Writing Through the Clouds

It's a struggle right now.

Coming up with new topics, writing about something new or interesting, coming up with fresh thoughts in the predawn hours, especially when your mind is clouded by the thickest part of tax season.  And when you're dealing with the loss of a close friend.  Topics and thoughts are too scattered to form the necessary frame.

Politics is difficult.  My emotions and feelings are too volatile to adequately coordinate a response in the time I have to do it.  Some things require more analysis and referencing than I have time for.  Others my passions run too high.  There are some topics right now where I have grown weary of the opposition and little patience anymore for their arguments (or bigotry, or ignorance).

More autobiographical stories would be nice.  But that requires me downloading more pictures and thinking about my past, when right now it is hard for me to remember the basics, like have I combed my hair this morning?  Did I have breakfast yet?  Is the car going to run out of gas because I keep forgetting to fill it up?  But maybe soon I can take the time to get some pictures on, and let it give me inspiration.

My father's reminiscences stand unrecorded.  It has been a long time since I put one on.  I really want to get back to it, but that also requires a decent block of time.

I have  failed to maintain Ripping Good Yarns, the group site on Facebook.  It requires a lot of effort, and sometimes with little reward or payoff to maintain it at the level I had hoped it would be.  I was looking for a safe haven for people to discuss their favorite shows, movies and books in an environment where people weren't dissing you for watching TV and movies, or for reading books.  But the way Facebook works nowadays, if people don't visit something in the group frequently,  they see it lass and less.  So the group is still there, but I've kind of had to let it go.  Reluctantly.

Fiction has been beaten out of me for right now.  It's almost always a casualty during tax season.  It actuality requires the highest level of attention and focus.  I am particularly disappointed that I have failed to focus on giving my book a final editing, and then begin marketing it.  I'm looking at something where the odds may be no better than a lottery ticket, but nevertheless is there if I choose to try, and I inexplicably sit on it.  You can't publish if you don't submit.

But for good or ill, The Strait Line is not disappearing.  I will manage through.  Even if sometimes you get a meandering, introspective blog entry like this one.


Peace out,

T. M. Strait