Back Up on the Horse

I’m making myself a vow that I’m going to do one thing for Ashland every evening that the Butcher is not home for the rest of the month. There is no other way. It just has to be done.

I finished the short story I’m working on. The tone is weird. Maybe it’s not weird. It makes me feel weird to read it. I have written a lot of those stories this year. Most of them have been too personal to send out. This one may be, too, but I want to submit something to this anthology, just because I need to get back up on the horse in the short story department, too.

My parents called and eventually asked how things were going. I told them about a problem I was having and my dad said he told me I should have done all my writing under a pseudonym. He never told me that, but whatever. It’s too late now.

The pseudonym he says he recommended is just my middle name with my same last name. I don’t know anyone in real life with my middle name. I’ve never heard a person say it who I did not first tell it to. Maybe that would be different if I went to Sweden and hung out in their nursing homes.

But, as it is, it feels like a very private thing. It’s not a secret or anything, but it’s just something that feels like a thing my great-grandmother left me, which I cherish, but I wouldn’t recognize it as my name, as a way to identify me. It just doesn’t seem like something for everyday use.

I’m overthinking it. I’ve just been bummed and frazzled for a while and I can’t shake the feeling I’m screwing up in a bunch of ways I don’t realize. And I don’t think I actually am. I think this is just a shitty thing my brain is doing to pass the time. That’s frustrating.