Adam Oster's Blog, page 10

The Emotional Rollercoaster of COVID

I don’t need to tell you that the last couple of years have been a rollercoaster. Obviously with the craziness of a presidential election and all of the social unrest bubbling over the top, not to mention things like a little attempt at a coup happening a little over a year ago, we’ve just had a ridiculous amount of emotional energy to toil over. Add in things like the passing of so many people who have been a part of our lives through television and film from our youths (and, for me personally, as well as many others, family and friends who have also left this mortal realm), and you can also see that the past couple of years have just been, well, a bit much.

But in reality, all of that seems to pale in comparison to the emotional ride we’ve all been on with this global pandemic. If you had told me two years ago that the setting of the city of Minneapolis on fire would play second fiddle to any disease as far as how our memories of 2020 would play out, I would have thought you were ridiculous.

But here we are…

Here’s but a glimpse of the emotions I’ve felt over the course of the past two years. Because two years ago, my family had planned on a trip to Germany for the coming fall. My wife and I were really excited to finally take the kids to Germany, to have them get to meet my wife’s host family from her time spent on exchange, and to get to introduce them to an entirely different culture. We had also started teaching the kids a bit of German to prepare them for being in a place where English wasn’t something you could expect everyone to speak.

But we also were hearing reports about this scary new disease. My wife, who tends to be a bit more of a worrier than I, was concerned. I, on the other hand, like to think positive and was certain that this disease couldn’t possibly have such an impact. It sounded like SARS or MERS or even Ebola. All those things that had a slight panic around them, but ultimately didn’t have a real impact on my life at all.

Heck, even in February, as things were starting to escalate, I still felt like this was another one of those panics that would lead to nothing.

And then March came along, and, well, by the end of March, we were looking at a longer than expected Spring Break for the kids, while also having almost all non-essential businesses shut their doors. Which sounded really lame, but also, in a way, not so bad. While I still had to work and the idea of having the kids home was stressful, it really just meant that we didn’t have as many expectations outside of the work day.

However, it was at this point that I started worrying for the people who were suddenly not allowed to work. Those people who were generally already nearing the poverty level (if not already under it) who suddenly found themselves without a paycheck.

I was worried, but also figured it might not be that bad, considering we were going to be opened back up in less than a month.

But…of course, that’s not how that worked out.

There was a lot of time spent by me from that point, watching all the news, trying to see if things like the local pool was going to be open for the summer, since it is across the street from our new house and was one of the reasons we were excited about the house. It didn’t. I was still going to school, still at my job, and, in fact, was deep in the hunt for a new job, which meant that I was having interviews with prospective employers while having the kids trying to kill each other in the other room. I spent months trying to figure out ways to amuse the kids during the winter in Wisconsin while they were stuck at home.

March 2020 also happened to be when my Granddaddy died, meaning that right at the start of the lockdowns, I had to make the hard decision not to go to South Carolina to be there for his funeral, realizing that that much travel was not a good idea when we were trying to keep this disease from moving around. Because although I’m focusing on some rather selfish emotions in this post, I also spent a large amount of my time not wanting to spread this disease around and get other people sick which might, you know, lead to their death.

We would go down in May for his celebration of life ceremony, but even then, it was almost something that we cancelled. However, that trip also included a quick stop at the beach, leading my kids, who had spent the last couple of months indoors in Wisconsin, to have an explosive excitement as their first real thing they saw of the outside world was the Atlantic Ocean. The water was cold, but that didn’t stop all of us from enjoying getting our feet in the water and being splashed by waves.

Considering this wasn’t the first time to the ocean for any of us, and had, in fact, spent a week at the beach less than a year prior, it wasn’t like this was a crazy amazing new thing. But just coming from the absolute nothingness of the end of winter to being at the ocean led all of us into this spectacular moment of catharsis from a few months of taking all the precautions. It was amazing.

The summer meant we spent a lot of time outdoors. We did a ton of biking, we saw very little of our friends and family, and we ultimately spent way too much time together as a family. It was good, but the stress of trying to keep isolated was wearing on us.

