Ah. Hello, blinking cursor. My old friend. My old nemesis.

Sisyphus the Ineffectual. That’s me.

I’ve wanted to write about some things, but the unpacking process has stopped me in my tracks.

The missus and I have (I hope) sewn a button on an epic, ten day fight. Boy, I would have loved to write/whine about that ditty, for sure. But… Not a good idea. The Really Big Fight™ sprang from MBW obliviously goose-stepping her way through a fence I built around a well-cultivated garden of childhood issues; stuff we’ve talked about ad nauseum for the past decade. Ten days of me pointing to the damage and lifting my palms, my jaw hinging open and closed in disbelief and confusion. Nine and half days of MBW looking at me, shrugging, and picking up her knitting basket.

Sigh.

I realize that The Really Big Fight™ was nothing more than an inadvertent “Whoops” on the part of MBW. If, at Minute Five, she had said, “Aw shit. Yeah. That was probably not a great move on my part. Sorry ‘bout that, Shawn,” The Really Big Fight™ would have been over before it started. Every day that passed with her shrugging and pretending it didn’t happen made me that much more insane with anger.

Also, I had to get my shit together with this new anti-depressant. Something was right, but something was also wrong. When I tell you I averaged eleven hours of sleep per day, EVERY day while I was on my three week Christmas vacation, I’m not exaggerating.  Insomnia pushed me into my doctor’s office in the first place. I went from one extreme to the other. I had to get the dosage right and change the time of day I took the pill. In the interim, I got really weird. Weirder than normal, if you’ll pardon the oxymoron.

Brintellix has finally given me to the clarity of mind to take inventory of my life and my relationships. But at the same time, I was stripped of the creativity to do anything with the new information I was taking in. Odd. “Here, Shawn, here’s some enlightenment. Just don’t do anything actionable with it, okay?”

By sheer coincidence, my son apparently also tried a new anti-depressant recently. He wrote this Facebook status: “Going back on brain meds after long hiatus is like waking up to discover your house is on fire.”

Bingo.

Combine The Really Big Fight™ with The Conflicted Resparked Brain™ and Shawn has become a quietly more unpleasant person than he normally is.

And then there’s The Agent thing.

This blog was started as a platform effort to show The Agent that I could drum up some readers in the event that a Publisher would sign the book. I get the reports on overall hits for every blog post. I don’t pay for the fancy analytics to tell me where those page hits come from. About sixty unique people read any given blog post.  Approximately.  Most of these people will say something to me on Facebook (where The Agent can’t see it) about the post, but won’t leave a comment in the blogspace (where The Agent can see it). I’d say I understand, but I don’t.

I’m sure The Agent thinks I have no readership potential. Not even my own wife will comment on the blog, despite a dozen requests I’ve made for her to chime in and prime the pump. If I were The Agent, I’d wonder why this Shawn chump chums the water so often and gets so few fish from it. In this respect, the blog has actually worked against me.

I signed with The Agent almost exactly a year ago. As many of you know, The Agent makes her nut from representing animators. The Boxtrolls. That’s where she made her money this year. Little ol’ Shawn was way down her list of concerns. After The Agent signed me, there were a flurry of initial communications, and then nothing. Supposedly, a large (really large) European print house asked for an exclusive read of my novel. This was back in March. Not a peep since. How long does an exclusive read take?

Agent: [paraphrase] “Don’t be a dope, Shawn. This is a crazy opportunity. Don’t blow it.”

Okay. That shut me up.  For a long time. And now?  And now I just don’t fucking know what is going on and I have resigned myself that I’m never going to know what is going on. I assumed she changed her mind about representing me. Or maybe she was getting feedback from publishers that said, “Really? Are you pranking me? Because Shawn’s book sucks!”

Maybe she’s just not telling me that nobody likes my book.

Perhaps she has not really sent my manuscript anywhere.

Perhaps she’s really working her ass off and the publishing industry is as glacial as everyone says it is.

I have no idea. There is no communication. All I can do at this point is piss off The Agent. She has all the power. I have none. I can press the issue, and then what? What have I done? I’ve annoyed the only representation on the planet who expressed faith in my intellectual property.

So I resolved to stop caring. About a thousand times, I’ve resolved to stop caring. Just let it go. Shake it off. Move on. Get another agent for the next story and don’t look back. What else can I do?

And then The Agent sent a form email wishing me a happy holiday and saying she hopes to sell my novel in 2015. It’s very much a form letter. Yet in an instant I reverted to the lovelorn dope who thought a Christmas card from his ex means maybe she really IS COMING BACK TO ME! MAYBE I WAS WRONG TO THINK IT WAS OVER! MAYBE SHE LOVES ME! MAYBE… Maybe… (May. Be.)

Nah. It’s just a Christmas card.

That’s the story of the past month. I’m an unpleasant bastard.  I’ve had to fire a lifelong friend that I’ve known since I was twelve, and I think I may have to fire yet another lifelong friend. I’m still mad at my wife. I’ve given up hope that my agent is representing me.

This supposed clarity of my brain is killing me. I almost prefer the cloudy nether reality of the past twenty years.

I woke up and my house was on fire. Lovely