Just trying to get through

Just trying to get through the days. There's no drink strong enough, and not green or beer or wine or spirts or distraction enough in the world to escape my sadness. So I stumble through. Some days are better than others. When I manage to get things done, whether cleaning the bathroom or vacuuming around the house, it's a small victory, to be sure, but a victory nonetheless.

Know what evidence of bereavement is? It is going to the downstairs bathroom and seeing piles of dust bunnies along the baseboard trim, a filth that has accrued during my two months of taking care of my sister, and living in two cities alternately, and not bothering to clean it. I don't clean the mess up, because. there is too much to do elsewhere in the house. In fact, there is two months' worth of things to catch up and resume some sort of semblance of a life.

I think about writing a lot. 

I let the most baroque ideas of the past weeks return from their safe submersion in the well, then let them age, like fine wine, to become what they want to become. As well, I glance askance at my incompletely revised second horror novel, cognizant of where I left things, characters paused, as though waiting for my directions or descriptions to continue them on their adventures. 

But generally, there's no writing lately. 

Also keeping a scant social media presence. I have limited patience for idle chitchat and moral indignation nowadays or educating others about whatever miscellany they insist on inquiring about, nor for people decrying having a bad year, for the reasons they cite. I am not in the business of citing my year's accomplishments at this stage, as I am not seeking approval or affirmation or encouragement or sympathy or, worse, pity. So I back-channel in and out of social media, making a connection here, a rare comment here, or there. At this stage of this miserable year, I am angry, saddened and removed, so it is just as well as I refrain from doom-scrolling or commenting ad much as possible. 

However, I must qualify my sentiments. Many friends, real-life, red-blooded friends, from my ex when I lived in London, England back in '98, to my crush in grade five to a friend in my hometown to my next-door neighbour to people I used to serve in comic-book retail to longtime friends of the family, have reached out with condolences regarding my recent death in the family. I find these missives touching and thoughtful. I'm grateful, although it has been difficult to read more than one or two of these messages of sympathy in a day.

In terms of a routine that I am trying to return to, I have some projects. One is a co-editing project, which I cannot reveal details about until the ink has dried on the contract. But I can say that it is a fun, macabre and delightful endeavor involving horror fiction, and a project unlike any I have never undertaken before.

Somehow, amid this turmoil, I landed some freelance reviewing work at a major U.S. speculative-fiction publication. There, I also found an editor sympathetic to my cause. Currently, I am reviewing U.S. writer Charles Payseur's short-story collection, The Burning Day and Other Strange Stories. While I can't give readers a glimpse of the betrothed before the wedding day (or the publication date of my review), I will say that Payseur's 22 stories are great bang for one's buck. He's also a very self-assured fantasy and sci-fi writer, both efficient and confident in his narrative voice. The lustrous cover, too, is likely my favourite of 2021, from any press, small or large (this one's Lethe Press, my publisher).

I have included an action shot of a freelance writer's life.