Oddly enough, our substitute trip to South Dakota instead of Germany, where we camped at the bottom of the Black Hills, somehow managed to bring the five of us even closer together, even though it meant that we were even more attached than we had already been during the previous five months.

This also led to a full-family love of the National Parks, which I’ll come back to in a moment.

Although we certainly missed things like having the pool open, we managed to have a pretty awesome summer, doing all sorts of things outside like biking and walking and finally visiting Big Falls (which is where we spent our swimming time that summer and was awesome). Although we weren’t seeing our friends and family as much as we would have liked, life felt real again. And with the vaccine nearing, it really felt as though we might be at the end of this whole thing soon. And by December, we watched as the first Americans were vaccinated and the five of us got excited about the light at the end of this long pandemic tunnel, determined to make 2021 really special since we lost all of 2020 to the pandemic.

You probably already know this, but 2021 wasn’t quite the year we had hoped for.

While all five of us were vaccinated as quickly as we could be, we watched as our country was torn apart over the debate of personal freedoms in light of this global pandemic which was not only killing thousands of Americans (not to mention the death count across the rest of the world), but was keeping us from a return to normal. People argued against masks and vaccines because they didn’t like them, while the rest of us just wished we could get enough people vaccinated to feel like we were safe to ride on a plane again.

And so, when the second Spring Break during the COVID-19 pandemic rolled around, my family and I decided to utilize our newfound love for the National Parks and go on a ridiculous road trip. We traveled over 4,500 miles and visited 9 National Parks over the course of 9 days. We explored Route 66, spent a night seeing the lights of Las Vegas, and hiked in some of the most beautiful locations in the country.

It was amazing and exhausting and I’ve spent way too much time over the past year wondering if we could do it again, but for longer.

We spent that trip trying to avoid people as much as possible, even while in Vegas, noting how many people still refused to wear masks and knowing how many were unvaccinated, and trying to keep my unvaccinated children as safe as possible. And we had a spectacular time as a family, getting to recognize how much we shared a love of so many of the same things.

And then we got home, and we realized that things were not moving toward that light at the end of the tunnel nearly quick enough. But we still had hopes to celebrate my 40th birthday in August by exploring the national parks of Florida.

And things actually looked really good by the time summer rolled around. That light shined brighter. Our new case counts were down so low that I was certain the endemic phase of COVID was coming at any moment. In fact, my wife and I made a last minute decision to celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary with a quick little trip to Disney World to relive some of our honeymoon.

Of course, by the time we actually got on the plane, Delta was starting its nasty way through the world and we once again realized that the light wasn’t as close as we thought.

We cancelled our August trip, transitioning it into a week of exploring the cool outdoor activities in Wisconsin that we’ve never explored before. We made it work and had a ton of fun for far less money than we would have spent traveling to Florida, but, we were getting pretty tired of changing our plans last minute.

And so winter came again. And Delta raged through the world. And we’d get calls about COVID exposures at schools. And then Omicron started and we are now watching the case counts get extravagantly larger. For the first time throughout the entirety of this pandemic, I have multiple people in my circles sick at the same time. Whereas I had only a handful of family and friends who had been sick throughout the entirety of the pandemic prior to this point, I suddenly could list of handfuls of people currently in isolation because of positive tests.

But there’s another light appearing. This light that suggests that because this variant is so contagious we might actually get everyone sick really quickly and finally manage to reach the endemic portion of this thing. Yes, lots of people will die in a very brief period, but, well, not as many as have been dying, at least proportionate to the case counts. The WHO just recently stated they think that over 50% of Europe could be sick by the end of January. This thing is flying through our communities at the fastest pace yet. And although it’s scary to think of the death counts to come over the new few months, not to mention all of the issues our hospitals are already facing and will continue to face, there’s a part of me that’s excited for the number of smart people saying we might be finally moving on to that next phase of this pandemic that we’ve been thinking was coming soon ever since we first locked down back in March of 2020.

And so, here I sit, seeing this light at the end of the tunnel, being excited about the idea that maybe we can finally get to the next stage of this process. But also knowing I’ve been let down before.

But also knowing that I just really really really want to feel like I can get out and not have to feel guilty about it.

