Category: Personal

2016 was a rough one, no doubt about it.

I’m not going to belabor the point, which has pretty much become a cliché at this point. Dumpster fires, meteor strikes, the grim reaper chopping through the population of our heroes like a cuisinart… you all know how it goes.

A dark year for me, too. Personal reasons. Personal failings. I won’t go into detail. The biggest one is well-known — hell, it’s getting to be ALL I’m known for, at this point. Another 12 months without releasing FAR WEST.

There were great things this year, too — and I’m putting them here in an effort to prevent “2016 = horrible” to be the sole thing that I remember, years from now.

My younger daughter got engaged! My son reached the first goal of his plan and headed off to school! My oldest passed her second bar exam (NY – #EsquireSquared, as she says)! All wonderful things.

I brought on a much-needed partner to Adamant Entertainment — Eric Trautmann, who has had an immediate effect, not only getting me back on track, but spearheading the company into regular releases again (the stream of THRILLING TALES products over the latter part of this year is entirely due to his diligence).

So, as I post this with a picture of David Bowie accompanying it, I look ahead to 2017.

The Bowie pic is my reminder. My intention to hold him as my Patron Saint in the coming year. The goal of 2017 is to create, create, create — never stop creating. This is something that I struggled with in 2016. I was hard to find it within myself to create, when there were so many other things that overwhelmed me at times.

If I have any resolution for the coming year — the thing that is going to require my constant diligence to bring about, that I will need to remind myself of, and that hopefully some of you will remind me of as well, if needed, it is this:

DO NOT WASTE MENTAL OR EMOTIONAL ENERGY ON THINGS THAT I CANNOT AFFECT.

Doing so only makes us feel helpless, frustrated, overwhelmed. It is far better for me to spend my effort only on those things I have direct influence over… and in my case, that is my creative process. I wasted so much energy this year on anxiety, outrage and depression.

I cannot solve the world’s problems. I can only do my work. And if I do that, and only that, I will get things done, which will lead to the positive emotional feedback of accomplishment — which is a helluva lot better than feeling overwhelmed and adrift.

So that’s 2017 for me. Create. Get Things Done. And Keep Going.

…And we wake to the sure knowledge that almost half the people of this country cast a clear-eyed, knowing vote for an utterly unqualified, unstable, authoritarian fascist. That he’s A-OK in their view. (Almost half, because his opponent actually won the popular vote, but thanks to an 18th-century anachronism that artificially inflates the power of low-population, rural states, that doesn’t matter.)

There’s nothing I can say here to make this any better. Look at the demographics — this was the revenge of the old, white and largely uneducated, aided and abetted by the genuinely fascist and the “screw everybody, I’ve got mine” crowd.

Almost half this country literally hates me, my family, and anyone like us. That’s a hard thing to face. Living out here in Red State Flyover-land, we face it daily, but it’s harder knowing there are more than you thought. Hard to feel like this is our country.

At this point, the best we can hope for is that Trump is in over his head, and we face 4 years of utter incompetence and an inability to actually get anything done. The main reason GWB was able to govern at all was because the GOP elites packed his administration with Substitute Teachers — old power. I can’t see The Donald accepting that kind of oversight, so I fully expect that his administration will be a clown car of sycophants and toadies. Not exactly a recipe for getting shit done. Especially given the fact that the rifts in the GOP are there for everyone to see. There will be a group of Trump loyalists in Congress, butting up against the other GOP factions, all trying to do what they want to do.

At least I hope so.

In 2004, I posted this. It still applies.

“We must do without hope. At least we may yet be avenged. Let us gird ourselves, and weep no more. We have a long road, and much to do.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book II, Chapter VI.