Random Thoughts

I don’t mean to whine and I’m not looking for sympathy or answers. I’m just mulling things over, getting them out of my head and onto paper, as it were. This is for my benefit and you’re just listening to my random thoughts, the spasmodic firings of the neurons. Over the last few months I’ve become increasingly stressed; the problem with stress is that it gets in the way of being able to focus, and without being able to focus, it becomes harder to get work done—since the sort of work I do is all in my head. If you dig ditches, or perform manual labor, how you feel isn’t quite as important as if you have to be creative. Being between contracts, with no imposed deadlines makes it that much harder to focus the mind. Deadlines are well named. Samuel Johnson commented, “”Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” That’s what deadlines do for a writer. But without them, the mind unravels.

What adds to the stress of course is how my mind starts flopping around like a fish tossed up on the side of a riverbank by a hungry bear. The more I want to focus, the more difficult it becomes.

And part of that is because of life. My youngest daughter is mentally ill and although her medication helps a great deal, she is largely unable to be unsupervised. Although she should be a junior in high school, instead she is at home on what is called independent study, which means she gets her work from her high school and then has to read and do her school work on her own. She simply is not capable of surviving in a normal classroom setting, not because she isn’t capable of doing the work, but because she is incapable of concentrating and actually doing it when she is surrounded by other kids (on top of the fact that she has no ability to recognize those kids that are good and those that want to take advantage of her; since the unsavory sorts see her as an easy mark, they give her attention—and she craves attention—and so because they initially smile and talk to her, they instantly become her “best friends”—which lasts very briefly, until they do something rotten to her; and then she falls apart and is devastated.)

So, anyhow, she works from home now (ever since two of her “friends” beat her up—the “friends” were expelled and prosecuted; since my daughter simply curled up into a ball and didn’t hit back, she didn’t get in any trouble).

So, I spend my days being interrupted frequently and have to help her quite a bit with her school work and other things.

Because I’m between contracts, there is less money. Thankfully my wife is a public school teacher and so our income from that is steady, relatively speaking. Because of the state’s budget problems, her income has actually been cut over the last four years by nearly ten percent—and our cost of health insurance has skyrocketed. Since someone has to stay home with my youngest daughter, I’m mostly precluded from finding any other work on top of my writing.

Meanwhile my oldest daughter is in college and this year has transferred back east. So there are the added expenses of that. And about five years ago my wife finished her master’s degree; she wanted the added education and it held the advantage of moving her up on the pay schedule for her job. But right after she finished, the budget cuts happened so rather than seeing her salary go up, it simply went down slightly slower than it otherwise would have. So we increased our expenses (thanks to her student loans) without the anticipated increase in her income.

So, stress. Regular interruptions. More stress.

But somehow I still manage to write. I find I can’t not write. But it has been much harder lately. Somehow I am able to write a weekly newspaper column, a daily posting to my blog, and still write a short story every two or three weeks and I’m plugging along on three different novels; plus I’ve gotten involved in indie publishing, so I now have 18 ebooks up at Amazon available for the Kindle. I’m not making a fortune, but they do bring in some money—more than they were just sitting on my hard drive.

I also periodically do some consulting for an online news site and see myself quoted extensively there and continue to hope that my name will be increasingly noticed—and that it might translate into more work and more book sales.

But it remains a struggle and I’m tired. A vacation would be nice, except that all these things would still be there and still be hanging on my mind; how can I get a vacation from my stress when it is all in my head? No matter where I go, my head tends to come with me. There’s no way to get away from it.

So I just keep on keeping on and find comfort and joy in small things and work to keep things in perspective.

Paul faced prison, flogging, shipwreck and endless trouble. It wasn’t because God was mad at him. In fact, he was doing exactly what God wanted him to do–and eventually it killed him.

Paul wrote:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:4-9)

So, Paul learned how to handle the stress and how to keep things in perspective. So I’m learning now, too.