Be Thankful
I decided to commit career suicide and delete my Facebook and Instagram accounts. (Scheduled for the end of this month.) I sent out a message letting people know, giving them an opportunity to reach out so I could exchange numbers and emails, but no one replied.
Such is the fickle mistress that is social media. It’s a veneer of friendship. Those that care about you, live in your texts, voice calls, and emails. Everyone else is on Uncle Zuck’s public facing rolodex.
This year was strange. The ups and downs of finding out your Dad has cancer but then the miracle of modern medicine/prayer saves him (or, at least prolongs his life). The promotion to a leadership position, when you feel completely unqualified to be in one. The increase in disposable income where, for the first time in a while, I you no longer feel stressed out about grocery shopping. And then, of course, the realization that this is probably the “best” years of your life so how things are going are a kind of benchmark for where things will be in 20 years…
When I wrote Spirit of Orn, I was writing from the perspective of a jaded 22-24 year old, which begs the question, with my lack of life experience, did I actually know how to render complex, interpersonal relationships? (Answer: definitely not.) Is it worth going back and pulling a Lucas and making a special edition of my first book? (Answer: definitely not?) Although, it was the first work where I felt that my characters were beginning to exhibit their own autonomy, I hadn’t yet experienced the death of a close family member, the fracturing on a relationship, or the death of a pet. These things contribute to the collection of life experiences that get synthesized into books by authors all the time. Any time you read something that seems oddly grounded and specific, it’s a good indication that the description or scenario was sourced from a real event in the author’s life. Fun fact: the demonic encounters of Conn that feature in the book come directly from my own life experiences of being afflicted by dark spiritual powers throughout my life. (Being a Christian, and worshiping a homeless king that said he was God incarnate, demonic activity isn’t as big of a stretch as you would think.) Those details, and the foundation of abuse and neglect that I routinely experienced growing up, I think made me into a relatively empathetic person. At least aware of them. Maybe.
I can be really oblivious to my own faults, sometimes.
With all that I’ve experienced, I ask again, is it worthwhile to go back and re-do some of my descriptions and dialogue in previous works? (Answer: probably not.)
Despite everything, I am thankful to be where I am today. Being content and included has always been a struggle for me. Yet I find most of these needs being met these days. I have a close group of friends now that meet on a regular basis to play boardgames, another that plays Dungeons and Dragons. I am connected to a great church, where the pastor is quickly becoming one of my best friends. I have also begun to come to terms with the frailty of the world, to not expect it to be always kind, but to trust that God is in control. The United States is not a divine institution mandated to exist in some goofy-ass dispensational theological framework. It is just one of many nation states in the procession of human history that will eventually fade into irrelevance by our collective ignorance or our misfortune. And that’s O.K..
Anyways… Consider that, for what it’s worth.
A quick update though: I am going to be writing a trilogy next, something that has been in my pocket since 2014-ish. I’ve bought my preliminary battery of research materials to acquaint myself with the cultural milieu that I am aiming to emulate. I even will put a book on swearing to use! Very excited though, moreso than I have been for a while now. A man can only write about robots for so long before he inevitably begins to feel like one!
Happy Thanksgiving!
