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The main fear I’m holding in terms of my mother’s pending death is not so much the death itself, painful as that will be. No, the main fear is the ongoing absence of her from my life.

It may sound terrible, but I’ve always had an easier time talking to my mom than my dad. I love them both, but I’m closer to my mom because I can talk to her more openly.

While Dad is still with us, once Mom is gone, one of my main security blankets in life goes with her. The fact is that she’s always been one of the people I can call and talk to when life isn’t making sense.

That’s the biggest fear. That in the weeks, months and years that follow her passing, there will be days, or nights, when I wake up wanting to call Mom… and realize, I can’t anymore.

(And here when I was a kid, I thought acne treatment was my biggest fear.)

Pride comes before the fall. And that doesn’t mean before autumn.

I’ve been thinking some today about how important it is not to let the little things bother you. It’s a hard skill to employ. After all, it’s usually the little things that trip us up.

It’s rarely the major things that cause fights or disputes; it’s rarely the big stuff that causes wars to break out. It’s the details.

The great thinkers say, “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” and “It’s mostly small stuff.” But if that’s true, why is it so hard to actually DO that?

Take for example weight loss pills. I need to drop at least 40 pounds. Pills like that might make it happen more quickly. But what’s the long-term damage, and is it worth it?

For me, how quickly I lose the 40 pounds is the small stuff. The important stuff is that I’m moving in the right direction, toward losing it.

Time disappears so quickly.

One moment you are spreading pimple cream on your face, the next you’re in your early 40s and worried about when the final call will come that your mom has finally passed away.

May sound morbid, that Mom has stage 4 cancer and it’ll be sometime within a few weeks to maybe a few months… maybe even a few days. No one knows.

And in the urgency of all the immediate concerns of daily life, time gets eaten up and before you know it, it’s gone. I’ve been hoping to find more time to write about how I’m handling this pending loss, but even that time slips away all too easily lately.

Last week, my wife and I went to a local Barnes and Noble to pick out some new reading material. Having burned through all her current favorite authors, we were looking for some new faves.

The thing is, my wife and I don’t like to read excessive profanity, especially the “G-d d–n” instance; we allow only three stikes on that count before pulling out a DVD or setting aside a book. It’s a personal preference, that’s all.

So my wife tried to explain this to the guy, and while he tried to be helpful, I felt (my wife sees it differently) that he spent most of his time disputing our personal reading standard, until a different sales associate took over and helped us find some potential candidates.

What all this points out is that language and audience are always concerns for writers to take into account. You’re not going to reach an African American audience well with characters that talk like they stepped out of Huck Finn, for example; and you’re not going to reach a lot of church-goers or the baby strollers brigade if you’re a cuss bucket.

And heck, my wife and I are hardly prudes; I can understand from an artistic perspective needing to use the word “damn” now and again. Is it too much to hope for that more writers could consider refraining from adding God onto that particular turn of phrase?

One of the things most successful writers require of themselves … at least, the ones who get published regularly, is a daily production quota. It works for me better than diet pills when it comes to blogging; if I need to get 20 blog entries done in a two-week period, it’s a lot easier to write 2-3 per night than sit down like I sometimes do and write 18 of them in one sitting.

The same principle holds true for any other type of writing; if you make sure you write, say, three pages a night, you get to 300 pages a lot faster than if you write in 10-15 page bursts, but then go days and even weeks on end without producing a single paragraph.

That’s the key to success as a writer; setting a production goal, and making sure you hit that minimum, all the time.

It doesn’t take a Slingbox to keep up with your manuscripts while traveling for the summer. All you really need is a laptop. Unfortuantely, I don’t have one.

Of course, I’d love to have one; for one thing, it’d make me able to sit in the living room with my wife while she works on homework and blogging, while I work on my writing projects and blogging. That would be a great benefit.

But ultimately, it comes down to spending priorities, and with my car currently in the shop needing to be repaired, transportation is taking the lead and mobile writing ability is taking a back seat. So it looks like a flash drive may be the best way to go, for the moment.

One can negotiate a PS3 shooter easier than the negotiations between SAG and the AMPTP, following the expiration of SAG’s contract on July 1 and the successful ratification of rival actor’s union AFTRA’s contract a week later.

The current hubbub is that the AMPTP is saying that SAG rejected its “last best final” offer, while SAG is saying “oh no we didn’t… we just haven’t accepted it yet.”

Whatever. The bottom line is this: if SAG thinks they can break through where WGA, DGA and AFTRA failed, we are headed toward a strike, or at least a producers lockout. SAG needs to get realistic and take the best deal they can get for now… and live to fight another day for progress on some of their other pet issues.

And let’s be honest; there’s no way actors are getting bagged by producers the same way writers were.

While going through a mall recently, my wife and I wandered into an aquarium store and memories of my old college hobby came flooding back: for two years, while I was in graduate school, I maintained a nice, 20-gallon aquarium where I kept a lot of fancy-tail guppies. I took so well to the pastime that I began breeding them successfully enough that I was getting some unique fish that local store owners would buy back from me.

It was a pleasant hobby that brought a lot of serenity when I took breaks from my study sessions. These days, you can even find what you need to get into aquariums and keeping fish without just relying on local retail outlets alone. Now there are Web sites like http://www.aquariumguys.com. It’s a nice little resource.

I’ve been thinking about starting up an aquarium again; it’d be fun to raise them and watch them whenever I’m blanking on what to write next, how to resolve a plot point in a story, or even just for the pure enjoyment of it.

That’s the best reason to keep fish: because you enjoy them.

One thing most people seem to be seeking these days in weight loss. That includes me.

I’m currently somewhere between 230 and 240. Ideally, I should be around 180. That’s about 50 or 60 pounds too much, and it’s not helping my health.

In the past year, I’ve suffered from visual migraine attacks and been diagnosed with high blood pressure. If I’m not careful, I’m concerned diabetes will be next.

I need to get serious about cutting weight, exercising and eating better; my mom made it to 78 before being diagnosed with cancer; if I’m not more careful soon in how I live my life, I won’t even get close to that.

And you can’t write anything if you’re no longer in this life to begin with. After all, who knows if the afterlife needs writers?

It’s inevitable that, no matter how hard we try to stay commited to writing, real life eventually intervenes and blows our schedule, and our creative mindset, all to heck and back. That’s what’s happened to me in the last couple weeks as I found out Mom’s been diagnosed with cancer.

It’s an unpleasant reality, and of course it’s changed my priorities as I feel the need to spend as much time as possible with her while she still has time left. And there’s not much of it, since she’s stage four in pancreatic cancer and also has a separate case of lung cancer.

Stage four means inoperable and spreading. It also means months, not years, left.

I know real life experiences like that will give me rich resources of experience to draw from and make me a better writer. In the long term. At the moment, though, it’s about as pleasant as cleaning toilets.

Mom’s facing her end. And it sucks.