Recently, in the Twitter world of online poetry and activism, I heard a criticism made about my conduct and my focus. In short, the critic stated that I should not be doing what I am doing on Twitter, because I was being derelict in my duties towards my offline family. I was too busy being a Dom instead of being a provider.
I wanted to set the record straight, pulling back the fourth wall to give you a glimpse of some of the choices that I have had to make with my responsibilities and with my career and my lifestyle.
My spouse of 14 years is terminally ill. She has been on kidney dialysis for almost 10 years. Four years ago she had a stroke. Since then her health has been in a steady decline.
We have two children together. Our eldest is 13 years old, and is on the autism spectrum. He is high-functioning and his particular form of autism includes ADHD and Oppositional Defiant behavior.
Our 10 year old, fortunately, is not on the Spectrum and is basically healthy. However, he has begun modeling his behavior off of his older brother's, in order to get attention.
With my wife's worsening health, I have had to make some difficult choices. I work overnights full-time, but in response to her increasing illness, I have found it necessary to cut back on my hours at work. In fact, I have cut back so much that I have worked basically 20 hours a week for the last 7 months.
In this same time, we have made several difficult decisions, to ensure that were able to make ends meet. This includes eliminating satellite television, Internet service, private supplemental health insurance for my wife, and my pride. It has been necessary to put my ambitions as a writer and as an activist for the polyamorous lifestyle and as a Dom aside as secondary in order to take care of those responsibilities.
Many of you may be aware as how I have cut back on posts to this blog. Also I have eliminated all prompts that I was running through Twitter, including a prompt that was supposed to have resulted in an anthology that would have been published this summer.
To raise additional funds for my family, I have had to pawn my equipment for writing. Not once, but multiple times. In fact the computer has spent more time in the pawn shop then in my possession since the beginning of 2016.
As a result, I have just last month finished my second book of poetry which would have been released by my birthday this year if other things had not pushed it back. Additionally, I have had to push other writing deadlines back.
I have also cut back in my involvement within the Twitter writing community. I used to post approximately 5 to 10 poems everyday, if not more. And I was also active in the community fighting to protect members of the writing community, instead I have taken a secondary role in most cases. The one case where that has not been so, has been in a situation where I have been targeted directly by a group of harassers because I spoke out in defense of someone who was being tried in the court of public opinion for something that should never have been a general flame war.
My primary involvement now, within the community is in the recognition of a writer everyday by shout-out and a writing prompt every week by shout out to draw attention to others in the community because they deserve that attention and because with all the followers I have I should be doing something to let them know that there are a lot of other people out there who are worth taking a look at.
I have not been derelict in any duty offline. I have, in fact severely been absent in my duty to the online community to respond to offline demands.
It is not because I care less for the online community. It is because I have had to take care of my primary responsibilities.
Please be aware of that, before you make any accusations of dereliction of duty.
(c) Tortured Cyclone 2016
