Week 43 - Guilt Trip

 

Update – Doing pretty well, for a change. I’ve been game-free for a week now. I’ve been writing instead. I just finished a big info dump chapter in the detective book; from here on out it’s a straight race down the home stretch to the finish. There’s a good chance I can get this second draft finished before the end of the month. Part of that, unfortunately, is because I haven’t gotten any new assignments from my paid job in three weeks. No guarantee I’ll get any, either. For all I know, the company will be shutting down at the end of the year. Things always slow down around Christmas so I’ve been going through this every November-December for at least the past 3-4 years. Each time I’ve been lucky, but now…well, let’s just head on to the post proper, shall we?

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Here’s the deal: I retired a couple of years ago, at age 63, mostly because I finally accepted that nobody was going to give me a full-time job with benefits and a living wage when they could hire some inexperienced high-school grad for a lot less money and lower health insurance costs. For the last couple years I’ve been getting by on Social Security and working as a freelance editor for an e-book publisher. It was a pretty sweet deal, since at the time I was making enough from the paid work to cover my lot rent and utilities, with SS handling the rest. On good months I could even sock a few bucks away in savings. I should have been writing and subbing too, but…I’m not sure what happened. Complacency, maybe. Poor sales on the books I did put out. Isolation leading to depression and the video game addiction. A sedentary lifestyle exacerbated by the Covid lockdown. I decided to turn things around at the beginning of 2023. Keep working, get back into writing. Build myself a future.

And that’s when the fun began. First a change in the tax laws socked me with a $700 bill in taxes and led to me having to pay quarterly (because I’m a contract worker, that makes me self-employed). That decimated my savings right off the bat. Then there was the diagnosis of uterine cancer which led to the hysterectomy. Then the long-time writers in the publisher’s stable pretty much left en masse, reducing my workload to a trickle. Then there was inflation. And new expenses, as both the house and I began to break down at the same time. Again, I could have written more, if I hadn’t been blocked by anxiety.

And then the election happened.

I voted for Harris. I have no regrets. It was a choice between two ideologies; one of the sides didn’t give a shit if women suffered and died, and was making noises about cutting Social Security, at the moment my main source of income. Not exactly a coin-toss decision for me. I was certain the majority of Americans, especially American women, would feel the same way.

Boy, was I wrong. I’m pretty sure men hate us; Republican men appear to, at any rate. I thought women would vote for self-preservation. I forgot how much women hate other women, probably more than the men do. Given the choice between an intelligent, experienced black woman and a white, male convicted felon and established rapist with the cognitive skill of a turnip—well, we all know the outcome. A whopping 52 percent of white women voted for the rapist/felon because no way in hell were they going to put some darky bitch in the Oval Office, even if she’d vowed to save their lives. No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

So I could be losing my Social Security within the next couple of months. To all you sons and daughters of bitches, fuck you very much. I’ll save you a spot at the homeless shelter because your turn will come soon enough.

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Why the guilt, then? Because, even though I have leftist leanings, that doesn’t mean I blindly support all leftists. I think I’ve made my antipathy for “wokeism” and the radical SJWs who pushed it onto all of us clear. I don’t like anything or anyone who interferes in my efforts to make a living. Yes, you have a right to exist and be heard, but when you get into publishing and push your agenda into my chosen genres to the point of excluding all voices but your own, that’s when you and I have an issue.

That’s changed now. The election of the Straight White Supremacist Party means my book, with its straight white protagonist and mostly white cast, suddenly has a better shot at publication. So do a lot of my older SFF writings, which had mostly male leads. Then there’s that series that I started and got blocked on. I decided from the beginning, way back even before Donnie’s first go-round, that the series’ leads would all be straight white men from Texas. With guns. That might have been the kiss of death even a year ago. It would probably be a bestseller now.

I’m sorry a lot of women from both sides of the political fence are going to suffer and die. I’m not sorry the election may have changed publishing enough so that I have a shot at survival. In our new zero-sum society, it’s every gal for herself.

I doubt this will last long. When those in power run out of victims, they’ll likely turn on each other, and We the People should be able to oust them in favor of someone we can bitch about with impunity. Or else we’ll all be speaking Russian. Hey! I might get an answer to my question if Vladdie Boy does invade Alaska. There’s always an upside to everything. See y’all (hopefully) next week.

Week 37 - Things Could Be Worse

 

Update – Last week wasn’t exactly me at the top of my form. I had a week off between paid assignments—plenty of time to write. Instead I mostly played games on the new laptop. That’s the only bright spot: I figured out how to fix the cursor’s zoom problem. Turns out it was software, not hardware. I went into Systems, found the Cursor section, discovered the Zoom box was checked, and unchecked it. Haven’t had a problem since. I was able to restore my missing Recycle Bin function using the same method. I’m still having minor issues with an overly-sensitive mouse pad, but I bet I just have to click or unclick a box there too and it’ll go away. Eventually I’ll get around to that.

I did start writing again—on Sunday, the day before my next assignment was due to come in. Now I’m beating myself up over a wasted week. At some point my subconscious and I will need to have a long-overdue serious talk.

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Anybody reading this, you just caught a break. Last night I had a bad bout of insomnia. Close to two early-morning hours of sleeplessness, bad memories, regrets, recrimination, self-pity and nearly-nonstop whining. I was going to share all that with you lucky people. But then it hit me: all things considered, I’ve got it pretty good. Yes, I can’t trust my car any more and I’m facing growing credit-card debt. On the other hand, I had uterine cancer but caught it early enough that all it cost me was removal of an organ that retired ten years before I did. I didn’t even need chemo or radiation treatments. I skated right through what could have been a life-altering—or life-ending—illness. I really have no right to whine about anything. No matter how bad I think things are, somebody somewhere has got it a million times worse.

Take, for instance, current Presidential candidate Donald Trump. He doesn’t have to be President—he absolutely needs to be President again, because without the protection of high public office, his butt will be going to jail. He’s already been convicted of a felony by the State of New York. Then there’s that little matter of January 6^th. The Supreme Court gave him a reprieve, but he can only fully dodge that bullet if he gets elected again. His flunkies are protecting him, but some in the party are beginning to sidle away. If he loses, guaran-damn-tee ya the whole passel of rats will jump ship, leaving him to sink on his own. He thought he had a shoo-in, but then Biden pulled a fast one and dropped out of the race, leaving Donnie to flounder against someone younger, smarter, browner and more female than he is. A popular female, with bigger, happier crowds at her rallies. I thought I suffered from insomnia? Donnie probably hasn’t slept well in months.

And now, on top of everything else, people are shooting at him.

When you look at it that way, all in all I have no reason to gripe. All I’ve got to worry about is paying bills, staying healthy, and taking the positive actions that’ll enable me to deal with the first two. I’m not facing national public humiliation or possible jail time. Nobody’s taking potshots at me. Not yet, anyway. The hardest thing I need to do is get off my ass and deal with life instead of whining about it. If I can do that, and avoid fomenting an insurrection against the US government, I should be okay.

Like I said, I’ve already gone back to writing. I have a couple side ideas I can try to work in. I’m not running for public office. Life is good. Especially for you folks. You just got an upbeat message instead of more whine with your cheese. You too can fix a zooming cursor now. No need to thank me. See y’all next week.