Tag: legacy

Take Me Back

Saturday morning and I feel rather well rested this morning. I wound up, of all things, sleeping on my left arm weirdly (on my stomach with arm across my chest) and this morning, it doesn’t feel either sore or tight. I knew it needed to be stretched, but this is very good news, meaning I can go back to the gym again tomorrow. I was very tired all day yesterday, too. I got my remote work done, ran some errands, and came home to write for a bit, but my brain was too cloudy for me to get anything done, really. I eventually gave up and sat down in my chair with Sparky to watch the LSU Gymnastics meet (they scored 198.00, which is a GREAT team score and something they didn’t do last year until towards the end of the season), and then we got caught up on Abbott Elementary before catching up on the news (always a mistake these days) and going to bed. I managed to get my chores done, and still haven’t made that to-do list yet–but hope springs eternal and hopefully I’ll get that done today, too. We shall see, but right now I feel pretty good. I hope it lasts.

Man, the kitchen is a mess this morning…well, the entire downstairs at any rate. But I will get that done as I write today. I do have to run a couple of errands today, so that will probably slow my progress down today, like it always does, but at least there’s nothing on television for me to get sucked into today, like tennis or gymnastics or figure skating or anything of that nature. So I have no excuse to not get things done today, right? That’s what I think, too. But it’s easy to get distracted and it’s even easier to get lazy and distracted. SO the key today is to not read the news or let our slide into fascism, aided and abetted by a legacy media that is not up to their jobs–or onboard with it all, like Fox, Newsmax, and OANN–not to mention a wimpy Democratic party that has essentially betrayed its donors and its voters and are now on-board with appeasement and sycophancy–so we’re basically on our own. The Democrats have been essentially spineless (with a few exceptions) my entire adult life, and now the party leadership can’t read the room and refuses to move aside for the bright young crop of future leaders; I’d rather fail fighting than fail rolling over playing dead. I have seen this, over and over, my entire life and yes, they have failed the country. Most of my ire is directed at the Far Reich, of course, but that doesn’t mean I have to accept the ineffectual leadership of the party anymore–and I sure as FUCK aren’t giving them another cent of my money. At this point, it’s simply throwing more good money down the drain for nothing. I’ve been waiting for results since I was twenty and have been disappointed repeatedly. If living as a gay American has taught me anything, it’s that being polite and being nice while working for change doesn’t work. It takes action, protests, and people willing to put their bodies on the line for it. ACT UP didn’t place nice, and they got results, didn’t they?

We need more Ted Kennedys and AOCs, not more Amy Klobuchars or John Fettermans (neither of whom will ever be president). Instead of fighting with policy, they are always playing defense, and badly at that. I honestly think their approach to opposition now is to cave on everything and let everyone suffer, while hoping things will get so bad we’ll win the midterms and 2028, in a repeat of 2006 and 2008. That isn’t leadership, for the record–although I am past the point of letting it all burn to the ground quickly so we can rebuild our new country out of the ashes of the old. Enough of this slow strangulation of freedom already.

And if anyone thinks I will ever mention Sean Duffy without making a reference to The Real World-Boston or Real World/Road Rules Challenges, they are very much mistaken.1

But somehow, I’ve managed to make it to sixty-three, which I never thought would happen. That should count for something, right? I’m kind of like Cher, I think–somehow I manage to keep going on. That’s the thing I suppose I cling to, my cockroach-like survival techniques. I never think bad things can’t happen to me–they certainly do enough times, and one thing I have learned over the course of hurricanes and hate crimes and death threats is that you can’t imagine bad things happening until they do, and so far I’ve managed to keep my few shreds of sanity intact, and knowing that I have somehow managed to get through it all somehow. I guess I’m a survivor? I certainly do have survivor’s guilt, for sure. I can never reconcile the randomness of my survival, either. I don’t think I did because I have some important role to play in the world, either–it’s literally one of those random things that happen people always try to find meaning in, when the truth is our lives, for the most part, are meaningless, but our egos are too fragile for any of us to consider we’re unimportant in the overall scheme of human and world history. I have no expectations of being remembered for long after I die, either. People will think it’s sad and then move on and forget me.

And I’m okay with that. My ego doesn’t require me to “live forever,” although I guess the books will, maybe.

And on that cheery note, I will head into the spice mines. I am going to read for a bit after I clean up in here, after which I will write, run my errands, and come home to read or write some more. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow or even later today; it depends, does it not?

