’m getting my name out there. At the end of the day, it’s all you can really do.

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As far as my February social media posts go, I need to backtrack for Saturday. I missed because I used all my time to edit after my trip. I finished book 4, but book 5 is going to need a lot of work. I wrote quickly, used a lot of garbage words, and FFS, I have a 90k book and only 11 chapters. These chapters are long, and if I remember right, one is over 20k words. I’m not going to change that during editing, that was definitely a deliberate choice on my part and it’s too late now. But I think I’ll be using up the rest of the month to get this book done. Even longer, maybe. Tedious no matter how I’m feeling.

That’s about all I have for this week, though I suppose it’s enough.

Have a great week!