51 degrees, cleaning house and loss of faith

Bleah.

51 degrees.

Bleah.

Spent some time yesterday evening working with Tag on his book and going over the current status of my own next volume. We're in the final lap...30 days until THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES is unleashed. Everything and everyone is ready and in place.

er, well...not exactly.

I'm still editing and polishing the annotations...and my cover model has dropped out of sight again. One of the best things in the "old days"...I could roll over in bed and ask Ann if I could use one of her pictures on the cover of a book, and she was always pleased at the notion. Most people would kill to get a book cover...maybe that's what I need to do, just search for a few "breaking in" models and make it a very short-fuse competition. I'd hate to do it to the young lady whom I've already talked with, but I don't even have a status update in almost two weeks and I'm running short of time.

I want to wrap things in this order: cover, blurbs, details.

I don't need this stress. For my birthday this year I'm going to clean house, digitally. All my edits and articles I've ghostwritten or edited for those who relied on my charitable nature, all those photos that have nothing to do with me, they all go in the trash bin. I've got gigs of essays, stories, novels and photos that I either held onto out of a sense of being the reliable one, or because I was asked to. Sooner or later, I just need to take out the trash. I'm sure everything of mine is already mulch. I am losing faith in some people. Which is not a statement of their character, but of mine. I can't continue to compensate for everyone else's failings. I can't play the crew of the Pequod, assuming that Ahab is even alive. Faith is big with me, why betrayals are particularly stinging. For me to let go of a rope I've been asked in seeming earnest, to hold onto, that is a difficult thing.

But whether it means I've gotten weaker or smarter, I leave that to the ages. You knock at the door or wait by the window only so long before you realize that you are betraying the rest of the human race and yourself for what may very well be yet another subterfuge.