New York City skyline from a ferry a few years back

I am calmer today. I felt pretty frantic and depressed yesterday. Today, I feel 100% better. I'm medicated and this still happens to me.  Imagine, if you will, being bipolar and not being medicated and having to deal with incredible ups and downs all the time. Untreated bipolars are more likely to commit suicide than any other mentally ill people. Sad but true.  I'm not here to talk about my illness today because as I said I feel pretty good.

I have finally been able to get into my Blackboard program and start doing lesson plans for my two classes. I was a bit frantic about all of it. I updated the stuff I was supposed to update, even have played with the program and added some of my own stuff into it. I need to find out if all of my dual-credit, ITV students have the same texts as they do at the main campus. I am good for week one, but after that, if they don't have the same resources, I will have to make some adjustments. I can do that if I need to, but I'm hoping they all have what they need because it will make things so much easier.

Another reason I am happy is that I have decided to go back to my writing roots. I have a play I want to write, one like the genre that seems to be very popular with high school drama groups these days. The mashup. My play is going to be about King Arthur looking for his queen in Chanted, the Enchanted Kingdom where Merlin sent him. He meets all kinds of princesses there, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Cinderella, and I think maybe Goldilocks. It's a comedy and should be fun to write if I can still be funny. I am also thinking about writing a younger YA book with humor in it, kind of like a ninth grade Eleanor and Park. I'm not giving up on Dean Knight. I will continue to query agents, but I still need to think realistically. It's a very bleak novel and some people might not want to publish it.

I am going out to feed my dog Ginger. I'll write again after the school year starts to let everyone know if this old, semi-retired fart can still motivate a class to write well.

Retirement so far

Just in case some of you are getting tired of the hot weather. Just think.  This is coming.

I have been more relaxed than I have ever been since I retired, almost to the point of slothfulness -- if that is a word.  Slothfulness as I recall is one of the seven deadly sins. I don't get that from the Bible. I think I got it from the musical Camelot.

I think you learn a lot about yourself when you retire, and it's an important crossroads in your life. You can get all depressed and just kind of sit around waiting to die or you can do something with the time you have left. I have a history of bipolar disorder, so I think it would be easy for me to sit around and do nothing except play on social media all day. I am going to fight that inclination. For one, I am going to teach some classes for Three Rivers Community College in Poplar Bluff. Even though we have a good retirement as teachers, we don't have free medical insurance any more, and I can assure you that it is expensive.  My teaching will keep me busy and help with our budget.

I am a writer also, but right now, I don't really have anything out there. Booktrope went under so you can't buy Fall of Knight anymore, and so far, I have been unable to get an agent to represent my other work. I have hit a creative wall and have lately not felt like writing anything. Why does freelance writing have to always be a waiting game?  You wait and wait and wait, and then, you get a rejection because there are millions of other people with better connections, who live where they need to, and yes, perhaps even write better than you. One of the books I read this summer was Gone Girl. As I read it, I kept thinking to myself that I will never be able to write like her. There are many people out there I will never be able to write like. So, I ask myself if I need to reinvent myself as a writer, try something different, maybe a different genre.  I know what my favorite kind of books and movies are; maybe I should write something like them. I don't know. I have started a play, which is similar to the plays I have published at Brooklyn. If I can finish it, I think I can publish it, but I'm not for sure.

Meanwhile, some other things are going on to keep me busy and a little anxious. My daughter and son-in-law are expecting their first child, our first grand baby. We have recently moved to a new town and are getting used to it. Some other stuff going down, but I won't bore you with details.

Finally, I think about my author platform. People have told me I need to have a blog, I need to be on social media, and I need to keep up with technology. I do have a blog, but people don't read it. I know the reason they don't read it is because it is all over the place. My blog is about everything. I don't know how to specialize. I think it's because I don't know enough about anything.

So, my major question as it always is, "What am I going to try to write and publish?" I may be too old to get anything published anymore, but what I am thinking about are high school plays, some screenplays, and maybe some middle grade humor. I am not going to break into YA, I've about decided. I've been rejected too many times. My wounded pride can't take it. My minor question is, If I ever decide to quit writing, what will I do to fill in the time? I'm afraid if I just said, I quit, I will be hit with a tsunami of guilt about all the years I've wasted trying to write when I should have done something else.