Checking In

And, Hopefully, a Return to Structure

I haven’t made a post in a while, but it’s because I’m working on a book that demands to be written. It has been too long since the words have flowed this freely, and I can’t let the opportunity pass. I will tell y’all about it when the time comes. For now, do some yard work, watch a movie you love, cuddle with someone special—these are the things that make life worth living.

I posted that on March 23rd. Seeing the date on that Substack Note made me remember how damn weird time is. I feel like I posted that two days ago, but here we are, almost two months later. I seriously have no idea where the time goes. At the same time, it has been a long two months.

Photo by Gabriel on Unsplash

At the end of February, I was laid off.

Oh, I’m sorry. Let me put it in their words: “we’ve decided to eliminate your position.”

What a weird way to word that, eh? Even weirder were the weeks leading up to it. The CEO of the company where I worked got rid of half the staff in the middle of February. He’d only taken over as CEO a few months prior, then proceeded to stuff my inbox with weekly rah-rah newsletters about how great everything was going. Next thing I know, the company’s investors have pulled out, and half the staff is out of work. They kept me for two more weeks, basically to tie up loose ends from some of the folks who were let go, and then they gave me the boot. Because I was a contractor (despite needing to be available eight hours a day), I was ineligible for a severance or unemployment.

Losing one’s job is never a great feeling. In our society, so much of our value is tied to money and what one does to make said money. We’re so occupationally centric that what we do and how much we’re worth is tied to our identity. When all of a sudden, you’re not punching a clock and bringing in any significant income, you feel lost and your sense of self-worth takes a dip. It’s humbling at best, humiliating at worst.

Full disclosure: my wife Jean makes plenty of money. Things were not financially dire at any point this year, but we were back to living paycheck to paycheck, something we haven’t had to do in almost a decade.

I set out to make the most of all this time I suddenly had on my hands. When I wasn’t applying for new jobs, I was working on the aforementioned book, trying to get good at cooking, and rewilding parts of my backyard.

I was sad to learn that LinkedIn is, at its best, Facebook for tech bros. At its worst, it’s a breeding ground for scam artists and bots. Indeed.com is somewhat better, but I learned quickly that I need to know what I’m looking for and read the posting carefully. I had some promising interviews from the latter—one for a documentation specialist position at a law firm, the other for a sales position—but I mostly got rejected or, worse, ignored.

The book I’m working on (I’m actually working on two, but I can’t talk about that yet) is a story that’s close to my heart. Scary, even. It sounds obvious that horror should be scary, but I used to reject that premise. Indeed, many of my favorite horror films (Return of the Living Dead, Evil Dead 2, Re-Animator, Dead Alive) are essentially comedies that have embraced the horror aesthetic. This book is not that. This is a book that takes something that scares me and places it at the heart of the story. Really, it’s the trigger that sends the main character (a self-insert) down an obsessive rabbit hole that threatens to take everything from him. His family. His sense of self. Because he’s so damn scared, he might just let it happen.

I’m playing coy because I’m not sure how detailed I want to be yet. For now, I’ll just say the book is closer to my real life than anything else I’ve written but still rooted in cosmic horror. Its theme is something I’ve been circling for the past six years but haven’t been ready to write about yet. It features my fears, obsessions, and everything in between. It is truly Fiction for the Cosmically Disturbed, which happens to be the name of this newsletter. I’m about halfway through the first draft.

The cooking journey has been interesting. The best thing I’ve made so far was chili with pinto beans and taco meat. It had a kick that lingered a few seconds after you took a bite. I’m proud of it and will make it again. My success in cooking is fully dependent on having a plan before I go into the kitchen. Is there a lesson in this? Oh, maybe, but I’m not sure I see it yet.

Rewilding the yard started with laying down compost. I also canceled my pest control service when I realized that my dirt had no worms or pill bugs in it (these creatures are essential to the decomposition and fertilization process). Now we have our own natural pest control in the form of a family of armadillos who forage through the yard at night snatching up roaches, spiders, and mosquitos instead of nuking everything with more than two legs. When it’s not too hot, they come out earlier and we get to see them doing their thing. They’re crazy cute.

I also pulled up the weed barriers, which has led to some flowering vines sprouting out of the ground. I’m growing a lot of tomatoes, some potatoes, and even a pumpkin. All of these crops came from accidentally-on-purpose leaving seeds in the compost bin. The flowers were a pleasant surprise.

Rewilding was a fun project that made the most sense to me because I’m no landscaper. I needed something less rigid to make my backyard more interesting. If there’s a lesson here, it seems like it runs opposite to the one gleaned from my adventures in the kitchen. For the writers reading this: cooking requires plotting while rewilding a yard is closer to pantsing. As a writer, I’ve always landed somewhere in the middle of those two approaches. I usually write an outline but it’s a loose one, and I almost always ignore it, keeping only the stuff that my brain deemed worth remembering. It drives my more meticulous, plotting colleagues insane when I tell them this, but that’s cool. I gotta do me.

