I am feeling a lot better now.

Sorry for the Xmas Eve venting last night. A lot of things came to a head in me, no doubt shepherded together by the unique loneliness of the loner on Xmas Eve. And I figured, might as well write it all out and get it out of my system. After all, that’s what a diary is for, amongst many other things, right?

Plus, it seems only prudent to get into the habit of trying to solve my emotional issues via writing. It seems like that is what a lot of authors do, and it could in theory lead both to writing which has a deep emotional resonance that reaches into the reader’s heart and connects then with the rest of humanity, and maybe even helps them with those same issues…. and, of course, gives me something to write about when I am bored.

Of course, it’s a little weird to be turning your personal psychotherapy into cash via the quill, but then again, being a writer is pretty darn weird way to live your life anyhow, and so what’s one more weirdness?

Turning pain into art, and art into money… that sounds like the kind of scribbler’s alchemy I might just be able to pull off.

It’s not like I am cut out for the normal world, anyhow. Hi all you nice people in the normal world! Don’t worry, I won’t be coming in. I will just peek in from time to time from my writer’s garret and make my observations and move on.

Hopefully, I will even make money at it eventually.

Bound to happen sooner or later, right?

I have been pretty lazy about sending stuff out lately. My self-discipline usually goes all to hell this time of year anyhow. So there has not been a lot of the non writing but still writerly stuff happening lately.

In theory, I could have things really whizzing about. I have at least six short stories I could have in circulation which are currently just sitting in a directory on my computer not being rejected or anything. Plus I still haven’t finished even the first pass at my book.

Remember that? I wrote a book? Did it in 25 days in November? Today is the one month anniversary of its completion. It feels so much longer than that now. I have been lazy and self-indulgent lately.

Well, it is but once a year, sir. (Poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every 25th of December!)

I will shape up in the New Year. Develop a list of markets and some way of keeping track of who I have sent which story to, so I can try each story in each market and not annoy them by sending the same story over and over again to them.

Although you never know, they get so many submissions, they might not even notice. It would be pretty funny to have the exact same story, no edits or anything, get rejected by the same editor five times before getting accepted. What changed?

And it’s possible. Maybe said editor never gave it a really good read until then, or said story just happened to fit in that issue of whatever, or they just decide publishing me is the best way to get me to shut up.

OK, that last one is not all that likely.

I am having a very modern Xmas morning so far, in that instead of unwrapping a lot of gifts, I have been spending the various gift cards I have received at various fine online establishments. So it’s a very shop it yourself Xmas, as befitting this on demand era.

So far, I have two pairs of jeans coming via eBay and a crock pot (slow cooker) coming via Amazon.ca, and I am not close to done yet. I have $40 left in my Gifts From Me To Me budget, $20 left on the Amazon card from my dear sister Anne, $50 at Future Shop from my brother Dave, and $25 at Best Buy from my friend Ray.

The Future Shop cash is likely to be going to Rayman Origins for the Wii. I was originally going to get Legend of Zelda : Skyward Sword, but then I would also have to buy the MotionPLus addon (or as I like to call it, the “Motion How It Was Supposed To Work In The First Plus Ha Ha Our Bad Now Give Us More Money addon) and I was not sure I wanted to buy a whole other thing to plug into the Wii controller just to play a game I might not like.

So then I took a look at what else was hot for the Wii, and saw Rayman Origins there, and looked at some of the reviews, and concluded that when so many critics use the word “perfect” over and over again when describing a game, the game might just be worth a look.

No idea what I will do with the other giftable cash. Gift cards are a wonderful thing, as they give you a chance to get what you really want, but they are also tought on a fellow like me who has option overload issues and trouble figuring out what he wants when faced with an entire online department stores to choose from.

Remember department stores? Seems like such a quaint and old-fashioned idea now. But back in the day, they were the only place to go when you needed to buy a department.

So due to online shopping madness, I imagine this place will be a little busy with deliveries in the next week or so. Should be rather fun, I like having things to anticipate. The rest of the shopping will wait until I think of something else I want.

After all, tomorrow the “Boxing Week” sales are starting. Who knows, I might be able to pick up a bread machine to go with my crock pot!

To me, small kitchen appliances are toys that make food.

