i'm tired from a very long week; the sale of our land in new mexico, which was supposed to have closed around today, fell through, and this meant i'd have to go back to work in the near or immediate future just to cover the mortgage of our new house in illinois. we are now very land rich but cash poor - we had it all figured out, if they bought it, that we'd survive, and now all is in the air. a quick survey of jobs in the area show there are some. the mental preparation for doing them is another thing.

the ones involving a kind of teaching - subbing, being a special ed assistant, etc., are the ones i'm most qualified for, of course. but having a few years of a break has made me want more of a break. i'm more inclined to be a truck driver or amazon warehouse worker, if i were to just simply go by what would give my tired spirit a rest.

fortunately the puppy picks up on my spirit and stays close. he rests on the arm of the chair as i write this and, though he has to run off and see what's going on every once in a while, at least he sees his companionship as as valuable as it is to me. he sticks by me. he values my petting.

i'm struggling with a kind of writer's block. no time would it be more important for me to simply finish my book of stories; i have about twenty, and would like maybe twenty-three to fold and call it done. i haven't actually published anything in a while, being too preoccupied with moving. i've backed so far away from novels i'm not sure i can make another one, though i'm about half finished with at least one. i have a kind of despair with this writer's block, not so much futility as just that it won't ever be quite good enough for me. i'm over-critical of everything i've ever produced, and when i have the chance, i go back and redo it, but that just seems to make it harder to crank out anything. and i need to crank out something. today i came home from running around, got some free time in my chair, and cranked out nothing. how depressing.

instead i do online surveys, a kind of sinister occupation in that it's easy to give away too much of your information, in fact you do it endlessly, all for pennies which basically i turn into amazon gift cards and fold back into my writing. i need to have more of these books around, and to give away, so i'm replenishing my stock which was low after moving. also i've changed covers on so many books that i need to have copies of some of the new covers as well as figure out how to get rid of the outmoded ones. i've proven to be slow to turn these books out into the public yet that's the only way a person can become known in the print-copy marketing world. if people don't see an actual book they probably won't buy another one like it, so you have to at some point just crank them out and turn them out into the world. and i've only just begun.

but the problem is, i'm kind of the opposite of a consumer. i consume virtually nothing, and pay little attention to the difference amongst various brands. i don't really believe in getting all into stuff and i just don't, so when they ask me all the tech gadgets we own i'm barely even aware of them, and might be misrepresenting. but often they're willing to pay any random consumer and i'm sure they figure in those of us who often don't have a clue what we're talking about. they have caught me saying different things at different times, and of course they don't like that, but it's easy enough for me to do even without bad intention; i simply have to guess some of the time.

they ask me all kinds of things, and i get somewhat obsessed with just always answering, moving on, taking my two bucks and buying me a book or two. in a way i'm using my time to develop my paperback presence, or my ratings at least, since i buy them all over the top, as a consumer who doesn't want to pay postage. but it's limited. not only am i sick of surveys, but also, i'm of limited value to them, with my lack of ability to distinguish finely (there are exceptions - tonight i got one about two of the worst corporations, and i let them have it) - but reading and answering endless survey questions is about as stimulating as reading and evaluating bad indie writing.

i'll admit, i'd read a couple of real bad ones just before. and i was a little sick of that. it was like, if that was the only way i could develop my readership, that was a slog, and might not really be worth it. life is short, after all - why should anyone waste it on slogging?