Its gloomy. The sun was supposed to shine and I assume it did while I was still dreaming. Now that I’m awake its overcast. Which means I’ll write and clean the house, start my motorcycle to let it warm up, then shut it down because I have no reason to go anywhere. Not with the temperatures in the low 40’s. Not with the clouds threatening to shed rain. I’ll half ass exercise, think about my life, wander around the house, and float down the river of the rest of the day on a big black inner tube of doing something then nothing then something then nothing. Wipe off a mirror, brush my teeth, sweep out the garage. Work on a novel I’m writing about a suicidal psychotic on the edge of his ability to keep from losing it all. Vacuum the carpets. Mop the floors. Clean the granite counters.

My house is on the market. I can’t afford to live in it anymore. The price is right. The home is immaculate. The lawn is well groomed and the roof has many more years to go before it needs to be replaced. I’ve had a few people look at it. Most like it. Its just a matter of whether its the right place at the right time for the right buyer. When that happens, the house will sell.

I write everyday. Right now I’m at the point where the protagonist in my novel is about to take his financially train wrecked life into his own hands. The problem is he’s suffering psychological trauma and is loaded on all sorts of medication. His efforts to make decisions and keep his physical and mental balance in order are complicated by his ongoing anxiety and passive suicidal depressions.

I don’t always know where the story is headed because the character often takes me in an unexpected direction.

Write what you know. I know what depression is so I know what its like to imagine taking my own life. We all do. Is it depressing writing about someone who’s suicidal? Not if its good writing. If its good writing about someone contemplating ending their life or the lives of others, then it feels good writing about it.

A friend of mine was 22 when he shot himself to death. He was bright, friendly, not at all moody. He was a good swimmer and a scholastic success. But something about life bothered him. I don’t know if he left a note behind or not. I wasn’t around when he pulled the trigger. But out of a line up of eight people, you’d never pick Bruce as the one to put a gun to his own head. My Uncle Art ended his life with a long stick and a shotgun in an empty one car garage. No one saw that coming either just as no one sees whats coming from the character in my novel.

Including me.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 16th, 2011 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Stuff I know. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.