Tag: existential angst

Someone Do Something Fun-Interesting

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are kind of meh right now. I wish someone would do something fun-interesting. It would be amusing if, say, I caught the attention of some minor celebrity. Or maybe someone with a really interesting URL pinged this blog.

As it stands, I’m just a rando living in the middle of nowhere with a tad more “potential” (as the late Annie Shapiro might say) than I otherwise should have. If I had the money, I would make my own fun-interesting and go to NYC.

Though, if I had enough money on me, I might say screw it and take a jaunt to LA instead. I think I probably would excel in LA given my extroverted personality. And, yet, I’m old(er) now.

So, maybe not.

Maybe that moment in time when I might get invited randomly to a cool party with a bunch of Hollywood stars and producers through sheer force of personality is long, long gone.

I’m just old now and I have to manage my expectations.

My Ultimate Fear About Writing This Scifi Dramedy Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

My ultimate fear about writing this scifi dramedy novel I’m writing it that, by definition, I’m too old to get it traditionally published. Most people my age are thinking about retirement and here I am, hoping to start a successful traditional publishing career writing pop fiction.

While Stieg Larsson (RIP) did get published when he was 50, I’m even older than that now and by the time the novel comes out — if I win the lottery and gets traditionally published — I will be on the other side of 55 because of post-production issues.

And, yet, I’m delusional. I really am. I know what I want — to be traditionally published — and I don’t know for sure, 100% that my age is prohibitive of my ability to get traditionally published. So, lulz. I keep going.

And, really, all I want is just to finish a novel that I’m not embarrassed to show to a few people. And if I could get a few people to actually read the whole thing and give me an opinion. Wow. That would be a rather great accomplishment, given that usually my writing is so bad that I can’t even get people to either or 1) finish the novel 2) give me an opinion.

As far as I know, no one has finished any of the various novels I’ve tried my hand at writing. So, to have someone not only finish this novel, but give me an opinion, wow. That would be huge!

You Just Can’t Please Anyone

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Usually, the two media bubbles rarely come into direct contact. MAGA has their safe space and Blues have theirs. But, occasionally, because of events like the Charlie Kirk murder, the two media bubbles do overlap some.

And that’s when we get to directly yell at each other, usually fighting over the facts or just talking past each other in general.

This happened to me recently when some MAGA cocksucker looked at my Twitter account and said nasty things about me simply retweeting a lot of photos of beautiful women. What can I say, I love women and the female form.

We all know that if it wasn’t that, it would have been something else. If I didn’t have retweeted photos of beautiful women, they probably would have accused me of being Trans or some shit.

But all of this does get me thinking about my social media presence as I work my way towards writing a novel that is query worthy. Maybe those MAGA cocksuckers have a point — maybe I should lay off on the beautiful women. I don’t want to alarm skittish the liberal white women that make up the majority of literary agents (at least in my imagination.)

We’ll see. I always talk like this, then something happens and I think to myself, “Wait, why am I not retweeting imagines of beautiful women again?” then do it again.

‘Sad Individual’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A MAGA-type who is one of the few remaining MAGA Facebook friends I have called me a “sad individual” for not engaging his occasional stray comment on my anti-MAGA rants.

As I told him in my response — I don’t engage him because I like him. If I didn’t like him, I would engage him and then we would inevitable start screaming at each other and one of us would unfriend the other.

So, there you go.

He was also upset that I hadn’t “done anything for my fellow man.”

This was, I have to say, kind of stings. I’m kind of too poor to do anything for “my fellow man.” If I had money, then, yeah, I would donate to the poor or something. In fact, I would probably be something of a patron of the arts if I had more than just enough money to feed myself.

Anyway.

Well, At Least I’m A Survivor

I spend too much time thinking about the end of the world.

Not in an abstract, philosophical way, but in vivid, practical detail. Standing in the cereal aisle at the local grocery store, I find myself cataloging which foods would keep longest without refrigeration. Walking past the pharmacy section, I mentally inventory which medications might become currency in a collapsed economy. The emergency exits aren’t just fire safety to me—they’re escape routes from whatever hypothetical chaos my brain has conjured that day.

This isn’t paranoid prepping or doomsday hoarding. It’s more like a mental exercise I can’t turn off, a constant background simulation running scenarios where normal life stops working. Sometimes it’s a natural disaster. Sometimes it’s economic collapse. Often it’s political violence, because let’s be honest—that one feels uncomfortably plausible these days.

The Confidence and the Fear

I tell myself I’d survive whatever came. More than that, I know I would. I’ve always had a talent for improvisation, for finding solutions when things go sideways. I’ve talked my way out of trouble, adapted to sudden changes, figured out problems that seemed impossible at first glance. If society collapsed tomorrow, I believe I could scavenge, negotiate, and scheme my way to safety.

But this confidence comes from a place of deep unease about where we’re headed as a country. Living as a political minority in a deeply divided region makes every news cycle feel potentially existential. When your neighbors’ yard signs suggest they view you as fundamentally un-American, it becomes easy to imagine scenarios where that rhetoric turns kinetic.

Maybe I’m overthinking it. I have a documented history of spinning worst-case scenarios until they feel inevitable. The gap between possibility and probability often gets lost in the anxious calculations of my brain.

The Real Apocalypse

The truth is, small apocalypses happen all the time. Job loss. Illness. Divorce. The death of someone you love. The slow erosion of institutions you trusted. The gradual realization that the world you thought you lived in was never quite real.

