Settled and Coming Back

Whoo, long time gone! Well, Toledo Ted has been on hold for a year now while I went through the wringer. The first edit of the novel sits on my hard drive, and notebook drive, and at least one backup, but I have done little but look at a few notes. I knew that much work was required, but I could give little. A similar problem ended my first college try - lack of funds.

As expected, and it does make a certain amount of sense even in my not-quite-grounded brain, with no income I could not stay in Sidney in a house with payments. With more than $1,000 due each month for mortgage and taxes, my bank account was like a tub with a large drain and no stopper. I held out for a miracle, God showed me another way.

In 2001, I moved into my new house and after the moving in was done, said that I would not move for at least ten years. On April 16, 2012, eleven years to the day after my closing date, I looked at my tax returns and knew then with no miracle from God that I would have to move, and in fact should have moved some months previously. I still maintain that God has a wonderful sense of humor, eleven years to the day, yeah buddy! Even I can laugh at that timing.

The housing market in Sidney recovered as the main employer began hiring again. I sold my house at a good price, but that very market also determined that the downwardly mobile could not afford a lesser home in that same town. With my real estate agent we looked at every home available in my price range, and we looked at some frightening places too! As of now, most of them are rented out at steep rates. Sidney is booming and I had to leave. I like to say that I lived in a tough neighborhood... to go broke in.

As I put my house up for sale, one neighbor bought a Jeep to play with. Another went to the lake in their long fifth-wheel camper with the boat trailing behind, almost a road train. A neighbor across the street bought a new boat and then sold his house and moved into the McMansions across the way. Construction projects went on all around my house from the hail damage, most were upgrades: I sold all my rifles to make the insurance deductibles. As I sit here crying into my blog, I had to laugh at it all this morning.

The stress of selling, buying, and moving this summer came crashing down on me in October as the seasonal change began in the daylight. The depression from PTSD tends to go through good periods and bad, more of a month to month basis than a day by day. I am affected by the seasons, though I do like autumn most of the four. It seems a bit unfair at times that the season I like best would also be one the PTSD tends to hit me harder. How do I describe this thing, this post-traumatic stress disorder?

Describe a new restaurant with people waiting in line to get in so good is the food produced by the chef, and I am likely to literally take a step back in terror. Lines are something most folks put up with to eat in their favorite restaurants. Both can trigger panic in me. Guests to my home are an invasion, and we speak of people that I know and love, not strangers. Dining in a friend's home for the first time, I may not be able to eat so anxious am I. Yet, I will go home and make up for it in a comfort food binge. Anxiety over imaginary situations beats me during idle moments, if I give free reign to my imagination. I can be anxious about being depressed, or turn it around and give in to depression over my anxiety. How can a person live this way?

Growing up in a church, I often wondered that same thing. Some persons it seemed were always on the prayer list with this ailment or that surgery. They got by in the same way I have discovered I'm sure. Day by day, prayer and trusting in God. Which brings us to the laughing. With all of my crying breaking out this morning, my electric griddle refused to give up my fried egg. That's what I had to laugh at! I don't believe that I have it so bad, if a stuck egg is such a noteworthy event in my snivelling.

Marine veteran of Grenada-Lebanon, survivor of a terrible auto accident that cost my friend Mike his life, terminated suddenly from a company I helped grow for almost 20 years, of course I have PTSD, or as I sometimes call it post-traumatic distress. I mean, why wouldn't I? I'm like that damsel I wanted to rescue in my youthful dreams of love and marriage, only it's me that needs the rescueing. I can laugh or cry over this thorn in my side, to use the Pauline expression, and if I have the choice I'll take laughing. Sometimes the tears catch me by surprise and I have to laugh later as with the little basement flooding that came up the other day in my new home.

Yes, with the proceeds from my house sale, I was able to buy an older home in a smaller town that isn't booming. The creditors have been satiated for the time being, though the howling and snapping is never far from the phone. The good news is no mortgage and the taxes are much lower across the state line. The house is much smaller, but I had to sell quite a few things to get by anyway, so there was less to fit in. The cats have made their adjustments, and most of the wailing and moaning stopped after a week or so. The cats remained mostly quiet after the move.

