The Fourth Wall

164.

AUTHORS NOTE:

In a complete dismissal of the respect due to the fourth wall, I am speaking as writer, sometimes editor, constant blogger and creator of this site and the Assignment 2020 story. There is good news and bad today. The good is, IMHO, we have been in free-fall exploration of the creative joy of stream of consciousness prose for almost six months, about half way to the target. The goal was, way back before COVID -19 and the GOP insistence on sedition, to script a story at the rate of 500 words per day, for 366 days. While the 163 pages to date may not be of Nobel prize quality, is was, again from my perspective, a noble effort. 

And now for the not-so-good news. One morning back in February, I woke up with zero cash flow. Literally overnight I lost six gigs, all indoor cycling related, and/or house and dog sitting. No one was spinning, training, vacationing or, as you know, even leaving home. Something had to be done. And it was.

Since March I have been delivering parcels for the USPS. You can imagine the spike in volume as Amazon.com quickly became the nation’s shopping mall. This week alone I just passed the 80 hour mark. I thought that I could persevere and work through it, but the accumulated fatigue makes it difficult to do anything other than work and sleep. I have tried. But the physical and emotional stress has taken its toll. Bent but not broken and looking for the inflection point of adaptation, I try to Zen it out and stay true to the present moment and its myriad challenges. But I have to take some RnR and allow the process to naturally occur. 

All meaning that I am suspending the initial format (and challenge) of writing a new page every day. I will continue as best I can, my next scheduled off-day is Monday, but I wanted to fess-up and be honest about my needing more sleep and fewer literary plot twists. 

Up until today it has been a wild ride. I thoroughly enjoy the discipline and practice of the gig. I love my characters, Bogart, the vision of my ultimate best self, and Julie both have real world history. While flawed and sometimes trite, every other page or so offers that rare sentence or turn of phrase that makes me want to continue to dig. As with playing my guitar, I don’t do this because I am good at it, I do it because I like it. 

Thanks for spending a few minutes of each day with us. We shall return, and hopefully when we have some of the pressing issues of the day contained, controlled and changed, we can resume the regular formatting. 

Until that time, continue your practice.

Love. 

KML