Given that I’m a week into September and haven’t written anything substantial in quite a while, I felt the need to write a public-facing post here.

Guilt can really send someone into a spiral.

It’s not that I feel guilty about life in general. I have a wonderful wife that I spent quite a bit of time with. I have the best son ever in the Peanut, and I never feel like I don’t get to spend enough time with him. I spend time volunteering for projects with my church. I helped my brother pour a concrete slab and start framing out a new garage. I’ve switched over to baking all our own bread, rather than buying from the store. (The wonderful wife still does virtually all the other cooking.) I spent time helping on the family farm because my dad was badly injured in a horseback accident and the family needed help.

But what I haven’t been doing is writing.

The worst part is feeling guilty about it, because it paralyzes my ability to write. Then I feel more guilt, and the process repeats.

Contract Hunt has been over half done for quite some time, but my progress on it for several months now has been minimal…because of the loop.

It’s not unlike the problems I’ve struggled with in the past with depression. I had bad, bad problems with it in college; the depression and the guilt for screwing things up (because I was depressed) built on each other and paralyzed me, until I had a whole mountain of screw ups and I couldn’t dig my way out. It cost me an extra year of college (I should have been done in four) and a planned career path (education).

So now, the site is back up to date. The manuscript is laid out in Word, holes and all.

It’s time to write.