Is it time to take up Toledo Ted again? Something in this experience must be what God would have me to write. I choose to give God the glory in my weakness. I may not be able to hold down a regular job, but I can write. Perhaps my affliction is the only way God could keep me at home and writing. I don't have all the answers, but at least I can feed the question pawing at my jeans right now. He wants his kibble and writing to you is secondary. Without the cat I would probably sit too long and get too comfortable writing.

God bless you,
Bucky

A Long Time Gone

Good Monday morning on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Yes, I must apologize for my long absence. The holidays came and went. I gave away the only present I received this past Christmas. (A little detour into crybaby land there.) December is usually a tough month for many people and I am no different. The short days tend to get us down as the winter solstice approaches and some of us have one of those days in the month too. Not just a run of the mill bad day, but an anniversary such as Tolkien wrote about in The Lord of the Rings. Frodo Baggins had a couple of days that tended to haunt him each year. I didn't understand this until life laid a couple of 'em on me. December 4th is the anniversary of a bad auto accident and at that time each year I tend to get depressed more easily than at other times. You probably have days or times like that too. If not, praise God!

Back to the self-publishing experience. Last week, the cover art was completed... and I haven't brought myself to look at it yet. Part of the reason for that is that I have not done my part in rewriting the novel yet. I have gone through another period of what Twain called 'having nothing in the tank'. Whether this comes from the post traumatic stress or from God's own timing I don't know, but I do tend to get impatient and frustrated with it. Now the middle of January is here and I hope and pray that it is time to get underway once more.

Of course, when I began this new path in life, I would not be subject to the career hazards of writers. You know, the writer's block, the down times, and others. I would crank out book after book, dominate the bestseller lists, and just generally be above all the things that other authors have to contend with. You can see the fall coming in that one a mile off! Yep, I have proved to be a human writer just like every other. There are times when I despair of publishing anything at all. Times when I am ready to write and times when nothing comes. Times when I trust in God, and the times when I want to shout, "Hey, are you up there? Remember me!" I know that writing takes practice, but days may pass with only reading and no writing accomplished. Is that my fault? Perhaps not, it may be that times such as these are simply part of the process of moving from one season in life to a totally different and new season. I worked for nearly twenty years in a big corporation where assignments and duties were given to me, deadlines were set by higher authority, and I was not the one calling the shots. Now I have the freedom of the self-employed writer... and the pitfalls as well.

Learning a new life is never easy. Things from the old life cling. Some need to be let go. Believe it or don't, I tried to use project management early on in this writing thing. Plan a schedule, stick to it, draft the charts, estimate the times, and all that crap. Phoo, none of that worked. I hated the project management stuff in my old job; so I drug it with me to inflict on myself in this new one. Every time I say or think that I want to have thus and such done by this date it is like turning off a switch. Like a recovering alcoholic, I have found that I just need to pray and then take it one day at a time. Interesting comparison there, but perhaps not so far off the mark. Coming out of Corporameia or Cubeville, to use the Dilbert term, requires a recovery period like, say, the rest of your life. I remember even today the dread of Monday morning that started on Sunday afternoon. I can't believe how long I worked under that stress too! Now when things get tough the temptation is to go back? Yikes!

Lest this be all about bad news, I did start an experiment before Christmas to work out six days per week. The experimental part is to see if this will help in writing. Certainly it will help my health in general. I'm no Tebow. He is a young and fit athlete; I am no longer young, haven't been fit for a while, and could never claim to be an athlete. However, I use an ad-libed step workout with a small ladder and a step. A couple episodes of Home Improvement are used to set a workout length and to take my mind off the dreadful boredom of exercising alone in the basement. While it's not exactly Pilates, I think the workout has done wonders for me already. I can't speak to the writing effects yet, the jury is still out on that one. Let me take a look at that book cover...

Yours in Christ,
Bucky