Daily Journal 1/8/26

8:31am here along the Susquehanna River bottoms in Central Pennsylvania. I’ve been up since 5am and already, this day can go fuck itself in the ear.

See, I planned very carefully. The plan was get up, drive over to my ex-wifes, make breakfast for my youngest son and then have coffee with my ex-wife, come home and work until 3pm on the Splatterpunk Awards ballot and AuthorCon VI Programming (and it was reasonable to think both would be finished by 3pm if I really knuckled down), post guest content to Patreon at 3:305pm and 3:10pm, head over to the old warehouse and have it emptied by 7pm.

Which would then mean that tomorrow and Saturday could be spent finishing emptying the store, which — in turn — meant that next week could be devoted to nothing but WRITING.

The problem is that neither of those things (AuthorCon VI programming and Splatterpunk Awards ballot) are going very well, or indeed, going at all this morning, due to circumstances outside of my control. Just an influx of not one perfect storm, but twenty perfect storms, all converging at once over my office.

I’ve found that on days like this, the best thing to do is to play music really loud and just wade into it, sword clenched, teeth clenched, butt clenched, and just remain standing and unbowed.

And after this classic bootleg, I’ve got Anthrax and Motorhead queued up, because while Yacht Rock might be good for my blood pressure, it ain’t doing nothing for me this morning. Also, a note to whomever is programming Sirius/XM’s Yacht Rock radio channel — we really don’t need to hear “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass every hour on the fucking hour. That song isn’t good the first time you hear it, and repeated plays don’t improve it.

Have a nice day!