Present times are still the best times (so far)

I freaking love the internet. In addition to it letting me whine about grief to anyone in the world, it houses resources that generations before me would've happily traded their polio legs for (mm...too soon?). As a side project for the novel I'm working on, I am also pursuing self-publishing a collection of short stories online. And 50 years ago, that sentence would've sounded completely cray-cray.

But with that there internet, I found a site that introduces authors to freelance writing professionals, and after filling out a few online forms and clicking a few buttons, I can request quotes from up to 5 cover art designers or content editors - just like that! Boy I'm glad it stopped being The Not-Information Age. So I did. I've already heard back from 3 of the graphic designers, and one of them, who works at a major publishing house, said my title is great! Me! But for the price of a professional book cover design, I could also go to Best Buy and get around 55 inches of flat screen TV. Totally worth it! I've been buzzing all day!

What actually motivated me to come and share all this in blog form is the realization, just a few moments ago, that I haven't actually accomplished shit yet. I still need to finish editing the short stories! The graphic designers are freelancers, they'll take money from anyone they want. In fact, I should get to work on that stuff now, what am I doing wasting time blogging, when I-

For Whom The Taco Bell Tolls

I was in the drive-thru lane at Taco Bell (which could describe more of my evenings than I'm proud to admit) and I realized that now, a year has passed, and I still possess the ability to cry about B.S. minutiae! Thank god I still have that!

You see, back when my wife was alive, we wound up in the drive-thru lane at Taco Bell more of our evenings than we'd be proud to admit. Now, I have a well-known fondness for their nacho cheese sauce (which I'm sure is legally a "cheese product" that has never known the touch of a cow, but to me it's basically yellow liquid crack). Occasionally, in those days of yore, my wife would order something that came with a little cup of nacho cheese sauce, and if it was more than she wanted to use, she would, of course, give me the remainder. Which, as you all know of course, is true love.

So that all hit me and I burst into tears. Fortunately, I'd already ordered, and I had time before my turn at the little window to reign it in. So yeah, turns out I can still have those moments after a year has passed. Darn. And I'd really been hoping. I will say that this time, among the random griefbursts over minutiae, I felt a bit foolish, more than I used to. Is that progress? I'm calling that progress.

Life is long, hard and gets messy too fast

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again (though my opinion is subject to change with time): I'm not afraid of death. Even after losing my wife, I can honestly say that I face that hereafter or everafter or whateverafter without any squeemishness. I attribute this to the grandfather I never knew, who died twenty-ish years before I was born: as soon as I learned what a grandparent was, I knew what death was. There's no great enigma to dread. It's just dead.

But I'm still pissed off as all hell about losing my wife. Her dying isn't the problem, the problem is that I'm still alive. I would've happily died when she did. Death is easy! Death means you don't have to go to work, don't have to pay taxes or shovel snow. Death means you don't have to deal with some moron in a BMW cutting you off and then driving in front of you 5 miles under the fucking speed limit. Living's what's hard.

If nothing else, I'm glad that my wife doesn't have to endure life's bullshittery anymore. I'm still stuck out here, and I can't kill myself, because it's not the right season anymore (late Spring, according to Maria Bamford). I know that my time with my wife was the happiest of her life because she told me so. But there was a lot of time when she wasn't with me, and from those troubles, she's now free. I just wish I didn't have to still be here trying to survive life. She's dead, I'm not, so my job's waaaaay harder.

Regularly scheduled grief

I've said it before, grief is losing it's pizzazz. Now that I have a job again, and a schedule, there seems to be less to write about on here. Certainly less of the side-splitting variety, if any of my humor can be considered that. Turns out routines are dead boring. This is not news to me, but it also turns out that even grief can't spice up a Monday-through-Friday work week.

It doesn't help that the weeks are flying by, either. That's another thing about routines, they can make a week blink past and all of a sudden it's Monday again and even grief is like "Hey wait-! Ah, fuck it." Grief's still around, but it's just another part of my routine to slog through.

I hate the idea of routine at it's core, because they are, as previously illustrated, dead boring. My two worst fears are watching the love of my life die, and being boring. Probably a good time to mention that life wasn't ever boring around her. But I've already lived through the one fear. Is living through the other so bad? Ye-he-he-hes! But as long as I keep writing, I can convince myself that I'm not totally boring. Gotta be a little boring for a while, though. Just enough boring to be useful against the grief, and pay back my damn student loans.