I can’t believe how little I’ve been posting lately.  I also haven’t been keeping up with others’ blog posts, newsletters, reading short stories, or my actual writing.

Life does that to you.

I thought I was going to take the big plunge this year and go all-in on my writing.  Instead I find myself in a full-time job, commuting an hour plus to work every day, spending my limited free time watching mindless TV or hanging with my puppy.

It’s not a bad life…The work assignment is relatively interesting.  I’m making money, which is a good thing.  I like where I’m living.  I get to see friends on the weekends.  I love spending time with the pup.

But it would be very easy to let things go for a month and then three months and then six months and then a year and then five years and then…

I guess I’d get back to writing when I retire?

That’s not good.

But life is tricky that way.  It lulls you into a sense of comfort and complacency.  When things are “good enough” it’s hard to take a step back and try to make them fantastic.  Because there’s an equal opportunity you’ll just screw it all up.

I encouraged a friend to open a business five years ago.  It seemed like a great idea at the time.  Now?  Well, pretty sure the move and starting a business led to that friend getting divorced.  Is that a bad thing?  Perhaps not.  But I’m pretty sure that friend could’ve carried on for a good ten or fifteen years the way they had been going and been reasonably happy.  Satisfied even.

So, when things are good, when they’re okay, when they’re fairly comfortable, it can be hard to force yourself to make time for something new.  To take time and effort and put it into something that doesn’t reward you right away.

(And maybe for others it’s different, but for me writing right now is a process of falling short of what I want to accomplish.  I haven’t perfected my craft or even come close so my stories don’t do what I want them to.  They don’t suck.  I’ve come very close to placing a few.  But they aren’t what I dreamt they would be.)

It can be easy to just sit back and relax.  Enjoy what you have.  Let time pass without change or effort.

Until it’s too late to change.

Which is why I have to buck up in February and get back on track.  I need to send the ten or so short stories I’ve finished out to new markets or I need to self-pub them.  I need to write new material.  I need to be better about posting here.

And I will be.

Right after I finish watching this Chopped marathon…