Rainy days

I’ve been sitting on this couch, watching the wind blow the branches laden with buds and the rain pattering against the glass. Usually, it is easy to write on days like this, but for the life of me, I cannot think of a blog post today. Some weeks, it just appears, and others, it is like this until I give up. Sure, I could talk about my writing. My new project, The Order of Thanatos, is going very well. But that is more exciting to me than it is to you. I could talk about how my current books are doing. That’s easy. Not well. I could speak of my querying journey for Koen, a project I love and poured my soul into, but that has much the same answer. I could talk about my life. But at the moment, it is a seesaw between a job I can barely tolerate and my writing. I could complain and justify to you and myself, but I would much rather watch the rain.

Sometimes, we must take moments like this to pause, reflect, and ramble. I find myself asking, what is worth expelling our finite energy on, and what is not? I’ll be the first to raise my hand and say, “I devote far too much of it on things that don’t matter.” It was worse before COVID and when I found my purpose in writing again. Literally, my entire 30s feel like a missed opportunity as I eased into comfort, swaddled in the notion that I had so much time. I spent nine of those years building an office from scratch for others. I came home drained each day and plopped in front of a movie. I gained weight and didn’t exercise enough, and that drink to calm the nerves became two and then three. When it was all said and done, I walked away defeated and disenfranchised- a decade that wasted me. They replaced this loyal worker with three people without even a pat on the back and moved on as if I had never been there. I could have spent that energy writing and had dozens of stories to show for it- but I didn’t. I fell for the American dream, which is, in reality, a nightmare.

As you probably can ascertain by now, my wife and I are becoming very existential. Instead of focusing on the negativity that claws for our attention, we’ve decided to try and focus on things that really matter, such as love. We aren’t always successful, but we’re trying. And what do I love most (other than her)? Telling stories. There is no greater gift this universe has given me than the ability to create a world populated with characters of my creation. Sure, it sometimes brings me stress, frustration, and even a bit of heartache. But most of the time, it brings me bliss. It is never dull and gives me purpose. All the jazz above doesn’t matter. Fame, fortune, and validation are nice, but at the end of the ride, all that is important is that you are fulfilled and content and have as few regrets as possible. I have a world to create, a catalog of 20+ ideas itching to be told. If I can have enough time on the clock to write those adventures, I can die content, and all that other crap can stay where it fell.

We are all just a speck in a sea of specks. A single raindrop upon my window, taking a quick journey from the top of the pane to the bottom, beleaguered by the winds of time and fate. Sometimes, our drop may zoom, and at others, sit still for hours, but the journey only goes one way. Some may find this post melancholy, which would be easy to do with a day as dreary as this. But it’s not for me. For me, it is refreshing and validating, and it gave me my blog post. 😉

Cheers!