Remember how I said ages ago that my therapist is awesome? She still totally kicks ass. Today I just went in to discuss with her how I’ve been struggling with rebooting the Nusquamton series. She’s known about it ever since I launched here it’s just I never read any of it to her. The cool thing is since I’ve started writing it I’ve been able to discuss some things with her that I haven’t been able to discuss with anyone before – like that reoccurring dream. We talked about that again today, but that wasn’t the cool thing.

She let me read aloud the episode I’m currently writing to serve as the relaunch because I wanted her clinical opinion on some things. I’m trying to establish illnesses without stating “this person has xyz” for one and two I’m trying to set up clues for the over arching plot I have running in my head. That meant the person that died in the beginning needed to have specific behavior patterns. And what I needed in those respects is all there. So that’s good. No need for revising that. She also commented that Korg fits the caregiver role – wasn’t planned but I’m good with it and I’ll build on that.

I also talked with her about some of the other characters in the series and how I need to depict them. Lorot came up and what my new plans are for him. She pointed out some interesting – and unintended – symbolism with him that I plan to stick with because I agree with her on it.

The sweet thing about all of this is that by talking to her about it is I can evolve the symbolism I’m using into something that has meaning to all of us – not just me. It may not be the symbols we are used to seeing but I hope they are ones that will resonate and be understood just the same.

At least I feel a little better about what I’m doing with my work. I don’t quite feel like a fucking idiot and she confirmed that my target audience is in fact right here. This community.

When I got home from therapy, Dad as usual wanted to know what I talked about. Not sure why he does this because usually I blow him off with the answer, “It was a therapy appointment.” Really it’s bad form to ask people what you talked about during a session. Especially when you follow up your question with, “Did they tell you that your crazy?” Seriously, I don’t need them to tell me that. I already fucking know.

This time though since he usually doesn’t like hearing me talk about writing I slapped with all of this, and my brother was there in the kitchen with him and he jumped in the conversation with me since he had read the piece I had shared with my therapist so he knew which one I was talking about. Finally Dad ended it all with, “Well it would be nice if you got published and started making money off this.”

Oh, so now we want to get published and make money? And then he goes on about “legit publishing” and walks off into the living room with my brother as they continued with that topic. So I don’t feel like he wanted to talk to me about it. He knows that my brother has written a book – ages ago in fact. No idea what stage it’s in or what his plans are for it at this point. But it seems Dad takes my brother’s writing far more seriously than mine…

Getting really tired of being bumped over like that. What makes my brother’s efforts in writing more legitimate than mine? I worked for the local newspaper in highschool but for some reason that wasn’t good enough back then. I had my foot in the door. And he pushed for me to find another job. To this day that’s still not recognized.

I don’t know why I fucking bother.