i feel pulled down into an overall slump and depression which has been mostly caused by troubles in my family. there is a good possibility that we will have to move yet face overwhelming problems if we choose to do it. there is no doubt that i should be cleaning out the basement, attic, and garage, and every day i get up and try to do it. each is full of things i saved partly because they worked, they could be used, or somebody somewhere valued them. yet now they seem to be extra weight, preventing us from moving or even feeling like it would be possible.

a part of me feels a spirit of possibility. our kids are over 18 now, capable of taking care of themselves, or should be, though that's another story, they aren't, they'll flip, they may not make it on their own. but we could conceivably duck out and go anywhere. having traveled all the states, i'm not afraid of any of them, and capable of being happy where i am. but there are problems there too. i'm not writing much, i'm not happy or inspired, i'm worried about the marriage itself which opens up all kinds of other possibilities. at the moment i'm healthy. but i'm 72 and people are watching us both warily.

so i started walking. i go about a mile and a half a day, up to downtown and back, or if my wife invites me to walk out at the lake with her and the dog, we go out there and walk in the woods. i just found a little tick on me, though he was a little hazy, perhaps already dead, as he'd stuck himself into my shirt instead of into me. but this no doubt came from the woods, where we were today. i walk too slowly for my wife who is pulled along by the dog and needs to go fast for her own exercise program. but i am happy to be with her and this is one of the few things we do together. i worry about moving off alone with her if she's truly unhappy as that won't be much fun. but alas that may not even be possible either.

so how can i begin to get my writing back on track? here i am alone with about an hour, perfect opportunity and i pull out this old clunker of a computer to get started. all the ideas in my head pertain to a book that was about half done, bluffs leveretts, for which i'd gathered all this information about my great grandfather leading up through my grandfather and into my father's own life; all three generations lived in council bluffs, iowa. i find myself more and more paralyzed as i get closer to the people i actually knew which would be my grandpa and of course my dad. i didn't know my grandma on that side; she ws from a family of german farmers who were interesting and who of course had to bury all reference to their origins once the first and second wars came around. it was really a story of conflict that made that one large ethnic population hide their origin, don't speak german, don't carry german letters, newspapers, etc., just shut up and speak english. it was actually illegal to speak german there for a little while in iowa and that i'm sure made a big impression on people who had basically been speaking german all their lives.

so i had fun writing about that crowd, and what happened, leading up to my grandmother's birth, but i mull over some reorganization and then find i've become a little too separated from my notes and my work on the family. so i thought, just write it all out and i can go back, do more research, and fill in the gaps later. but that doesn't seem to be working. i can't just pick up this computer and write it all out. i'm a little too paralyzed.

one thing i am doing, and that is, reading a lot of other people's work. it's my only active way of marketing as i'm disillusioned with making noise on facebook, twitter, etc. i do fill up these blogs and people by and large are opening them up for whatever reason, which doesn't appear to be buying books. but anyway, i write it, and they are reading it, so i guess in a way i am writing, it's just that, if this is all i do, it's not enough.

i do however have a new book out, beasts of ayutthaya, and it's wild, and i need to get it connected to the series it's in (writers from all over doing the global beasts series, all retellings of beauty and the beast). i should kick back, be proud, and make some noise about that. it's just that, instead, i'm paralyzed, and fall is coming, time to clean out the garage.