This week has been busy with non-writing stuff and just plain exhausting.  Not only physically, but mentally and emotionally.  Though, an accident when working on the new entertainment center comes to mind.  We were moving it out of the way and I didn’t get my foot to safety.  Sliced a toe from the side and along the cuticle and that’s kind of how the week started.  The humidity came back too.  By the way, I’m writing this on Wednesday because I have no idea how around I’ll be until September.  (2 zoo trips and a Halloween Costume Hunt have occurred since writing this.  If you get whimpers and groans as responses then here is why.)

Let’s get into the writing, which is going to be kind of a rant.  It’s difficult to do this because, as stated many times, I have a lot of lurkers.  These are people that will read my sadder posts and contact me with a ‘sorry/not sorry’ message that puts me in an awkward position.  In fact, pointing this out might trigger the reaction.  We’ve kind of established that I’ve been depressed for most of this year because nothing has gone right and much of it stems from the writing situation.  This would be where several people stop reading and jump to the comments to give advice or suggest taking a break.  Sorry to come off like an ass here, but it gets rather frustrating when that’s the most common suggestion even after you explain why it won’t help.

The truth is that I feel like I’ve spent most of 2016 on a break or in stasis.  With my wife losing her job in 2015, things took a bad turn and other events compounded on that.  How does this relate to writing?  Well, I started this year being told that I have to prove myself in order to continue writing and publishing in 2017.  Yet, I’m constantly running into obstacles and situations that knock me back.  I recently noticed that two of the smaller promo sites I use have been silent for a while.  I can’t find any interviews that I haven’t already done and I lack the time to jump into a review group.  I’m struggling to balance so much and it feels like something crashes to the ground every week.  All of this is adding to the stress that I’ll have to close up shop next year.

I know people are going to say that I can balance writing and a full-time job, but I’ve already proven that it can’t happen for me.  Hell, that’s what I tried for 10 years and the full-time job won every fucking time.  Not everyone has a life where they can balance these things.  For me, it’s one or the other and I know I can’t come back to writing if I walk away at this point.  It would be starting from scratch, but with several forgotten books to revive in some fashion.  That’s if I could ever come back since retirement these days is almost laughable for anyone getting a job now.  This sounds dark, but I really feel like I’m staring at a firing squad and I don’t know whether to be angry, sad, or accept that there were too many things against me.

I’ve spent the last month trying to think of ways to boost my books to a level that will get people off my fucking back.  As much as I hate to be an author who focuses entirely on the money side of things, I’m being shoved there out of survival.  Yet, I’m trying to stay true to myself and that isn’t meshing well.  I can’t figure out what the next step is aside from staying the course, but I have no idea what that would be.  Can’t draw well enough to make Windemere comics or animate to do YouTube episodes based on the books.  That’s really as far as I went because I think adding a second medium would be useful in promoting the books and vice versa.  Still, I have no idea how to do that.

A lot of this feels like stuff I’ve said before and I feel trapped.  These goal posts have become venting platforms because this is what’s on my mind.  This week was a family one, so I don’t have any writing stuff to report and I get backlash if I bring up the private stuff or post too many kid pictures.  Will things change in September when Charms of the Feykin is out, my son is back in school, and I get to work on Path of the Traitors?  I have no idea.  Maybe I’ve taken too many hits this year and I need a big stroke of good luck to turn things around.  God knows I’ve had enough bad luck to last until 2018.

I have no goals for next week.  School is still out and I have no idea what my schedule will be.  Maybe I’ll get to fiddle with an outline.  More then likely, I’ll exhaust myself and stare at a notebook every night while my mind wanders back to this topic.  I really don’t know what I’m going to do once 2017 hits because it seems I’m expected to make a decision that involves walking away.  The only hope I have is that I can write the rest of Legends of Windemere before the end of the year, so I can still publish them.  Not really sure if that’s going to happen either unless I go back-to-back on 14 and 15.  Maybe a week between them to work on the outline.  Going to stop rambling.  Later.