What to do?

More mountain climbers die on the way down than on the way up, partly because they become so fixated on reaching the top that they ignore things like time, fatigue, and deteriorating weather. The more energy a person devotes to something, the harder it becomes to change directions. I see this in myself. I live as if I were a train on a track.

I seldom leave home or have a visitor, and the phone rings only for Peggy. Unable to do much else, I listen to the rain and edit my journals, all the while promising myself that I will seek publication someday—I’m too depressed to make the effort now. I’ve edited 2,000 pages over the years and have only 200 to go. Maybe when that’s done. Maybe when my knee is better, and the weather is nicer, and I am less depressed, I can face buying a Writers’ Market, or learning about web publishing. Much of my writing is marketable, the question being how much trouble I am willing to go to, and how many alterations I am willing to endure.

If I don’t publish, my writing will probably die with me, yet how odious is the publication process and how scant the reward. For years, I have been unable to either go forward or to give up the idea of going forward; so I keep finding reasons to procrastinate.

I need to say something positive because recording only the negative limits my thinking to the negative. I enjoy re-reading my work. My humor is dry and original, my phrasing clever. I possess depth, intelligence, and poignancy; and am uncommonly honest even when I appear less likeable for being so…but I am boring myself. Actually, I am just waiting for summer to arrive and my knee to improve, so Peggy and the dogs and I can go to the mountains.