Pretend Like Nothing Happened

Rather than make a protracted post about my failure to write on this blog everyday, or address my last entry, which was rather discouraging and defeatist, I am just going to pick this back up as though nothing unusual happened. 

I got a vasectomy a few weeks ago. We are officially one-and-done on the child-rearing front. The reasons are multitude. Firstly, I just don't want to put Whitney through the experience of being pregnant again. She didn't enjoy it, and the actual labor process was scary, difficult, and expensive. I feel like we got pretty damn lucky with our little Nemo. And speaking of money, kids are expensive as shit. People wonder why Millennials aren't having children - might have something to do with the cost of living combined with stagnant wages and our fucked-up, for-profit healthcare system. And last, but not least, we want to give Nemo the best life we can, and contrary to popular belief, only-children generally benefit in the long run from having more resources and attention allocated to them. Sure as hell not paying for two college funds, I can tell you that now. 

Despite this blog, which has lain fallow, I have been writing. And reading too. I've started reading aloud to my son, and it's having a positive impact on my habits. It's weird that I love books, yet so often fail to pick one up for long stretches of time. But I guess it's like everything else in life. It takes work to be happy. And for a person like me, it's easy to get distracted. Easy to fall into bad habits. But I can't afford bad habits anymore. Not with this tiny human around, learning and analyzing and shit. I don't want him to grow up to be a demi-slacker like me. I mean, I'll still love him if he does, but I want him to come to his laziness honestly, not because he never tried. 

Since this is my blog and nobody's going to read it anyway, let's get all self-indulgent and talk about my writerly ambitions.

I never wanted to be a full-time writer. I know that's the goal for most writers, but it was never really my ambition. My plan has always been to work a regular asshole job and make steady asshole money while writing novels, which is more or less how things have panned out so far. Only characters in romcoms and the idle rich (or well-connected) get to sit around in gorgeous apartments ringing their hands over truth and beauty. And while the idea of being a pulp novelist or a smut machine appeals to me, I know that I would never be successful at it. I'm too slow. And I don't actually like pulp novels. And I'm not taking speed, so being like Philip K Dick is right out. Academia is also right out.

All that said, I would like to take my writing more seriously. I got the one novel published. A few people know about it. I need to do more to get its name in front of eyeballs. But more importantly, I need to get my name in front of eyeballs. Which means I need to write more fiction. And appear in more things. Need to actually submit stories. I need to be visible. Trouble is, I don't actually like being visible most of the time. I like making jokes. Sometimes I get real manic and post a bunch of stuff on Twitter. But, for the most part, social media exhausts me. I see other writers on there, hawking their wares, posting their daily content, making sure they're gonna keep being noticed, and it all just makes me feel so...tired. I don't have a solution for this problem yet.

There's more to discuss, but I'll save that for tomorrow.