Wednesday, February 7, 2018

#IWSG CHECK IN FEBRUARY 2018 - WHERE THE HELL HAVE I BEEN?


Good question. I've mostly been depressed and when I wasn't depressed, I was sick, or in the hospital. This finally culminated with what (I swear) is going to my last hospitalization for quite a while in early January, due to mis-calibrated medication, which resulted in pancreatitis, followed by a nasty case of this flu that has been going around in Florida, two days after my hospital discharge. I also had a flu shot, so the three weeks I spent in bed with the flu was a best-case outcome. People younger and healthier than me, are dying of this in Florida and in several other states and the flu has not peaked yet. It's pretty frightening really. It also helped me to appreciate that fact that I'm really in relatively good health and reminded me that I need to start being grateful for that and get my head out of my own ass. 

So, it's back to the orchestra and back to writing. This month's question is a good one, and when I write fiction, which I write very little of, but am trying to remedy THAT situation, I tend to write in a science fiction-fantasy type mode, as Alex J. Cavanaugh would say, and for many of the same reasons. 

I think, too, that writing speculatively also helps to relieve some of the stresses of the modern world's problems and that thinking in an alternate universe kind of way, is another way to approach solutions to things that may not seem so solvable. People seem to be so intransigent now, but I think they're just really scared over nothing. It would be so great if we could just all put our differences aside and think rationally about the really grave problems that we're all facing in this world. Writing speculatively is one way to get through that, I think. 

Anyway, that's my take. It's really good to be back on my feet after such a prolonged bunch of craziness and misery, but I'm here for the long haul. Thanks, everyone for a great #IWSG experience.