The Creativity of Sadness

As fate would have it, the same day as my "the bad times are behind us!" anniversary post, my husband was laid off. This was his first full-time teaching job after getting his licensure, and we hoped he would be there long-term ~ it was close, paid pretty well, and he was finally getting into the swing of things. Plus, we were planning to invest in a new home this summer. After years of struggle and uncertainty, we finally thought things were calming down and we could move forward on all the plans we'd put on hold. But fate has not finished with us, it seems. Apparently the universe keeps thinking "hmmm...they are STILL not toughened up enough yet! Let's keep messing with these folks."

Certainly, we aren't the only people experiencing tough times now, and luckily we're not in danger of losing our home or in financial straights...we really did make hay while the sun shone, so we have a nice safety net for the time being. But the "thwarted hopes and dreams" quality of this loss is really slapping us around and making life seem, well, for lack of a better word: mean. And being this sad when it's spring and birds are busy and lilacs are about to bloom...well, that makes the whole situation even more taunting.

But, hell, I'm a writer. And it occurred to me that, hey! The novel I'm writing is about "thwarted hopes and dreams," and how a major loss can end up putting someone on a better path in the long run. It's about struggling with "should have beens" as opposed to realities. It's about grief, madness, and fears so deep they're supernatural. I mean...yeah, things really suck right now, but holy moly am I in the right place to start tearing through the novel revisions. What better time could there be to dig into my ghost story. So this coming weekend, instead of feeling sorry for myself and walking around crying and eating nothing but toast, I'm going to put all that foul energy into Haunted People and make it come alive like never before. There are advantages right now to being in the middle of final revisions to a gothic novel, and I better make use of my melodramatic mood before things start getting all happy again.