“Slowly I Turned”: Drowning in Privilege

I’ve been extremely sporadic in updating my blog during the summer so far. I admit it, and I regret none of it. If I must go for two months without pay from my day job, then you’d better believe I’ll use those two months to indulge my creative side as much as is humanly possible. So far, I have finalized the cover art for the second Makkarios novel (release date still holding steady at mid-October); I have plunged headlong into the planning stages of a sequel to Faerie Tales for Travelers, which shall be my project for August’s Camp NaNoWriMo. I’m rereading my way through my fiction library, now that I have rescued my books out of their boxes. Because I’m a word person rather than a numbers person, I’m attempting to achieve a respectable level of skill at Sudoku and bolstering my math-related skills on Khan Academy. (I am mildly addicted to Khan Academy.) I’ve fallen behind on my efforts to teach myself how to play the ukelele, sadly, although I picked up a new set of chord charts that should help me figure out where my fingers are supposed to go. Also I still want to learn how to make my own ice cream; as yet I’m lacking the proper tools for that job. On top of all these things, I have discovered the fun of baiting the aggressive, not to say officious, salespeople at Becker Furniture World in Roseville (hint: all you need to do is walk around looking at their stock piece by piece without stopping or slowing long enough for one of them to latch onto you to “help” you; deliberately making eye contact and saying hello to them only adds spice to the game). I have no idea how some of my coworkers can say they get bored if they don’t have recourse to their school-year duties. There’s always so much to do.

On all these fronts, I shall keep you posted as often as I can. Suffice it to say that nonfiction is not one of my higher priorities these days. Since I have been liberated temporarily from those phenomena that comprise most of my writing struggles, I shall wallow in the privilege of that freedom to the uttermost. Some things are well worth forsaking income for a time.