Author Archives: Satis

Mental Wellness, Decisions, and Living in the Moment

For those of you who’ve been following me for a while, you may be aware that I’m not … entirely well, mentally. Clinically, I suffer from bipolar type 2, meaning I am often depressed, but pass through phases of unusual energy, activity, and productivity. Internally, that feels like I can’t trust myself from day to day to know how I might feel at any given moment, and that’s given rise to a sense of despair in and of itself, only because I feel like I really don’t know myself very well at all.

In some ways, it’s easier to deal with my condition when I’m severely depressed, because it’s a familiar old feeling. Somehow there’s a comfort in despair, in misery and loneliness, in knowing that nothing will ever change. It’s difficult, of course; but comforting. During those depressive phases, I sleep too much, get nothing done, can’t clean the house or even take care of myself to a large degree. It’s a huge stressor on my personal and professional relationships, and the worst part is that it’s often triggered when I forget to take (or run out of) my meds, at which point I spiral into a downfall of self-pity in which I continue to not take my meds. It can take weeks, if not months, to emerge from these cycles of despair, and when I’m down in it – to quote Trent Reznor – there’s really nothing to be done to bring me out of it except the slow progression of time.

Because of the frequency of these depressive episodes, I’ve taught myself to try and take life not even one day at a time, but literally one moment at a time; where I might be laughing at a joke one moment, I could turn into a stone wall of misery the next. It’s a rollercoaster, to put it mildly, and the only way I know how to cope with it is to not think about it. I dissociate from my own internal sense of self, and simply allow myself to feel – whatever feelings those might be, in the moment, for the moment. What’s to come is unknown, and what’s happened is forgotten in the past; there is only the present, ticking away one second at a time.

While this works well enough as a coping mechanism for when I’m depressed, it becomes a hinderance to a functional adult life when I’m not. Most people (I guess), by the time they reach middle age, have some semblance of a sense of self; they know who they are, what they like and don’t like, and how they might react to any given situation. I … do not. Living life perpetually in the moment is not as liberating as it might sound, because I really, truly don’t know how I feel about anything. If something seems like a good idea in the moment, I’ll probably go for it – even if, in hindsight, it was a terrible decision. And I can’t remember how I felt about it after the moment’s gone, nor can I predict how I might feel about it in the future. It’s a hazy mist of indecisiveness that leads me to sometimes rash decisions, and sometimes a crippling inability to make a decision.

For example: I am trying to apply to graduate school to continue my education that I left behind almost twenty years ago. This is the longest-term, biggest decision I have ever made in my life, and I still don’t know how I feel about it. Some days I’m anxiously excited to hear about my application, to know if I’m going to get in to my chosen college and be able to pursue a new career. Other times, I feel terribly overwhelmed, and questioning whether I’m making the right choice at all. I worry that I made a decision in the heat of a manic episode, and now I’m going to be dealing with the fallout for the rest of my life.

This is what I deal with every single day. What I have energy for today, I will lack tomorrow. What I feel happy about today, I will regret tomorrow. And what I did yesterday is a mystery, unknown to me why I did it or how I felt about it.

It’s a difficult way to live, but now, almost four decades into my life, I really just don’t know how else to exist. I might splurge on an excessive expense because I feel like it, and pay it off on my credit card for the next two years. I once bought a car on a whim because I wanted a new one. As a teenager, I put my hand through a window because I was annoyed at something.

But, despite it all, I know I am capable. I have written books, albums and symphonies. I have completed projects that some people only dream of starting. I know I have a strong person within me; I just can’t find him most of the time. And when I do, it feels fraudulent, a kind of self-reflected imposter syndrome. Yet, I persevere, because – at the end of the day – I don’t know how else to live.

Just one single day at a time.

I Used to Have Things to Say

It’s funny; as I consider the history of my blogging – and its future – I think about all the things that used to occupy my mind. Every week, nearly, it seems there would be some newness to share: a novel idea, a thought, an opinion. There was no shortage of topics to write about, and no shortage of concerns to share about them.

As time wears on (or perhaps merely as I get older), the less these things seem to matter to me. What once was of grave concern to me (or at least of mild interest) now holds no sway. And I don’t know if that’s because the world has become duller, or because I have.

Every week as I fire up WordPress again to write, I struggle to think of something to say. Something worthwhile. Something interesting, or passionate, or educational. Or even just erroneously opinionated. But instead, all I can think of is how I can’t think of anything to write about.

What a conundrum.

I wonder if this is an aspect of getting older. I started blogging twelve years ago, when I was twelve years younger. Life was more engaging, more thrilling, more devastating … more stuff was happening to me emotionally. Now, of course, I fear that I’m getting boring, or too cynical to care about anything in any real depth. Especially as, even when a topic does come up that reignites some latent interest in me, it fizzles out before I can cohesively string a sentence about it together.

Or is it just me? Am I just becoming less interesting? Am I becoming a boring old git, whose interests are waning and in whom others’ interest is equally declining? Age, one would think, comes with experience and experiences, and with the both of those one would reasonably assume that there would be more to discuss, not less.