The Scariest Movie I’ve Ever Seen

While I’ve never really sought out horror flicks, I’ve watched tons of them over my lifetime. As a kid who literally ran out of the room when Mad Marge’s eyes turned into cartoon eyes during Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, I never would have expected to be someone who would enjoy the scarier things in cinema, but I’ve grown to appreciate a good horror flick. From watching movies like Critters and Gremlins on tv when I was younger to my adult life of being in love with all of the zombies I could find, I’ve definitely grown into someone who can really get into a well-crafted piece of horror fiction.

Heck, while I’ve still never been able to get myself to watch (or read) It, I’ve found a severe love of Stephen King’s work. Playing the recently remade Resident Evil II was one of my favorite games of the past few years, even I absolutely dreaded those jump scares where the unkillable Mr. X would suddenly appear, meaning you had to quickly figure out how the heck to get away from him. When I found the Cube series, I became infatuated with this idea of mysterious torture thrown in with a little bit of the puzzling escape room trend.

Needless to say, although I don’t seek out horror flicks very often, I have enjoyed them countless times throughout my life and don’t really consider myself too incredibly squeamish about them, even if I really didn’t like walking through my dark house after late night rounds of Half Life 2.

But when talking with my kids the other day about horror films, I realized there’s one movie which has stuck with me as being the scariest flick I’ve ever watched, and one that I simply can’t watch again, much less want to think about too heavily. And that’s the late 90’s movie, Event Horizon.

Since this is a film that has gained quite a cult following, meaning that it is probably fresh in the minds of a few of my readers, I feel like I should set the stage a little bit, because although I still consider it the scariest movie I’ve ever watched, I also know that there were a lot of absolutely ridiculous campy things about this film that, if I were to watch it again, would probably mean I wouldn’t find it nearly as terrifying. Also, to be completely honest, I really don’t remember that much about this movie.

But, you see, I was in my first few years of high school, as a kid who had been brought up in an incredibly fundamental church, and so, as a kid who still hadn’t really gained any form of appreciation for horror movies, whose understanding of the occult hadn’t reached any form of understanding past “Devil=bad”, and whose only previous experience with a horror film on the big screen was Seven, which at least had a little bit of reasoning to its madness, I was being brought into this tale of terror which had no reasoning except Hell=Evil, and that alone was enough for me.

Now that we’ve set the stage for myself, I should probably explain the basic concept to those of you unfamiliar with this movie. It’s pretty simple, as least as far as I remember it. A spaceship using a special faster-than-light engine, ends up traveling through hell and comes back haunted. I don’t know if that’s the official explanation of what happens in that movie, but it’s what I understood from it back when I watched it in 1997.

What follows, then, is this trek into madness as the crew of this spaceship (who might have been a rescue crew from another spaceship…memory is hazy) is tortured by the hellish nightmare inside the spaceship.

There’s a lot of crazy, not a lot of explanation, and a helluva lot of absolutely torturous imagery. And me, being the young, naive little high schooler I was, knew I wasn’t ready for this movie when my friends suggested it, but really wanted to sit close to the girls who were had suggested it, hoping, you know, for some high school-appropriate hand holding or something when things got too scary.

I remember so little from that film today, having blocked out most of it, outside of Sam Neil stabbing out his own eyes as he laughs maniacally…or something.

But what I do remember is being absolutely terrified about this movie, and then having to walk back home in the dark because our ride forgot to pick us up.

This kid who had run out of a theater not long before this because of a Satanic-ritual involving the hanging of headless chickens around a yard in an opening sequence that led me to believe watching some children’s movie about pandas would be a better choice, had made it all the way through this terrifying flick, and then had to walk back in the dark through the forested streets of Eau Claire to get home…knowing we were already out past curfew, leading to the biggest jump scare when a car pulled up beside us to find it was the dorm supervisor who had caught us out late and now we were all in trouble.

So, yeah, that’s my memories of the movie: Hell, Sam Neil with bleeding eye sockets, not wanting to chicken out and watch a panda movie again, and walking home in the dark to be caught out after curfew.

And I really can’t bring myself to watch that movie again.

