I realize it’s been a couple of weeks since I published an actual article on my blog. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write. It’s that I’ve just been using my writing time to work on my novel instead.

I admit saying “my novel” when I haven’t even finished it sounds a bit pretentious, but it is what it is. In case you didn’t know, I have dreamed of writing a book and getting it published for pretty much my entire adult life. I’m not talking just a few years. I’m talking decades.

Now that I’m thinking about it, it’s hard to believe I’m still at it after all these years, typing away on my keyboard trying to write something people might want to read. If you’d told me in my twenties that I’d still be working on this book in my forties, I might have thought that sounds kind of pathetic, but I’m going to be kind to myself and choose to see it as kind of admirable.

The truth is, for the last few years I’d pretty much given up on the novel, or at least put it on hiatus. I don’t think I’ve worked on it seriously at all for the last three years, maybe even longer. That never happened before. Weeks might go by, sometimes maybe even a few months if I was in one of my gambling phases, but inevitably, I’d always lose all my money, feel like a loser, then go back to working on my book again.

But the last few years I was so focused on eCash and writing about about the eCash project that I guess I unintentionally put the novel on hold. There was also the fact that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to figure out how my novel was supposed to end. I had some loose ideas, but nothing ever clicked or felt right. I was explaining this to my wife the other night when she made a suggestion that actually did click. I suppose that, along with the fact that eCash has been stuck in this interminable bear market, finally gave me the motivation to dust off my novel again, digitally speaking that is…

I decided the best approach would be to start from scratch, but it helped that I have been able to cut and paste some sections from earlier drafts still saved in my Google docs. The idea was to try and go chapter by chapter, until eventually I had a completed rough draft that I could work with. I had no clue whether it was going to be 20 chapters, or 50 chapters, but it’s looking more like the former.

I’ve come to realize the reason I love my blog so much is that while it’s hard writing something long like a novel because it’s hard to see the progress, and seeing the progress is what provides motivation via dopamine rewards, publishing a short article like this is much easier to do, and each time someone pays me a little XEC to read them is the best dopamine reward possible.

Luckily, I now have something else to motivate me besides money, because the other day my kids saw me writing in my office. They came in, each one positioning himself on either side of my chair, and read what I was writing over my shoulder. I can’t say exactly how they felt about what they read, but they both seemed intrigued. My youngest one even said he wanted to read the whole thing right then and there, but I told him it wasn’t finished.

“Just let me read what you wrote so far,” he said. “Please?”

I tried to explain that that would be impossible. Everything’s still in bits and pieces and it wouldn’t make sense if you read it now, I said. He said he didn’t care, but I told him he would have to wait.

That’s when my oldest decided he would give me a deadline to finally finish this novel of mine. I laughed, and this time it was me who was intrigued.

The truth is that over the years, I’ve given myself countless deadlines to finish this book. Then after I got married, it was my wife who would give me deadlines to finish the book, but in every instance, the deadlines would come and go, and I never had a book to show for it.

I was curious how long my son would give me, so I asked him what he thought would be a reasonable amount of time.

“How about by the end of next year,” he said, and I told him I thought that was very reasonable indeed.

Then my wife chimed in and said, “That’s too much time!” And I couldn’t help but laugh.

We ended up coming to consensus on my oldest son’s next birthday, so instead of the end of next year, I had a little less than a year in total.

I have to say I feel more determined than ever, and this deadline definitely hits different than the ones before since disappointing your kids is not the same as disappointing yourself, or even your wife.

But I’m optimistic I’m going to actually do it this time. I’m making good progress. Of course it’s possible I will come up short like so many times before. This wouldn’t be the first time I thought I’d make it only to fail, but I want to believe that this time will actually be different.

Only time will tell, of course. Luckily, I don’t expect my book will be that long, so I have that going for me. Anyway, all this to say that I will still try to write here from time to time, but hopefully one day in the not too distant future, I’ll have something more substantial to share.

As always, thanks for reading, and thank you for the 1000 XEC =)

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