Status Check: June and (at this Point) July 2025

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Oh hi! I’m MJ Bailey, and I write things. Sometimes. It doesn’t mean I always know what to write, but hey, we’ll get there. I guess.

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But okay, two months ago I thought a status update series on this podcast would be a great idea, and I feel like I was immediately proven wrong. Great.

What I mean to say is that there was not an update or any episodes in June, and it makes sense, though. At least from my side of things. June is–in general–a hard month for me what with Father’s Day and my paternal grandmother’s birthday both crammed into the month. All those feelings of grief that I carry and may very well carry for the rest of my life are heightened this time of year. 

And I’ve tried to push through it by focusing a lot on Twitch. Because on the other hand, the more positive hand, June is also the month when I both started live streaming and hit the somewhat coveted affiliate status. So I leaned into that and did my best to stream every day, which did include a lot of writing and editing, but it also included some games and just me zoning out. 

Honestly, that’s not the best way of dealing with grief, but it is the way I deal with it: disconnecting from the moment until the worst part of the sensation passes. And when you’re doing something like playing a video game live on Twitch.tv, it’s hard to call yourself out on what you’re doing when it’s largely seen as a normal thing to do. I write on Twitch, but it is predominantly a gaming website, and the games I play are ones I want to play and largely enjoy playing. It’s just a matter of intention really, and I have a number of those. Only one of them poses any sort of concern. I.e. Me trying to escape my feelings. But hey, I’m good at ignoring concerning things. That’s part of the problem.

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Because this June, I had more to grieve than I normally do, which says a lot, frankly. But I left a workplace I spent the last 7 years at and had every intention of giving a twenty to thirty year career to. And I’m sure me omitting any specifics makes me sound painfully naive. The best–if not only way–to see an increase in your salary is to change employers, but I wasn’t chasing a higher salary. I was chasing creative space and mental stimulation to help me with my writing, which I had there in spades. And it’s a rare thing, so it can make you overlook a lot of problems. 

But the past couple of years have seen my mental health somewhat spiralling downward. I’ve always had anxiety and panic issues as a sort of two for one disorder deal. There’s no one clear reason or cause. It’s just been how I’ve always been, but in the past few years, there’s been a more noticeable decline. COVID didn’t help, but it didn’t set my brain into certain patterns or understandings of safety that I wasn’t fully cognizant of until the structure of my larger life wiggled just a bit. Then the late-stage jenga tower fell apart. And suddenly, my health took on a major decline.

Well, it wasn’t that sudden. There were reasons that I won’t go into here in no small part because to unravel that story would likely be its own seven part podcast. Or more. And that doesn’t include the spin offs because things only fit in one way, really. But also I still believe in that organization and certain–though not all–of the people who work there. So I like to think things will get better, and I’m one of the last casualties of the final pang. Meaning don’t draw too much attention to the fire and create lasting damage. But that’s probably all still naive. Or you would think that if you had a full glimpse of what I’m thinking or what I know. But you don’t live with the things I say. I do. So I’ll just leave it at that. 

But amidst those swirls of complicated and potentially unjustifiable feelings is the grief that something is lost, a chapter in my life is closed that I was likely never going to be ready to close, and that life is moving on before I’m really ready for it to. These feelings are partly from me being bad with transitions, sure, but regardless of the specifics or the exact details of my grief, it remains present, a fog I have to work through. You think I’d be better at it by now, but I’m not. It’s not the sort of thing one gets better at. 

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I’ve started to think that grief is fundamental to the human experience. The same thing with hurt and pain, discomfort and disappointment. All those things we are wired to avoid are unavoidable. I don’t quite know what that is. It’s not exactly a paradox, I don’t think, but it is something close. Or it’s just the kid being told to eat their vegetables when they really don’t want to. Who's to say?

