This year has been fucking exhausting. If it isn’t the bullshit engendered by being surrounded by hidden enemies who are enemies solely on the basis of not doing what is necessary not to get Covid. I have lost track of how many days I have spent working from home because of the rainbow colour swatch of crap that has caused this. I won’t say I am not one to usually complain, but by virtue of the fact that I haven’t done it here for a while, I feel totally free to let loose a little. Actually, to be fair, writing half the time into an unresponsive vacuum, means the editing mechanism on salt is really just not there and has no need to be. You either give enough of a fuck to read it or you don’t.
I have been weirdly doing well when I am not at home and then getting sick when I am at home for a long time. The ear infections, the stubbed toes, the misarranged muscles from badly done sleep. Gluten allergy-inspired throw-ups. What a load of bollocks.
But I have been working. I have been publishing others, publishing myself. I have been upping my game in any area that I can up my game. I bought a guitar I will get to. I have a video camera to dive back into that. I have watched more fucking films than most people watch in a lifetime. I have really got back into reading — and reading real books. I have also finished off reading some of my favourite comic series too.
But the need to be regular and to force out some writing every day — that has surely dropped out. When I am doing well I don’t have swoops of production and then dips of production; I am consistent.
I always feel like I am a mix of high and low brow and I am glad that this has never changed. I talk about it a lot but saying stuff like I wrote over a hundred books seems to go in one ear and out the other. People are surprised I have watched so many films and listened to so much music and read so much. I don’t brag — I kinda hate that shit, and I would knock someone over who tries to make someone else small for an absence in their knowledge.
Stupidity has been at the base of a lot of the frustration I have felt this year. You try and hit at it with logic but you see like it is trying to attack soup with an axe. Things that should not be political are turned political. Men in public life and behind the scenes are incapable of decency. Good men shuffle off the mortal coil and shit ticks keep on jiving.
So what keeps rolling? The work does … and I mean by that my writing. And the wondrous gift of being able to publish others. And I am massively in love with my wife who is a great and inspiring person. You have to hold the framework in place yourself though. And it is not as if I have been slack — I have done stuff. I have built a fair amount of infrastructure. I have written a fuck ton still. I finished up five books recently. But it is not enough — there is more to do.
Set yourself a mission and touch base periodically. And do it daily. I am useless at keeping diaries but I write and I write and that puts pins on the mappa mundi.