Burnout.

 

Sitting at that desk all day long.

Louis Shalako

Lately there’s this sense of boredom, a bit of depression and what sure seems like burnout.

I’ve worked pretty hard over the last six years, since publishing my first two novels. Now I have five pen-names, twenty novels and something like a hundred thirty-five ebook titles, with another slew of titles available in paperback.

At some point I just quit blogging for five pen names in rotation. In order to write a bunch of novels, the short stories and submissions sort of fell by the wayside. Every morning, I get up and check the emails. I check the sales account numbers. Then I go on a bunch of websites and read, sometimes for an hour and a half, sometimes two or more hours. I call it ‘the morning repost,’ and I post those stories as many places as I can in order for other people to get the benefit of them.

In the last six years, I worked pretty hard to educate myself as a writer, to build up a platform and to learn at least the basics of everything a person can learn in order to write and publish their own works.

Since January 2015, I wrote six novels of over 60,000 words each. That alone was a ton of work.

It’s difficult to take a day off once you get bitten by the bug, and yet, inevitably, I seem to be slacking off. Finding ideas is not that easy, and lately I haven’t been working at it. I have couple of blank files on the desktop and I haven’t even really thought about them. Publishing # 99 Easy Street as a serial sort of gives me a little something to do, a nice easy job that doesn’t take up too much time.

I have chores left undone, including taxes, price changes, edit and format Easy St., make a cover, all kinds of things really, and it’s like I just don’t care.

Bear in mind, it’s been a long winter if not a particularly harsh one. I’m lucky to get out of here for an hour or two a day. Three or four hours away from the house would be a real good day for me.

I am at this desk pretty much all day, every day, and this has been going on for some time.

At some point, I need to do something different once in a while. This is just what we can’t afford to do after twenty-three years on a very small pension, and after all this time, book sales are not all that impressive.

As somebody once said, if you can quit, then do it—

The trouble is, that if I just gave up on writing, there wouldn’t be much left, and I’d be even more bored than I am now.

END

On Grief.

Louis Shalako

My dad died about four years ago.

The worst of the grief lasted about six months. The first year was pretty rough.

My father was eighty when he passed away.

He had lived a good life.

I knew he had Parkinson’s disease in about 2002, and he passed away, I’m thinking, about September 2012.

I think about him every day, and yet the pain, the loss, the regret is much diminished.

My grandmother, who was 100 and a half years old, died two months later. I don’t know why, but the effect was a lot different.

Maybe it was the two of them leaving so close together. The passing of my grandmother affected me so much less.

I was already numb.

The funny thing is, that my cat was killed by a car. That would be about 2011. The grieving process was exactly the same—the first six months were sheer hell. The first fucking year was pretty bad—and we’re talking a God-damned cat here, not my grandmother…

I had the cat trained.

He would lay flat on his back, sort of under my armpit, laying in bed, his head on my shoulder, purring away and looking up at me with love in his eyes, until I said hey!

You little bastard.

And I that's when I rolled over and went to sleep.

That’s just love or something, and yet I must have loved my grandmother too.

A hundred years is one hell of a long time, and so is eighty years.

But that fucking cat wasn’t even full grown when some poor bastard hit him going down Kathleen St.

It’s all right, Bud.

It can happen to anyone.

END

On Smoking, and Sublimation.

Louis Shalako

When I got up this morning, I had two smokes left.

Normally, I wouldn’t leave the house until around ten o’clock.

I’ve developed quite the routine. To go to Seven-Eleven, get a cup of coffee. To drive down to the rez, and pick up anywhere from one pack to a carton of smokes…to take back a few empties to the beer store and pick up a few more beers. I go to the grocery store for one litre of milk when it really is cheaper to buy the bag of three litres. It’s a matter of killing time.

It’s a make-work project. It gives me something to do.

Let’s face it. I live alone. I’m not married, I don’t have a girlfriend or boyfriend. I don’t have kids or grandkids. I don’t have a job.

I don’t have any hobby outside of writing, although at one time I did.

Smoking is accessible—anyone can afford to smoke. You can buy a pack of shitty smokes for two bucks. You can get a can of beer for two bucks. It does bring a kind of relief—for what it’s worth and for how long it lasts.

A lot of the time we don’t even get any enjoyment out of it. It's a kind of sublimation of some other personal desires, at least that's my theory.

It's possible to look back to a time before I smoked. I was happy enough in not smoking...

What in the hell happened...???

How many times have I squinted through the smoke, choking and gagging a bit, as I tried to put in my password to get in to the email account?

It doesn’t make any sense.

Today, I skipped the shower, got dressed and rushed off to get them damned smokes.

So far today, since 7:30 a.m., I’ve had thirteen cigarettes. It’s about 4:30 p.m. and this is actually pretty good for me.

Normally I would have been onto that second pack by now.

It is true that I have spent many happy hours, in front of the computer, with a pack of smokes, a cold beer and working away on yet another story.

Part of it, I think is boredom—sheer, unmitigated boredom. It’s like I don’t quite know what to do with myself.

At one time, this might have seemed like the perfect life.

I also think that quitting—especially smoking, cold-turkey, would be a little too traumatic.

The time to quit is while I still have money!

That might be a good motivator.

It’s a question of how long I can keep it up.

There is the question of what I might replace it with…

Some question of where do I go from here, I guess.

But almost anything would be better than what I’m doing right now.

END