  1. And for the record, I don’t think I’ll be flying anywhere for a long time. ↩︎

Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag

Well, yesterday wasn’t so bad, really. The office didn’t burn down in my absence (didn’t think it would) and there was no mess for me to clean up anywhere, so that was nice. I also felt good for most of the day; I had energy and didn’t feel sleepy in the least. I managed to come home from work and get the thing done that needed to be done for today; I also revised and rewrote that short story before discovering the deadline is actually October 20th, so I have time to go over it once again before turning it in for the perusal of the editors. It’s a reach to meet their theme, but nothing ventured and all that. I won’t be disappointed too much if they turn me down. I also have another story to write by the end of the month, and I am not sure which one I have on hand to use for it. Something to look into for this weekend, methinks. And I need to get back to work on Scotty. Heavy sigh.

But I never felt any stress about the deadlines, and I managed to get both things worked on, which I am quite pleased with myself about, frankly. I am rather pleased with the new version of the story; it really does need to be revised one more time (not the least of which is that it’s too long; I always think 5k when writing a story but the CFS for this is 4k max, so some pruning and tightening is in order. I also managed to sleep really well again last night and feel great this morning. I wasn’t tired when I got home, either. After I got through with working, I happily collapsed into my easy chair and caught up on the news. I do think this approach to this year’s election–staying calm and blocking the legacy media1–is the right way to go. I have felt a lot less stressed about everything without losing my shit at the insanity of said legacy media’s insane bias. It doesn’t mean that I’m not worried about the outcome–I am, very much so–but the weight of it all doesn’t need to rest on my shoulders. Thank God for anxiety medications, and the clear-headedness those medications give me.

Today’s goal is to figure out what short story to use for this other call for submissions that is due at the end of the month. I literally have no clue, off the top of my head, and so I am going to have to go through the files and figure out which one I can either finish or revise. A tough problem to have, don’t you think? I kind of want to work on short stories at the moment, which has everything to do with revising one yesterday. Once the dam breaks, and all that stuff and nonsense. I’m just delighted to be writing again, and even more delighted that I am prioritizing my work for once (and from now on). I’ll still do the occasional volunteer thing now and again, but nothing that requires a lengthy commitment or has any urgency; I’ve sacrificed my mental health and my writing for far too long on things that ultimately had no benefit for me other than satisfaction–and sometimes I never even got that, so it’s time for someone else to do whatever it was I thought I was accomplishing. I also have little to no interest in my legacy. I am always amused a bit when I hear writers talk about things like that. For one thing, that’s not for me to decide. Did I make a contribution to American letters? The mystery genre? Queer writing? Most likely not; I am not going to be studied in future college lit courses–genre, for one; gay for the other–and once I’m gone–or stop producing work, I’ll be forgotten, and I am fine with that. The books will all float around on the Internet for years after my death so they are there for the finding. Maybe in a hundred years some scholar will stumble over my work and make a case for me as one of the unsung heroes of crime fiction, but I rather doubt it. In either case, I won’t be here to see it, so why even worry about it? Talk about a waste of energy!

We’re having a cold spell–a front for a few days–where the highs will be in the sixties and the lows in the fifties. It’s fifty-nine right now, brisk and crisp; it will definitely help me sleep and will definitely help bring the power bill down. We resist turning on the heat until it’s actually in the fifties inside, and the heat is far cheaper than air conditioning. I also need to run errands after work today, and then once I am home I need to progress on the apartment before settling into my chair for the evening. I’ve also got to figure out my doctor’s appointments and try to reschedule them all for the same day–or at least to have as many on the same day as possible. Sigh. This is what we call gumbo weather; when you spend the morning in the kitchen making a nice big pot of it–the cooking of it also keeps you warm, and it certainly does warm you up on the inside when you eat it. If the weather holds through the weekend I’ll probably make some kind of shrimp dish–shrimp creole or shrimp scampi or something like that. I also like making potato leek soup and white bean chicken chili (but that will require a Costco trip at some point). I do love the fall here in Louisiana…and it also looks like the two systems the Hurricane Center is monitoring aren’t going to develop into anything for a brief respite.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one never really knows for certain, does one?

  1. They have been committing journalistic malpractice since at least 2015, if not longer. ↩︎

I Wanna Be Your Lover

Thursday and working at home.

