Summer Goals (& a new letter)
JES touches base after a century, and lets you know about their new more-regular updated section of this newsletter called THE VOID WRANGLER
As all three of my window units try (and mostly succeed) to keep me alive through the Kansas City summer, I’m attempting to get my life moving in some sort of ordered and progressive direction. I feel like my life has started to stall in 2025, and especially the last few months, which is likely due to my having to transition into my new job as full-time, night watch security at the museum. Now, after a few weeks of too much overtime (insufficient but necessary because Grendel broke his foot, which cost me approximately one million dollars), I am ready to try and make my life filled with more than work and sleep.
One of the things that I am most urgently trying to do is to build a better support system, as well as fostering some closer friends. This feels extra resonant as, when I recently answered a questionnaire as part of the intake to see a new therapist, I answered 0 to the question of how many close friends I have.
This is unfortunately not an easy thing to do when you are 34, especially when you are 34 and also happen to be Me. I think I have a lot more baggage when it comes to friendships than I like to think about, which gets in the way of my trying to develop and strengthen new ones. But I am trying. If you have any tips, let me know. I have been putting myself out there a bit more, trying to make my amicable intentions known to creatures that I feel would be receptive to it.
I think I’m also going through a crisis of spirit, which I am sure many of us are right now, given how blaringly conscious we all are of the state of the world these days—and the apparent bleakness of that state. I’ve been trying to combat the negativity in myself, which I think springs up particularly aggressively whenever I’m in a lull when it comes to my writing/creative work.
Now that the mania of writing my latest novel project, Guest Services at the Museum of Sexual Deviance, has passed, I have found myself in that mournful revising/rewriting stage of grief, and am being forced to contend with the fact that the world will never find the value in the project that I find.
It’s funny how every project I write I feel is going to be the one that opens new doors for me. Like, each one I feel like is going to suddenly make the world turn its head, and then it never quite happens. Which is reasonable, given that I am writing pretty unapologetically literary and trans/queer books. But whatever crisis of spirit I am going through has been negatively affecting this book, I think, which is sad because usually my belief in my work is about all that gets me through this thing we call life, and now I am already losing faith in it far before it has had a chance to disappoint me (literally maybe 1.5 people aside from me have read it, as far as I know). But I am hoping to be able to make it into its better self by the end of this summer, so that I can work on something else for a little while…
So while Summer is maybe halfway over by now, my goals for rest of the summer are to:
Indoctrinate a few good people into becoming close friends with me
Get this damn novel rewritten, and further submitted, and work on something else
Be better about sharing work/ideas (especially in photography and illustration) without fear that absolutely nobody will give a damn
To accomplish the last one, I’m starting a new, more regularly updating “Section” for this newsletter, through which I plan to send a broader range of stuff (with a broader range of seriousness) than the sort of thing I send to Excerpts from the Void. The problem I have with Excerpts currently is that I value it as a way to let people know more important things that are happening, but with that comes the idea that I should be careful not to overstay my welcome in your inbox.
All this to say, later this week I’ll be sending out the first entry of this new section of my Substack called The Void Wrangler, which will in general have more little musings from me, more blog-like updates about what I’ve been working on/reading, and more just…whatever I decide I want to talk about and share! A lot more photography, hopefully more updates on my comics, etc. If you like Grendel (who doesn’t?) I recommend you stick around for that letter, as there will certainly be a lot of photos of him.
I’m creating this as a new section because I want to be able to give you the option to opt-out of getting more emails from me. The growing pain of this transition will be that I have no choice but to add everyone to the new section, but that being said you can absolutely manage your subscription and unsubscribe from the new one once it comes through your inbox. I realize this will probably just lose me subscribers across the board, but if you are interested in just generally checking in with me more (on a place that is not social media, because I am increasingly just removing myself from all of those) please stick around for The Void Wrangler!
I am looking forward to not feeling so precious about what I choose to share here, out of fear of overstaying my welcome.
LASTLY: To all my friends in Saskatchewan, or near there, I am going to be in Moose Jaw this week—from the 17th through the 19th—for the Festival of Words! I’ll be doing a reading or a panel each day of the festival, and would love to meet you. I can’t wait to get out into the big sky of Saskatchewan, which I’ve not seen since 2014.
Thanks again for all your support of me and my work, and I hope to connect more soon.
Stay cool,
