Number 1

Number 1
By Alex Ness
January 1, 2023

I am on hiatus for my creative and journalistic works. But I am going to live and do what I love to help myself stay on track, write.

The Funeral of Shelley by Louis Édouard Fournier 1889. Showing a pyre with Percy Bysshe Shelley's farewell, watched over by world adventurer Edward Trelawny and Shelley’s fellow poets James Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron.

The reasons for the hiatus are complex but are not hard to understand. In 2005 I began working in the creative field, that is, writing to be published, in addition to my coverage of the comic book and popular media world. It was then that my schedule went from odd and random, to constant. I went from barely enough sleep, to nearly 4 hours of sleep a night. I'd crash for a weekend now and then, but writing or working 80 hours was meant to make up for lost time, as I was a 40 year old man, in a world of younger and younger creatives.

Writing for 80 hours a week succeeded in my creating work for a website, later hacked by a certain unnamed country, where I had provided at least 4 articles of commentary and review and 1 interview per week. I also compiled hundreds of pages of works that would become vital to writing the 36+ books I've written.  I have also ghost written works for non profit groups, for free, and had exchanged writing and editing for a couple artists who would then format my books. One of the two died, during my final King Arthur themed book. He had supported. me during my cancer time of 2013/2014, and when I was healed he said he had something unknown, and by the time he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, it was, of course, too late. The other artist failed to live up to our handshake agreement two books in a row, after many successful situations, so I can't work with him again. However, I mention this because it is all about the fact that life as a writer, can be exciting, but it burnt me out physically.

And I was also destroyed physically by a series of broken bones, issues with my guts and kidneys, and mostly, a broken neck that had not been diagnosed for over a year, for various reasons. As such other parts of me compensated, or tried to, for what was going on. A month before my operation to fix me, I was in a car accident where in a snow storm I did a double loop going down a hill and rammed a guardrail. I came five feet from jumping it, into a rushing river. Had my airbags functioned, I'd be dead with a broken neck.

As this is an entry to say hey, this is what I am doing, I am letting everyone who reads this know, that I am not writing fiction, researching projects, creating poems, interviewing authors and artists, I am not writing music lyrics or reviewing anything. I am keeping a journal that, if I keep to it, will be able to use this for a current status, as well as leave links to anything new that I write or has been published.

Another thing, my health isn't the only thing gone bad, but I've lost two siblings, a beloved mother in law, and a best friend in the last 2 years.  I am deeply depressed. Still I am hopeful, and I believe God is Good.

I had originally begun an attempt to write short fiction pieces.  I found that while I prefer reading short stories, as writing goes, I am mostly a poet creatively, and write non fiction writer in my other life in the fan press. Writing short works is fine, I can do it, I just prefer what I prefer.

For those who don't know me, and don't know what I like:
Cats, Comics, Poetry, History, Museums, Art, Books, Music, Minnesota, Football, Baseball, Hockey

I was born in October of 1963, given up for adoption.  I graduated high school and went on to UM Duluth, and NDSU and have multiple degrees in History and Political Science. 

Even as this year is an election year, I don't see a way any politician can win. I have worked for a NPO who helps candidates with information and access to statistics, polls, and trends. Since 1996 I had chosen correctly who'd win nationally to 2016. But I wasn't choosing who I wanted, that is just juvenile to think so, I was saying "... based upon these factors..." I was disinvited from given future papers to that NPO, and then reinvited when a new chairperson took over. However, I looked at the stats, and if I can't give good advice, I can't function.

Trump and political division has made the art of prediction almost impossible. I think that is all I need to say. Also any time I mention my national candidate prediction success I am asked how I do in local elections. Let's just say, when balancing my numbers, in local elections I suck. Maybe it is where I am from and how people here speak and act conservatively but vote liberally, or that I've lived elsewhere where the reverse was true. But who knows... I might just be stupid, I've certainly been called that.

LINKS

My Author page: amazon.com/author/alexness
Poetry Blog: AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com
Popular Media Blog: Poplitiko.Blogspot.Com
All of my Published works: https://alexnesspoetry.blogspot.com/2007/01/My-Work.html

Social Media
Blue Sky
twitter.com/alexnesspoetry X/TwitterA few things more then I'll conclude.

I am not political in views despite having a focus on Political Science in both undergraduate and graduate studies. It isn't that I have no beliefs. It is that ultimately I try to focus my views and voting behavior upon the reason I call myself a monarchist. I don't believe in any kings or queens in this world, but I am religious and follow Jesus. I try to align my beliefs upon him. Now, some folks just stopped reading and said screw this guy.  I get that. But I don't worry about human leaders and political parties because as you've seen recently in America, Russia and elsewhere, impolite, thuggish, vile humans can often get voted in, despite their shortcomings. I don't see democracy as terrible, I don't see it as rule of the least common denominator.  I know other political theorists who do think that. My goal is to not attach myself to a group or identification of self by reasons outside of those that I hold as my own. 

Every single time I take political views tests, some short, some very long, I get non political, non partisan or eclectic, has no stated party alignment. It isn't that I have no interest in politics in the sense of being unconcerned about the world we live upon. I stay up all night every presidential election year eve.  I do dislike a number of politicians, and I like some as well. My father who voted Democrat with every election, might well have voted for Trump, as when he was 68 years old and thinking about the election in 2000, he told me, 'I don't recognize my country any more. I think the politicians seem to all be the same.' He was a person who rarely read for pleasure or even interest, but he bought and read quickly two books by or about Donald Trump. As my father came from the generation of the Great Depression, and he admired men who made money, and he kind of didn't see women as equals, outside of his sister and his wife (my mother). He died in 1998. And I didn't vote Trump. I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton either. In 2020 I didn't vote.

I'll not be posting on politics here, just wanted readers to know why I don't focus upon them, when elsewhere it seems to be all they think about. I don't think writers are good if they are moral. I don't think an artist is excellent because they are vegan.  The art is the thing. Politics is human war without violence. And morality is defined very differently by different people.