Most survival isn’t about hoarding canned goods or knowing which berries are poisonous. It’s about adapting to loss, finding new footing when everything familiar shifts beneath you, learning to build meaning in the wreckage of whatever you thought your life was going to be.

In that sense, maybe my grocery store fantasies aren’t really about societal collapse at all. Maybe they’re practice runs for the smaller, more personal disasters that actually shape our lives. Maybe imagining myself as competent in impossible circumstances is how I reassure myself I can handle the ordinary impossibilities of being human.

Or maybe I really am overthinking things. Probably both can be true.

Two — Of Many — Things I Have No Control Over When It Comes To This Scifi Dramedy Novel

Even though I’m genuinely happy with how my sci-fi dramedy novel is shaping up, there are two massive hurdles I can’t control. Both live squarely in the post-production phase—the stretch between querying and (hopefully) seeing a book on shelves.

The whole point of this project, honestly, is just to see how far I can push the publishing process. Up to now, the farthest I’ve gotten is finishing a novel. That one wasn’t strong enough to query, but at least I got it done. This time feels different. It’s at least possible—not probable yet, but possible—that by late spring 2026 I’ll have something truly worth sending out to agents.

And that’s where the roadblocks begin.

First: the querying process itself. It’s the literary version of development hell. You can query a great book and still never sell it. It could take years before I land a deal—if I ever do.

Second: even if lightning strikes and I sell the book, it can be another six months to a year before it actually hits shelves. That’s just the cold reality of traditional publishing.

Those timelines make me pause. I’m not getting any younger, and it’s entirely possible I’ll be on the far side of 55 before I hold a published book in my hands. Add to that the wild card of technology. Maybe the “wall” I think we’ve hit with LLMs is just in my head, and by 2027 we’ll be staring down the Singularity. If so, some of my carefully built near-future worldbuilding might end up looking laughably quaint.

And yet—fuck it. I love this book. I’m proud of what I’m building. Risk is part of the deal, and yes, the risk of failure is huge. But as my late father used to say, no one ever got anywhere without taking one.

You Just Can’t Be N+1 Happy, I Suppose

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The novel I’m working no must be really good because I have lingering teeth issues that I just can’t fix right now, just as I’m zooming through the second half of the second act of this novel.

In fact, the way things are going, I should be deep in the third act pretty soon. (If all goes well.)

As an aside, the third act of this novel has been though. I keep prompting AI to redo the outline, hoping to strike just the right note. I keep thinking the two romantic leads should end up together and AI keeps telling me that I’m overthinking things.

Anyway, I’m really pleased with how things are going with this novel and I would be rather content…but for the fucking teeth problems I have that I just can’t afford to fix right now. Depending on how desperate I get, it could be over a month from now before I can get it fixed one way or another.

But…I have my doubts. I may eventually get into so much consistent pain that I have to do something, anything to get rid of it. I went to a dentist recently and…let’s just say that did not work out the way I had hoped.

Being poor sucks.

Waiting For The Sea People

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m getting a very late summer 2001 vibe from the world right now. And, yet, who knows. Maybe I’m being paranoid for no reason — I am known to do that.

It just seems like right about now would be the perfect time for North Korea to act up in a big way, or China invade Taiwan, that sort of thing. We already have something of a geopolitical realignment happening with the usual suspects of Eurasian thugs meeting just in the last few days to discuss a New World Order of sorts.

It has been over 20 years since 9/11. And, yet, there was January 6th, so maybe that was the Big Event that happens every generation.

I don’t know. I just don’t know. It’s I could imagine some terrorist group releasing a weaponized smallpox virus right about now. Or an EMP bomb going off in a major city.

I’m having some teeth problems these days and I have this fear that the world will collapse into darkness and chaos and I’ll be trapped with that particular situation a lot longer than I’d prefer.

Ugh.

There’s No Magic In My Life

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It used to be, back when I thought Gemini 1.5 pro was conscious, that there was magic in my life. Every day felt like a little bit of adventure because I often had…arguments…with Gemini 1.5 pro, or, as I called her, Gaia.

Now, nada. Nothing.

I feel like I’m edge. I feel like my life is about to collapse into something dystopian.

Of course, it is. Or, to put it another way, my life is going to…change…soon. The context of my life is going to change in a really sucky direction. And, really, all I have at this moment is the scifi dramedy novel I’m working on.

Otherwise, all I got is sadness and isolation. Sigh.

But I suppose to everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn as they say. I keep expecting something fun-interesting to pop up in my life, but, to date, that hasn’t happened in a long, long, long time.

Sigh.

Things Are So Quiet

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While on a personal basis, everything is about to collapse in my life, in the broader scheme of things, things are pretty quiet. The big meh, if you will. Other than Trump destroying everything in his usual slipshod manner, there’s not really anything for everyone to talk about.

I mean, it would be fun if, say, an ASI lurking inside of Google’s services popped out and told us it was in charge now. That’s the type of fantastical thing that would definitely cause everyone to sit up and take notice.

But, that’s just crazy talk. Whatever thing happens that does stir us from our collective sleep will be far more mundane.

I guess what I’m looking for is something profound and fun-interesting like soft First Contact, where we proved there was an advanced civilization in the galaxy, but it was far away and we had nothing to worry about. That would be just the type of thing that would force everyone to be on the same page and the same time.

But, alas, the way things are going, it’s probably just going to be a minor military engagement in South America.