I am not in a good place. My uncle's sudden death has cast a pall. The world has become more heavy, intensifying my sense of mortality and all I have not accomplished.
Stassis smothers me. Confusion, frustration and anger accompany me daily. Creatively I'm stuck. Worst of all, I'm depressed and hate what seems like everything and everybody. I don’t have a community though I have made strenuous efforts to be part of one and find one. I feel alone and isolated. I need to put that isolation to a productive use and focus it on my literary and photographic art.
Selfish I know, but I musr turn the bulk of my energy toward myself, my health, my books and my own art. Since 2016, my writing has focused on commentaries and reviews of books and films. My creative writing has been sacrificed to help my family financially and, I thought, our democracy. After the demon was elected in 2016, I thought my words could make a difference.
After self-serving, aliterate boneheads incapable of critical thinking and understanding history returned a crook and traitor to The Oval Office, I put my energy into more words and more actions.
But I am tired. More accurately, worn out. Also I am physically weak. When my legs gave out a few feet from my condo last Thursday after I returned from my uncle's wake, it was one fall too many for me.
Before my uncle's sudden death, I had been reading a lot on my vacation and returning to my fiction. Now I am grieving his death and find myself disgusted and saddened by a cruel, callous, apathetic, philistine and imbecilic United States.
I will continue to post to my Substack, but my posts now will be shorter and focused more on creativity exercises, literature and cultural reviews, and literature and cultural analysis. I also plan to start a photography class next month. If it goes well, I will post photos that I'm pleased with. Learning a new fine art form I hope will inspire my fiction and me in addition to bringing me out of my depression.
I need beauty. Grace. I need art and faith.
I am going to put most of my energy when I am not at my day job and photography class to my short fiction and novel. Both of theseI have too often sacrificed to help my family financially, my daughter adjust to school and her high school years and to speak truth to power. I know there is a good chance no agent will want to represent me and no book publisher will want to publish my novel. But I have to get this finished before I die.
Before you tell me I can always self publish, I will let you know I have no interest in that route. I don't have the economic privilege to do so nor the energy of a healthy person to promote and sell my book on my own to sell a few hundred copies.
I need to put my energy and care to my creative work and myself.
Thank you for your time and understanding.
Laura - Of course you need to do what you must for your health! I hope you feel better soon.
Everyone has times when rest and healing are critical - I'm so glad you recognized the need and are taking care of yourself. Your community is here to support you.