Spring Is Upon Us
I have to say, 2024 has been a long year, but thankfully it’s almost over…wait, it’s only the end of March. Bummer…
It seems each year of the 2020s so far has started (and sometimes finished) in a not-so-great way for me, but this one has been especially challenging. My position at my former employer was eliminated in November 2023, and for the first time in my adult life, I have been unemployed for roughly four and a half months at the time of writing this post. It’s been a strange, stressful ride thus far. Here in the US, so much of our lives hinge on being gainfully employed, and if you’re not, our society by and large kicks you to the curb. Being unemployed generally means having no insurance, contributing nothing to retirement accounts, and a whole slew of other financial detriments. Suffice to say, this system is…not ideal.
But those are topics for another day, as I don’t want this inaugural blog post to be only doom and gloom. Instead, I want to reflect on the positive aspects of my life at present. It’s easy to drown in a sludge of despair if you’re not careful—and I’ve never been a particularly good swimmer—so it’s sometimes worth just listing out what’s actually going right in one’s life. That doesn’t mean you should bury your head in the sand and ignore what occurs outside your immediate surroundings, but when you constantly struggle with acknowledging you can’t solve all the world’s problems (no matter how awesome your solutions might be), you have to take a step back from it all.
So, here are the positive updates from my year thus far:
After many moons, I’ve finally gotten back to actually writing, and even though progress is agonizingly slow, it’s better than nothing. Always remember that it’s better to write the worst first draft ever conceived than to never finish at all.
A few of my coupled friends have had or are expecting to have a new child this year. While children are not something I particularly want myself, I have found great joy in watching some of my adult friends grow into awesome parents.
I recently decided to revive my YouTube channel, and I’ll be posting new videos to this blog as they come out. I’m largely moving away from discussing books and instead focusing on teaching about creative writing, particularly as it relates to fantasy and science fiction.
At Gen Con 2023, I pitched my novel, The Broken God, to an editor, and I also met a trio of writers who also reside in Indianapolis. I’m now part of an actual writing group for the first time ever, and even though we only meet once a month (and sometimes don’t discuss our writing at all), I’m having a blast just getting to chat and hang out with them.
For a long time now, I have wanted to volunteer more in my community, and without the ever-present burden of a pesky job taking up most of my waking life, I have been able to do some work with Habitat for Humanity and my local library. Being at the library is especially fun because I simply like being surrounded by books.
I’m probably missing a few key items, but hey, this isn’t an exhaustive list. The important takeaway is that I need to do this type of exercise more often. I don’t often shy away from expressing my rather bleak predictions for the future (and don’t worry, there will be plenty of that to come), and while life certainly isn’t perfect by any stretch for most people, I want to do what I can to help others in whatever form that takes.
