Looks like my legs may be getting a workout once again. My wife and I have not won the lottery, so it looks like I’ll get to see just how good I’ve gotten at writing no matter what. I’ve submitted several applications and hope to hear back from at least somebody within a day or two. I may not have done everything by the book in my younger years, but a decade and a half of experience in the same field has made me somewhat of a commodity. Ideally, I’d like to just go into restaurants and tell them how to fix the things that they are doing wrong, but there’s already someone doing that, and he has got a camera crew. I suppose that if I had started this whole process a few months earlier, I might have been able to coast by as a cashier, but since I’ve left it until the last moment, I’ll have to jump right back in where I left off, at least in terms of responsibility (and pay). And I know that once I’ve gotten hired and get used to where I’m working, all of this anxiety will dissipate, as I throw myself completely into the task at hand. In addition, depending on my salary, I may be able to give my wife the same opportunity for joblessness that she has given me.
Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Actually, I suppose that it is. Whereas I have been writing nearly every day that I have been away from Blondie’s Pizza (discounting a reasonable number of days off and time spend on vacation in December), I’m sure that she will launch into an all-out assault on the apartment, and have it organized exactly how she wants it. She’ll have all the time she’s said she’s wanted to devote to her home and to her children. I give her about a month, tops, before she’s ready to get back to work. I am the type who needs to mull things over, chew on thoughts, and then explode in prose while seated before my laptop. Wildflower, on the other hand, just sort of rages at the various tasks before her until they disappear or submit before her mastery. It would be nice to have some money again. That’s what I’d have to say I miss the most since leaving my last job. It’s hard going from having enough to pay the bills and maybe have a little fun (time permitting) to trying to figure out how to make the magic work.
It used to be so much simpler, before I had people who were counting on me. One person bouncing from couch to couch isn’t all that much, but trying drag along your entire family just makes it that much harder. But I’m going to be positive today. I’m going to believe that it’s all going to work out like it should. I’ve been far more productive than I was the last time I renounced a gainful state of employment, and I think that it was necessary to get me writing again. I wish that the cost wouldn’t have been so high, but I’m doing something that I feel that I was meant to do. The last time, I got to spend six months bonding with my son. This time, I’ve been bonding with myself.
In retrospect, I probably could have phrased that better.
But I’ve rebuilt my writing muscles, and the only thing that I need now is a little inspiration. It’s easy to get trapped inside your own feedback of madness, and I may have mined most of what’s been hiding in my head. I’m impressed that it took so long. I figured that I would have run out of nonsense to spout weeks ago. Then again, I have written this same column probably five or six times, so I don’t think that I should be so terribly impressed. Yeah, I need some outside influence on my reality. Fortune favors the bold. That used to mean being the guy who threw away a career to jump toward his destiny, but apparently that now means making enough money so that I can feed my family. And I feel about the same way with the change in definition as I did when “literally” became “figuratively”.
My fingers are crossed.
In other news, yesterday I managed to rack up my 2,000th page view since December 7th. As a gesture of thanks, I reprinted an old tale of mine, and then promised to start working on a version that more closely showcases what I’ve been able to pick up since I first wrote it, which I will debut here in when I hit 2,000 views for 2015. That’s only 83 views away, so I had better get started on it, if I want it to be ready on time.
Great. Now, in addition to finding someone to pay me for doing something, I have to rewrite one of my favorite stories for all of you. It’s only 900 words or so now, and I’d like to make it a little longer. I think it’s time that I learn how to make a meal instead of just a snack-sized story. I guess this means that I will have to put myself back into the mindset of who I was when I wrote the damned thing, and from there, try to remember everything about the story. I guess the biggest thing which worries me right now (about Terracrats, not life in general) is that I don’t know if I’ll be able to maintain that youthful tone, or if I should even try.
It will probably be the victim of a gritty reboot.
Batmart Begins:
I glared down at the cherry of my lit cigarette, furtively glancing about in the fading light of this spring day. Anyone happening to glance this way would wind up seeing us for sure. I dropped the cigarette to the saltwater-soaked concrete and ground it beneath my boot, much as my ex-girlfriend had done to me not months before in lieu of a birthday present.
Damn. I was going for mockery, but I kind of like that.