The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. That is to say, I'm mostly alive, though life as I've known it may soon be coming to an end. Sort of a mini-Armageddon, if you will. The status quo is to be broken, the familiar and comfortable stripped away once again. There may be zombies or aliens or fairies. I'm not sure which yet. 

The status quo is that my husband works at a difficult, well-paying career. We own a quiet house in a valley, and I grow kids and write. But in the next six months it is very likely my husband will be fired by his boss (who might be a zombie), or he may quit, or I may insist he quits. In this new reality he has already applied to every local job in his field without success. The reason for this is a mystery. It could be that his boss has blacklisted him, or it could be that my husband doesn't really want those jobs and sabotages himself. Or it may be that the universe has something different for him, and this is the only way he's going to let go of the old, and grasp onto the new. He must have no other choice in order to make the hard, scary choice. 

In his wildest dreams he works part time in a coffee shop and spends the rest of his life learning about and playing on sailboats. In my wildest dreams I make enough income writing so that he can do this. 

In an Armageddon in which one writes short stories and one's spouse works at a coffee shop, it is difficult to pay a mortgage. So we may or may not be selling our house. That is to say, we are going to try and sell our house, but we have been "trying" to do that for a year. But we'll be trying much harder now. We're going to go with a big name realtor, and possibly auction the house to the highest bidder, who I hope is an alien with no idea what his global currency is worth in the current earth market. We may or may not break even on the house. We may make enough to buy a sailboat to live on. If we cannot sell the house, we may have to hand it back to the fairies, who have always owned it in the fairy realm anyway. 

We have found a boat we love and think we could live on with two kids, four cats, and a lot of patience. We may or may not be completely out of our minds, and foolishly romantic. We may or may not be able to afford this boat, depending on the house thing. It may or may not still be for sale, depending on the business ventures of the man who owns it now, and a certain project in Perth, which might go under, or may be sold for a high price at any moment. 

My marriage of eighteen and a half years may survive all this change, as it has survived in the past, or it may not. Our children may hate us, or they may love and thank us for an adventurous life. They will probably do both. The cats may drown or poop in the clean laundry basket in the boat we may or may not live on. There may be aliens, or fairies or zombies. I'm not sure which yet. 

The only thing I'm sure of, no matter what happens, is that I will write. I will write until I'm good and truly dead. That is what I cling to, what reminds me that I'm mostly alive, even at the end of the world. 

For that I need no house or boat, no career or job, no spouse or child, no marriage or cat. To write I need nothing and no one but myself. 

And so the end of the world can never truly come.