Welcome to Letters from the Mire Don’t recognize this sender? Unsubscribe with one click E.K.Vale recently imported your email address from another platform to Substack. You'll now receive their posts via email or the Substack app. To set up your profile and discover more on Substack, click here. I guess I keep avoiding writing? That’s what it feels like. Worries about health issues. Not just worries, but flat out pain. I took today and Friday off and blissfully put up an “away for a week” auto email for anyone that tries to bug me in the interim. I am away. Taking a break. Go away. Leave me alone. The truth is, yesterday and Tuesday won’t even be breaks, I went out in the field yesterday and will be again next Tuesday, so, still working, just not working in the sense of making calls, answering emails, as well as all the paperwork and desktop reviews I must do. ::sigh:: already I feel as though I have wasted one of my off days, but I guess that is how it feels sometimes to live in this world. You are wasting time if you aren’t “spending it the right way”. I did manage to workshop some of my writing with ChatGPT. Yes, I use it. I know writers loathe it. Well, I am using it as a tool. It gave me good critiques on my writing actually, and ideas for which one I should shorten and which I should expand to a full novel. Still planning on self publishing my collection of poems and vignettes, but realized when I put the finished book on my Kindle (which was a surreal experience, so mind blowing to see my own name on my kindle) and I started reading through it I realized, damn this needs more editing. No typos or errors, but I could tell it wasn’t written the way it should be, and could use some fixes. I will probably do that on my long weekend, fully edit the manuscript, and get it 100% ready for publication. My cover is ready. I think. All that will be left will be to publish. I am excited for it, and to publish (hopefully) my novella/novel re-telling of Beauty and the Beast that I wrote when I was 15. Why not edit and publish it? At this point, I kind of want to publish any bit of writing I have ever done, because why the hell not? If I can make it worthy of reading? Why let it turn to dust on the wind? I always wanted to have my writing published and have it mean something and be read. Well, maybe it won’t ever be read OR mean anything, but I can now publish it all myself, and not worry about whether it’s “good enough”. Maybe it is. Maybe there is no “good enough” and it’s just, here, I made something, take it or leave it 🤷🏼♀️. My Memories of my Brother book might come out next. I need to continue on with that. I have too many writing projects. But that is also why I am keen to get some old stuff published, to get the momentum going so that I can feel a bit more motivated to continue on with my WIPs, and maybe write some more short stories or flash fiction or add to another collection. Feels like a lot of time has been spent trying to figure out the self publishing route and the logistics, editing, research, and not much time actually writing lately. Even my blog, I have felt uninspired, even though I made a trip to a park recently that was magical and worth writing about. In other news, tomorrow I will be dropping my husband at the airport and he is flying to West Virginia to ::hopefully:: purchase and pick up and drive home a 2024 pearly white Prius. Different from the black one we thought we were getting, instead of black on black this one is white on white. Still pretty. I wasn’t all that excited about it, was more excited about a 2019 one we drove, but this one is newer, less miles on it, more features. All the fancy features we liked about one we drove before, but not the hefty price tag because it’s “used”. Barely though. So we get a great deal, everything we wanted, high quality, nice car, at the price we would have paid for the base trim, which felt cheap and crappy to us when we drove it. It’s a good deal, glad we found it, just have to travel to West Virginia to get it. We figured it was easier for just one of us to go get it and drive it back rather than both going and having to drive separately back anyway. I will enjoy having some time to myself at the house, my husband never goes anywhere, which isn’t a bad thing, I love having him around so much obviously, but there are times when I miss having the house to myself or “me” time. It will be nice for a day, and I am super excited to get the Prius and mostly excited to just be done with our damn car search. Ever since our 2004 Nissan Frontier left me stranded in the middle of the highway, gas pedal not working, we have been looking for a new vehicle. It’s been a long search, honestly a lot of it was spent waiting for a brand new Prius that we had to order - base trim - that we ended up hating when it arrived because the base model, base trim, at least the 2026, is SO CHEAPLY made. Disgustingly cheap. The plastic felt like thin water bottle plastic. I did not want to pay $29k for something so disappointing. The higher trim Prius’s we had driven were nice and felt nice and fancy and high quality. Not the base trim. “Oh for you poor people? You get trash unless you want to spend $40k” Well now we will be able to get what we had been excited for and not spend that much. Kinda crazy that this car will be a full TWENTY years younger than Borche (our current truck). We travelled twenty years into the future. I’m excited also to have two vehicles. We plan on sharing the Prius and driving that mostly, only using the truck for truck-type things and driving it a lot less, but I am still looking forward to having two vehicles when we need to, or when I want to go do something and having Seth meet me later or something, or take myself somewhere and not worry about him being stranded without a vehicle or something. Excited to get better gas mileage, smoother ride, cruise control and parking hold, electric window and seat. I re-read my journal from when I was 21 and in it I described having a really crappy car at the time, to the point where some older women in a parking lot meanly commented on the “gas leak smell” coming from my car, when I was a dirt poor young person, working in a factory, and couldn’t afford the $700 it would cost to fix it. The shame I felt, and helplessness. No family to help me at that age. On my own when really I was still a child. Fending for myself in poverty while my parents drove goddamn Jaguars. My father still brags about the amount of money he has and spends lavishly on cars, all while not offering to help me financially one bit even when he knows his generation has it much easier than mine. Anyway, I feel proud of myself that I am in a position now to get a newer car, not a rusted out lemon, and we saved a lot of money by driving such an old truck with no car payment for 6 years. We plan on having this car for as long as we can, so it’s an investment really. An asset, just like the house. We have something that will hold its value, and the goal is to have it for life. So, in that way, the cost is worth it. The gas savings will offset the cost too. My co-workers talk about their children a lot and it strikes me how different my life would have been if I had had parents like my educated, scientist colleagues. They set their children up for success. My one co worker talked about how his daughter is going to med school and is leasing a new vehicle. Wow. What a different life path. I try not to be jealous. I have the life I want now, finally. I managed it all on my own, without any help. Met a wonderful husband who is a great partner, and as a team, we make our dreams come true together, exactly what I always wanted. Now I will be driving a nice car, for the first time in my life actually, at the age of 35. Wow. My dad said congratulations when I told him, and he was sincere. I’m happy for that I guess, but some assistance in life would have been better. Not just a pat on the back once I accomplish it all. Back pain and hip pain is kicking in hard now, going to take a bath or shower and then relax some with a book. You're currently a free subscriber to Letters from the Mire. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Thursday, 28 August 2025
Avoiding Writing
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Rex Sikes posted: " Take this quote of William Atkinson Walker's to heart. Understand it and apply it in your life. ...
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