Blog Post No. 530
There’s value in keeping in touch with the people who matter in your life. (Value beyond relieving guilt, I mean, though alleviating guilt is a personal win for me every time). I wouldn’t say that I’m the worst at keeping in touch, but only because so many other people I know say that they are. That doesn’t mean I’m great at it , though. I just happen to be fine with being alone for so much of the time.
While I enjoy the company of my friends and family while in the moment, I’m also content when I’m just doing my own thing. (It also takes energy to engage, so sometimes there’s too much of a good thing with other people). It’s almost the same issue I have with starting any kind of work. Once I get going, I tend to do better than I had expected. I struggle with that first push.
A friend of mine shared a great concept with me regarding last week’s post about 
My first story submission to an open call was rejected. I’m not surprised. I wrote it last minute, it was for a horror collection, and I struggled to make the story any scarier than intense. It would have been nice if it had made the cut, though. I was happy with the idea, if the execution was a bit lacking. Plus, even though it wasn’t a big payday or anything, the little bit of extra cash would have been a tiny boon to my current focus on financial goals.
It’s been about a year since I was first called back to the day job. I was off for over a year from mid March 2020 to August of 2021. I feel like I did alright in that time off. I released the third and fourth novellas in 
This is it. What everything (ever in the universe from the big bang to the moon landing) has been building towards. It’s the long anticipated 500th post on this blog. Before I get too deep into what is likely going to be a long and esoteric post, I want to thank Justin Cantelo, 
I was hoping to announce that 
I’m racing to the finish line with the Snow from a Distant Sky, the fifth and potentially final novella in my 
January was tough. All my shifts at the day job were cancelled (as I mentioned 
I’m off from the day job again for pandemic reasons and while it’s mostly a good thing (both having time off and not being at risk with omicron running wild) I’m also not making any money. You’d think that with this sudden time off, I’d be writing up a storm or getting way ahead on edits for the new novella, Snow from a Distant Sky. Unfortunately, edits grind to a halt when you have to wait on people to get back to you with their beta reads. As for writing, I’m still struggling with short stories as a whole and I still haven’t cracked the ability to write while in the middle of an edit. 
I’m not alone in thinking that 
Ben Van Dongen 