I thought I had a complete breakthrough in my life and it was changing. Everything was looking up and I was more positive than I have in ages.
Then, Thursday hit. I woke up that morning, and, frankly, I was exhausted. I felt as the famous line from the Silverhawks cartoon outtake, “I feel like I’ve been shot at and missed and shit at and hit.”
I need a t-shirt for that. You know who you are. Let’s work on that.
They don’t read these posts anyway, so I will probably text them. Oh well.
Not your atypical title, huh? I wanted to put tons of other things, but to sound like a professional, I have to listen to a simple program. Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, and other authors don’t have to deal with this shit.
Anyway, let me tell you how I took back my last year and did a complete 360 in just a short amount of time.
I started this site as a means to get out the demons in my head.
I also started it as a means to have other people understand the hell that I am going through, or that I have put myself through.
I wanted to be a spokesperson for mental health. POSITIVE mental health. That even in the darkest of times, there is a way out if you have the means for it. I also wanted to be an extra ear for those people who needed to talk.
I would say I accomplished that, and in a small way I did, but not to the extent I wanted to.
I also wanted to throw people under the bus for what has happened to me and how I got to be the messed up person I am sitting before you this early morning, but I can’t. There would be some people hurt, embarrassed, or not even care.
What is important is that I need to move on. I need to stop using this as a place to complain about life, and find something more meaningful to write about.
I’m not writing a book (at least not yet), and I am trying to startup to websites that I have put off for various reasons. And, I am trying to get over my “scars” and try to find some work. I have placed a total of five applications, never heard back from two, was contacted by one and cancelled it because it was not a good fit for me, cancelled another one because it would cause me to be away from my family, and I can’t do that right now. So, I am going to contact this last job and find out if they have received my resume and application and try for an interview.
But, this site, which did help to have people understand me better, and allow me to understand me better, will close its doors. No one will be reading this until much later because of some Internet issue that I will have to figure out, but, yeah, it is time to close this book and start a new chapter.
You guys that have supported me have been great, even if I eventually was not back. I wish I could make some of you understand, but honestly, it is just best if I let it go.
“Good morning, and in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!”
It’s not just that I haven’t wanted to write, but I’m sure after a while, people get tired listening to someone complain about their problems.
I know I am.
I also don’t get a lot of feedback like I used to. That is due to the fact that I unfriended a section of people I knew. They aren’t a part of my life, and some of them were the problem.
I am an empath. I feed off of people’s problems and feelings, whether I want to or not. I have tried to stop doing it, but it led to part of the reason why I couldn’t work any longer. I couldn’t deal with life’s problems being fed to me by the masses.
I posted a video on Facebook recently. It was this:
Ahmed Best, aka Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars Ep. 1.
He talked about how Jar Jar Binks was not only the greatest thing to happen to him, but how it was also the worst thing to happen to him. In the video, he talks about the media and public backlash and hatred he received due to the character. They covered everything from racial stereotypes to just how the character was George Lucas’s worst idea. Ahmed had a hard childhood as a black individual, but what really got me was how he explained his depression. He was expected to put on this “happy face” and pretend like life was full of roses to the public, but privately, he was suffering. That’s how I feel and how I have felt for over 30 years.
But, that’s what I’m getting at. It spoke to me, and I was forcing everyone to listen to it. I got one response on my Facebook feed. It was from my wife. God love her.
So, I need to focus on the positives. I have started to work on a short story that I hope to have published by Father’s Day, if not before. I hope to have another one or a full book published by the end of the year. So, this publicly personal journal will play second fiddle to me wanting to accomplish those goals.
I’m also slowing down on my ARC reading. In three months, I read fifteen books, nine were advance reader copies to review and proofread, and six I read because I wanted to. I want to read more of the books that I like and less work with authors and publishers. Being that I only have three of my six authors/publishers that have been posting consistently, they will have to understand. If not, then I just do less of their reading and more of what I want. End of story.
