I’m halfway through my stay. I realized after I published last week’s post that I didn’t give a followup on the car-trunk-seafood. I have eaten the shrimp in two different meals and lived to tell y’all about it. The first meal was salsa verde shrimp and rice and the other was coconut shrimp. Both were excellent. I have enough to make coconut shrimp again and two servings of the shrimp and rice in my freezer. I have not eaten the crab legs yet. 

WiFi and access to streaming services continue to be an issue. I swear the WiFi here is held together with staples and scotch tape. Some days it is fine, sometimes it blinks on and off all day and night. The only streaming service that doesn’t seem to care what country I’m in is Netflix. HBO and Amazon give me limited menus of shows and movies to choose from. Hulu blocked me from their site entirely when I tried to watch This Is Us a couple weeks ago, because they won’t stream to customers outside of the US (unless you’re on a military base). Reagan had a brilliant plan. She suggested I get a VPN (Virtual Private Network). This encrypts my location so streaming services can’t tell where I’m watching their programming. With the VPN, my computer shows that my location is in Texas. This has given me full access to HBO and Amazon Prime and, initially, Hulu. But this past week, Hulu blocked me again, because they figured out I was using a VPN. Reagan sent me a Zoom link and shared her screen so we could watch This Is Us on Hulu together. If you’ve spent any time on Zoom, you know how glitchy it can be. This whole accessibility thing is ridiculous. I’m paying for the service. Why the hell do they care what country I’m streaming from?! My last ditch effort to watch This Is Us is Xfinity. I record the show at home, and it looks like I can access those recordings here on my laptop. Wish me luck. 

I went almost 10 hours without power last week. The power company had to shut down the grid for maintenance. They were kind enough to give us notice though. Power, like WiFi, will be a persistent problem. The infrastructure can’t keep up with the growth of the town. We had someone come over today to speak to me (and Tim on speakerphone) about generators. Fortunately he’s a Canadian native, so there wasn’t a language barrier to complicate things further. My brain is on overload with so many options, variables, costs, and (SHOCKER) supply chain issues to consider. There isn’t an easy or fast solution.  

I’ve been a little down in the dumps lately. It’s been nearly two months since I sent queries to 60 different agencies. I got a handful of rejections in the beginning, but I haven’t received any in the last month. Most agency websites said they’d only reply if they were interested, so if I don’t hear back from them, I should assume they’ve decided to pass. An acquaintance of mine has also been writing a book and sent a proposal out to a few agencies. One agent told her she didn’t have enough followers to get a book deal. She has 7300 followers on Instagram. That’s 7000 more followers than I have. Also, I recently learned that an essay collection is a really hard sell, especially one from a debut author. I am considering my next move. There are publishers that solicit manuscripts without representation from an agent. I could rework the manuscript to read more like a narrative memoir. But the thought of going through the editing process again and cutting out parts of my story entirely makes me physically ill. Lastly, I could self-publish. I may not do anything until I’m back in Nashville. I’m supposed to be enjoying this sabbatical, aren’t I?

Well this was kind of a bummer post. Tim and I have really missed each other, so he’s flying down for a visit this weekend, which should cheer me up considerably. I can’t wait to see him. I may be a little late next week getting a blog post written and published.