Given my previous posts, you might think my less frequent updates were me taking a vacation from writing, like I said I would. Um…okay, that actually didn’t happen. In fact, my plans to take a vacation lasted all of a day and a half. Since then, I’ve been writing a lot. I started a new novella, wrote a short 2K story, and added another 20K to an ongoing novel project.
All of this sounds great, until you realize that I’m incapable of resting. You’d think having a handicap would convince me to rest, but it doesn’t. I work myself into fatigue and drop all the time, but I can’t rest. I can try, but soon after I’m doing nothing, my moods crash. I don’t feel right unless I’m doing something productive.
I was actually a worse workaholic earlier in my life. I would work a regular jub for 40 to 50 hours, and then come home and work on my creative projects. Any of my old friends can tell you about the manic phases where I would disappear for weeks at a time because I was taken with a new idea and wanted to work on it on my computer.
Am I really “better” now? Well, no. I do take more naps during the day, and some days, I don’t get started on my projects until very late in the evening. But once I’m on, I’m on until fatigue shuts me off.
This kind of workaholic behavior eventually leads to mo0d crashes and brain drain, phases where I’m so out of it that even dressing and feeding myself are difficult tasks. I get snappy with people, and I spend a lot of time with thoughts of self-loathing. I wonder what’s the point of writing all this crap.
But deep down, I know the reason why. It’s because I want to leave something behind for when I’m gone. When I die, there won’t be a massive funeral with kids and grandkids for me. There will be a few people, depending on who outlives me. And then, after that? Nothing. The quiet sigh and slip into death followed by silence, when nobody talks about me, thinks about me, cares about me.
I struggle so hard to make something important to me because I’m afraid of going too quietly into the night. The fear clutches my heart in a vice, wakes me from my fatigue-induced comas, and demands to know, “What have you done lately to make some noise?”
So, on these times when you see the blog get quiet and you realize I’m off in a typing frenzy again, try not to think of me as lucky for being able to write so much. I’m not lucky to be working myself to death. I’m just haunted by the specter of the Grim Reaper, and he’s always just behind me.
That’s not luck. It’s working in blind terror.
... I write dark fiction in a variety of genres. My blog contains my rants and rambles, and some short fiction that can only be found here.
I can be pretty fucking offensive, so viewer discretion is advised.