I’ve spent the last year wallowing, essentially getting punched repeatedly, and punch drunk, like a boxer in the tenth round, I fell down over and over until I couldn’t get up again.

Somehow, in the midst of this, I wrote The Mungk, an exploration of fatalism and trauma.

I try to learn something from everything I write, and what I’ve learned from The Mungk is how easily a life can be derailed by circumstance and an unwillingness to deal with the thoughts inside your own head.

I’ve been thinking about how to market The Mungk and honestly, I don’t know. It’s a good little book. I know it. But it’s fatalist. It’s dark. It offers little to no hope. A metaphor for trauma and life eating away at us until there’s nothing left.

It often feels like there’s nothing left of me, after this year.

So next year, I am going to try to focus on something better. No more fatalism, without some genuine kindness. No more Mungk (except to sell the manuscript or publish it myself, in any case).

No more trauma. No more wearing down. It’s time to find something a little better in the world around me. It’s time to apply that presence and focus and radical acceptance I’ve read so much about for more than a few minutes a day.

So, goodbye, trauma year. I wish you long gone.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 9100 words, hip little story: Forest Edge