Another Year, Another Sadness

I am one of those people who gets sad around Christmas.

Can’t tell you why. The best times I’ve ever had during this season were when my son was a boy. I loved buying toys for him, mostly due to the vicarious thrill of watching him play with them. Okay, I would play with him. It was like being a kid again.

But these days my beautiful son and his beautiful wife and their beautiful child live in Michigan, two thousand miles away. And while I will talk with him on Christmas day, it’s not quite the same.

No, Christmas around the old Barstow homestead are quiet, sad, sedate.

It doesn’t help that this year has been one of disappointment.

The big sadness for me is that I don’t seem to have obtained an agent, even after that thrilling moment in August when it looked like a had a very good agent in my corner. Alas, I have submitted my material to the agent and had to email him three times and send him a memory stick by mail to get a response. And the response was somewhat neutral–“Hey, I got your stuff, stop bothering me.”

Sigh.

I had hoped by this time that we would have had a working relationship which would lead to Minerva’s apotheosis into the world of published novels.

It doesn’t help that I’ve recently read two more published mystery novels which were boring, cliched, unnecessary.

I have published a few short stories this year. I guess my sadness is that I don’t seem to have the energy to write a lot more of them.

Or maybe the sadness is just that life is zooming by me and I’m 66 and getting more and more useless each day.

Whatever, as the kids used to say.

Anyway, if you see me, don’t wish me a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holiday. Just duck your head and hurry on by.