Got through nearly the whole week

Got through nearly the whole week—since Tuesday—without any of the green or the pot, so there’s that. Still had a beer each night, sometimes two. Managed to virtually hang out with a friend on Wednesday and another on Thursday, watching things on Netflix and Shudder.

All week, I edited this anthology for my publisher, about fairy tales with hirsute or burly, hairy men. So that work got me back on track during the day. As my partner said it would, the editing work got me out of my head, but also on a schedule, working through mornings and most of the afternoon. The only real drawbacks to the work are that I am working for a small honorarium, so there is no much monetary compensation coming my way for all these hours. But the upside is that my publisher is not tipping his foot waiting on me, so there is very little pressure. As well, I am working very slowly, this being my first proofreading edit since I did one for a poetry antho back in 2005 or so, and that was entirely a different beast. So, in essence, I am somewhat frustrated with my pace, and that I cannot maintain focus on proofreading for more than about half an hour, and then I switch off for quick breaks, messaging the publisher or emailing daily questions, doing things around my office, or around the house.

Framing all of this work was the other new daily routine of driving our son and his friend to school, since the schools opened back up after lockdown. So I have been driving in mornings and afternoons, and have been on the hook for making supper, as my partner has gallstones and is not eating supper with us but instead having two smaller meals (one of the adjustments of having gallstones, beside surgery, is that you have to radically alter your diet to not irritate your gall bladder with fat or certain foods such as cheese or starch.

All in all, the week was very busy and I can see from what I have just written that I feel stressed for very good reason.

Aside from having some tokes on Tuesday, I managed to stay off that ‘P’ an mostly off the pornographic ‘P’ for the remainder, getting my ass to bed at reasonable time, around midnight or so, which isn’t perfect, but still a vast improvement over my usual one A.M or two or three or even four A.M.

I feel, looking at the week, that thisis vast improvement in work ethic for me. I still lament, although briefly now, that my short fiction is not getting place and that I have pulled over to the side of the road in roe revisions on my second horror novel and I am currently sitting on the hood of the car, staring at the starlit sky, thinking of the book and making discoveries as I examine constellations. There’s still envy there, too. On Tuesday or Wednesday, I saw a post from a horror writer whom I quite admire, who said that they submitted three stories and got three acceptances. Well, good for them, but I feel that posting this detail is hard on those of us just doing our damned best to get through, some of us, such as myself, not having published a short story since  2014. So I stepped off social media after reading that post. As well, yesterday, I saw a post from a local writer who is penning the third issue in a comic series about Jim Henson’s themes, as she won a Nebula for a co-written sci-fi novel last year and has solid street cred’. So flippantly told my partner that if I stop writing and publishing spec-fiction that this person is at least doing interesting things and is in touch with writing trends. My partner was too tire to answer, which is just as well.

So there’s still all that.

On the upside, my publisher has asked me to write 2,000 words of flash fiction for the very anthology I am editing. I will post about this to explain. So that is good news—the first time someone has solicited some fiction from me in over a decade.

There’s still tension between my partner and myself as I continue (they continue) to navigate my anger issues. She is circumspect around me if I get irritated. My 12-year-old son is leery around me when I raise my voice. Even our short-haired grey-and-white cat, when she hears me utter, “Fuck!” will either bolt from the room, or under the bed at the nearest opportunity.