Years ago, at one of the darkest moments, a friend in the Austen fandom gave me a motto in a quote from George S. Paton. The quote is: Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom.
It’s one of the things I had pinned to my board, and which kept me going when it seemed like I’d hit the bottom, and then there was another bottom underneath.
I wasn’t sure I believed it. Or at least I didn’t believe there could be bouncing, and there could be success. Look, after a while you lose sight of where you hoped to go. After a while things get lost in the shuffle.
But it turns out it was right, anyway.
It was only after losing my career, my beloved home state, the familiar places, the things I loved and all my certainties about the world and life in general (in 2020) that I had the courage to write the book I’d been avoiding for the last … forty plus years.
And it worked. How high will it bounce? I don’t know. Jury still out. But it did give me a bounce anyway. It gave me hope back.
Perhaps the country too needed to hit bottom. Which we did in the four years of autopen. Let’s hope we bounce all the way to the stars.
My friend Charlie Martin says “You can’t recover for someone else.” And that’s of course, true. Whatever is holding you back, whether real or not, whether self-inflicted or not, you have to fight it on your own. I can’t fight it for you. No one can.
What I can do is give you hope. People have hit bottom before, and then bounced really high. And maybe it will happen again. Maybe it will happen for you.
You won’t know till you hit bottom. And start bouncing.
This coming year: remember to bounce. Bounce to the stars!
I’m angry and sad, and I don’t know what to do with any of it.
So let me share so you too can also be angry and sad:
The thing is, if you think it’s just the Somalis, or JUST the daycare fraud… You’re air-dreaming.
Look, as I many times remind people, I come from what is technically an European country, and yet… What is considered fraud here is just the way you do business there. All the way down.
America, as dirty as we’ve gotten, is REMARKABLY clean. Oh, never as clean as we’d like it to be or think it is. Never was.
To an extent fraud is inherent to humanity. Stopping fraud would require “If only everyone” and as we know there has been no time in the history of ever when everyone did the same thing at once. If tomorrow someone invented a shot that allows you to live disease free forever, about 2/3 of the people or more would refuse to take it.
However, most countries and most cultures are so choked with fraud they achieve nothing. To an extent, for a shining moment the US was not so stopped up by fraud and that allowed us to push humanity forward a massive amount. Fraud was still there, from the party machines to the federal contractors, but it wasn’t so pervasive that nothing else happened.
And then–
Well, it was baked into the centralization of power, wasn’t it? The more money there is somewhere — and there’s a ton of money in our federal government. Really a sh*tton of money — the more the fraud will grow.
But then all of this was incrementalized by…. mass migration.
I pointed out on twitter the other day that while I don’t think we should totally shut of immigration, except temporarily, I DO think we should UTTERLY stop chain migration and “family migration”. Yes, because I’m cruel. Why else?
No, on the serious side, because those two are a gateway to mass migration and mass migration means never having to assimilate. As much as I wanted to assimilate, if instead of being pitchforked into the country with my American born and raised (whose family had been here since the 1600s (and a branch before)) husband I’d come with my entire extended family, I probably would never have acculturated. There would be mom’s judgement and dad’s judgment, and what the cousins would say, and it would rapidly turn into “us against how the Americans do it.” And acculturating meant breaking with your family. (It does mean that anyway, to a great extent, as much as I still love them. I’m not of them and they fail to get me.) Something most people don’t want to EVER do.
Doesn’t mean assimilation doesn’t happen. eventually the vast masses of Irish and Italian became largely American, but it takes three generations to do that. And some stuff remains, always.
Which is why for a while at least — until we get our culture to stop simping for everyone else — and maybe forever we need to cut off chain migration. And family reunification should ONLY be done… Well, a couple can come through together. A citizen (which means years of wait for citizenship) can bring in his wife/her husband. BUT children over say 6 years of age? One at a time. Because it requires the last one being a citizen to bring another. One for one. Don’t like it? Don’t immigrate. And parents? ONLY IN EXTREME PROVABLE NEED.
Also of course, yes, this wouldn’t apply to refugees, but we do need to establish who is an actual refugee — hint, refugees don’t go back on vacations to the place the fled from — and even in those cases, we should disperse them, using the nuclear family as a unit. “You can’t settle in NYC. I don’t care if all your cousins are there. You are assigned…. Arizona.”