Well, here it is, Xmas eve 2011 and me all alone in the apartment, pecking away at the ol’ keyboard and feeling kinda lonesome and forlorn.

My original plan was to maybe go to the liquor store next door and pick myself up a bottle of something festive (probably some of that yummy Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum, and some apple juice to put it in) in order to smooth the evening over. But I lack the motivation and the funds to do so, plus by now the liquor store is surely closed (even the booze fairies have families to go home to) and while I joke about needing to start drinking if I want to be a real writer, the truth is that turning to alcoholic beverages for companionship when you are feeling lonely is probably a very bad habit to get into, especially at my age and with all my health problems.

Fat and drunk is a stupid way to go through mid-life.

As is, though, I am not doing well. I feel cold and lonesome and tired and sleepy and isolated and forgotten and neglected and excluded and pushed out and unwanted and unloved and unlovely and unworthy.

So, par for the course for my Christmas Eves ever since moving away from home, really.

It sucks to have nowhere to go and nobody to be with for Christmas Eve. Tomorrow evening, I will be dining with my roomie Joe’s family, and that will be very nice. It’s good of them to take me in every year, and I anticipate a lovely meal and a relaxed evening.

But there are a lot of cold and lonely hours between now and then, and so here I sit with nothing but the Internet and my words to comfort me.

And other things have gone wrong for me lately. Lost $100 of sweet, sweet AdSense money (my first payout ever) to my own stupidity. Feeling all out of sorts because I am in one of my sleepy tired deep dreaming phases. Been too tired to eat properly, which is a bad combo.

And to top it all off, I have some sort of nasty infection under the fingernail of a finger on my left hand, which makes even typing these very words very painful. I am not exactly a touch typist, because I never took a course or learned all that “home keys” jive or anything, but I am much better than your average hunt and peck tentative typist, and I use every finger but my pinkies when I type. So it would be pretty hard to not used this particular finger when typing.

It’s the one next to my left thumb. Index? Ring? Pointer? Whatever.

I probably gave myself the infection, too. I trimmed my nails recently, and for whatever reason, I have a tendency to over-trim my nails and end up nicking the cuticle, and with my diabetes weakened immune system, that leads to this minor but highly painful and annoying infections.

Nothing like pain from one’s own carelessness to make a person feel lovely.

And to top it off last night, I learned some very depressing things. At Xmas dinner at Denny’s for my little group of friends, no less. Always a wonderful time to get bad news.

Turns out, the money I have been paying Joe has not been actually covering the rent, bills, and groceries. He has been paying the extra himself, and what’s more, resenting me because he somehow convinced himself that I knew about it all along and I was just willingly taking advantage of him and his good nature and fear of conflict and unwillingness to upset the applecart.

But I had absolutely no idea. I paid him $300 a month, which is what he asked of me, and assumed that covered things. It absolutely horrifies me to think that I have not been paying my own way (via government money, but still) for a long time now, and Joe has been resenting me for it, and I owe him a whack of money (which he has graciously waived as an xmas gift), and I had absolutely no idea.

I do not have much to keep my fragile ego afloat. But one of the few things I thought I had was that I was paying my own way and not living off others any more. Now, it turns out, I don’t have that, either.

And the knockout blow is that in order to get right with Joe and really pay my way from now on, I am going to have to start paying $380 a month, an increase of eighty bucks.

Bad enough for you employable types, but I live on less than $8000 a year, around $675 a month, and so a loss of eighty bucks of disposable income is a very big deal in my life. I have been just barely hanging on to the edge of the cliff for a while now, and life just came along to stomp on my fingers.

No wonder my finger hurts.

But I’m not suicidal. I have not been suicidal for a long time, thanks to the drugs, I suppose. I get attacks of that crazy panicky desire to try to escape from life itself now and then (existential claustrophobia?) but they pass pretty quickly and I am learning that those often come when my energy is blocked and what they are trying to tell me is that I need to do more things, not do myself harm, let alone do myself in.

Still, it’s nights like this when the barrier between me and the darkness seems the thinnest, and I find myself staring across the frozen abyss within me and wondering what lies on the other side of it, if I but had the courage and the stamina to cross.

I am in no hurry to learn, though. I will find out some day, and that is enough.

Just wish it wasn’t so damn cold on this side of it, that’s all.