I finished a book and actually published it which was probably crazy and then entered into this sort of unproductive rut. For the last six months, I\u2019ve felt like I\u2019ve used up all my words. Like I\u2019ll never again be able to string sentences together, or communicate coherent thoughts. It\u2019s actually felt like I stroked out a little bit.
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I blame my publisher for this because they folded five days after my book came out so I had to spend two months trying to save the stupid thing and re-publish it myself without anyone noticing. Except, of course, they did notice, and I fucked everything up.<\/p>\n
Drama! The last fucking thing you need when you\u2019re trying to come down off the release of a book! An author should spend those months post-release finishing up their next book, drinking champagne, and having sex with underaged groupies. Right? Something like that. Me? I just wanted to marathon Space: 1999<\/em>, not put on pants for 10 days, and drink Corona for some crazy reason. Maybe I was just craving limes\u2026<\/p>\n Anyway, it\u2019s been a wild few months. During that time, since my book is all about how awful my family is, I found myself caught in this weird self-reflection loop. Not the \u201coh my god, what have I done\u201d failure death spiral. It\u2019s actually been positive. It\u2019s been: \u201coh my god, I can do better!\u201d I don\u2019t need to be working at the soulless day job I\u2019ve been working at for 17 motherfucking years. I hate it there and I always have hated it there, from day one. But it\u2019s an easy job with great benefits. I work maybe 20 minutes a day, I\u2019ve never had a boss with a higher IQ than 70, I work at home two days a week, and there\u2019s unlimited PTO that means I take weeks and weeks off every year.<\/p>\n There will never be another job like this one. So a part of me just wants to milk it. Go for that 20 year badge, 25 years\u202630\u2026 Die in the stairwell and be quickly forgotten. <\/p>\n My book didn\u2019t sell well, thanks to the publisher debacle, but all of the other little projects in my life are doing well. Plus, all of my debts are paid off, or will be by the end of the year. It\u2019s now financially possible to step away from the grind and try and become a master of my own destiny. Or\u2026something. I don\u2019t know. Probably just a stylish failure more than a master of destiny.<\/p>\n Working for a place you hate for 17 years, even if there is the option to get out of the office as much as possible, has started to just not sit right with me these last few months. I feel a physical revulsion on the few days I am in the office. When I exchange emails with my superiors there\u2019s a sense of gritty disgust in my heart and soul. We\u2019re all wasting such precious time on nonsense. Which is what every job is like, I suppose. But it just seems too much all of a sudden. <\/p>\n I can\u2019t tell if this is a positive change or part of a general post-book emotional breakdown. Writing about my family and childhood forced me to put so many things in perspective that, perhaps, it sort of rebooted my brain. My life, for so long, was a life in stasis, a life in pain. A life unlived, really. <\/p>\n It\u2019s taken a few months, but I\u2019m using Greatsociety for its alleged original purpose<\/a> and will get back in the writing cycle, and begin the long extraction from my idiotic day job, and enter 2018 with a new set of goals, an unsure financial position, a tenuous mastery of my destiny, and maybe a completed manuscript of a book that\u2019s as far away from my family and reality as I can manage. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I finished a book and actually published it which was probably crazy and then entered into this sort of unproductive rut. For the last six months, I\u2019ve felt like I\u2019ve used up all my words. Like I\u2019ll never again be …<\/p>\n