About this short story I’m working on, I don’t want to give much away, but I know that people wanted me to write horror, but I had this idea for a slight horror/hard sci-fi short story that has never been done before, and I think it will do really well. I’ve already notated a lot of passages in my voice recorder that I will write down and piece together the meat of the story, but I dig the idea so much that it’s my main focus right now.
I also have an author that I may review some of his books that deal with self-help with mental health and overall health. We will see what will come of that.
So, I will occasionally post on here, but don’t expect daily posts. Maybe more weekly or bi-weekly posts…maybe the same day I do my Humira shot. That way I can sleep the rest of the day.
Kidding.
Authors and publishers I think people should check out are Kaleb Shad, Shadow Alley Press Inc., Odysia Press, Oliver Franks, Silas Post, and Jamie Hawke. I’m too lazy to link each one of them right now, so copy their name from the post and look them up that way. You will thank yourself.
So, I haven’t been writing. I haven’t been in a slump, I don’t have the overpowering “writer’s block”, I haven’t had anything to stop me, except for two things.
I’m wanting to write for the wrong reasons. I want to be famous and I want to make money.
Those are the wrong reasons to do something that I have been told by many of you that read my blog that I am good at.
I shouldn’t be attempting to make the next “Moby Dick” and selling it because I want money. I should be writing what I want because I want to.
I had started to write a memoir. I have a lot of baggage and I thought getting it out would be the most cathartic thing for me to do. But, if I did that, I would be throwing people under the bus left and right that has either worked hard to change, have matured over time or have had enough heartache of their own. I can’t do that to them. It wouldn’t be fair.
I could write about mental health, but there are a ton of books out there that people are releasing every day, whether it be self-help or autobiographies. I don’t want to travel with a crowd that I remind myself every day that I am a part of.
My wife thinks I should write horror. The ideas I’ve posed to her have at times been disturbing, graphics, or macabre. I also have the side of me that wants to write comics. I love superheroes, and I hope in novel form, or even short story form, that the genre isn’t over saturated.
I can honestly say that when I have gone to Half Price Books, they have not had a lot of superhero or comic related novels on the general fiction shelves. I remember seeing Spidey, X-Men, some movie novelizations, but not much anything else.
I also love the Saturday Morning cartoons of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Also, I watched a lot of Cartoon Network before everything started going streaming. I’m a powerhouse of information when it comes to cartoons and DC Comics before they changed the line for a newer demographic.
I’ve been reading an overabundance of ebooks lately on my Kindle. I am taking a break, and I’m going to read a reference book on SF writing by one of my favorite authors, Ben Bova.
Maybe, with his help, I can find my calling there.
I recently logged into my LinkedIn account — most of you on Facebook know this story — where this owner of this copywriting mill service was trying to hire me, and when I asked if the writers get credit, he gave me a rude response.
I was miffed, but I responded back and agreed with him that we weren’t a good ”fit,” and that he was being rude.
I thought this might be an interesting topic to blog about. I’ve talked about other options that are more scientific, but not really weird or occult techniques. And, I’m not going to talk about using the Ouija board, as I find it rubbish and only find it a novel looking board to use as decoration in someone’s home.
If you read yesterday’s post, you would have seen that I am minimizing what I am using on my iPhone X for the next week. Link to the post is here.
Because of getting a Fitbit Versa from my wife, I looked to see if there were any minimalistic phones that were compatible with the device. It looks like I am stuck in the smartphone world until I no longer need the help to physically get better. Plus, there was an article I found somewhere on the internet that stated that Fitbit is slowly changing to utilizing smartphones in their technology and phasing out some of the older technology.
This is another gem from Fumio Sasaki’s book. I wondered if I could start from scratch, starting with my phone. I have an iPhone X with 256 GB of space.
Now, let’s be honest. I did not delete things off my phone. There was a lot of items that I do use, whether it be daily or occasionally, but I do use those apps. Instead of deleting the apps off my phone, I merely moved a lot from one screen to the next. I did this because I tried an app called Moment from the App Store, and it was shit. I couldn’t get it to track properly, it was too busy, and it just would not suit my needs.
