Day: April 6, 2021

I had to go back through the last few blogs and redo the dates. I didn’t realize what day of the week it was/is. Chalk that up to another Covid Casualty of Sensibility. If I don’t leave the house on a regular basis and work/teach asynchronously, days of the week do not matter. Sure, there are some track meets and youth games that fall on weekends, and I see my kids on particular days of the week, but those moments feel like snapping back into a reality that is temporary. In truth, short of needing to be somewhere on a specific date or needing to post something for a class, I am legitimately not connected to the standard seven day reality at all, and I like it. That is one good thing to come out of all of this.

So, here I am up in the woods. Last night I noticed my neighbor watching OAN news (for several hours) through their open window. I found myself wondering what sort of reality they’ve been spinning up as a result of that newsfeed. I wonder how much anger they are collecting as a result of what is being pumped into their brains in this otherwise empty wilderness. That too is a Covid Casualty. No, not them persay but the pursuit of Common Sense. We stopped asking questions (or at least the right ones) and began looking for the people who were saying the things we quietly wanted to hear or the things that felt right to us. This has always been the way but it feels much larger now. The filter bubble is expanding. All it took was a strongman megalomaniac on the heels of someone who didn’t look or feel like anyone the ‘people’ were ‘used to’ and the result is what we have right here.

But that is not my cross to bear. Yes, by saying that I am living in a deflection, but I have other things–smaller and more immediate crosses to bear.

Some Thoughts:

1. I love it out here. I want to live out in the woods and have my own treehouse or other retreat where I can hear the water gurgling in a nearby pond or stream and the laughter of my loved ones in the distance. It is from this perch high in the trees that I would write and love that I was writing as I do now.
2. Tomorrow is actually Wednesday and I will have some halfway decent football talk. Is football my only sport now? Seems so…

The words are finding me again. As I go through another draft of this novel I find myself finally ramping back up into writer mode and feeling good about the story and the characters and the conflicts and the world I am helping to shape in this fiction. I really do believe this is going to be a good novel. Will it be a #1 bestseller? Nah. It is still missing something to make it universal like that, but it will do good for what it is and it should be well received by the fan base. I hope.

Well, I am doing my part to make that happen, and as I ramp up and move into my stride I feel like I am going to be able to keep up this energy on into the next project (which I already have) and beyond into whatever comes after that.

Point of Fact: One of the keys to being a successful writer is knowing what you want to do next and in those spaces where the ‘now’ project is not foremost on your mind, the next things start to form up. So, as I proceed and continue to rock this life I intend to focus up on that specific goal of always working on what is next and never letting my writing life turn into that old car that sits in your driveway for months and then cannot start without a lot of help.

Some Thoughts:

1. In the end the Big 12 did still rep in NCAA basketball. As I write they are putting the brakes on the Gonzaga story with a big time whuppin. Of course, I could be wrong. This can still somehow go the other way, but down 20 seems like it is over.
2. A baseball stadium hit capacity for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic became front page news. Too soon, I think. I fear there will be repercussions.
3. The interface for this wordpress is not as good as past ones. It feels glitchy.