One of the worst things about writing fiction is when you realize you need to just abandon a project.  Whether you need to tear the steel out of it and start from scratch, or just give up on it all together, it’s a heartbreaking experience.

Writing is a lot of work.  Oh sure, maybe it’s not like digging a ditch or pulling a double on the sales floor, but there’s an exhaustion and effort to it that is truly under-respected and pretending otherwise is often how writers get (yet another) inferiority complex.  But even in writing, the sunken cost fallacy is a common thing and sometimes, you got to just let it go.

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You know, in another life, I could have been a big gun nut.

As an American, guns have always been a thing culturally.  But in my family, and in my personal life, they were never prominent.  Nobody in my immediate family owned guns, I’ve never owned any guns (not counting a few antiquated farm shotguns I inherited from a great-uncle, which I’m pretty sure stopped working decades ago).

What’s weird is that, given how into martial arts I am and for how long I’ve studied violence – never mind my life-long love of action movies (and no, violence and action are not the same thing) – it always struck me as a little weird that I never wanted guns or really even liked them.

But what especially surprises me is that I never learned to like guns because of one of my cornerstone interests: toys.

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At the end of last year (2022), we adopted a squirrel from an overbooked rescuer. The young squirrel wasn’t a kit when she’d been found in the street, but wasn’t old enough to survive the winter on its own. We took it off the rescuer’s hand because she was otherwise healthy.

Having cared for squirrels in the past, we expected this to be a similarly loving and rewarding experience.

We were in for quite the shock.

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               Are we doomed?

               Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, dystopian fiction was often present in every genre.  Fantasy, sci-fi, anime, video games, comics, there was always some ‘dark future’ story near to whatever your favorites were.  Going into the 2000s and a post-Inconvenient Truth world, it became less fiction and more speculative.

But as climate change ramps up its effects and the predictors meant for a decade from now are surpassed last year, I find myself wondering just how bad is it going to get.  And are we really doomed?

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I think about routines a lot.

As a writer, routines are important because you often set page or word goals for yourself (write this many pages a week, write this many words a day, etc). It’s a time-honored and proven method to complete writing projects. But to meet those goals, you have to build for yourself a routine.

Thing is, just as the task of writing one project is not the same as writing another, neither are the routines. Routines change, which some people struggle with. Which I understand, but changing your routine regularly is not a sign of failure; it’s a sign of strength.

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