Picking Up the Pieces

This morning I was looking at my blog and I realized the last post I wrote was back on September 27th. I wrote about what the word normal is. Well the past 16 days have been nothing close to normal for me. The reason I've been scarce on the blog scene (besides my posts over on the Samhain's Sirens page) is because I've fallen a bit into a funk during this government shutdown. I figured if I wrote anything it would either be a) bitching about Congress, b) complaining about how I'm losing money, or c) a horrible bloody short story to vent my feelings.

All those feeling though of sadness, anger, and anxiety have been replaced by apathy. Never in my life have I felt so apathetic. I've found a numbness has just washed over me as I remain waiting in the wings for Congress to get its act together. This apathy isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's allowed me to just continue with what I'm doing and figure out how to supplement what I've lost by being out of work for this long.

So what have I been doing during this Congressional tantrum? Well while this would've been a great time to get to work on Return to Summer's Hollow I've found myself lacking inspiration. Instead I binge watched Sons of Anarchy for about a week and a half in between going to visit my Dad who is having health issues. Let me just say if you haven't watched Sons of Anarchy go to Netflix and start watching now. I'm pretty stuck in my ways on what my favorite shows are but this show definitely breaks into my top 3 all time favorite shows. It has also given me the inspiration to write some new short stories that deviate away from my usual horror genre and to the crime/corruption genre (which I dip into in my first book: Dark Cell).

As far as work is concerned, I've been able to pick up a couple of hours at my old company to at least pay off some bills. My book sales for Summer's Hollow have been slowly growing so that's another source of at least spending money (and we all know when I say that I mean coffee money). I'm better off than a lot of people out there since thankfully Grant is private sector. Still, being a contractor and therefore not being paid unless I work, we are hurting during this time. Let's face it Grad School, a Wedding, and a house aren't exactly cheap things. I'm hanging in there, just feeling very numb to all of it.

I've lost all faith in the leaders of this country to be quite honest. But life must go on. I've got plenty of things to keep me occupied during this stalemate and I know the financial stuff will work itself out. Until then I'll just keep working out for obscene amounts each day and keeping my head buried in my eternal loop of Sons of Anarchy episodes and my new short story series.