036: A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING YOUR EMAIL
AN EMAIL IN SEVERAL PARTS, FRAGMENTARY
First, Tha NEWS.
What I consider the "initial" marketing push for confessions from a drainage ditch is over, which is to say, it's been about two weeks, it's likely hitting the long slide to the bottom at this point. However, at one point I was at least #20 in LGBTQ+ Poetry, and #65 in American Poetry. In the former it was just behind Allen Ginsberg's Howl and in the latter it was just ahead of Joy Harjo's She Had Some Horses. So either I'm doing better than I thought, or poetry is an even softer market than I had anticipated. And that was a couple days later, even. Regardless, if you picked it up, thank you. Thank you so, so much. If you'd go one step further and leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads I'd be thrilled, as that's the sort of thing that gives books a solid long tail in sales over there.
Unrelated to the above, I am sick. Sick as beans. I think I'm on the upswing, and it's not covid, but it's absolutely prevented me from working on all sorts of stuff over the past week, including this here newsletter. Most likely it's just a cold that came back from school with the kiddo, since said kiddo has also been sick, and indeed was sick first. But it's been tiring and uncomfortable and trying to stay upright has been a pain. And the ear pressure has been sidelining podcast work. Turns out you need ears for audio work. Who knew?
Second, INTERLUDE.
First, Tha NEWS.
What I consider the "initial" marketing push for confessions from a drainage ditch is over, which is to say, it's been about two weeks, it's likely hitting the long slide to the bottom at this point. However, at one point I was at least #20 in LGBTQ+ Poetry, and #65 in American Poetry. In the former it was just behind Allen Ginsberg's Howl and in the latter it was just ahead of Joy Harjo's She Had Some Horses. So either I'm doing better than I thought, or poetry is an even softer market than I had anticipated. And that was a couple days later, even. Regardless, if you picked it up, thank you. Thank you so, so much. If you'd go one step further and leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads I'd be thrilled, as that's the sort of thing that gives books a solid long tail in sales over there.
Unrelated to the above, I am sick. Sick as beans. I think I'm on the upswing, and it's not covid, but it's absolutely prevented me from working on all sorts of stuff over the past week, including this here newsletter. Most likely it's just a cold that came back from school with the kiddo, since said kiddo has also been sick, and indeed was sick first. But it's been tiring and uncomfortable and trying to stay upright has been a pain. And the ear pressure has been sidelining podcast work. Turns out you need ears for audio work. Who knew?
Second, INTERLUDE.
How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense?
~ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Third, CONSUMPTION.
- I spent a lot of the last two weeks playing Final Fantasy XIV. I had a two-week free period for the game and so I finished one expansion (Stormblood) and started the next (Shadowbringers). It continues to be one of the better games I've played, and it didn't take terribly long to get back into the swing of it.
- Almost everything else has fallen to the wayside. However, we stopped at Half-Price Books not too long ago, and I got an amazing deal on some Netrunner cards. The game recently went out of print because the publisher lost the licensing rights, and so getting authentic cards can be kind of a crapshoot, price-wise. I've been slowly trying to complete the collection over time, but finding some in a retail store was pretty surprising.
Fourth, HUSTLE.
First and foremost is my most recent book, confessions from a drainage ditch, which was released on Sept 1st through Amazon, and is available in ebook and paperback formats. If you haven't picked it up, it's a great introduction to my more concrete and mainstream work.
If you're looking for something weirder, you can check out A Void and Cloudless Sky, a chapbook, which is also available from Amazon, as well as most other retailers. By being a subscriber to this newsletter, you're also entitled to a free PDF version, which you can get here.
If you're liking this whole project and want to support it directly, here is my Patreon. There are lots of little benefits you can get there, from access to a subscriber-only Discord to poems written to your specifications to subscriber-only limited-edition chapbooks.
Finally, THE OUTRO.