Stand Up Comedy

I’ve long thought that at some point in my life, I should find a way to get up on stage and attempt stand up comedy. Not because I consider myself particularly funny, but just that it seems to be this odd form of vulnerability that you can’t quite find anywhere else.

I’ve done plenty of performing over the years, things like singing, plays, and I even have a fair number of improvisational theatre bouts under my belt, all things which, in some way, share some similarities with the concept of stand up, but still don’t quite have the full effect, in my opinion.

Not only is stand up just you, alone on a stage, but you don’t have anything backing you up. The closest thing I might consider to this would be to sing a solo, but so often you have some sort of backing track to join you. And even if you were to choose to sing acapella, you’d still probably be singing a song people have heard before. And even if you were to choose to sing a song you’ve written, you’d still have the ability for people to recognize the beauty of your voice, even if the song itself sucks. It feels like there’s so many things there that could really help you not feel quite as vulnerable as doing stand up.

Because when you do stand up, it’s all on you. You can’t hide behind your natural talents as much. Not only do you have to write something funny and engaging, but you also have to get the timing right in order for it to actually land with the audience.

Which means, when you get up on that stage, it really is just you, on full display, for the world to see.

While I write this, however, and even having said just a second ago how I don’t think anything in my history can compare, I do have one moment in my experience on stage which feels similar, and its during those improvisational shows I do, such as the murder mystery I have coming up at the Eau Claire Children’s Theatre. There a often a point in this type of show where the audience gets to ask the suspects any question they might want. And the idea is that your response should be somewhat funny.

I’m really bad at this part of the gig. Because it feels like at that exact moment, I’m supposed to come up with some witty joke on the spot which not only is in character, but also answers the question, while also being at least somewhat amusing. I’m even tempted to proclaim this as being worse than being a standup comic, but the truth is, your answers are supposed to be short, there’s already a whole set up for the moment going on which allows the audience to already be ready to have a good time, and really, you could simply just make up some nonsensical answer that vaguely references someone’s penis, and you’ll get the laughs.

Yet, this is where I often choke. I stumble for an idea, hoping for a way to connect it to the few jokes I’ve already prepared for the event, knowing that I just don’t have it in me, when I’ve been suddenly thrown to the wolves in hopes for an easy laugh.

And this, my friends, is where I’m at today. Working on coming up with some stock jokes I can throw out in response to the endless options of questions that could be asked me at the moment we get into the Q&A. Knowing that I’m just not quite there yet.

And also wondering if I’ll even be able to remember any of them when the time comes, instead of simply yelling out at the crowd about some nonsense that I can’t even be clever enough right now to make an amusing example.

So, maybe this is slightly worse. At least with standup, you get to prepare all of your jokes beforehand.

Crafting Fiction

Hey folks,

So, I have to apologize here real quick. Because one of the intentions I had for this space when I was initially working on coming back, was to fill it with far more examples of my creative writing, instead of just putting out a bunch of random crap-posts about whatever is on my mind…but things have just gotten far too busy in my life to actually sit down and have some fun with the writing, instead of just crapping out whatever is on the top of my mind.

And that sucks for both of us.

My plan is to correct this in the near future. I’ve worked on trying to rearrange my schedule a bit better so I can fit in some more fun writing, but for right now, it’s just not going to happen.

But I do have a strategy. One I’m hoping will work. One that’s worked before anyways. I’ve reinstituted my 1000 word per day quota. It’s the method by which I wrote my first book (and several of the following books). It’s the method sworn to by such folks you might have heard of as Stephen King. And, well, it means that I’m actually forced to do some writing. At least, I hope so.

My thought here is that, I have this giant list of items that I’ve been slowly working through writing. A pile of ideas of things that I want to all write at the same time. And so, on my task planner that I use for keeping me productive throughout the day, I have had this ever-growing list of things to write, which I’ve been just pushing the snooze button on because it all felt so absolutely overwhelming.

And so, now I’ve replaced all of those items with one simple one, which amounts to simply: Write 1000 words.

While that giant list of things I want to write is still there, my hope is that by decreasing the visible daily expectation of “Write all these things” down to “Write something” will help to make me actually get some writing done, instead of simply looking at the overwhelming list and deciding to throw up my hands in frustration over how little time I have to do it all.

