one identity crisis at a time, baby

When was the last time I wrote a blog post? April. When was the last time I wrote anything at all? Also probably April. So let’s shake off the soot sprites and see what I’ve got.

Amid my catatonic state in front of late-night Jerry Springer reruns, I started thinking about this year and particularly this summer. The rhythm of my days has gone a little like this:

Get up (still tired), scan the news (hellscape), fixate on work (a lot of it!!). Check in on everyone, check out of myself. Schedule my day so precisely that there’s no time left over for my mind to wander spiral suffer—including my off days (listen to x podcast for y amount of time, watch x movie at y o’clock, laundry on Monday and groceries on Tuesday, add “shower” to the to-do list), so then they don’t feel so off because I gotta be on to snap out of the almost-wander suffer spirals. Creativity is at an all-time low.

Not that I’ve been completely on autopilot. There’s been friends and thrifting and day drinking, new books to read and old media finds (DVDs and vinyl and cassettes and CDs, I’ll keep my streaming but I won’t rely on it anymore), album releases I’ve been waiting for (Bruce Springsteen and Djo and The Summer Set and Spencer Sutherland) and the unexpected thrill of Alicia Silverstone in the kind of trashy movie that’s made for me (Pretty Thing).

But creativity is at an all-time low, and I think it’s because the stress is there anyway, no matter how I try to schedule it, and maybe I can’t dig into UNTITLED BOOK 3 because I’m not really letting myself loose and just thinking.

(Books 1 and 2, incidentally, will rerelease in summer 2026 via Turn the Page Publishing, so stay tuned for that. And all the more reason for me to get a goddamn handle on Book 3 already.)

The wander—not so much the spiral and the suffer, but the wander—is what I need to make the pieces of my stories click. As much as I want to turn it all off until the world isn’t doing what it’s been doing this year…

Well, that’s not done me any good so far. I’m still blocked and the American government is still bullshit (and what a lighthearted way to put it). I can’t schedule that stress, because you never know what these bogus fuckin’ incompetent cover-up criminal dumbass absolute bozos and national disgraces are gonna do next—and since it’s not drop dead yet, the hits are gonna keep on comin’.

The world is a constant cycle of ups and downs, and we happen to be stuck on the upside-down part of the rollercoaster right now.

And I think. I’m done. Unbuckling that harness and dropping off this ride. At least for today.

I didn’t plan to take today off, so maybe that’s why I should. Got up (not bad), scanned the news (hellscape but not hopeless—never hopeless). I don’t *need* to work (and my wrists need a break from the keyboard anyway, nevermind that I’m here right now, but it’s not a twelve-hour shift). Had cinnamon toast waffles and an energy drink (all food is good food). Played through my Spotify Discover Weekly (okay, and sometime later I will have moved off Spotify and onto Tidal). Messed with my fresh-cut shag to decide if the norm should be styling or letting it go natural (the latter, I think).

Maybe I’ll paint my nails in something iridescent or glitter. Definitely I’ll watch a movie without setting an arbitrary start time. Undoubtedly I’ll text my friends about and probably during said movie.

And in the face of everything, all of this sounds useless shallow who-cares and why-bother. But I’ve felt like that all year, and not caring about anything hasn’t made me more proactive or productive or self-assured—or any of the things any of us need to be to, if nothing else, keep going.

In all the noise, I’ve lost some love for writing. The will, the inspiration, the urge… It hasn’t been there. Because creeping in the back of my mind is that why-bother.

I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to do something.

(And absolutely I’ve said this or otherwise much of the same before, but, hey, when life’s not a highway, it’s a roundabout you can’t get out of.)

So I’m going to bother. And that means taking myself out of the monotony and getting back to the mental/emotional balance that makes me feel good about writing, where writing makes me feel good. Where it matters to me—because nothing’s felt like it matters much, or the mattering has been fleeting, so then I return to the mondo bummer familiarity of just doing what I need to get by.

But when the getting by starts to suck, it’s not enough to actually get you by anymore, is it?

…I’m not sure that any of this has made sense, or if it’s at all cohesive when off the rails of my directionless train of thought. C’est la vie and oh well, it’s really just a reminder to myself that I do love writing, even when everything else feels like it totally blows, and maybe especially when everything else feels like it totally blows, because I don’t know what I can do about any of that except *not* let it kick my ass into the emotional deadzone of complacency.

……I’m further not sure if writing this did what I thought it was going to do for me, or if I even knew what that was, but I feel better having done it. So that’s something.

Let the wandering begin—and fingers crossed I can avoid the turns into the spirals and the suffers.