Well I am having anxiety. And as a hack writer (I know I shouldn’t say that) this is normal. I worry that this year less people will visit my Blog & my 5-year streak will end! This would be terrible! A hack writer such as myself couldn’t stand that pressure! If a writer that is a hack fails this mean they are a ‘hack hack’ – and we all know that all ‘hack hack’s’ eventually get ‘Whack Whacked!’. But that’s ok, some ‘whacks’ are good.

To make more sense, I guess when you try to do this writer or artist thing, you book yourself into anxiety – and you would have already had generalised anxiety syndrome already – otherwise you wouldn’t have been doing the Art thing for so long!

As mentioned/alluded to before – this means you have double anxiety. I’m not complaining – perhaps I’m not even making sense – after all, there are people with generalised anxiety that worry a tonne without being artists or writers – so I will shut up about anxiety now. Other than to say to other people like me (especially in the WordPress community) we can talk to each other about our anxiety – its ok to be not ok.

I feel better already.

So it’s been a while since my last chat – perhaps a few months. What has happened? Well I’m tempted to say “Not much” but that would be lazy. Let’s mention the good (I’ve mentioned the bad already haven’t I?). Well last year was a success – I wrote the most posts ever – 72! This was 3 more than the year before. I had a great December in my productivity. “What about Quality” – well I think I wrote a few good ones – perhaps one third of them were reasonably good, perhaps 5% were “gems”. I hope only 10-20% were “Crud”. So that was good.

I’ve been thinking about ramping up my professionality – like getting a paid site – putting myself out there in the ‘Real Life Writers Networking Scene’. The problem is I’ve been staling on that front. I am no doubt guilty of doing what all no name writers do – failure to push themselves out there properly or at all. This is a bad affliction – so if anyone has any tips of cracking that egg – please let me know (comment or email me at martinantonsmith@gmail.com).

Outside writing – Life in NZ has been ok. The economy always seems to leave half us out of anything good – but I guess that’s happening all over the Western world. I know many are worse off than me – my rent ain’t too bad vs others. But I find it very weird that the average joe can’t seem to ever win – although I know why this is – but I won’t share it because that’s a dark dark thing. I’ll just say this – “that’s the plan”.

The weather here is now getting cold – so my daily swims will be soon no more! I’ve been swimming a lot the last few months, and the last few weeks the water has got pretty pretty cold-plunge-like. That water aplenty has been very good for my mental health though – I fully recommend it.

My love life, I never talk about here. There’s nothing to say anyway. My heart is still shell shocked probably. It’s easier to become a eunuch. Also, it bugs me that females don’t seem to chat anymore – it’s like they have lost their edge in communicating. This is probably a post 2020 thing. Or perhaps the machines in our hands have just zipped our mouths. I do worry a lot about this – but I do have some good friends still – that’s at least something

Other than that…there’s not much news, the only thing I can think of is that I have been back to Dunedin (A good arty/writers/intellectual city) a couple of times in the last six months. This is good as it gets me involved in things a bit more. My tiny town only had 6 thousand people. I’ll be going again in a few days, so I’m looking forward to that. You have to always fight the urge to be a total hermit. Even if you are arty or a writer…(even if you are a hack hack).

On that note I wish you the one reading this well in your endeavors & I hope this rings true or at least slightly entertains.

Have a good week. (You can if you think you can…I think I can…think I can CHOO CHOO lol)

Martin A Smith