Yes, this is more authoritarian than we’d tolerate, but it’s for GUESTS, not citizens.
Why? Well, beyond the fact that I think we desperately need assimilation? Because we need to break up the fraud mentality from other countries.
Again, if you think that’s just Somalis! Every country bordering the Mediterranean has this problem, and don’t get me started on Africa. JUST DON’T. Or India. Or any other place that’s been invaded multiple times. You work around the authorities, and there’s no inherent respect for the rule of law. PERIOD.
Which leads to stuff like this.
We’re back to the DOGE question “What if all our debt (and a bit besides) is just fraud?”
As we all know I’m the philosophical persuasion that Taxation is THEFT. All taxation. Because it’s taken under threat of force, and because it’s not moral for a group to do something an individual can’t do.
But there are purposes for which I — and not just me! — would willingly donate if not the same close to the same amount we pay in taxes. For me, the things to which I’d gleefully donate to protect our borders, space exploration, biological research (to the extent I think government should do those last two, which is none, but you know, I’d still donate to that.)
There are things to which, if not a government, a large enough enterprise-control is needed as a force multiplier.
Pouring it down the rat hole of democrat corruption is not one of those.
And it’s mostly democrat corruption. No, not because the GOP is Simon pure — I’d bet you there’ 50% of them on the China payroll! — but because the GOP is in the crosshairs of the MSM and for the last 100 years if one of them so much as farted in church, he’d be taken down in the media. Meanwhile, the left? Oh, dear. by the mid 20th century I’m not even sure the live boy or dead girl in bed thing applied. They could do what they wanted. And did.
Combine this with the fact that might be derived from it, but then again might be inherent to the dems, that they have no understanding of second — let alone third — order consequences and believing that what they want to happen is what will happen, and they turned “Diversity is our strength” into a through of dirty money, in which they’ve been wallowing like pigs. (Because if you don’t think they get a kickback from all of this.)
And this, ladies, gentlemen and those who just looked in their pants to figure out which, and those who are just as puzzled after looking in their pants: THIS is why they’re fighting so hard.
This is why they defend every “Maryland dad” and are sobbing in their soy lattes over the bombed drug boats.
It’s not the empathy for the poor suffering criminals — when did the left have empathy anyway? Talk to them about people genuinely being abused and if you’re lucky you’ll get “they deserved it because their ancestors–” — it’s the sadness over the decreasing stream of sweet sweet dirty money.
And I don’t know how and I don’t even know how to start, but that spigot needs to stop and needs to stop right now.
It would be bad enough to let the epitaph of mankind be: “We gave up the stars for welfare.”
This is what the left has been trying to talk us into for years, with stuff like “We shouldn’t go to other worlds until we learn to take care of this one” or “while there are poor on Earth” or any other bilge. (Bilge because this is like saying “You can’t go to college until you defeat your auto-immune.” The two aren’t related.)
BUT–
BUT–
“We gave up the stars for fraud”?
I don’t know if in the vast universe there is anyone to read our epitaph, but I firmly believe we owe it to ourselves not to let it be that.
Good morning Huns and Hoydens, pull up your chairs, grab your hot cocoa, and let me tell you a story, while Sarah writes over there in her chair.
Many, many years ago, before I ever met Sarah, long enough ago that the kids involved are grown and flown, I met a lady named Pam Uphoff on the internet. She wrote fun books, she let me proofread them, which meant I got free entertainment, she got proofed books, and we were young and broke and had kids, so money was often tight. She wrote a couple juvenile books under the pen name Zoey Ivers, and I bought them for my boys.
And they fell in love.
Those two agreed on nothing, except that having to share a room was the worst ever. They still agree on very little. But they did and do agree that this Zoey Ivers is the Best Writer Ever. She doesn’t put “Ick, romance” in her books. She doesn’t put “Stupid Adults” in her books. She puts Good Adventures in her books. “You know, Ma, the kid who got grounded totally deserved it.” I liked the books–they didn’t encourage stupid behaviors, they had good stories. The boys liked the books. Win-win.