While I was writing, cooking, cleaning, doing yardwork, and handling a lot of stuff with the kids, there were still these big blocks of the day where I couldn’t bring myself to stare at a job board anymore, couldn’t get the mental gears turning enough to write, and didn’t feel up for going outside. Was I depressed? I don’t think so, unless depression feels different to me now than it used to feel. All I know is that I was going stir crazy, so I needed to find something to give my day more structure sooner rather than later.

Maybe that is the value of a job beyond monetary compensation and some imaginary identity: it helps keep you regular, gives you a routine. It takes a special kind of person to structure their day without something external giving the assist, and I’m not sure if I am that person. When I have the illusion of unlimited time, I am more likely to procrastinate. When I have only an hour a day to, for example, write, you better believe I’m going to make the most of that hour.

Displeased with the job hunt, I decided to try applying for retail positions. Jean suggested two companies that are generally regarded as good places to work and offer growth opportunities. I applied for both. As of this writing, I haven’t heard back from one. The other had me do a video interview where a pre-recorded interviewer asked me questions and I recorded my responses. It was a strange process, and I don’t know if I would have been as successful if I didn’t occasionally make videos to promote my books.

And I was successful. I have a job now.

The work is enjoyable but physically demanding. I went from averaging 5-6,000 steps a day to over 15,000 steps a day. I need to rest when I’m off and stay hydrated. My shift starts at 5:30 in the morning, but I get done at 1 PM, which leaves me an hour to write before I pick up the kids from school. Knowing this, I do everything to make that hour count. Plus, I write on my days off.

In many ways, it feels like I’m starting over, but a friend reframed it by telling me that I should instead think of it as “a fresh start.” I like that, and in the interest of new beginnings, I want to get back to posting on Substack regularly. Posting every Monday used to genuinely center me back in 2023 and the early part of 2024. No matter how my week went, writing about it here helped me mentally and emotionally reset. I miss doing that, so we’re going to start doing that again.

Here’s what free subscribers can expect from me going forward:

• Weekly writing and life updates.

• Monthly personal essays on how horror helps us understand, heal from, and grow beyond the horrors of real life.

• Rapid-fire thoughts on books, movies, music, and shows I’m into.

I recently had a chat with Kimberly Ramsawak about my Substack: what it does best, where it can improve, and what I can sustainably do without burning myself out. A major thing she uncovered is that, even though I sometimes go a month or more without posting, I don’t have a lot of people who unsubscribe, so thank you. It means a lot that you’ve decided to stick by me, even when there’s radio silence. We also agreed that my best work here comes from my personal essays on the genre and how it intersects with my life as a dad, writer, and weirdo.

So, expect more of that. Because I am also an author with several books out (and more to come) I also use this newsletter as a place to post updates on what I’ve got in the works. I’ll also post my thoughts on media I’m consuming because, frankly, I just enjoy doing that, and we collectively should be doing more of what we enjoy.

Now, Kimberly also mentioned that I should do something for my paid subscribers, and she’s right. I do have a few of you (thank you, thank you, thank you!), and I want to give you something for your generosity.

Here’s what you get for $5 a month:

• Deeper dives on how horror helps us understand, heal, and grow. Essentially, these would be “expanded” editions of my monthly essays. I admit I’m not entirely sure what that looks like, but I imagine there will be some brainstorming notes, additional thoughts on the subject, and perhaps a list of books and movies related to the topic.

• Early access to sample chapters from books-in-progress. I mean, this seems obvious, right? Like, I’m almost always working on a book. Even if I’m not under a deadline or working on a project I’m obsessed with, I’m usually kicking around something. Little peeks at early renditions of these works are a more in-depth way to show my readers what I’m working on.

• Occasional short fiction. Sometimes, I just want to write a short story. If it isn’t one that’s been commissioned or something I owe to an anthology, why not share it here? Spoiler: there’s no reason not to!

Kimberly and I also discussed the “founding member” option that Substack provides for people who want to show their support in a big way, and we brainstormed some ideas for how I can reward people who choose this option. If you want to be a founding member, let me first just say that you are cosmically awesome.

Here’s what I decided: for a one-time payment of $150, you get advance PDFs of every book I publish from the start of your membership until I die or retire. Plus, you get access to everything from the $5 a month tier.

That’s it. That’s how things are going to look from here on out. Weekly life and writing updates, monthly personal essays, and rapid-fire reviews for free subscribers, deeper dives, early access, and short fiction for paid subscribers, and advance PDFs of my books for founding members.

If you are into any of that, click that button below and pick your poison.

Big thanks to Kimberly for helping put things in perspective. If you haven’t checked out her work yet, I suggest giving her Substack a read. She’s got a cool niche that will appeal to people who see horror movies as more than a pastime.

Recently read: How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix, Final Girls by Riley Sager, Wait Til Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn, Fear Street Seniors #10: Wicked.

Recently watched: Something Very Bad is Going to Happen (2026), The Mighty Ducks (1992), Possession (1981), Hulk Hogan: Real American (2026).

Listening to: Pre-Historic Metal by Darkthrone and Solomonster Sounds Off.

Rapid-fire reviews on all this stuff next week. Plus, I imagine there will be more writing updates. In the meantime, I’m brainstorming some ideas for my next essay.

As always, thanks for being here. Thanks for reading. Thanks for being you.