Sigh

Spain smoked Honduras today (2 - 0; and Portugal flayed North Korea, 7 - 0). Spain's soccer play was really lovely to watch -- just good stuff. They should have won 10 - 0, just from the number of attempts that should have yieled goals, but beyond that, they played beautiful soccer, the loveliest I've seen so far in the World Cup. The Swiss played a strong (but futile) match against Chile, losing to them (barely) but still showing serious strength.

I'm bummed out today. Got the "How in the hell am I ever gonna make it as a writer" blues in a big way. I won't give up, I never give up (on writing, anyway), but it's frustrating just how hard it is to get noticed, how arbitrary and connection-driven it is. I really should have played the game in my youth -- I would send stories out when I was 18 and 19, but I should have entered the Iowa Writer's Workshop, get the connections one apparently totally needs to get seen. The editorial firewall is still so hard to get past. All I focused on was writing well (or at least as well as I could), when I guess I should've properly positioned myself and played the game more on the front end. Now I'm a 40-year-old writer, not even a "young writer" anymore. WTF? Bleah. Sucks. At least my boys'll have all of the writing I've done, so when I'm gone, maybe they can make hay out of it. And maybe THEN people will enjoy the work. Hah. By the time I eventually die, I'll have written so much stuff, at the rate that I go. It'll be a library's worth of unread fiction.

I'm keenly feeling just how shitty this economy is. Unless you work in some kind of boutique industry that serves the wealthy, you're really fucked in the Great Recession. God, do I ever need to find a good job to escape the Asylum before the walls come down. The main reason I sweat it is because I want the boys to be better off than their dad was, and I worry that in the far-more socially rigid America that is the unspoken reality we face, I've done them a disservice by not being a captain of industry...

Social Immobility in America

Sigh. I see my writing so much as me creating cultural capital -- creating something from nothing, something of value. But until I can make it work for me, it's nothing. Just a big pile of nothing. I want to help my boys any way I can, help them deal with the bullshit of "the game" that our society foists on us all -- certainly, I'm more attentive and supportive to them than I ever got. I am looking at what they enjoy, and what they're good at, and I try to encourage them to test their limits and explore. I don't want my sweet boys to be casualties in the "new economy" (that is, the medievalization of the American economy -- which is really the US becoming a de facto banana republic).

The Longest Day

Happy First Day of Summer, motherfuckers! It's all downhill from here! Winter's right around the corner. It's funny, because over the weekend, I remember thinking "Wow, what a long fucking day." and not even associating it with the Summer Solstice. And here we are, on THE longest day of the year...

Scene from "The Longest Day"

Now you can play along!