New Directions

Been a while since I wrote anything here. I guess that's mainly because these entries, for the past year or so, have been articles that also appeared in The Bali Times newspaper. My efforts had been focused on producing a weekly column for that paper, into which I put considerable effort. Mysteriously, however, The Bali Times suddenly disappeared some weeks ago, then reappeared a couple weeks later in a new form, minus any of the editorial columns that had previously appeared (most notably mine and Vyt Karazija's second page columns). Nothing was ever said to either of us by the management of the paper - we simply disappeared! The paper now consists of straight, rather abbreviated news pieces which can be read in the Jakarta Post or the Jakarta Globe, plus a four page insert in Bahasa Indonesia (apparently with an eye toward that rare Indonesian reader who prefers to spend 10,000 Rupiah for four pages to 6,000 Rupiah for an entire newspaper).

In any case, a recalibrration of intent becomes necessary such that I may begin to fill these blog pages with something new.

In addition, I had recently been working on my book, Everything Here is Jim Dandy (living with MS) for publication on createspace.com, and that proved to be a time consuming task. None of these things are as easy as they look on the surface, and so a certain amount of struggle was involved. But that's done now and the book has so far sold one copy, earning me a grand total of 3 dollars and 18 cents. I've not yet decided where to spend this windfall.

My agent back in the States spend nearly three years trying to sell Jim Dandy to a publisher, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Thus sounds the death toll of poor Jim, consigned now to his lonely grave in cyberspace. Too bad. I think the book might have been enjoyed by many MS readers, and really by readers in general as well, since it's focus was not on MS alone but on MS as a symptom of life as we all face it. But anyway . . . .

So, where to go from here? We'll have to wait and see. At this point in time, I haven't the foggiest.