Sober reflections on the year that’s passing…

It’s been a long holiday season. It’s been a long month. It’s been a very long year.

I didn’t write a holiday letter to go out with my Yule cards this year. Only a few people would still get one, because most of my card list either doesn’t know me well enough to be interested, or, increasingly, keeps up with my doings via Facebook and LiveJournal. But that wasn’t the main reason. When I started to review my journal to summarize the events of 2010, I realized that it’s been a very…disappointing year, in many respects.

True, I didn’t lose my job or experience a bereavement or face serious illness like so many people I know. I have a lot of blessings to appreciate, right there. But there wasn’t much about 2010 to get excited about. It’s been a year of cutting losses, of relinquishing or aggressively purging things that just weren’t working or needed any longer, of clearing out clutter and eliminating junk on both material and intangible levels, much of it going back for many years, long before the “Great Recession.” It’s been a year when nothing seemed to go smoothly, when results fell far short of expectations or hopes, when very little happened that boosted my self-esteem. It’s been, as if I needed it, a very humbling year. Since life cycles don’t follow the calendar (and do follow long-term astrological influences that are nowhere near done), I’m going into 2011 still very much in this process and pattern.

I got a very cool new computer in January. But this led to changing Internet service providers and web hosting, which turned into a huge ordeal that lasted nearly a month. Later on, I had to completely wipe my new computer’s hard drives, reinstall everything and restore all the backed up data because Dell shipped my system with the wrong configuration and I didn’t catch it for several months. On the positive side–because new things tend to lead to more new things (and expenditures)–I got a big new printer, and a cool pen tablet for doing digital art, and Adobe Creative Suite CS5 which I don’t know how I managed without, and I started doing original illustrations for book covers. I even have a portfolio started on DeviantArt.

I published my second book, The Longer the Fall, the story which laid the foundations for my entire fictional universe and had been torturing me since 1995. But the response it’s gotten has been very disheartening and I’m almost sorry I bothered. By Light Unseen Media released two other books, Krymsin Nocturnes and Blood Justice, which I think are very good, but it’s gotten extremely difficult to get reviews in the three years since I published Mortal Touch. I did two big rounds of queries to book bloggers, and for the most part, even the ones who asked for a book didn’t post a review. I put every title on the Blogcritics writers’ list and didn’t get a single request for a review copy. These days, book bloggers and critics are reviewing major, front-list books from big publishers, or old classics–and that is all.

Ebooks are revolutionizing the publishing industry and marketplace, and I’ve been very grateful for my computer skills. I’ve kept up with everything: I was among the first Kindle publishers in 2007, in the Apple iBookstore the day it launched, in Google Editions the day it premiered, in every other ebook retailer that will let me in (some, like Fictionwise, won’t). I increased the ebook royalties I pay my authors, too. But it’s like tap-dancing on top of a rolling log–in white water rapids. I have no idea where all this will end up going. Readers, not just publishers, seem to be responding to the chaos by pulling back and prioritizing “sure things,” hence we have mega-hits like Twilight while mid-list and new authors go begging–far more than just a couple of years ago.

I applied for two grants and got neither. One of them gave a lot of awards in several tiers, but I didn’t even make the finals–and it was a relatively small, local grant competition.

I cut back the conventions I attend to just two, Readercon and Albacon. But both of them were disappointing for me this year from a participant perspective. I volunteered to chair Readercon 22 in 2011 instead of trying to do programming. Conventions, I’ve found, just aren’t worth the investment of time, work and money, at least for someone as far outside the box as I am. They mostly work for authors who are already celebrities and will attract fans who want to meet them. I don’t even really “network” at conventions. The pros I meet can’t connect with me, I’m just too iconoclastic. (That’s the story of my whole life in one tweet, actually.)

I gained back some of the weight I lost in 2009. It’s true that after over 50 years of obesity (I’m not exaggerating, I was obese by the time I was 2 years old), I’ve maintained a “normal” BMI for more than 18 months now–but just barely. It’s been very hard to keep my eating under control when life in general has been so discouraging. I’ve maintained my workout regimen successfully, though.

I worked very hard on yard work in the spring, summer and fall and got a lot accomplished. I bought a tiller and put in the first serious vegetable garden I’ve had for over 10 years, and made major progress toward converting an old screenhouse into a greenhouse. But then Pepperell implemented a total ban on outside water use, and there are no hints when that will be eased up. The ban could continue through this coming spring and summer and into the indefinite future. I didn’t put by as much food this fall as I usually do. I didn’t go blueberry picking, and I picked one bag of apples but never went back for a second bag as I intended to do.

So…yeah. As holiday letters go, it would have been a downer. But then, I guess it’s been a pretty rough year for nearly everyone. I think most of us are glad to see the end of it!