I was holding a workshop on writing over the summer.  I have not facilitated too many, but when I do, I am not comfortable enough to talk up my books. I focus on teaching something.

 In the discussion we (a small group) of people, someone talked about feeling invisible. He is a widower with a young child and thus the only caretaker. However, people don’t seem to see him.  They look for the mother. Women will do things like touch his child while he is holding him and adjust his pantleg.  He gave other examples.

This led to someone who is writing a memoir about her missionary work in Cambodia and becoming a minority and someone that had to work to fit in.  Someone else shared about living in Paris and feeling like she did not fit in.

Because of this, I think I was to add to the discussion about my books.  My humorous book The Tao of Apathy has a main character that feels invisible.  While it has some serious, weighty sections, it also has many farcical elements.  Bigger believes there are invisibility rays in the hospital where he works that work on him.

Like my fellow workshop people, that idea came from feeling alone. Like Bigger, I worked in the kitchen of a hospital, and I felt ignored as I transported the food carts. To me, there was a class warfare where I was not valued as a kitchen worker. To let those people from my past off the hook, I am a tall intimidating guy. They might just have been a little afraid.

Which leads me to my other book, Shattered. The main character is a comedian- Mikey Haskell. He is a six foot six, fat guy that slips into a mental illness where he believes he has become an animal. It all stems from grief, but his size makes him feel different and alone.

No I am not as tall or as fat as Mikey. This discussion, though, really allowed me to see how constant a theme loneliness is to my writing. Hopefully, my novels are complex enough to hold many themes because loneliness is not my intended theme.  But it is important to talk about.

It is well established that we all feel alone sometimes.  But how many of us feel alone all the time?

To try to be clever because I do enjoy my life—

How many of us has loneliness as a constant companion?