Marc Rivers, Author

I apologize in advance for these scattershot thoughts.

In just a few days, I will officially be between jobs. It’s not something I envisioned for my career, but I have to move forward as best I can. For all my earlier talk of resolve, it either failed me when I needed it or else it just wasn’t enough to overcome the broader situation. It will be easy to think it was the first one, and to give up accordingly. But like I said, I have to move forward. As GLaDOS once said (or sang), “We do what we must because we can.” And so, I must find a new way to trade my time and skills for money within the framework of a capitalist society. And I need to do it especially quickly because that very capitalism acts as a gatekeeper to healthcare in this ass-backward country. We could have nice things, but NO! We had to listen to Adam Smith’s colonizer nonsense from the 18^th Century and never, ever question if there was a better way to do things.

It’s probably going to take some time and energy away from the second draft of my novel. If nothing else, it will feel harder to write creatively when I feel the burden of needing to find suitable employment looming over my head. Justified or not, that obstacle is going to be there and trying to shove it away probably won’t work very well.

Speaking of novels, my writing group has started to give some feedback on the first few chapters of mine. It’s good to see things that others are able to observe when they haven’t been living with the story bouncing around in their head for a decade.

Nevertheless, there is a part of me that thinks I should be cooking up some smaller writing ideas on the side. That’s not happening, though, which is irritating. I’m not entirely sure if I should actually indulge the urge to work on any side projects, and that uncertainty is its own brand of frustrating. Should I be working on more than just my novel? If so, what? Why can’t I think of anything? (Of course, the employment situation is also an unwelcome major distraction, too.)

Some priorities are about to shift—partly because they’re being compelled to and partly because it’s the only thing that would produce the desired results anyway, external factors notwithstanding. I have in my mind a vision of what those priorities are and what it looks like when they are elevated. Now will come the test of whether or not I can actually execute that vision. In a nutshell, I just need to do better.

I do enjoy writing, though. In fact, I think I’ve enjoyed it more these past few months than I have in a long, long time. I hope I don’t lose that momentum or that fire. I’ve seen what happens when my enthusiasm for something almost completely evaporates and if that happened to my fiction work, I’d be pretty devastated.

To anyone reading, thanks for letting me bend your ear (as it were) as long as I have. I promise not all my updates will be this moody.

Only tangentially related to that last paragraph, I did a Corporeal Writing prompt that asked about living “completely openly” and what it would be like to “live without walls.” It got me thinking of the walls I’ve built up in my mind to defend my ego (feelings) and how those walls have counterproductively kept me from growing. Yet to break down those walls would also mean to make myself more vulnerable to the outside world, which is not something that appeals to me. The reward? Yes. The risk? Not so much.

So, this is an attempt at breaking down a little part of one of those many, many walls that have turned my psyche into an ADHD version of the backrooms. That’s right, if I don’t do more to fix myself now, I’ll end up just like Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character. (Whoa, hey, man! Spoilers!)

To end this on a positive note, here’s to me (and you, and them, and us) getting better! We can do it! As the incomparable bard himself, George Michael, once said (well, sang), “I gotta have faith.”

Take care of one another. We’re all going through it, even if “it” is different for each of us. Until next time,

-Marc