Writing, for a long time, was easy. I had my set time in my schedule where I could just sit down and go to town with the keyboard. And I would often find myself writing at least 5000 words a day on multiple different projects, while also editing other projects and, well, really, I spent a lot of time just crafting fiction. I’m unfortunately not at that place right now. I simply don’t have the time. But…I still want to write. I just need to make sure I do it when I have the time in my schedule, instead of getting scared about not being able to write everything I have on my list.

And so, I’m trying to trick my brain. Here’s hoping it doesn’t wake up enough today to figure that out, because I’m pretty darn eager to get started on some writing.

Why Are Naps So Awesome? And So Hard to Find?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a huge fan of naps. Not that I’ve always been super good at actually taking them, but I’ve definitely loved them. When I started having kids in my life was probably the best time I’ve ever had for taking naps. Considering I have a special skill which makes me amazing at putting babies to sleep, all I’d have to do is take a young child, put them to sleep, and then it was completely reasonable for me to also fall asleep while trying to keep them sleeping.

It also happens that napping while having young children is incredibly important, because, in case you’re not aware, babies are terrible for your sleep schedule.

As I get older, I realize how much more important naps are to just being a sane human being, but since my kids are also now older, I’m finding it more and more difficult to actually sneak in those little moments of unconsciousness. Now, I don’t want to come across as overly dramatic or anything, but this is quite possibly the worst thing that has even happened to anyone ever.

I miss naps. When I have a healthy nap schedule, I’m a far more pleasant person, and far more capable of getting things done…but life has taken away these things I need so badly, and so, here I am, moving through my days in a fog, while wondering if there’s enough time before the next meeting to close my eyes long enough to be worth the effort.

More often than not, there isn’t.

And so, right now, it’s 8:30am and I’m thinking about how I manage to squeeze in a nap today. That 9:30 meeting is looking like the perfect time for it, if I’m being completely honest…

Here Comes The Sun

We’ve officially made it past the shortest day of the year (you know, ~2 weeks ago), and in Wisconsin, that means that we’re currently making our way through the coldest days of the year as we wait for the sun to actually come back, even if our days are a little bit longer than they were yesterday.

But for someone who suffers from some pretty severe mental issues when the sun goes away, these days just aren’t freaking long enough. We’re only a little into January and I’m already longing for the sun, for the warmth, for being outside. Sure, I get outside from time to time, but it’s so cold that I just can’t enjoy it. I was outside for an hour and a half just the other day, but it was because I had to get all the snow off my driveway, walks, and deck.

I need to find the warmth!

Okay, so, yeah, I obviously shouldn’t be in Wisconsin, but I’m here and I don’t have much for options until my kids and wife move out. So, I have to find some way to deal with the fact that we have no sun for months on end.

I’d like to say that I’ve come up with something good, but the truth is, I haven’t.

I’ve gotten one of those little sun lights that are supposed to help with giving you the feelings of a good old dose of UV-infused Vitamin D…but it really doesn’t feel like it gets me there. I like to try to fit in a trip to somewhere sunny during the cold months, but, well, with the whole pandemic thing, not to mention being busy with school and work, it looks like that’s not exactly an option right now either.

So…I sit here in my basement office, on top of my little space heater, thinking of the days in which the warm will come back.

And they aren’t nearly soon enough, folks.

Not at all…

So, if you find me, just know that I’m thinking of far warmer places for the next couple months. And also checking last minute flight prices to anywhere warmer.

The Power of Noise

Early on into the pandemic, I found myself in this weird place where although the world really didn’t feel all that abnormal, something still felt off in my life. I obviously wasn’t going to too many places, but it was probably somewhere around the start of summer where I got to this point where it felt like there was this gaping hole in my world, and I couldn’t figure it out.

At around the same time, I received a ton of VHS tapes from my parents because I told them I could transfer them to digital. And so, I began. And as these things were playing in the background while I worked, I felt my spirits lift, and, well, that hole didn’t feel quite so empty.

