I have one day off this week, and I’m going to spend it doing what I really want to do. Right now it’s the few hours in the wee morn of Sunday before the rest of the family wakes up. The house is quiet, I turned on the little space heater in the den and it’s humming away, along with the trickle of the filter of the fish tank and the clicking of my keys these are the only sounds that pierce this sleepy silence. This is the only chance I will get to sleep in this week before starting the cycle all over again, but it could very well also be the only chance I get to write. I’ll sleep when I’m dead, writing at that point would prove to be a much greater challenge.
I’ve been a very busy lad the last week, and I will be just as busy for the foreseeable future. I started a new job teaching a hospitality class in an English as a Second Language school downtown and I’m still working my old job at the cafe’ for three days a week. Between the two of them, I officially have 42 hours on the clock, but in all honesty my teaching job has taken more hours than that while I get into the swing of things. All told, I would say I worked closer to 55 hours this week.
On top of that, my commute is longer for this new job, so add 2 hours of commute every day to my schedule. On my busy days where I work both jobs, I get up at 6 am and I don’t stop doing things until about 9:30 pm. They’re long days but there are only two of these in my week and if truth be fully told I get a break in the midday on one of them for a few hours.
Even still, my once relatively ample free time has been reduced to next to nil. I have a family that needs my attention, I take Croatian class on Wednesday nights, I’m puttering away at learning French and German as well. So, naturally the only logical next step at this point is that I try to cram in some writing as well, right?
We only get so many flashes of brilliance and inspiration in our lives, and I find that we need to strike when the iron is hot on these because we don’t know how long they will last or exactly how many will come our way.
So, I’ve returned to the keyboard, something that I have long wanted to do but just couldn’t seem to find time for the last few months. Yesterday I sent off two stories that I had written and edited in the past, and I already have a fresh rejection sitting in my email. Thanks, Clarkesworld, I can always count on you to quickly look at my work and decide it’s not good enough. The funny thing is, this rejection just doesn’t sting like they used to. I have finally developed the thick skin that all good writers need to have. I have finally come to expect rejection, and yet not be daunted by that fact. I know that my stories are enjoyable, I have faith in my writing, and someone else doesn’t see it then that’s fine. I’ll send that same story away to the next people on my list and when the one week cool down period is up I will be knocking on the door of Clarkesworld again. Someday they will publish one of my pieces, and I will be so happy to have achieved that goal. In the meantime, I will just keep walking on this path.
I wrote three poems this last week too, and a couple lengthy posts on facebook as well. The posts were in response to the loss of my family’s beloved pet, Cleo, but I guess in her final gift to me these posts helped remind me how very much writing has always been my way of handling grief, and how much I need to do it for my own sanity. When my grandmother died, I wrote her eulogy. When my grandfather died, my gido, I wrote his obituary and his eulogy. When I lose someone, anyone, I put pen to paper and fingers to keys. When I’m struggling with something, I do likewise. Writing has always been there for me and it has always been able to help me rationalize the world and heal from the wounds it inflicts.
It’s a good way to do these things, I think, and I would honestly suggest it for anyone.
With that said, those kinds of posts and pieces have a limited appeal to readers. So, although this is the first post back on this blog in a long while and a sort of warm-up piece, I can assure you that I will try to mine the inner recesses of my mind a little more effectively and come up with some more enthralling material. I have a number of thoughts on a number of things, and, hey, maybe I’m just a dumbass and the thoughts will prove to be rudimentary and ill-informed, but I will give my best shot at writing some thought-provoking stuff.
For now, I’m just happy to be back doing what I love to do.
Bloody Well Write 