My husband got laid off. Christmas rolled around. And I thought, ok, well, a new paperback isn’t that much, and they’d share it for a gift, I can scrape the money up, if the third book is out by then. I knew the first two stories were done–I was in contact with Pam by blog and by email, after all. So I emailed her. She emailed back. The book would not be done by Christmas.
You guys, Pam sent me the first two stories as attachments to the email, and said I could print them out for my boys for Christmas.
There was some candy in the stockings, not much, but some, and a couple hotwheels cars. There were socks under the tree. Our sons didn’t care. They had new stories. That was all they cared about.
To this day, they tell me the Best Christmas Ever was when they woke up to two thirds of Atlantis+ in their stockings. And, like I said, they’re grown adults now. Nothing, ever, has topped Pam’s act of kindness and generosity to those two boys at Christmas.
Yuri Popov was born and raised on a primitive Research World, where his scientist dad and uncle worked, avoiding the rest of the family.
But as he approaches his eighteenth birthday, it’s time to meet that family, and deal with a culture having more trouble adjusting to the new reality, than Yuri the Tiger Hunter will have dealing with a modern society.
For nearly ten years, Surela “Rel” Silin Eddings has been plying the galactic waters on the merchant vessel Earthrise, picking up sundries for the home system from which she remains exiled… and enjoying herself despite it. How else, with a congenial crew, dozens of worlds to explore, and so many things to learn? Most days, she can even forget she’s a criminal to her own people, and that’s the way she likes it. The last thing Surela wants is a new mission… particularly one that involves haring off into the unknown reaches of space in search of an Eldritch from a House predisposed to hate her for her misdeeds. But the Empress has decided one of the Eldritch’s waywards needs to come home, and Surela’s the woman to fetch her.As usual, nothing goes as planned…
High above Earth, the privately funded Aurora III space station represents the next step in human progress—clean energy, advanced research, and confidence born of flawless simulations.
When a revolutionary experiment known as Project Helios Seed is activated, the crew expects routine success. Instead, they encounter something no model predicted: a hybrid organic–silicon system that adapts faster than human oversight can contain.
As subtle anomalies multiply and safeguards quietly erode, the crew of Aurora III must confront a growing truth—technology that feels familiar can still become dangerous when its limits are assumed rather than enforced. With time running out and Earth preparing drastic countermeasures, the station’s crew faces a final test of responsibility, restraint, and courage.
The Quiet Orbit: The Aurora III Incident is a calm, suspenseful science-fiction novel in the tradition of classic mid-century stories—where professionalism matters, heroism is measured, and survival depends not on panic, but on doing things the right way.
On a remote mining station, Nyalin hides a secret that would make her a hunted woman—she is a Crystal Keeper, a protector of a shard of the powerful Starfire crystal. However, when a strange shuttle falls through a portal near the mining station, she can no longer avoid her responsibilities. The human pilot, Vellin, is part of a research team that has developed gateways for instant travel anywhere in the universe without requiring a Starfire crystal, and he has been followed by an enemy through the portal.
To stop dangerous forces from possessing the gateways to spread destruction, Nya must team up with Vel and risk exposing her secret. In their race to destroy the gateways, they will find allies and enemies… and a new reason to worry.
The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I don’t understand this place at all.
First I helped Maxim kill a werewolf, then I kissed him, and then I found out that he was about twice as old as he looked. Now Maxim is about to be crowned King of the Stormcrows aboard a luxury airship, and I am invited, even though things are pretty awkward between us right now. But this ship feels more like a cage with each passing hour. A passenger’s horse has turned up missing. A crewman has turned up dead. And before it all started, I heard noises in the cargo hold. But Maxim has a mind as sharp as my banishing dagger, and between us, we will take down whatever monster is stalking this airship.
My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night.
With my coronation only hours away, something stalks the shadows of this vessel: a monster that answers to a human being. But who, and for what purpose? Despite our recent complications, Chloe’s courage and loyalty make her my strongest ally. The crown of the Stormcrows may await me, but first, we have a mystery to solve. Together.
For fans of Lindsay Buroker and Patricia Briggs, here is a dual POV gaslamp fantasy with monster hunting, a slow-burn romance subplot, and a reluctant king facing his destiny. Book 2 of the Hunter Healer King Trilogy.
