I was excited when I last updated the blog in May. The semester was over, and I looked forward to jumping into two very large projects. One is personal, the other the current novel.
Things did not go as planned. The utter exhaustion I was working under was not apparent, but as I tried to get back into the things I love to do, it became more apparent. I started therapy when we found out Emily had cancer, because I knew I was running on empty and would need help, and that’s been helpful, but as my friends pointed out, we took a lot of hits this year in health. On top of that, our university underwent some dramatic turns (announcing financial issues, then a merger, and then the ending of the merger and return to independence, the resignation of our university president) and all of that taking place within an atmosphere of oppressive state moves against all education creating more stress about the nature of the job, as well as the fact that I’m not a US citizen and now am living in a hostile state.
It’s a lot.
So, I’ve written a number of chapters of In Empire’s Shadow, but the other project took up all my free energy.
And I can’t talk about it.
Yet.
What I’m up to will become clear in about 2-3 weeks, and I’ll be able to talk. I’ve been keeping my head down, waiting for clarity and a decision that has to be made by an institution before I can reveal. I can’t talk about it yet, and it is the thing taking up all my waking hours and working time.
That’s hard.
But things could, in just a couple of weeks, become radically different and I’ll be able to share.
In the meantime, every day I wake up feeling the weight of the news that seeps through no matter how I try to filter or keep it carefuly corralled to certain times of day, as we need to get on.
I’m functioning in terms of cooking, cleaning, brushing my teeth, but the levels of dissociation that I hit sometimes are new levels because I have read history, and I suspect there’s so much worse to come before the better.
I’ve turned down a lot of travel and speaking gigs to keep my risk minimal, but that hits the pocket book. Before Covid, I was making decent money from the speaking and teaching workshops circuit, all that money went away. It’s one of the reasons I pivoted to teaching university, but that feels teneous as a career in the US now.
I’ve gone through many of the stages of grief this summer. Grief for a future I thought I was headed toward that no longer seems to exist. Grief for all the human beings I already see suffering, and the ones I know will be suffering once hospitals close, medicare is shut off after the midterms, more pollution is dumped, more public land sold, less science developed, medical miracles dying on the vine as NHS funding lies in limbo.
Unnecessary and cruel suffering that didn’t have to happen.
As a young man, having lived through a chaotic childhood with hardships and political turmoil, I developed a cynical and misanthropic view of the world. I operated on a warm level as a person, but in the privacy of my head, I viewed humanity as idiots who repeatedly punched themselves in the face due illiteracy and ignorance.
I spent my 30s working hard to become empathic, kind, and patient with humanity. It was work I was so proud of, changing how I saw people at their most fundamental because wise people, the people I wanted the world to be full of, grew that within themselves.
But reader, I confess to finding it a struggle when I see the ribs of a child starving to death in Gaza and videos of people smashing food headed for that child.
I find it hard when I see people laughing about the hospitals that will close, or cheering ICE on.
I’m gobsmacked to see Republicans now wavering on whether they’re against pedophila because their golden calf is telling them there’s nothing to see.
And my childhood self rises again, and it says “see? I told you that work in your 30s was a waste. The world is a dark place full of monsters that pretend to be human.”
That isn’t how I want to see the world. I wanted to see it full of promise, potential, and dynamic vigor. I wanted to see it like Dr. Who: humans being humans, flawed, yes, but ultimately, with some help, good and worth saving.
I’m trying.
Not coincidentally we’ve been watching a lot of Dr. Who as a family. And it lands on me that this escapism, the hope, the fun, the vision of a better view of humanity, this is how fiction helps us navigate hard times.
There’s a reason the facists are coming for literature and art again.
I’m just an author. So I’m going to step back into my books and try to write something that maybe will help someone else like me escape for a bit.
And maybe, if I’m lucky, it’ll be this current book.
Maybe.
Right now, it’s something I’m clinging to. A place I can go and get away from it all.
Another world. One where, although the odds are stacked against them, if they can stand together and believe there’s something better on the other side of the journey, we can make it there together.
It’s what I’ve got, right now.