New Orleans Bouchercon was canceled (well, postponed until 2025, at least) yesterday; it was inevitable, I suppose, but it was still a let down. I kind of feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the field goal with Lucy holding the football–so so close–but it was the right decision, if a difficult one. As someone who has worked on more than his fair share of events, I am very well aware of how hard it is to keep all the plates spinning and how much work it is and even as someone who occasionally derives a perverted, sick sense of pleasure from organizing events from time to time…canceling an event is always a hard call, always heartbreaking, and always an enormous disappointment. Watching all that work circle the drain is overwhelming…as I well know. I watched it happen with the Tennessee Williams Festival and the Edgars in 2020; for 2021 both were planned as virtual from the very beginning–which wasn’t the same, but was still lovely. I have also decided to keep the requested time off–it’s not quite a week, one day short, really–yet I think it will be absolutely lovely to have that time to get things done, get caught up, read, clean and rest and relax, really.

I was exhausted last night when I got home from the office–although I was able to pick up my copies of Megan Abbott’s The Turnout and Stephen King’s Billy Summers on my way home. (God, I am so far behind on my King reading it’s not even funny; like I said the other day, I may have to simply devote October to trying to catch up on King) We finished watching the second season of Outer Banks, which continued its bonkers ways right up to the very end, setting up season three–which I can only assume will be even more bonkers than the first two–and it really is quite fun. (Although Paul periodically would say, at a particularly bonkers part, they’re just high school students!) But…it’s because the show is so completely bonkers that makes it fun; it’s like a teen version of Dirk Pitt or Indiana Jones; that sort of thing. Just great fun to watch and experience.

Although now we have binged through the entire thing and will have to wait another year for season three… DAMN IT!

Today I am working from home (hello condom packs!) and so got to sleep a little later this morning. Emotionally and physically I feel a bit drained; the rollercoaster of the Bouchercon stuff all over social media and the eventually cancellation absolutely wore me out. It’s weird to realize that it’s actually August already, and the last days of my fifties are slipping through my fingers like quicksilver. Today is the 5th, I believe; which means two weeks from tomorrow is the BIG DAY. I am not overly concerned–although it may seem that way, given how often I bring it up–about turning sixty; the real truth here is that I am more amazed than anything else. I certainly never thought I’d make it this far (and to be fair, there’s still a chance I won’t make it to sixty); when I was a kid I was certain I would die young–and even knew how; I had a recurring nightmare that I would die in a car accident, which is why I loathe driving, try to avoid getting into cars as much as possible, and am always terrified when I am the passenger and someone else is driving. I’ve taught myself coping mechanisms over the years to deal with being in cars (whether driving or riding), amongst which are listening to music I like (the last big drive I took I discovered that books on tape work just as well), and when I am a passenger I very definitely have trained myself not to watch the road or other cars, but to look mostly out the passenger window–and if there are people in the back seat, I always turn and face them when I talk to them. I know it’s irrational–and for fuck’s sake, I’ve made it this far without being killed in a car accident, haven’t I–but it’s one of those weird quirks I have.

There’s also a part of me that thinks that if i ever get over that fear–that’s when it will happen.

It’s probably also why I write so many car accidents into my work.

I am pretty strange, aren’t I? I know I find myself to be fascinating, with all of my weird little quirks and beliefs and fears and superstitions. Stephen King writes about his fears and obsessions and quirks–became a best seller and an icon in the process–so maybe I should have begun my career exploring my fears and obsessions and quirks. I don’t know, sometimes I sit and think about how I probably could have done my career differently, but in all honesty, I am pretty pleased with where I am with it right now. Sure, more money and more acclaim would have been lovely to experience, but those are all surface things; side-effects, really; I’m pretty happy to be able to just write what I want to write and not ever worry about those sorts of things. I’ve seen other writers literally make themselves unhinged worrying about their “legacies” or the lack of success they think they deserve; being gay and writing gay, I guess, eliminated that concern for me, as I knew it was highly unlikely that I would ever achieve either. Sometimes I wonder if holding on to all my papers–correspondences, drafts both corrected and uncorrected–is a vestige of vanity; the whole I need to preserve my papers and find a place to donate them to mentality is one of those things that, when I stop to think about it further and in more depth, turns into what the fuck do I care? No one is going to study my little career in the future anyway.

On the other hand, as was pointed out to me once, my papers and books document gay life in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina and after; and could prove to be a valuable source of material for future queer scholars studying the gay history of New Orleans. Would simply destroying my papers rather than donating and archiving them be a loss of source material, just as I wonder about all the source material about queer lives in the past being destroyed and not surviving?

And then I laugh at myself for taking me and my career so ridiculously seriously.

After all, thanks to ebooks, my books will live on forever. Are my personal papers really that valuable to any future scholar? Probably not.

And on that note, my condom packs are calling me. Check in with you tomorrow, Constant Reader.