It feels like I’m running in place, running another dent deeper into the ground, and now I’ve made myself sick again. Lately I’ve been doing nothing much else but sleeping. I think I got too mentally overwhelmed with things. I got personal shit, mixed with a long “to-do” list, and this damn book is going to be the death of me.

I will be happy once it’s out there. That’s for sure. I know I’ll feel a sense of relief. Yes, there’ll be an all new hell (backlash) to deal with, but that will be much easier than all of this. At this point, I really don’t care about the haters. I don’t care about the people that don’t get it, that don’t understand me, that disagree, and that don’t see. In essence, these types were the trouble to begin with, and the trouble with me was trying to appease, convince, or win them over. Why is that? Well, who likes rejection? And who doesn’t want to be loved? Me. Not anymore.

So, there’s still much to do. I’ve been up to my ears since I decided to take on the publishing of the book myself, I soon realized that making new art is just nowhere in sight. Reluctantly, I cancelled my spring show at Craig Krull Gallery and asked him if we could reschedule it for later in the year. That doesn’t mean I won’t paint. I will. I just can’t fully concentrate on it at this very moment and I can’t have the stress of another deadline.

This is just after I made a space in my dining room to start painting in oils again. But that’s okay. It’ll still be there when I have the time. Time is something I wish I had, but don’t anymore. Maybe I’m getting old. There are days I can carve it out I guess. I just get so tired these days, and especially the last few days being sick. My to-do list weighs on me because I have to go out and about, at least to notarize some documents — but mjp and I are moving forward on setting up this publishing company. It takes time and energy, but it’s exciting. Scary too. Lots of responsibility, and a lot of risk.

I have yet to set up all the tax junk, social media stuff, finish the website, figure out if I’m doing all the accounting myself or not. I’ve been taking short accounting courses online and my mind is still in knots. I’ve learned a lot about business and record keeping, and laws, but it’s still seriously over my head and above my pay grade, which is zero.

Then, there’s still much to do with my book. It never fucking ends. Now, there’s way more formatting I have to redo in Adobe InDesign since I’m doing it all myself and not just handing off a Word file to someone else. It has to be formatted perfectly — illustrations and all, as well as made into an eBook. I guess for many authors, this is easy. I know how to make a Kindle version pretty easily, but I have to read about making sure it crosses platforms for iBooks and includes all the meta data, etc.

And the cover. I am really liking the design, but it’s not finished yet. More needs to be tweaked, approved, and blah, blah, blah. I do have a concern that the book cover kind of competes with the site design of the new publishing company, which is just coincidental. It’s not that big a deal; it just sort of bothers me.

I guess now that I type these things out, I feel better. The mountain isn’t as high to climb as I thought. Thanks for listening

Much of I wrote here will be repeated in the Shrapnel blog. FYI.