Stultus: Blog

for making the shitjob of a year 2019 look in retrospect like a golden era :/

I'm hanging in there... doing sort of alright, but feeling a bit overwhelmed. Wife and I both unemployed at home due to COVID and now hustling side gigs to keep the lights turned on. The current madness, with more protests and outright senseless rioting has just taken an overall bad situation and just made things worse. No one remembers history. I don't think they teach it in schools anymore (other than evil white men = bad). Burning down your own city rarely improves the economic situation, even years later. I recently read a report that even 40 years after the LA Watts riots, that most businesses never returned to the area. Same after the Rodney King riots... economic activity permanently decreased in that area. Politicians unhelpfully telling the mobs to 'burn it all down - we'll rebuild' are being comically disingenuous. It won't be any sort of long term economic improvement.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. - Aristotle

In 1969 the Hong Kong Flu came along and killed at least as many people in the USA as COVID has so far, if not far more. No social distancing then, no radical lockdown closures of the entire economy, no radical government reaction or over-reaction. We survived (as we have every other prior pandemic) by developing our herd immunity and keeping calm and carrying on. Not so much now... when it's better to close millions of businesses and put a hundred million people out of work instead :/

Good job politicos (of both blue and red states)! You've destroyed at least half of the small businesses of this country... but bailed out Wall Street (again) and made AMAZON so obscenely rich that they now have a virtual monopoly on all retail sales. Time for some old fashioned Teddy Roosevelt 'Trust Busting'... but no politician of either party has the balls to try it :(

I also wonder why Minneapolis, which hasn't elected a Republican mayor or city councilman in over two decades, is suddenly blaming the President (and everyone else other than themselves) for their own civil mismanagement?

Politically, I'm an evil Moderate... hated by both liberals and conservatives, but I have just enough sense of Reason left to know that when politicians start violently pointing the fingers of blame around at everyone but themselves, it's because the #1 main problem is visible every morning in front of their own bathroom mirror.

Bring on the guillotines, sure, but only if we can purge the herd of politicians of BOTH parties... equally! No... it won't cure the stupidity, but perhaps we'd at least enjoy a bit of different idiocy for awhile.

Anyway, the world is too strange right now for me to deal with, so I'm mostly trying not to! I'm avoiding the news, or at least as much as I can, but what seeps though doesn't improve my depression. I'm also really needing to focus all of my non-sleep hours for wrangling every little bit of extra income I can, so if I steal a few writing hours I then feel guilty about the time lost or 'wasted', when I should have been posting new sale items on eBay or Etsy instead.

Health issues... about the same. Long term pain/blood sugar issues all about the same, but can't get into my GP's office nowadays due to COVID fears. Stress/Depression issues probably worse, but I get up out of bed in the morning and carry on anyway.

I'm very behind on answering reader emails, 95% of which are 'when is the next chapter of series XXXX?' Short answer: damned if I know when.

I made it with about an hour left to spare - getting this years three chapter Christmas story written, sent off for overly hasty review, and then posted up in its entirety before Christmas Day was over! :)

This tale has significant potential for a later sequel, but I'll likely resist the urge. I want the couple to enjoy their happily ever after and not worry about overly precocious teen girls wanting to hop into their bed in a few short years. I don't do incest stories... or more than one per decade anyway!

Back to writing, I hope, by late this weekend. After too long of an absence, I'm now remembering why I loved to write - and need to keep up with it despite other ongoing issues.

And Happy New Year's to you!

And Chapter Three (the conclusion) is off at editing. I'm hoping to post it sometime tomorrow (Christmas day/evening) as long as I get one or two good set of edits. Next week, when things are very quiet, I'll probably update all of the edits and do some very minor tweaks. At least one or two typos always escapes me... always.

Going to try to work on an updated chapter later this week for one of my current incomplete serials and stories. Lots to choose from... so not sure which squeaky wheel gets the grease first.

Santa Loves All Kids, Especially Ginger Ones - Chapter One has been uploaded to SOL's story queue - hopefully it appears shortly.

I'm hoping to have the final chapter up later this week, perhaps by Christmas, but likely by the weekend. Other stuff in various stages of semi-progress - my writing time is still minimal, but I'm trying to get some other chapters done.

Edit -
Chapters 2 & 3 are done! Hoping to post them tonight or tomorrow at the latest. Just waiting for one or two more edits to come back. I've also tweaked Chapter One to fix two lingering typos that were irritating me.

It's a quiet Christmas week here... and I'm writing!

I finished up Chapter One today and it's off for overly hasty editing and proofing. I plan to post it up on Friday evening. Doing the final chapter takes priority, but I am wanting to do another quick-ish holiday story for next week.

No, I have not forgotten about my annual chapter of 'When the Hunter...'

Health and writing time availability are both recurring issues - but I've been in the mood to write. May it continue...