An apology

The last month has been less than optimal for me. My writing has stalled pretty hard due to some health concerns and a significant loss of coordination on my right side. Like an idiot I've been putting off seeing a doctor about it, but I know it's only a matter of time before I knuckle down and do it. Not that we can really afford the visit even with insurance, much less any treatment that visit will require.

It brings to mind the dark humor of gen Z as they cheerfully and blithely remark that the boomer threat "you'll end up living in a van by the river" is a life goal indicating success in saving up enough money to own a van and move out. Or the joke about the civilian identity of a superhero attempting to sleep off an obviously life threatening arachnid bite because he doesn't have health insurance. Except it's not a joke anymore; I look at what American life has become and it's a painful truth that a few years back my wife and I had taken policies out with the Neptune society so that when one of us dies the arrangements are already paid for. And somewhere along the way I decided that rather than a long and financially ruinous treatment for something chronic or terminal, I would simply let nature take its course and slip away "unexpectedly" rather than leave her in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, possibly lose the house, possibly saddle our relatives with that baggage... no. I won't do that to her, because as unfair as leaving her widowed would be, she still has the house and the cars. I'd rather leave her widowed than homeless, or worst of all, widowed AND homeless.

Plus, there's that old knowledge that she needs me a lot less than I need her. I don't mind that. Even if it smacks of a certain cowardice. I was never really good enough for her and I can't understand what made her think I was worth marrying, even after all these years.

I don't really know what I'm trying to say with all this. Maybe vent a little. Maybe an attempt to shake loose some of the stuff crowding my head and heart and interfering with my ability to write. Maybe some vague and poorly constructed attempt at offering an apology and excuse to everyone I'm letting down who've donated money to me only for me to stare blankly, wrack my brain for words that won't come. My most popular stories are stalled, my original work is in limbo, and I feel like I've run out of the nebulous nectar that tales are spun from, like I'd spent my last few years scooping from a bucket only to make my latest reach into it and getting only a dry scrape of my cup against the rusted, empty bottom.

Maybe it's existential despair; I'm certainly at the right age for it. I look at the news and wonder if there will be anyone left to read my stories in another two decades. I want to believe there is hope but I see the world in a mad scrambled race to see what human crushing apocalypse will happen first. Climate change. Ecological collapse. Disease. Microplastics. Space rocks. Civilization collapse. Maybe that's a contributing factor to my malaise. Who knows.

Sorry to vent like this. Hoping I'm somehow overreacting and just emotionally imbalanced, because I don't want what I see to be objectively true. I don't want this vision of my culture, my nation, my species, to be the reality of what our next generation will inherit. And looking back at this bombardment of words I'm a bit surprised at how much there is. I haven't been able to string together a full paragraph in a sitting in weeks. Maybe now that I've vented a bit I'll be able to write a little.