It would take another month or so before I figured out what actually happened, but I remember after capturing the tapes, I found myself falling back into that weird place of despair, seeking out memories of the past in the hopes that it would somehow resolve this internal emptiness I was again feeling.

Until I realized that it wasn’t the nostalgia that had brought me back to life…it was the noise. Specifically, the noise of people.

Although it made so much sense when I finally realized it, it took forever for me to come to terms with the fact that the thing that I was missing was simply the sound of people. Even when going to the grocery store early on during the pandemic, things were quiet. People didn’t dare breathe too hard, much less talk, for fear of passing this dreaded disease on to others.

Now, while things aren’t nearly as quiet out in the world today as they were almost two years ago, I’ve found that I still use this little technique to lift my spirits. I put on videos of people walking around crowded places, just to hear the sounds of people in my life, and I find my spirits again gain some height.

It’s quite possibly one of the weirdest techniques I’ve ever used to improve my life, but, I’ve found it works quite well.

Obviously results may vary, as I tend to like to be in a loosely grouped crowd of people, which may be triggering in more negative ways for others. But, I’ve found that I’ve missed people. Not specific people, but faceless hordes of people making all sorts of noise that I can only pick out random snippets of.

It might be time to go out and do some people watching somewhere again soon…

Another One of the Little Things I Miss

If there’s one thing I’ve missed most during this pandemic, it’s probably travel. That’s not to say that my family and I haven’t had the opportunity to travel at all during the past two years. In fact, we had an amazing week in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and a once-in-a-lifetime road trip from Wisconsin to Nevada and back, visiting 9 different national parks over the course of those 9 days. These are things that I will never forget and, honestly, find myself wishing we could do again.

But, at the same time, the trip to the Black Hills replaced a trip we had planned for going to Germany. And we were also supposed to take a trip to visit the national parks of southern Florida which we had to cancel because of burgeoning COVID cases.

But, the truth is, I’m not even sure it’s just those big trips that have got me down. Like, I obviously wish I could take the kids for a week to Disney World or something similarly ridiculous right now, but I honestly believe that I’m more down about the smaller trips.

It used to be that if we found ourselves with a free day, we would take a trip over to the cities to do something like bum around the Mall of America, or go to Lark Toys out in the middle of nowhere, or just find little day trips we could take to break up the monotony of normal life. And while we’ve definitely done little bits of this, it’s not been nearly as common, primarily because we’re still trying to be somewhat cautious in how we approach the world.

And so, when I hear things like how Omicron is ripping through our nation (as well as the world), I find myself a little conflicted. Like, I’m still incredibly worried about the health and lives of my family and friends, but I also find myself really happy when I hear that the expectation of this extra contagious variant means we may actually get through the pandemic phase sooner than we had been fearing.

Life over the past two years has been a weird one where my family and I have felt, for a large portion of it, as busy as ever, but, well, still spending far too much time at home not knowing what to do outside of playing board games and watching movies. And so, when I look at the light at the end of this tunnel that I’m still pretty sure is 2020, I find myself eager to return to some of those things we used to do.

And also, to finally get to do some real travel, because although I’ve enjoyed the socially distanced trips we’ve done these past couple years, I’m ready to go back to exploring the civilizations of the world as well.

That being said, if it hadn’t been for this pandemic, I’m not sure I would have taken the opportunity to really explore the national parks of our country like we have these past couple years, and that would be incredibly disappointing. Because there are some truly amazing parts of this country that we’re lucky to have preserved through the National Parks Service.

So, I guess, what I’m really trying to say is: go visit a park. They are quite literally awe-inspiring.

Agreeing – The Most Mythical of Things

As someone who tends to ride somewhere along the middle of everything when it comes to politics, religion, and whatever else, I’ve often found myself in a place where I typically can’t find a single person who agrees with me. Like, while it’s possible for me to find someone who will agree with me on some things, it generally doesn’t take me very long to take an agreeable conversation and turn it into something where that person thinks I’m way off base on everything.

Because of how polarized we are as a country, as a world entity, it’s pretty easy to turn something as innocuous as “I’m not entirely against voter ID requirements” into causing someone to believe that I’m all for the continued oppression of votes among the poor.

