School started up a few weeks back, so I’ve headed back to tutoring, and that, coupled with the writing has lead to pretty much full days. The cash is nice, though.

The one thing I can’t seem to escape is the financial state of the world, at least at the moment. It lurks around the corners of both gigs: parents get laid off, business’ struggle to pick up the money they’re owed, mags go down, editors get fired, and you have in the back of your head a set of plans, or things you’ll do if everything goes south very badly. Right now, I think I’d become an astronaut. You never really hear of them being fired, or people saying, ‘Well, we have too many, and we need to downsize.’ Reportedly there are too many: there are astronauts that train entire life’s to get thrown out of the orbit, only to spend a lifetime waiting. I don’t know if that’s true, but it has a nice tragedy to it.

I’m about to begin reading Octavia Butler’s final novel, Fledgling. In the last month I’ve read and reread her entire body of work for the piece I’m working on, and I’m unsure how it’ll turn out, but it’s feeling good. She did seem to have a quiet fascination with Mars, though.