Life has been challenging this past year and a half. Major changes have affected my life in a big way. I'll be honest: I haven't had much time for writing. I've still been tinkering, of course, and my brain is always turning over ideas, but I haven't been able to write as much as I need to to maintain the momentum I had going for awhile there. For a couple years I was able to publish 2 novels a year plus numerous short stories and novellas. I was active on Facebook and Goodreads and I was blogging regularly. Then, my wife got pregnant when we didn't think it was possible, and we had Violet, who is amazing and to whom I am dedicated to providing everything she needs--food, shelter, safety, education--everything. So my writing became less of a priority. And then I took a teaching position last year, middle school science, and it consumed my life. No longer was I able to use my headspace for story and character, but for lesson planning and classroom management. So my writing became even less of a priority. And now Violet is going to have a little brother and here we go again.
Which leads us to our title about blogging. Well, if writing has become less of a priority, you can bet blogging has become even less of one. To be honest, it never seemed all that important to me and I got sick of social media, filled with opinionated bullshit and aimless arguments and comments meant to tear others down and had to step away. I hate it. But I watched this year in which I was pretty much nonexistent online as my royalties fell each month, smaller and smaller. I know this is partially because I haven't had a novel release in a while, but its also because I haven't been sharing myself and interacting with readers. I like doing that part. I wish I could do it more directly at cons and readings and such more often, but my life and where I live make that difficult. That being said, I've also come to realize how safe I was being online, trying to never speak about religion and politics to the point where I was afraid to share any sort of opinion at all. There have been many times when I've thought about sharing something online and then stopped myself because I didn't want to be judged by family members or whoever else.
Well, fuck that. This is who I am:
I'm a short (5' 4"), white guy who lived as a child in Colorado Springs, CO and as an adolescent in Los Alamos, NM. My parents are engineers and my mom was devoutly Methodist when I was growing up (my dad followed along), but in high school at a bible study group my mom made me attend I once asked how we could be sure Christian beliefs were the true beliefs when so many others around the world had contradictory beliefs that they felt were true. I don't think I went to another bible study meeting after that. I have an overactive imagination and love to consider possibilities, but I've never found much use for religion. If I learned anything this past year as an educator, it's to never make conclusions about anything without sufficient data to back it up. And so I prefer to take a scientific approach to life, driven by skepticism and data collection. Blindly believing in what others tell you to is a dangerous road to take.
Anyway, I'm going to stop there for now. All I really mean to say is that I realize now that this is my blog, that hardly anyone is going to read it, and so I'm going to use it to air my thoughts. I'm going to be myself. Sometimes I'll talk about writing and sometimes, if I feel like it, I'll talk about other things. I'll probably share excerpts of work in progress on here too, because I like doing that. I'll probably also, from time to time, share random verse. I have lots of projects cooking and you should see some new work from me very, very soon.
All the best!
~Keith
P. S. Here's my new 'bible' if anyone is interested:
Which leads us to our title about blogging. Well, if writing has become less of a priority, you can bet blogging has become even less of one. To be honest, it never seemed all that important to me and I got sick of social media, filled with opinionated bullshit and aimless arguments and comments meant to tear others down and had to step away. I hate it. But I watched this year in which I was pretty much nonexistent online as my royalties fell each month, smaller and smaller. I know this is partially because I haven't had a novel release in a while, but its also because I haven't been sharing myself and interacting with readers. I like doing that part. I wish I could do it more directly at cons and readings and such more often, but my life and where I live make that difficult. That being said, I've also come to realize how safe I was being online, trying to never speak about religion and politics to the point where I was afraid to share any sort of opinion at all. There have been many times when I've thought about sharing something online and then stopped myself because I didn't want to be judged by family members or whoever else.
Well, fuck that. This is who I am:
I'm a short (5' 4"), white guy who lived as a child in Colorado Springs, CO and as an adolescent in Los Alamos, NM. My parents are engineers and my mom was devoutly Methodist when I was growing up (my dad followed along), but in high school at a bible study group my mom made me attend I once asked how we could be sure Christian beliefs were the true beliefs when so many others around the world had contradictory beliefs that they felt were true. I don't think I went to another bible study meeting after that. I have an overactive imagination and love to consider possibilities, but I've never found much use for religion. If I learned anything this past year as an educator, it's to never make conclusions about anything without sufficient data to back it up. And so I prefer to take a scientific approach to life, driven by skepticism and data collection. Blindly believing in what others tell you to is a dangerous road to take.
Anyway, I'm going to stop there for now. All I really mean to say is that I realize now that this is my blog, that hardly anyone is going to read it, and so I'm going to use it to air my thoughts. I'm going to be myself. Sometimes I'll talk about writing and sometimes, if I feel like it, I'll talk about other things. I'll probably share excerpts of work in progress on here too, because I like doing that. I'll probably also, from time to time, share random verse. I have lots of projects cooking and you should see some new work from me very, very soon.
All the best!
~Keith
P. S. Here's my new 'bible' if anyone is interested:
