A Letter of Apology

Dear Bloggy Friends:

I'm sorry. I haven't felt very bloggy lately. In fact, I've felt downright shitty. Not sickly shitty, but the kind of shitty you feel that drives you making a chamberpot a metaphor of your life.

Things around MJenks Central haven't been nearly as chipper as, well...oh, fuck it. I am not in the mood for similes. I've just been battling a spate of empty-checking-account depression coupled with burgeoning-mountain-of-debt despondency with a tad bit of "where did my life go wrong?" which has reduced me--almost!--to tears. But, since I'm a man, I don't go in for that shit. I just do my crying on the inside, where it's just me, a bunch of rats, some gray mist, and the backs of all the mirrors in the world. The plus side? I'm naked and don't care that I'm fat.

In order to combat this downward emotional spiral, I've been burying myself in escapist activities whenever I'm not pretending to be working and/or driving to and from work. I've been playing a lot of Civ III, because shooting Egyptians takes the edge off. When I'm done with Civ III for the night--you know, that point where my eyeballs feel as if they're about to invert--I turn the computer off and I read until I'm so exhausted that I tumble into a dreamless sleep. The alarm goes off, I spend five minutes mentally bemoaning my situation, and then I start the whole thing over anew: work, eat, Jeopardy, shoot Egyptians, mentally masturbate to the genius of Neil Gaiman.

This leaves little time for bloggy goodness. It's not that I don't have posts lying around the in the darkened corners of my creativity; I have plenty of them. So many, in fact, that I forget them, only to remember them after I've furiously tried to cobble together something to entertain you during the last shredded dregs of my lunch hour. It's just...I have to think in order to put the words together in what I perceive to be the correct order to deliver my inner machinations in a subtly amusing and somewhat piquant manner. And, well, to be honest, thinking is not something I want to be doing a lot of right now.

At the same time, I haven't been reading nearly as many of your fine blogs as I would like. I'm sorry. I'm just...well, I'm funky, and not in the jive-talking, afro-wearing style. More like the...*shudder*...emo kid...*shudder again*...style. Frankly, I do not wish for my melancholy to drag down your comments section. Unless you're Vic, in which case, I'm actually kind of proud of my chamberpot metaphor.

Because I never metaphor I didn't like.

I wish I could take credit for the sheer genius of that terrible pun, but it's actually a book title.

Speaking of books, hey! I wrote one. Well, it's still a manuscript. If you and I are facebook friends (which we are), then you know that I submitted the manuscript for The Boar War to a publisher last night. It's the first time in about a year that I've submitted anything. Apparently, somehow, someway, my brain finally registered that whole "you can't get your manuscript published if you don't submit it for publication and/or representation". Amazing, isn't it?

In short, my bloggy friends, I am sorry for not being a better bloggy friend. I'd offer hugs, but you know I'd just try to grab your ass, and some of you think that would be "creepy" and "out of line" and "something I don't want to subject myself to." Pfft. Philistines. I will try to remedy this situation as soon as I scrape together $1,000 possible. And by "situation" I mean my melancholy mental state, not my desire to feel you up whilst embracing you. I'll never sacrifice that.

Cordially yours,

MJenks (not so indefatigable these days)

PS: American Gods is awesome. You should read it.