Well hello there. It’s been a while. I hope you’ve been well.
This is just a quick note to let you know I still exist and am trying to do this fiction writing thing but that it’s been very difficult recently.
I’ve thought for a long time about writing and posting something like this, but I haven’t quite been able to find a comfortable place to be in with regard to how forward and open I would be, partially because I don’t know how forward and open anyone really wants me to be.
I’m a sensitive and emotional guy who loves to give hugs and wants everyone (including you) to know that he loves them, but I usually let others dictate how intimate we get because I understand boundaries and social norms. That troubles me, though, when my nature is to just open my veins and gush all over the place but I know that’s weird. I’m very likely neurodivergent and undiagnosed, but alas, I’m doing it again right now, aren’t I?
The bottom line is 2025 was really difficult for me, personally and professionally. Professional woes became personal ones. Personal difficulties affected professional performance. And down the spiral we go. I imagine you understand, and if you don’t, take the win. Depression sucks.
“I still exist” is about the best I’ve got for you today. No publications are forthcoming. It’s been a long road of rejections. I have a bunch of works in progress, but my writing has been seized up for an embarrassingly long time. I know I can’t create when my head isn’t screwed on properly and my heart isn’t full, and not creating feeds my depression. Spirals.
I remain exceedingly passionate about what I do, and when I revisit my wins, I am proud. I still think I have something valuable to offer the world, even if the world continues to insist I do not. I know. Woe is me.
Given the turn of the calendar year, I am making a more concerted effort to get more stuff out there, but the indifference of the world weighs heavily. I’m going to post something soon about generative AI, and because I endeavor to post useful stuff, I am working on what will probably be a series of blogs to help you cope with this nightmare age of disinformation. It feels like that will just get ignored because it won’t be a 30-second video on TikTok or whatever, but that just ain’t me. I’m a writer, and I look like one. Nobody wants me on camera.
Anyway, Churchill urged the Greatest Generation to keep going through hell* so they could defeat fascism incarnate as well as the very idea of it, even if it would ironically resurface less than a century later across an ocean in the “land of the free,” so I’ll keep going, too, because stories do that, don’t they? Inspire and illuminate us when we need it? That is my deepest hope and greatest ambition.
Much love. More soon.
*Yes, I know Churchill didn’t actually say that, but I still like the sentiment, and this is my place, so I do what I want.