Or that because I think everyone should get vaccinated, that I’m absolutely on board with the idea of mandating vaccines for everyone.

Now, on both of those topics, I could go on at length about my thoughts and concerns which lead to my middle of the road beliefs, but that’s not the point of this post.

The point is, at a family event over the holidays, I had a family member tell me they’ve been reading these posts and, well, they said they were happy to find someone who believes so many of the the same things they believe.

And, in shock that anyone could possibly consider themselves in agreement with the ridiculous statements I sometimes put on here, I stammered a basic response of thanks for reading, and probably awkwardly changed the conversation.

Now, while I’m sure that the truth is that I still say things that this family member isn’t entirely on board with, the reality of his statement is probably more along the lines of “Hey, I don’t completely hate you for your thoughts behind your feelings on this topic”. In other words, my attempts to play devil’s advocate for a number of different polarizing subjects may have just caused this one person a moment to say, hey, I like to look at things from different angles as well!.

And, if I’m being completely honest here, that’s mostly all I’m looking for in putting the things I put out here, to have someone who maybe takes the thoughts I have, and regardless of whether they agree, maybe they just get a new perspective on the topic.

So, if you throw up your hands in disgust at something I say on here, just realize that this is probably what I’m looking for anyway. That, and to have one person who reads this and doesn’t immediately find me insane. So, now that I found that person, the rest of you should just expect to roll your eyes for the foreseeable future.

Escaping The Rock

So, since we’re finally in the new year, and I’ve mentioned a few times how I’ve been looking toward the future, it turns out that now is the perfect time to start making some strategies for how I’m going to live my life now that 2022 is upon us. 2022 is a huge year, I think for all of us, especially if we can manage to end the pandemic. But even if we don’t, this is my last year of school.

I have to admit I’ve been struggling with how I want to live my life post-school for a while now. When I originally decided to go back to school, I had a pretty solid strategy. I was going to basically do the same job I already did, but for more money.

However, as the time gets closer to that moment in which I should actually start looking for the new job, I’ve realized that I’d like a little bit more than just doing the same thing for more money. I’d really like to do something that means something to me. And I’d like to work for a company I can believe in. And so, although I’m still at least six months away from getting that piece of paper that I’ve been working for, I’ve decided to start formulating an actual list of places (or types of places) I’d like to work for and getting together some ideas for what exactly I’d like to be doing.

You know, like actual students do, I guess.

But you don’t really care about that. You’re here because of the writing. And, I’ll be honest, I’ve spent far more time thinking about my writing than I have about my schooling when it comes to thinking about the future. After taking the past few years off from writing, I’ll admit it has been a bit of a struggle to get back into the swing of things. While I definitely worked really hard on getting together a final draft for my newest book Moonshine Monarchy, I’ve also been finding it hard to work on any new books. Part of that is because of things like working on the plays I’ve been writing, and trying to figure out what I want to do with the blog space, as well as things like simply trying to fit all of this in between school and work and life. But, the bottom line is, I haven’t done nearly as much writing as I would like.

And a part of that is because I really don’t know what to do with my writing any longer. After spending some time trying to actually sell Moonshine Monarchy to an agent, I realized that the whole process of selling myself as an author is mostly a waste of my time. While I’d love to put my time and energy into developing and implementing a marketing strategy (something I’ve definitely spent more than a little time working on over these past few months), the truth is, all this does is take me away from putting words to paper. And, while I’d love to find more readers, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d rather spend my time writing than trying to convince people to read my books.

Which means, I’m also in the midst of reconfiguring my life around my writing. While I like having this blog space here, it is also something that takes me away from doing as much other creative writing as I would like to do. I don’t want to drop this space quite yet, but it’s possible that things might change here in the coming months as well.

Because, well, we’re on to a new year, and this new year feels somewhat momentous. Fauci is even saying that we might be months away from finishing this damned pandemic. Maybe we should all be looking toward the latter half of this year as a time of new beginnings, of reemergence…of redefining who we are and how we fit in this world again.

I know that I, at the very least, am going to struggle remembering what it is I used to do with free time when the world isn’t quite as infectious once again.