It just seems that there’s so little left to say about the world that hasn’t been said by others already, or in a better way, or with greater reach. After all, who am I? Who cares what I have to say? What does my voice matter?

It’s not that I’ve lost interest in my own passions; quite the contrary. In a few weeks I have an interview for grad school to study music composition – a return to a major that I had thought I’d abandoned nearly twenty years ago. I’ve been writing books, writing music, recording and composing; I just can’t think of the same idle, random thoughts to put up on the internet that I used to.

That being said, I suppose I never was very prolific at the whole “random thought” thing; I was never successful at Twitter, because I couldn’t think of enough witty 140-character remarks to fill a feed. Medium- to long-form blogging was the closest I could achieve, largely because I’m too wordy and not witty enough for sound bites.

I could, of course, update you all on the ins and outs of my mundane life and existence; I had Cheerios for breakfast, and drove too fast on the way home to pick up Chinese takeout because I was hungry. But I suspect that would be just as dull as anything else I could think of to write about.

Perhaps I should return to where this blog started; a way to publish and promote my fantasy writing. But in order to do that, I’d have to actually, you know, write some more fantasy. Which I’ve been dreadfully stagnant at. (Although I do honestly have an intention to return to The Redemption of Erâth.)

In any case, I will continue to try and write here, even if I am waffling with nothing to say, because writing keeps the muscles limber, and ultimately I need to exercise those dormant muscles from time to time.

The Evolution of One’s Writing

One of the great struggles I have as a slow writer is keeping a sense of consistency in style and tone when there are month-long gaps between progress on a particular novel. You see, although I can claim I’ve been working on book four of The Redemption of Erâth for four years now (yes – the first chapter has a timestamp on my computer of January 3, 2020), the honest truth is I’ve probably put no more than fifty or so hours of work into it so far. I don’t write slowly, so much as I take very, very long pauses between bouts of inspiration. There have probably been moments where an entire year passed between one chapter and another.

Over these long time periods, of course, it leads to me forgetting what I was writing, where I wanted to go with the plot, and more importantly, how I wanted to write the content itself. For example, the language I use in The Redemption of Erâth is considerably more deliberate and possibly archaic, designed to invoke memories of high fantasy and epic tales. The language I use in my contemporary novels is more colloquial, simpler, and less flowery in its imagery. And when I find myself working on different works across the span of months and years, I sometimes forget “how” to write in a particular manner. It takes a while to get back into the prosaic style of a particular type of story, and I find that sometimes the story suffers because I can’t keep the tone consistent from one chapter to another.

Another difficulty I encounter is the overall style of writing across books. With my standalone novels this isn’t too much of an issue, because the book in and of itself can be edited to a certain level of consistently, and if the next book comes out stylistically different, well … they’re two different books.

But with The Redemption of Erâth, an ongoing series that is essentially one long story (each book tends to end on a kind of cliffhanger, long-awaiting the next book to pick up where the last left off), I have to try harder to keep to a style and tone that matches throughout. And herein lies the biggest challenge: The Redemption of Erâth was originally conceived as a bedtime story for my then-seven-year-old child. That was twelve years ago. They’re nineteen now (and regularly remind me that I still haven’t finished their childhood bedtime story), and the story that began as children’s literature (to an extent) now has to accommodate an audience that has since grown up. However, I also don’t want to turn a corner into graphic, adult content with sex and extreme violence (à la Game of Thrones), not only because it would ruin the ongoing feel of the novels, but if a younger reader picked up the first book, I wouldn’t want them to be shocked by the time they get to the fourth or fifth book.

To an extent, of course, The Redemption of Erâth has matured over time anyway; whilst the overall themes of loneliness and coping with depression and darkness persist from the very beginning, I’ve found that as I continue to write, characters’ actions and motivations tend to be less childish (even adult characters), and more grounded in reality. Even things that happen to characters, such as injuries or the death of loved ones, I find I treat with more respect for how those characters would truly feel and react. For example, in the second book one of the main characters suffers a broken leg. This injury remains with them for the rest of the stories, causing them a limp and difficulty walking long after the injury is healed.

And of course, over the past twelve years, my own abilities and style as a writer have grown and matured. What felt like subtle plot points in my late twenties now seem obvious and uninspired as I enter my forties, and what thought was clever use of language back then now comes off as a pastiche of older, greater writers (like Tolkien). I have a better understanding of plot, structure and character development than years ago, and can (perhaps) weave a story with more subtlety and delicacy than before.

Of course, I’m also stuck, to some degree, with the style and language I started off with all those years ago, simply for the sake of keeping a sense of consistency between novels. It would feel wrong to change up the language, dialects or style of the writing itself at this point, and a clash of that nature between books would likely turn readers off. So now, of course, the challenge lies in replicating the style and tone of the past, whilst still incorporating everything I’ve learned about writing in the interim.

It isn’t easy.

At the end of the day, however, I still am committed to completing the tale of The Redemption of Erâth, which is still three and half books away, and that means continuing in the manner that’s been set as a precedent. hopefully it doesn’t become to wearisome to the reader, and the ongoing story of Brandyé and Elven will continue to be interesting and engaging throughout their coming adventures.