Tired.

No pictures for a while. That is probably bad. I know visuals are often important.

Really tired. Been up since just before 5 AM, our new "normal" wakeup routine. I've done all the errands for the day, and am happy to be enjoying a quiet afternoon so far [the Father-in-Law is out and about, so the TV is off.]

The Federal Agency wtih whom I've interviewed twice has a new posting, which I applied to. Maybe the third time is the charm. I have a much better chance this time around, this job is located here where I am, I'm not attempting any type of relocation. And since I've interviewed with them twice already I think it will be easier for me to prepare. This is assuming I get an interview, but I think I probably will just because I did the last two times I've applied [each time you apply to a specific job announcement you basically have to do everything all over again, with a few exceptions.] Maybe it will work out, although I would probably prefer this other job I am currently working on the application for. The Federal job will involve a lot of conflict and unpleasantness. That will probably be stressful. Oh well, given past experience, I have around three months before they will even call me for an interview, so plenty of time to find something else before then.

Reading LITERARY LIFE, a memoir by Larry McMurtry, one of my favorite writers. His last one, BOOKS, had almost a stream-of-consciousness flavor and this one is similar, although at least a little more focused. BOOKS was about his bookseller business, book scouting, and book collecting in general. This supposedly is about writing, writers he has known, etc. Like BOOKS, it is a slim volume and I'm glad the library had it.

When I was taking creative writing classes back in my early 20s, McMurtry was a big influence on me, or at least on my better work [only one story, really, that basically was young-adult type fiction.] I too wanted to write about rural folk, something which I am still interested in doing, although at the time I didn't appreciate how much good material I had right in front of me.

The rest of my work was pretty poor. Experimental stuff that didn't work, "look at me" type fiction, attempts to write about things that I had no real knowledge of [and could not successfully fake it,] and so on.

Anyway, LITERARY LIFE seems pretty good so far. There seems to be a sense of finality to these memoirs. McMutry's novels tend to be bleak in some ways, he has a penchant for killing off characters that he's written about for years, I guess a sort of closing of old accounts. Any time he revisits an old setting you know that there will be several deaths before the story's end. He recently seemed to finish up the "Thalia cycle" of novels that began with THE LAST PICTURE SHOW and spanning five books with RHINO RANCH, what seems to be the final installment. I enjoyed all five to various degrees, although I was still college age when I read the first two books and well into my thirties before the others came out.
I should revisit the earlier ones now.

Most of the books I liked in my teens/early twenties have not really stood up for me, or at least I feel less strongly about them. I suppose most things are that way.