I should be rejoicing. It’s been a gorgeous October, and if this is the last time I’m seeing these colors in Colorado it’s because I’ll be back among friends and family in South Carolina. My last child will be out of high school and moving on in May. It’s time for the Next Thing—and that’s a good thing.
It’s been a good eight years here inasmuch as we have grown children and published books to show for it, but my wife and I can’t afford to wait around here to die. Not so far from family and friends. We might as well be on a desert island out here. It’s pretty in Colorado, but lonely.
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| Along the easement up into Frontier Park, across the street and a couple of houses down from mine. Ideally, I won’t be here to see these colors this time next year. |
Notice how hard I’m selling this to myself. Truth be told, I’ve always been resistant to change. I like my routine. To awaken, pour my coffee, come downstairs to the office, do the social media patrol, poke around at my latest book, maybe torture a blog post out of myself. It’s lonely, and it gets dull at times, but it’s what I’ve got. I’m trading what I know for...what?
There aren’t many basements in South Carolina. I’ll be working above ground for a change. I strongly suspect that, just as it was before I got married nearly 25 years ago and left the state, it’ll take major shaming or a bomb threat to get me out of the house to go visit those family and friends. Case in point: my roommate in 1990 had to shame me out of the house to go to the very party where I met my future wife.
The temptation to lock myself up in a room and hide has always been strong with me. I’m well aware that if I don’t have close friends or any kind of meatspace social network after nearly eight years in Colorado, it’s my own fault.
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| Orange lights over my basement office window. After the New Year, I’ve got to depersonalize my office, along with the rest of the house, by way of staging it for sale. No more tchotchkes and knick-knacks on the shelves, and it would probably be a good idea to box up some of the more controversial books. |
So, I’m going to call upon stronger things than my personal pathology. It’s already taking everything I have to get Act One of my third book out of the way, while rewriting Bleeding Kansas for the Ultimate Edition, and to maintain consistency of tone on a series I’ve been working on for nearly three years now.
I need to get The Saga of the Dead Silencer behind me. I need to be on to the Next Thing.
Meanwhile, there’s the here and now. With Halloween on a Friday, Friday will be here before we know it. My son will be playing his last football game of the regular season that night, so I’ll miss the last half of trick-or-treating. Not that anyone has been stopping by after 7:30 p.m. over the last couple of years; it’s been mostly small children. Which is good. I’ll take a neighborhood full of small children over one filled with surly and disaffected teenagers any year of my life.
To think my son went to that elementary school on the east side of Frontier Park. Now he plays his last few games of varsity football for Rampart High and...what?
One thing at a time, I keep telling myself. This change is necessary. This change is good.
No, really. We need to be somewhere else this time next year, filling our Halloween candy bowl in another neighborhood, in another state, far away from where we raised our children, but closer to the people who care about us.
Why is this so hard?
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| Along the greenbelt north of my house. I’ve got to pick a path. Can’t stand here forever. |
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