A choir girl cast into the Pit through an egregious clerical error Her strapping Guardian Angel A condemned hitman … and Derek
–a crossroads demon who’s been secretly storing up power for millennia.
He wants revenge on everyone on his extensive list, from Lucifer all the way up to Daddy and every devil and angel between. It’s a frankly impossible goal for a low-level guy like him, but “dream big” is his motto and sheer spite keeps him going.
Now he’s stuck escorting three idiots through Hell—and Derek has a history with the angel, thanks very much. An infernal rebellion looms along with a premature Armageddon, and the black and withered thing Derek used to call a conscience rears its stupid, stupid head. He’s faced with a choice.
Rescue friends he never thought he’d make from a boss he never really thought he’d defy, at the possible cost of his life, such as it is…
When his company demands either a move to Mars or the loss of his job, perpetual plaintiff Lewis Ostrow finds he can’t even get a ticket to the world without lawyers.
Space Bats & Butterflies pulls together an eclectic collection of seventeen of the best alternate history or time-travel stories, book excerpts, essays and world-building exercises from the ninety-plus issues of a long-running Alternate History zine. • An alternate World War II-The Moscow Option-1942. • Was a Japanese invasion of Hawaii possible? • Could you do a better job than Roosevelt in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor? • Alternate timelines and the Prime Directive Fiction stories and excerpts: • Modern-day US finds an alternate timeline where the Roman Empire stagnated and Europe never reached the New World. It’s 1492 all over again, but this time with an entire new world to exploit. • Outnumbered four to one, New England’s Indians make one last doomed attempt to push the English into the see, but this time they have a dangerous ally who may help them win. • The Space Bats don’t want to invade Earth. They just collect unique human minds the way we collect rare coins. • Red Potter is unemployed, homeless and humanity’s last desperate chance in a time war that has lasted a million years. • World War II Europe meets an alternate North America cut off from the rest of the world since the middle of the American Revolution. • A boy and girl from alternate realities become friends, but they can’t both be real.
Cherchez la femme, they told McBride. Find the woman. He hit the trail in the suburbs of L.A., and wound up in the heart of Montana; in the heart of a bitter, bullet-baited gubernatorial election; in the heart of the one woman he would have given his life to put behind bars.
This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the book historical and genre context.
NON BOOK PROMO — DID SANTA MISFIRE? WELL, GET YOURSELF A GIFT FROM THESE GOOD PEOPLE:
The best coffee money can buy, and also plain fun. And EVERYTHING IS ON SALE RIGHT NOW.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
Ah, Europe, so close to Marx, so far from G-d. And sanity. And freedom. And–
This is not how I wanted to spend my Christmas day, but here we are. This happened: State Dept. Bars Five Europeans for ‘Extraterritorial Censorship of Americans’ and the worst kind of Europeans lost their tiny addled minds and took to twitter to pound their pigeon chests, show off their three chest hairs and attempt to wag their shriveled micro penises in our faces.
Which in turn gave me heartburn and caused me to slap them around twitter like a cat with a catnip-infused mouse. This is probably not the charitable attitude I should exhibit on a holy day. But here we are.
Faced with stuff like this:
I had to respond. All the wrong assumptions and unearned superiority in that post are so densely packed they could easily cause a black hole to spontaneously occur. (And probably have. in the poster’s mind.)
I didn’t even answer all of them with this: Unfortunately we ALSO have a welfare system Our higher education is about as rotten as yours, because you can’t help guzzling up what ours puts out. But I guess ours is more creative? Europe has sucky public transport, but since they all live on top of each other, they can all travel in sardine cans. Europe has “higher life expectancy” because they kill a lot of babies born at marginal weights. Europe has lower cost of living and WORTH EVERY PENNY — it sucks. They’re not even aware how much it thoroughly sucks and how constrained. However, more power to them. Europe has cheap health care. You get what you pay for. And the last time they innovated in anything is… the nineteenth century, I think. Europe has constrained speech codes Europe is committing suicide through their belief in the cult of global warming. I used to be European and I CAN say this: Europe is like being an adolescent who is profoundly depressed and on the verge of committing suicide, while throwing a tantrum about not being the best ever. They’re senescent teens. I wouldn’t live there for double the money and half the time. Thank you for playing though. We DO need a sucky example of how not to commit suicide by socialism. You did not live in vain.
