Five Years Gone

Today was the fifth anniversary of my father's passing. Just like that day five years ago, today was my writing session with my writing partner. I didn't get much done, but that's how it goes sometimes. This Atlas of Bone & Sorrow project has a way of suckerpunching me repeatedly while trying to make my way through it. I may need to focus on something else for a little bit, return to it in short spurts here and there so I don't get caught up in my own swamps of despair. 

After our session, I finished sorting through old boxes I'd pulled from the storage unit I emptied last week. Old photos and letters and report cards and art projects - from myself, my siblings, and even old shit from my mother's youth - have been sitting in my living room for over a week waiting to be sifted through and given some level of importance: keep for later review or toss in the trash. 

Weird day of marinating in things of the past. Wasn't intending to do so, but here we are. 

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Had my final book event of the year at a church last night. Lit & Libations was a solid time, and I've been selling more books to the strangers that are becoming less strange with every time we see each other at these soirees. Word nerds just itching to suppport local authors serving up weird fiction, monster romance, bondage fantasies, and any other kind of strange lexicon that tickles the brain upon reading. 

The need to work on something else in the meantime is also partially due to wanting to have more offerings for these events. I've got a couple small projects that have been sitting in the background for a multitude of years (a partially sci-fi book that's written in a backwards narrative, my own absurd attempt at a Dostoyevsky-esque piece about a former soldier and a young girl in the Russian hinterlands, a half-finished magical realism novel, etc.). 

It's just often difficult to find the inspiration...still. We're scraping the bottom of the well out most times. 

I'm back to reading again, thankfully. Slowly, but taking a break for the last couple of months was a bad idea. I should've stuck to it, but again...life got busy. 

Another Orphan's Thanksgiving is coming up, as is a very chill but delightful, New Years Eve. I'm looking forward to ending this year. 

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