Day Twelve and Motivation Monday on a Sunday

What is motivation? 

Or in this case, what is MY motivation?  Unlike what passed for motivations in the bygone times, my children are grown, and the days of 30 weekly hours of overtime have given way to government cheese and, by the time New Year’s rolls around, a job that’s just enough to supplement my government cheese, without working too many hours, so that the government cheese industrial complex won’t take any of my monthly supply away from me, because I have some minor ambition for the finer things in what’s left of this life.

All I want for Christmas is a new book in print, and then one more in the next year.  And yeah, if you’re a writer, I know we know dozens of people who seem to give themselves this same gift, every year.  The only difference with me and this gift, and with the motivation to give it to myself for the first time in SIX YEARS since the last time, is…

I really don’t want this gift to suck.

Because with my old motivation, if I had published a book in 2019 or 2020, maybe in 2021 or 2022, hell, even in some part of 2023, I promise you, that book would’ve sucked.  It would’ve been like a gift you gave yourself a generation ago, when neckties were really wide, and Netflix still mailed you DVDs.  It wouldn’t have been something that you, now, should be okay with. And since this is a gift to yourself, you shouldn’t have to lie when you open it and, with a straight face and a fake smile, tell yourself just how much you love it.  Because you don’t.  And you shouldn’t.

Because it sucks.

And if any of you reading this have read anything I wrote between 2018 and the middle of this year, and still insist on telling me that it DIDN’T suck, just know, I’ll always love you.

But that is why today, I’m writing a post about motivation, since I haven’t had enough of it to write something so good that I felt safe letting it go out and play in the daylight, for damn near six years.

That was then, this is now.

So let’s call this Motivation Monday… on a Sunday; just a short blurb of a blog to remind myself that I can feel differently about what I write, and how I write it, and continue on with it, even when the reasons for writing have changed as much as fashion neckwear, or how we get our entertainment.

But I do still miss my stainless steel Motorola Razr.

Talk to you tomorrow.