Good weather and the production of quality prose don’t seem to go hand-in-hand. This is a truism based on personal experience. At the same time, it is an excuse, and a flimsy one at that. Writing-wise I’m feeling like a stalled car – well, stalled cars either move or they die out, one or the other. Some spew gnarly smoke on the way out.

I have stalled and would like to get moving again. It’s tough – right now, in part because I don’t have a computer at my disposal. My new computer’s word processing system has given up the ghost as in ghost busters, who ya gonna call? Pete’s been working hard to get it fixed. It might take a few more days to get it up and running again. In the meantime, I’m writing dispatches out by

hand and ignoring the other stuff that I should be doing.

I’m not up there with the writers who when their figurative hands are tied behind their backs, instead write with their pen in their teeth. I could ask Pete where he put my old computer and work on it, but this would feel to us both like a backwards move, and we don’t move backwards around here. Rather, we move full tilt boogey, forward and fast, at the speed of light.

The real truth is that I’m feeling pretty discouraged about my career. I know what the problem is; however, I’m stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck. I am not moving forward. I am stuck, stuck, stuck. Give me chalk and a blackboard, and I will oblige by writing this a thousand times.

This, being stuck, has nothing at all to do with Raudi. Raudi and I aren’t stuck. We go places and we do things. This writer just sits in a chair. I know that I need to get out there and market my work. However, I don’t because there is a part of me that thinks that my work will one day sit up and speak for itself.

For the very first time in my life, I’m going to miss a deadline. I won’t get the article on John Parke, the endurance rider, written for the Icelandic Horse Quarterly magazine by October 1. This is called burning a bridge. Doors are closing, bang, bang. And doors can’t be opened from the reverse side. So what to do? The immediate answer is to continue to enjoy the good weather. Sounds absurd, but there is well founded logic behind my feeble thought process. I would regret not getting out now if I didn’t do so. I can regret not making it as a writer when the snow flies.

Ahh, it’s all rationalizations. I just need to give myself a good swift kick in the butt and get going and finish undone projects. Will do, once the weather turns bad.

Next: 260. 9/30/14: A Good Swift Kick