But I could have unpacked a lot more. Like say, the fact our life expectancy mostly refer to recent imports having it out with other recent imports, or higher accidents caused by recent imports, or–
Seriously. the myopia is amazing. The truly fun part was in the responses to his post idiot Europeans saying “I visited America. I would never want to live there.” From which I have to assume they’re either lying with every tooth in their mouths, or that they visited East St. Louis, Detroit, and the South side of Chicago, exclusively. Or they think our homeless are homeless through lack of housing or the inherent cruelty of the system or whatever, instead of because they live in a society so affluent and full of charitable people that they can afford to be drug-addled raccoons in human form.
The truth is that the first time I read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and Heinlein said that there was nothing in the Soviet Union that The US didn’t have bigger and better in Podunk, I rolled to disbelieve. I was, after all, European at the time and I had no idea what Podunk was like. Now? I’d extend that to ALL OF EUROPE.
Children. I’d rather live in a low-income trailer park in the US than in a luxury high rise in Europe. Much of the same problems, but in the US there would be a pathway up and out and fairly easy if you stay off drugs, are willing to work your ass off and don’t disdain those trying to help you up.
While in Europe there simply isn’t a way up. They’re bound up with self-righteousness that demands they commit suicide. And their media lies about the US so much they have no idea there is an alternative to their suicide by socialism.
It’s like talking to people who say “Well, of course we drink a little bit of poison at every meal. What would you want us to do? Guzzle the whole bottle at once?” And they can’t hear you when you shout “JUST STOP TAKING THE POISON.” Because they heard that over here where we don’t take the poison — or to be fair, take less poison than they do — we’re dying like flies. AND THEY NEVER CHECK.
More shocking though, is the spate of telling us that we’re SOMEHOW controlling their speech by not letting them control ours. It’s bizarre and makes you fell like you fell down a rabbit hole.
I think their belief they can somehow discern “bad speech” and “things that shouldn’t be said” is at best naive, and at worst outright evil.
To any European reading this: it’s not that we believe everything everyone says is good or true. It’s that we believe when all speech is legal, the bad nonsense — say the Communist manifesto, or Mein Kampf — obviously shows itself for nonsense.
Also, that we don’t trust anyone to make the decision on what we should see or read. After all, Biden tried to create a disinformation czar, mostly to silence people like me about how Covid wasn’t really a lethal pandemic and how the vaccine was worse than the disease. Gestures at what has come out the last three years. As I was saying: when people decide what is true and control speech, it’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of your leaders’ crazy beliefs.
In this case I’d like to point out to everyone from Great Britain that just because your king wants you to go extinct/be genetically swamped it doesn’t mean he’s right. Also he’s an idiot who doesn’t understand what culture is and how it affects people.
BUT beyond all that, if Europeans want to keep their people blindfolded and keep feeding them lies about the US, that’s as may be. They just can’t ask us to do it for them. They can restrict their people’s internet access like China does.
And they certainly can’t come over here AGAINST OUR LAWS and punish our people for things that are within the law for us. That’s a no no. It would be a no no even if they were at parity of force with us, but they’re not. If they piss us off, we can swat them and not even feel it.
Which is why they’re trying to use moral superiority.
Will never happen, obviously. Well, barring divine intervention, which is what the song refers to, obviously. Because peace on Earth, on the whole Earth depends on “If only everybody” and never in the history of ever has everybody done anything including “don’t drop anvils on your foot on purpose” or anything else blindingly obvious.
So we’ll pray for peace on Earth, but let’s concentrate on the other half of that verse “good will to men.”
Look, it’s not very clear if it’s good will to men from men or good will to men from G-d.
Given in the earliest myths of mankind various goddlings extinguished mankind because it made too much noise, it is perfectly possible that our subconscious considers goodwill to men from G-d almost at the level of miracle of Peace on Earth.
But the truth is even good will to men from men is very hard.
