Previously on “Sarah Chaotically Yeets Herself at Indie Authorship,” I announced that I would be relocating–which I did! I am now a resident of North Carolina.

In the course of moving, I experienced the closest thing to fame I’ve encountered so far, but it wasn’t for my writing. It was for our house.

Those of you who have known us well enough to be invited over are probably not surprised to find out that our house hit the Zillow Gone Wild subreddit after it was listed. From there, it spread all over social media and was picked up by at least one TikTok influencer. I don’t know if we can accurately say it went viral (is there a standard for that?), but it went far enough that we’ve met people here in NC who have seen it and were shocked to learn that we owned “that house.”

After all the chatter about it, one of the local news stations asked for a tour.

This ended up being the perfect last chapter to the saga of a house that we built over the course of a decade. And by “we,” I mean that my husband primarily did the building while I played a creative consultant role for some of the ideas and decor.

(Who has two thumbs and should never be trusted with power tools? Me, because I want to keep both of my thumbs.)

If you’ve never seen the house and you’re feeling bummed about missing out, never fear. There is a YouTube tour available. We also got to do our first ever podcast interview on Owen & Dirt’s Pop Culture Radio, which was a blast.

While going semi-viral was an overall fun experience, it was also a hard lesson in why you should never read comments. Most of the responses on the various posts that went around about the house were overwhelmingly positive, but there were plenty of mean-spirited remarks as well. I don’t expect everyone to like or understand what we did, but there were quite a few Beige Beckys who seemed to take personal offense at the idea that someone might want more color and texture from their living space than a doctor’s office lobby.

The depersonalized nature of the internet makes it all too easy for people to forget that there are thinking, feeling human beings on the other side of whatever viral thing they’re commenting on. When I come across something I don’t like but that’s ultimately harmless, my personal position is to just keep scrolling. My opinion isn’t important enough to justify being nasty. Unfortunately, social media thrives on negative engagement.

The bottom line, I guess, is that criticism is the cost of making your creativity available to others. Don’t let it discourage you. Don’t get upset about upsetting boring people. It takes a hell of a lot more courage to be your weirdo self than it ever will to talk shit from behind the safety of a screen.

Despite a number of said boring people insisting we would never be able to sell, we sold pretty quickly to a wonderful couple who loved the house’s uniqueness. The day before my birthday, we said goodbye.

We drove almost 9 hours (with a hotel stop in-between) to North Carolina so that I could gift myself with a brand new mortgage on my actual birthday.

Since then, we’ve been settling in to our new house and area.

There’s a ton of stuff to do here, and we’ve only really just started exploring. We also have a bigger blank canvas on which to begin building our new Castle of Weirdness.

“That’s all cool, Sarah, but where the hell is this book you’ve been promising us?” you might be asking if you haven’t abandoned all hope yet.

My writing has actually picked up since the move. As luck would have it, we moved just a few minutes down the street from a lovely indie book store that hosts a weekly writing group, and despite my frequent insistence on being a creative lone wolf, I have actually found that the group and the people I’ve met there have helped fuel me and my writing in new ways.

I think I’ve got a whole other post in me about both good and bad experiences with creative communities, but I’ll save that for another ramble. For now, just know that the work continues and meaningful progress is being made.

I hope that you’re all staying safe and relatively sane in this time of ever-increasing madness. Put the doom-screens down when you can, read more books, and hug your loved ones tight.

Until next time, my dear literary fiends.