Happy summer everyone! I hope you all are doing well. Staying healthy and staying employed.
We made it through this season with without getting sick and our employment staying mostly in tact. There are changes coming on that front but we’re not on the unemployment line and we’re all healthy.
I’m writing this from Michigan. Where we hope to spend portions of this summer visiting family because who knows when we might see them again in 2020. Especially considering this crisis and its persistence.
Over the course of the spring I’ve written four chapters of the memoir and have a complete outline of the novel, and I’m working hard on keeping the fire hot on the novel while I work on the manuscript of the memoir. I’m doing that through research of the various legal procedural aspects of the novel because it is a crime novel.
How was your spring? Anything good happen during this time?
We’ve been hiking a lot and that has brought us a lot of serenity and peace.
Good morning! That’s the end of our posts for the transition between winter and spring. It is obviously a difficult time. One of the new habits that I’m working on is cultivating more of my Stoic-self to counteract my Aspergers, ADD, Anxiety and Depression. I realize it’s a very white-guy thing to do but it does speak to me and I do think it helps in a wholistic Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Way.
The irony, as Marcus Aurelius points out repeatedly is that the people whose opinion we covet are not all that great. They’re flawed—they’re distracted and moved by all sorts of silly things themselves. We know this and yet we don’t want to think about it. To quote Fight Club again, “We buy things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.”
That’s so true. Do I need all these books, notebooks, paraphernalia to call myself a good father, husband, and writer? Some of them do serve a purpose — a purpose I value—showing my story the way I want. But could I be better? Yes of course. For every book I buy, I should donate one to others. To be a minimalist. To be present with my kids and my wife because I regard this time right now as a gift.
I don’t need all that much to tell my story: just a notebook and a computer. And not even really the latter.
But most of all I’m not writing here to impress anyone. I’m writing here in hopes that what I’ve learned over specific seasons of life will help someone else down the line in their own seasons of life. Who knows if I’m doing it well. It’s not up to me other than putting one word after another, one sentence after another, and so on. That’s the only part I can control.
So here’s what I’m working on this spring:
Keeping my family safe, healthy, and together.
Writing the first draft of a novel that I’ve been playing with off and on as an interconnected short story collection that will probably end up being more of a straight-up murder mystery like Winter’s Bone and Before the Fall.
Solidifying my GTD habits and methods for working from home by using Bear and my Journal.
Reading the backlog of parenting books I have.
I hope you and your loved ones have a safe and healthy spring, and if you need anything at all (other than monetary and a visit from me)–despite my nickname (Depress)–I’m actually a pretty positive and optimistic person. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.
My newsletter will continue to go out weekly (as long as me and my family are healthy). Please note the new url for the letter as I’ve transitioned away from TinyLetter.
This is the face of a writer who is working from home and playing with his family.
The major reason I became a writer is so that I could work from home. Really anywhere.
Now my day-job has nothing to do with writing, but considering circumstances these days in Indiana, mostly everyone is working from home—or have been laid off. The latter is not the case for me, thankfully. But there are a lot of people who are not so lucky.
The Press Gang is healthy.
But for right now, I’m extremely grateful to be able to work from home, play with my kids, and hang with my wife. It’s been very challenging this past week, but it’s been filled with a lot of ups and downs. Who knows what it will be like tomorrow, next week, next month — but today — and this week has been hard but with a lot of great things!
That’s life.
In the meantime I full intend to grow my beard to Alan Moore levels.
The new work bag, from out of a William Gibson novel and into my life, designed by Mark Ryden.
Good morning.
I’m coloring a donut throwing unicorn robot with Doodlehog crayons.
So, I have something to tell you all.
The daily reality of my life is no longer a fit to blogging; because, well, life with two kids, a busy day-job, and some great writing projects (here are a few loglines) on the horizon makes blogging more of a chore than a joy. So I’ll write posts during the first two weeks of every new season and whatever I end up posting is it. Can’t promise it will be daily.
So it goes.
Here’s what I’m working on this winter:
Perfecting my GTD process and applying what works to my personal and professional life.
Writing a memoir
Then writing a murder-mystery novel similar in vein to Winter’s Bone.
Big Woods Restaurant at Hard Truth Hills. Nashville, IN.
That’s all for this season. Thanks for reading some of my radical transparency. I hope you got something out of it rather than my crazy repeated phrases and concepts that may or may not have made any coherent sense. Here’s what I’m working on for the summer:
1. I’m preparing for the birth of our second child.
2. Spending a lot of time on home improvement as a result of looking at Digital Minimalism and getting the house in order before the baby arrives.
3. Being less planned in what I’m working on, going with the mood of the week. I have diary updates, short stories I want to write, probably a nonfiction article for a magazine to do, a pair of comics, and a short film script that I’m going to play with between now and the fall.
I like to joke that ever since moving to Indiana that the summers are so hot here that I behave in a way that I used to during winters in New York: the only reason I go outside is to go to my car and turn on the air conditioning—which is currently broken, so…But the winters here are no big deal. In fact they’re delightful because no one goes out to the woods to walk around and we do.
As always, you’ll be able to find my weekly progress in my newsletter. Don’t hesitate to subscribe, say hey, or talk to me about whatever is on your plate. I’m here and willing to listen to you as you’ve willingly subscribed to listen to me.
Just a stack of books I have downstairs. You should see my nightstand.
That was the series of posts for spring. Thanks for reading and following along. I’m going back into my Writing Den, where I’m going to spend a lot of time in my notebooks, and catch up on the stack of books I have. I’m going to rest, dream, and mess around in a notebook.
Also, I’m going to move house.
We closed on a house this past Friday and we’re moving over Easter so there is A LOT to do and I won’t have a lot of time to be messing around online, so I won’t be posting on here, Twitter, or Instagram again until after Summer Solstice, BUT! My newsletter will still go out weekly. In fact, I’ll be writing it as I hit post on this.
Have fun, be well, and enjoy the weather. Now take a hike!
David Press 