The last few weeks I've been trying to work on reconciliation, which in this case means integrating the disparate parts of myself, and my values, and my theories and praxis...es... and whatnot into something that resembles an intentional life. August was the first month since I started the habit that I did not do a monthly migration in my Bullet Journal. Indeed, I didn't write a single thing in a notebook all month, and I didn't fill out a monthly spread for September until earlier this week. There's a line in Nine Inch Nails' song "Only" that goes something like "just sort of floating in the abstract / in terms of how I see myself", and that's been the long arc of this phase of my life. I haven't really figured out a direction.
One thing that became crystal clear to me this past weekend is that I do actually feel like I'm living my life on my terms (inasmuch as one can within the ol' late capitalist heckscape), and that I really, really don't want to fall into a place where I am too complacent with the goings on in my life. Because I saw a lot of that. I went to a gathering that felt very much like a class reunion or a business networking event more than the celebration it was intended to be. (That's not to disparage the people who had held the event or anything. They're wonderful, they WERE wonderful, and our being there was important to us and them both.) To borrow a phrase from an acquaintance of my partner, I'm glad to be a creative than a consumer. I'm much more happy to make something, and define myself through how I live, rather than what I have. I'd rather relate to people on an emotional level than a transactional one.
I think I'm doing that for the most part. But, as always, it never seems enough. Trying to accept that is where I'm at right now. Trying to be enough now, as I am.
Is "enough" sustainable?
- I spent a lot of the last two weeks playing Final Fantasy XIV. I had a two-week free period for the game and so I finished one expansion (Stormblood) and started the next (Shadowbringers). It continues to be one of the better games I've played, and it didn't take terribly long to get back into the swing of it.
- Almost everything else has fallen to the wayside. However, we stopped at Half-Price Books not too long ago, and I got an amazing deal on some Netrunner cards. The game recently went out of print because the publisher lost the licensing rights, and so getting authentic cards can be kind of a crapshoot, price-wise. I've been slowly trying to complete the collection over time, but finding some in a retail store was pretty surprising.
Fourth, HUSTLE.
First and foremost is my most recent book, confessions from a drainage ditch, which was released on Sept 1st through Amazon, and is available in ebook and paperback formats. If you haven't picked it up, it's a great introduction to my more concrete and mainstream work.
If you're looking for something weirder, you can check out A Void and Cloudless Sky, a chapbook, which is also available from Amazon, as well as most other retailers. By being a subscriber to this newsletter, you're also entitled to a free PDF version, which you can get here.
If you're liking this whole project and want to support it directly, here is my Patreon. There are lots of little benefits you can get there, from access to a subscriber-only Discord to poems written to your specifications to subscriber-only limited-edition chapbooks.
Finally, THE OUTRO.
The last few weeks I've been trying to work on reconciliation, which in this case means integrating the disparate parts of myself, and my values, and my theories and praxis...es... and whatnot into something that resembles an intentional life. August was the first month since I started the habit that I did not do a monthly migration in my Bullet Journal. Indeed, I didn't write a single thing in a notebook all month, and I didn't fill out a monthly spread for September until earlier this week. There's a line in Nine Inch Nails' song "Only" that goes something like "just sort of floating in the abstract / in terms of how I see myself", and that's been the long arc of this phase of my life. I haven't really figured out a direction.
One thing that became crystal clear to me this past weekend is that I do actually feel like I'm living my life on my terms (inasmuch as one can within the ol' late capitalist heckscape), and that I really, really don't want to fall into a place where I am too complacent with the goings on in my life. Because I saw a lot of that. I went to a gathering that felt very much like a class reunion or a business networking event more than the celebration it was intended to be. (That's not to disparage the people who had held the event or anything. They're wonderful, they WERE wonderful, and our being there was important to us and them both.) To borrow a phrase from an acquaintance of my partner, I'm glad to be a creative than a consumer. I'm much more happy to make something, and define myself through how I live, rather than what I have. I'd rather relate to people on an emotional level than a transactional one.
I think I'm doing that for the most part. But, as always, it never seems enough. Trying to accept that is where I'm at right now. Trying to be enough now, as I am.
Is "enough" sustainable?
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