Regardless, that doesn’t mean we have to wallow in it. And that’s the part that I always end up thinking about. Because as a creative person, there are some people who reduce my creativity to the hardships and hurts I’ve known in life. I’m able to draw from the shitty things that happened to me as a way to make art and that’s the only source I have, which isn’t true. But it’s also not completely untrue. 

Writing has been where I unpack the things going on in my life. A Tale of Isolated Panic, my second book, was inspired, in part, by my feelings around my dad’s legacy and the need to sort through that. Hold Your Peace, my first book, came from a shitty relationship, and I know a lot about unrequited love and the urge to race straight into that light that comes with Danger of the Light, my third book though it’s under a different penname. And even now, I have numerous story ideas dealing with this professional transition. That would seem like evidence to that thesis, but I also have an urge to write stories that empower and cozy fiction has been on my list for far too long. There’s more to me than hurt. There’s always more than hurt. That’s heart, as an example.

See, I want to write fiction that empowers readers because I see the value in it. I wrote my senior thesis on young adult dystopian literature and the political theory-slash-philosophy that awaits within it. Although, some of that thesis has not aged well. Suzanne Collins’ expanding the world of Panem is great for pretty much everyone but me. I love those books, so it’s just my thesis is not doing well in this new light. Either way, there is power in belief, specifically belief in oneself. 

And frankly, we all need some cozy fiction in our lives. We need some time to relax, some time to unwind, and a chance to see what is good in the world. I needed that. I still need that. I need it a lot, in fact. I didn’t even realize how much I needed it until a friend told me how much she loves the genre. So it is me diving into cozy fiction is me working through something, I guess, but it also isn’t.

Really, the problem lies in simplification. Stories, art, and everything under that grand umbrella is meant to poke and prod at the things that poke and prod at us. It’s the equalizer. It means we aren’t just being run over but that we stand a chance of fighting back.

The storm remains, though. That’s part of the problem. At least, it’s the problem I’m facing. 

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But look, I have made a little bit of progress. In early July, I did do another one book one stream challenge, so I have another book to edit. I.e. I was not going to end stream until I finished a book. But that now means I have another book to edit. But I am very excited about getting that one out. It’s a story I’ve had in mind for a long time. It’s not quite a YA book, which makes it the sort of story I needed. After all, I didn’t come into myself until I was in college, a consequence of losing my father right when I started my teenage years. And I don’t think I’m the only one who hit those marks a few years late. Life is complicated. Each one is markedly unique. The only commonality is that we’re all going at it for the first time.  

For me, this sort of delay–if you could call it that–led me to obsessing about young adult literature in college to the point that I did write that aforementioned thesis on it.

The main character will be or is, I guess, the wrong age for a YA story, but the themes and journey she is on will resonate with the genre and its lovers. It’s for those on the outside, those who didn’t hit those same steps with their peers, or those who need a little bit of a reminder. Which I’m excited about. I like writing books and publishing books that fill gaps in the current catalog, which I think this one does. 

But what else is there to say? Aishi Online got delayed because of my life stuff and a nasty cough, but it is still going. The Danger of the Light audiobook has been delayed because my narrator had some real life things to deal with. Completely understandable, by the way. And everything else is humming along. Oh I did have an idea for a short story that I’m currently working on for submission to a literary magazine. But it will likely be on the longer side, though, so if it isn’t accepted then I do have the option of getting it reviewed by my editor and published as a novella. So that will at some point see the light of day somehow. It’s all just to be determined.

But on the whole, I haven’t been getting a lot done. I guess this could be considered a lesson in giving myself grace and understanding when things don’t go according to plan, which is an important lesson, I’ll admit but I’ve been slow to learn.

Either way, with that, I’m MJ Bailey, and I’m a writer, I guess. Whatever that means.

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The Writer’s Open Book is a podcast from Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, edited, and produced by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. The logo was made by Keldor777 on Twitch. And to the Queen of Cups in my life, you know who you are, thank you for helping me process so much of this writing journey and for all the support. I couldn’t have done it without you.