In the Face of Disaster

It has struck me quite often that in my writing, I strive to remain true to what people feel and how they act, perhaps above all else. It’s part of what fascinates me as a member of humanity.

How people talk. How they act. What they are capable of, both good and bad. What they do when the shit hits the fan.

For those of you out there reading this as a fellow new author is living it, the shit has hit the fan in my world.

No, I’m not claiming that I have it worse off than someone in Somalia. But my world, my family’s world, is in a precarious situation as I write this. 

My wife’s company has been struggling for quite some time. It was built on the late 90s/early 2000s ethic of a turn and burn proposition. Build a good tech company, get some big name clients, do some good work, and then sell to the highest bidder.

But in 2008, the bidders stopped bidding, even for good tech companies.

For the owner of my wife’s company, who has successfully executed this strategy in the past, no tech giant has come calling this time.

Microsoft, Apple, Google, and the rest of the cast of regulars to this acquisition strategy have changed their approach. My wife’s company is bearing the brunt of the result of this change.

Add in the fact that a major television network/movie studio that owes my wife’s company 2 years in back pay was acquired by a monolithic cable giant that doesn’t feel like paying the bills of the company it acquired, but would not allow that company to pay it’s bills during a rather lengthy FCC inquiry into potential for antitrust, and her company is dead in the water.

My wife, the sole means of support for our family while I’m getting my shit together as a writer with a writing business that contributes positively to our bottom line, is out of work.

And I’m in a world of shit.

What do I do? If I quit writing when I have one viable product ready for the pipeline, another close, and still one more started, would I be a moron?

If I continue on my present course but don’t finish until it’s too late and we’re out on the street, then it really doesn’t matter what I do at that point. It’s hard to get leverage when you’ve got no fulcrum.

And, I should interject, that it’s no small matter that I have VERY young children.

It’s not much of a stretch to see a circumstance in which we could be fucked. Severely.

Even in this time of personal hell, I KNOW that things could be worse.

My wife is in a field that seems to be in an upturn in demand. My wife has 9 years of experience in an industry where that kind of seniority is something of a rarity. My wife is personable, intelligent, and hard working. That should help. And she’s cute, too. Right or wrong, that should also help.

But, it is amazingly difficult to focus on the tasks at hand (see the list of shit a writer has to work on, here) under the circumstances.

There seems to be both an earthy, grounded work ethic to writing and producing an actual product, and a frivolous, devil-may-care attitude toward writing as a “fantasy” career indulgence.

Normally I can see past the misguided notions of the latter, but it’s hard to push on toward the former under such potentially dire circumstances.

I find myself literally and figuratively pounding myself upside of the head saying “Focus … focus … focus.”

But ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends and neighbors—it ain’t easy.

There are some things that I look back on in my life and think, “Why the hell didn’t I stick with that?” The majority of life’s regrets, I find, can be traced back to panic in the face of adversity. Give up and you’ve made the mistake that does you in. Keep your head on straight and don’t panic, don’t freeze into inactivity, and eventually you come through the shit. Most of the time.

It’s that some of the time, though, that just shakes you to your fucking balls, though—or ovaries, as the case may be. Both are legitimate places to avoid shaking, I believe. Nobody likes that heartless ache that accompanies an authentic fear. If you do, you are one strange puppy.

I know my wife will succeed. I know she will.

But what do I do? Now?

The tough question is how do we make the timing work? How do we stay focused with the looming potential of being squashed like a bug? How do we not give up and go running into the arms of relatives ready to embrace us with an “I told you that no matter how good you are, the world is going to fuck you anyway, so quit already,” mentality, eager for the life you aspire to to fade into the past. Perhaps as their’s has.

In the face of disaster, how do you stick to what you know is right?

And is what you know is right always right?

Do we do what we can in this life and keep just doing it?

What else could we do?

Quit?