Because you start out with the best of intentions and then the other person takes advantage and you’ll never have good will again because what if those so and sos take advantage of us? Particularly if they already have? And they have….
So, you know….
That’s where we are, and I don’t blame anyone for not trusting the so and sos. I don’t trust them either. They’ve gone past shenanigans against us and embraced full blown evil sometime ago. No, I haven’t forgotten the no so subtle push for cannibalism the last few years of the auto pen.
As long as the left continues committed to evil, to the point they’d take poison if we said poison is bad, we can’t extend good will. Extending good will is asking to be destroyed.
However–
There’s always an however, isn’t there? There are people waking up on that side. More and more every day it seems like.
Are they with us? Well, no they aren’t. Their mental model is still entirely Marxist and some of them will go very, very wrong. BUT when they first start changing, when they first back away from full psychosis, go ahead, extend good will.
Half the time it won’t be worth it. The other half? it will be glorious. Let’s not forget that the most effective people on the right were once on the left, including Thomas Sowell and Ronald Reagan (And Trump. I mean, for these days he’s on the right. Or at least he’s the flag of the right.) Arguably even me, since I was raised European and you don’t get more left than that.
Give the hatchlings a chance. Half of them will turn into scorpions, but the other half are eagles in waiting. (Who is running around with the My Little Genetics Kit again?)
In that sense good will is not only possible, but it’s the sanest, most rational, most self-interested thing you can do.
Extend the hand of welcome and watch carefully. It takes time to extripate Marxism from mind and heart, even if you’re trying. it is, after all, acculturation, which means it’s like dying and being reborn.
With wisdom and gentleness, maybe we can snatch some brands from the fire.
I’ve been a little… not here for the last three days or so. The truth is that the house is on the verge of becoming unlivable to me. No, not in the sense that we need major renovations. (We do need to have a roofer take a look, but that’s something else.)
It’s more that we moved in a hurry for various reasons. (We were supposed to take six months, and spend a week each place, but health and weirdness dictated a pack everything, sort on the other end, strategy. (Never a good thing.)
And then I never really had time to fully unpack and sort, on top of which I spent the last year being sick and highjacked by a novel (not that the second part is much better now) and–
And for someone who most of the time can’t even and just throws things in the nearest available location, I don’t do very well in unstructured, much less messy environments. The house isn’t normally dirty, (there are weeks) but it is cluttered with totally random piles of stuff, to the point we can’t even figure out where things are, and sometimes have to rebuy. More importantly several rooms are unusuable: the living room was never unpacked and right now the guest room is full of stuff that needs to be sorted. The supposed to be hobby and art room has become a dump site for “drop things here” and … and I can’t live like this.
For reasons of “I have to paint the front door before I do the dishes” (You know what I mean. Sometimes tasks have to be chained, and it’s not even logical from the outside, but it’s how it has to be) I started with our bedroom. The idea being that we have a huge master bedroom, and very well lit and I need a place to sew. Right now the sewing stuff is making the guest bedroom semi-unusable AND can’t be used for sewing because it’s dark and cramped. SO–
So I’ll move the sewing stuff up, and put it under the bed, put the under the bed storage (not much. My wedding dress, my citizenship skirt suit and such) under the guest bed, and make our bedroom more useable.
Except the bedroom still had the last three unopened boxes, and a bunch of things piled on them because the closet is definitely inadequate.
Oh, there was also a bin that as full of random stuff, a chair that needed to be put on the curb and– SO MUCH STUFF. Among other things, what was under our bed included several bins of jeans that don’t fit me. These were things I unpacked and put under the bed in the last 3 years. WHY? I don’t know. I mean, these aren’t designer jeans or anything, just jeans that don’t fit me.
Took me two days to clean the bedroom.
In the process I did a rigorous evaluation of “will I ever wear this again” and took … well. Two back-of-the-SUV-fulls to the local goodwill. Next up is the hobby room which is unusable through too much stuff. It will probably start getting done after Christmas. (I still have cookies to make.)
And this brought up a curious thing: hobbies. I have supplies for more hobbies than I’ll EVER engage in. Hobbies and books.
I realized that I don’t really have time to do most of the things I have materials for, or even any interest in doing them.
Which brings up: Why the heck do I have them?
