There is a moment, when you are working as a freelance writer, that’s terrible and scary. It comes regularly, usually in the summer, as August approaches.
The paid jobs dry up, and you catch yourself out of breath, metaphorically and literally, as you see money go and never come in, and overdue bills come to haunt you as letters or phone calls from the energy company or the phone company.
It’s a frantic moment, in which you find yourself juggling too many projects in the hopes that one, just one, will go down properly and get you enough to make the crossing of this desert, and bring you to the safety of Autumn. A safety you are not sure really exists.
Maybe I talked already about this state of affairs, in the past. As I said, it hits hard as August approaches, and you hear the Beatles in your head
See how they run.
It will get better.
I know it will because this is the third August I face, and still, here I am.
But it’s bad, really bad.
It’s anxiety and fear, amped up to eleven but at the same time not immediate, not close enough to wrestle it.
Add to that the torpid countryside in the heat, the desolation and the intellectual isolation of this backwater place where they can’t spell your name properly, and you get an idea of the horror.

And yet…

Now I’ll hit you with one of my (many, admittedly) pet peeves.