Friday, Friday. Girls are working tomorrow so it might almost be a relaxing day.
I doubt it though. I am not a lucky man, and I do prefer to remind myself of that fact.
Of course, I do it with kindness, because you know, maybe it’ll reverse the jinx if I don’t overassume good things will happen to me.
Assumptions of goodwill can be a virus, especially if you haven’t earned it.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1479 words, novel: Father Lightning Seems like a real solid dude. Hell of a musician.
I really do have to go see them live.
At least once before I die.
File under: Things to look forward to, so you don’t drive into traffic.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 907 words, novel: Father LightningThis week cannot end soon enough; would that I had time to write. It’s all I want to do, and all anyone else wants to do is steal my time.
Fuck it.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1311 words, novel: Father LightningMaybe. Our weekends aren’t exactly relaxing strolls through the park anymore. For some reason, every goddamned weekend is rush, rush, rush.
It’s not helping.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 913 words, novel: Father LightningEvery day is action packed. With stuff no one really wants to do.
Where’s my lazy day? My day at the beach, or on the front porch with a coffee and a good book?
Isolation.
It’s a requirement for living.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1349 words, novel: Father LightningSummer’s leaving so fast. The heat, the wildfires, the desperate downward spiral.
It has been one to remember.
I see how the world goes and can’t help but wonder. Am I a twig in face of a tsunami?
Using kindness as a block, in a way that could never hold back the tide.
I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I have ideas on top of ideas.
I’m not sure the world will let us survive long enough to see them through.
I’m not sure I’ll make it.
None of us do, in the end. If we’re lucky, our works will outlast us. The question is, with climate change, the rise of right wing nuttery and increasing division and stupidity, will the world outlast any of us, let alone the things we create?
I’m building a world on kindness. Increasingly, I find the world wants nothing to do with it.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 2405 words, novel: Father LightningIt’s now been five hundred days since I sat down and wrote the “birds fall” haiku, and said, I’m going to do this.
The number of times I’ve wanted to turn back, to give it all up and just start over, start fresh, back at the beginning?
Probably almost equal, if not higher. But I’ve been starting over, giving up and turning back since I was twelve years old. I’m done with it.
The older I get, the more friends and family I lose, my body is turning on me and life is getting to be too “life”, and not enough life.
I am running out of time. Do-overs are no longer truly possible. I’m not hip. I’m not cool or famous, nor do I know anyone cool and famous. I’m too shy, too much of an introvert, too passive to reach out to famous people.
My Nineties-era disillusionment and sneering keeps me from enjoying the cool and the new, because popularity and recency have zero bearing on quality.
Things can be unknown and be epic. Things can be world famous and still awesome.
Contrarian I, I was never the one to tell a band to go fuck itself because it got big. I stopped listening when they started to suck. And sometimes, their old shit?
It was garbage.
Someday, hopefully, someone will call me a sell-out even if I’m doing the same thing, because I got rich doing it. Someday, I don’t care if I’m rich, I’ll be comfortable and able to do what I love full-time. I’ll have the quiet life of which I dream, and the assholes can do whatever it is they want to do, as long as they stay the hell away from me.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1315 words, novel: Father LightningHeaven forbid I try and do things for myself on the weekend.
In a matter of moments, what should have been a productive day ended up being a day spent doing crap for other people, running around places I didn’t need to go.
I try to go with the flow, but it seems I can’t find even five minutes to read or meditate without interruption.
It’s like there’s a camera on me and the second I try to do something for myself, the vultures come in, with their demands and their conversations and their places to be, things to do.
Fuck, man. I just want to spend the day reading and writing. Maybe a video game for thirty minutes and a nice movie to top it off. A good dinner. Some nice sex.
I used to do those exercises where you write out your ideal day, and it was always some travelling orgy that spanned the globe and featured a dozen different daring activities – snowboarding, skydiving, scuba, riding elephants and tigers and bears, oh my.
If I wrote it now, it would writing in the morning, reading in the afternoon, some exercise and meditation, followed up by a nice dinner with my wife and some sweaty alone time (with her, obviously). That’s it. A glass of wine and some chocolate. Maybe an old fashioned and a cigar if I was being really cheeky.
I wouldn’t even leave the house, except maybe to sit on the porch or the deck.
Perfect.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1170 words, novel: Father LightningThere are days where you think you should just say fuck it, and start over. Give up on your dreams.
Decide everything you are and everything you have is shit, and you want to walk away and never come back.
But then you actually think about it, and you know you can never get away from yourself, and the things in your life are hardly all shit. There’s plenty worth it there.
It’s like a decision I already made that I keep coming back to.
Fuck it. Keep going. You’re too deep. Too far in.
Carry on and on and on, as Spacehog would say.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1326 words, novel: Father LightningThat day went downhill in a hurry.
I’m in scramble mode; way behind on everything, even the little stuff I usually have done before six in the morning.
Too many puppies, not enough sleep. Forgetting everything.
Forgetting coffee.
Forgetting myself.
Target: 1400 words
Written: 1704 words, novel: Father Lightning