Well. That led to a trip down the rabbit hole.
Some of them I did for a while back in Colorado, some as long as ten years ago. Then for whatever reason lost interest or stopped having time. One of these was egg carving. I wanted to do egg carving, and continued trying until…. until I could do it. And then went completely cold on it. Just no interest.
Other stuff, I just used to enjoy playing with and now don’t because our life has changed. It was one thing to sit down where the kids were doing their homework and paint stuff, but now I really don’t have a place to paint.
Art… well, I could do it, but the drive to do it seems to have gone. I might at some point enroll in classes again, so not getting rid of all art materials.
However, at the bottom of it, what I realized was that I bought supplies, etc. for a lot of crafts that I’ve only played at, because fundamentally, at the heart I thought that writing was about played out. I think I’ve admitted I considered retiring in 2018. I was so burned out it wasn’t even funny, and I thought indie would never make enough money.
Well, crafting pulls from the same place as writing, so I could silence the stories and just make cute stuff.
This was never an expressed idea, but I realize now it was always back there, which is why buying craft supplies and learning new crafts was such an obsession. When it all blew up, I could get crafting immediately.
Well… How do I put this delicately?
No Man’s Land has changed everything. No, it hasn’t made me rich, even if it is a steady seller, but I’ve made more than I would from trad pub already. And more importantly, it “unburned” me. De-crispified me. And showed me what something can do if I do what other people would probably consider “mild” promotion.
So–
So I really don’t have time for crafts and for the last six months have felt guilty over how much I’ve spent on materials over the years and felt I had to do them so I could get rid of the supplies.
But my time is better employed in writing, editing, publishing, learning how to publish more effectively, and helping friends with their writing.
I mean, not just that will make me money (though that helps) but it is what I actually WANT to do.
Which I guess is why the hobby room has become so cluttered as I piled everything in it trying to hide it.
Yesterday I realized all those supplies have already served their purpose. No, seriously. Look, their purpose was to make me less anxious about what would happen if I couldn’t write anymore. And they’ve served admirably. BUT THEY DON’T OWN ME.
So, a lot of kids of huns are getting craft and art supplies. I’m keeping some art books, but honestly they probably can move downstairs to the library. I’m keeping the charcoals, the pencils and the pastels, because I’d like to go back to drawing portraits very slowly since I don’t have much time. I’m pretty much ditching everything else and about 1/2 the sewing supplies. (I’ll still sew, mind you, and might even make stuff to sell, but not…. not consistently and not as an obligation.) Most of what I’m keeping is stuff I can do on the sofa in the evening, when I’m out words: crochet and cross stitch and such.
The rest goes out. In boxes. With instructional books.
Just deciding that was enormously freeing. I CAN do stuff, but I don’t HAVE to do stuff. It’s not a job.
Because it’s important, sometimes, to not think in words, I can take a day a week and sew something or play with drawing someone. BUT it’s not mandatory. And if I succeed in reducing the hobby stuff enough, it’s 3 to 5 boxes when next we move (sewing is probably ten, mind you) and no big deal. And the hobby room with be useable for my art (and for Little Pickle to do her pricing and such which she doesn’t have room for in their place.)
I don’t need to feel like I HAVE to do things. Hobbies are not jobs. I don’t owe it to the supplies to use them.
Why am I sharing this? Because the last five years changed people’s lives. A lot. And probably changed all your lives too. Things and hobbies and ways of spending time changed.
Perhaps you too have a bunch of clutter in your house that you feel obligated to?
If so, don’t be afraid to part with it. Even the jeans that don’t fit anymore.
Look, I’m not a minimalist. I have tons of things that don’t spark joy but are needed. And besides minimalism is a luxury belief. It only works if you’re sure you can buy it again if you need it, no matter how suddenly.
BUT when you can’t find anything or use entire rooms in your house because it’s full of stuff you’ll never use again? Let it go.
It feels wonderful. It is however eating my life. After the New year I’ll make a goal of a room a week and take a couple hours a day to deal with things. (Except the living room/library. It’s going to take a month. But that’s life.)
This might be jumping the gun on New Year’s, but look around. What will free you if you let it go?
According To Hoyt 