Summertime, And The Livin’ Is Sleepy

The dog days have arrived for me, I think, which means that unless I have something I must do, I tend to spend a little too much time nodding off in my easy chair these days. It’s even affecting my personal reading schedule.
The books that I’ve set aside for future enjoyment have been unlooked at for so many weeks that I’ve forgotten what they’re about. The book I’m reading now, a paperback on the subject of science vs. religion by mathematician/philosopher John Lennox, is a slow slog. I can’t seem to go more than 10 minutes with it after breakfast before I get sleepy and want to close my eyes.
I suppose this has something to do with the late hours I spend at my job and my tendency to wake up bleary-eyed every morning at 6:30. But I suspect the primary culprit may be that we’re well into June now, the days are getting hot, and my bones feel it.
For the past several years, I felt energized every morning with the thought that I had a book to write and I couldn’t wait to get to it. This hobby of mine has led to six published books of mostly fiction, some healthy sales and, even better than that, a self-satisfied feeling that I’m producing something that other people find of value. But I’m between books now, and so sit around the house each morning feeling rather bored.
More than a month ago, I put the finishing touches on another book of fiction. It’s a story about a church and all the people in it — how they interact, how they search for truth and meaning together — with a thread running through it centered upon a believer struggling with forgiveness. It’s not others he can’t forgive; he can’t seem to forgive himself for a tragedy that happened many years earlier. It still haunts him.
I’m purposely holding back publication because I’m assuming my readers need a break. I’ve had three books released in little more than a year, with all the subsequent book signings involved, and I want to lay low for a little while.
Nothing should stop me from starting another book, however, but my sleepy summer has affected that, too. I’m sorry. I’m just not in the mood. Maybe tomorrow.
It’s not that I’m without ideas. In fact, I’m thinking about starting a baseball-based story about an obsessed fan who has devised his own complicated, statistics-based system for simulating major league games for the fictional Minnesota Twins. The story would be set 10 or 12 years into the future at a time when the real Twins are wallowing in their 13th straight year of abject futility.
To make a long story short (so to speak), his baseball web site goes viral. Real Twins fans, completely fed up with the prolonged and sorry state of the franchise, begin paying attention to the fictional team, which looks capable of winning its division and then, who knows? The attention builds in direct contrast to the apathy directed at the real team — toward increasingly unexpected levels.
I’m still not sure if I’ll actually tackle the project — even if I awaken from my sleepy summer mood. But as the summer of 2016 continues, and as I continue following the exploits of the real-life Twins, I’m wondering if what I’m contemplating isn’t all that far-fetched.