Pain and no peace

I haven't been able to achieve plain old peace in a very, very long time so the question, naturally, is can I actually achieve this state? Reading over the entries of the last year or so, I'm not so sure that melancholia isn't more of a better fit than say contentment.

I've mentioned ad nauseam that I want to be writing but it does seem that an awful lot of things are happening in my life that do not include writing. When, writing, like brushing one's teeth each night and regular sex (none of which occurs consistently for me due to my own lack of constancy) isn't habitual, do I really want to write at all (or have sex or have gleaming pearly whites??)

Yes and no.

One of the little pronouncements I've been making lately is to state the obvious when someone suggests a new method for achieving better habits ("Well, what I've been doing hasn't been working so I'm willing to try something different"). This mindset-- which acknowledges that I've failed in the past because I simply wasn't up to making changes-- has helped me lose weight and become a tiny bit less disorganized. It has given me the strength to overcome my natural inertia.

As I write this my wife calls to me from the bedroom. She's watching TV and missing me. Heck I miss her. This often happens when we're not in the same room. Most of the time, I go hang with her and try to write with Grey's Anatomy or football competing for mindspace. Typically, I stop writing soon after relocating. But this time, setting aside my culpability with the practiced selfishness of a veteran hack, I say "I'm writing." And even when her small voice says "oh ok. do what you need to do" and I feel that pang of guilt, I remain committed to the keyboard, to this passage, to wanting to change my life in the face of what–has–been–before.

It's all so GD complicated.

At least I lost weight

Way back in October I started trying to lose weight and I finally have made some progress. 20 lbs worth of it. I'm back to fitting into jeans that haven't seen the light of day for 2 years. This is uplifting. A singular good in a season of low spirits. I'll take it.

Pretend

Just visited littlebrownpen. Sigh.

It's clear I've been fooling myself. I pretend I don't care about going back to Paris but I do.
I pretend I'm not all that bothered by having gotten older (and thus no longer able to achieve the fabled cool phase of my life), but when I look at the video clips of the Marais from this blog, I'm very bummed.

Gotta find a way back from bumdom.

Learning very slowly

OK...I tried something else new. Tried my hand a freelancing a web design. Bad idea. Crashed and burned. The client hated it and my self worth is completely smashed.

Wow. I didn't see this coming.

So what have I learned from this?
a) I need a thicker skin
b) I need to hyperfocus on the things that I know I do well, not the things that I kinda do well.
c) Never, ever do work for friends. You'll not forgive them if they don't appreciate your work with the same urgency you do.

Funny...I've been yelling at myself for not writing. This latest failure has been instructive in that I need to listen to the authentic voice in my head. Disregarding it like it's a bag lady on the street holding a cardboard sign ("pay attention to me") isn't smart.

I'm also comforting myself by remembering what happened to Terry Gross. She famously failed before finding her niche.

It's Sunday. Cranky much?

As I read the digital copy of the newspaper, I am aghast at how there are so many people who write well, with authority and skill and copious amounts of talent. I’m amazed that most of those people:

a) are not me,
b) are younger than me,
c) are not in the food line or on welfare.

Also, I imagine most of those people to be women and to have working husbands that support them…that their writing isn’t enough to sustain the family or even one family member. And then I think of the fact that this is a Sunday and I have to work at someone else’s behest in a cubicle the color of burlap for at least seven more years (of course to have a job is to be lucky. To only have to work for seven more years is lucky. What a dunce I am) before I have that type of freedom.

And then I just get cranky.

Clarity

Answering some questions from previous entries:

1. Why am I not writing? - Because I'm afraid I won't be any good at it anymore. Because I'm afraid I'll be good at it and then discover I'm bad. Because then people will know what I really think and who I really am. Because it gets in the way of television couch surfing.



2. Why haven't I taken tests for a promotion? - Because instinctively, I know that to promote means to commit to a higher level of dedication and responsibility at work and I don't want to go there. I have other dreams I want to pursue. If I promote, everything else must come second.
   



3. Why don't I call my mother more often? - Duh....because she's your mother! She's never satisfied and you always end up wanting to eat your weight in pie after you hang up.
   



4. Why have I stopped going to the dentist? Obviously because it hurts. Less obviously because it's overwhelmingly expensive.
   



5. And why is my office reminiscent of the wreck of the Hespers? Because you are afraid of the Dimensions of Paradise. What would happen if you could actually work in there? Then you would want to actually work in there and challenge on your addiction to being a sheep-like cube junkie who depends on her employer for her wherewithall. You'd have to take care of your own financial well-being.
   

Tarot readings as therapy

My head is screaming...you need to write, you need to write. But up until now, I've just done a series of obsessive tarot card readings, talking myself through my conflict by compressing my issues to a string of yes/no answers. Sigh. I'm convinced that the thing I want the most is almost always the thing that I avoid. This is instructive in a backhanded kind of way...all I have to do is look at what I have been secretly preoccupied with and voila, there they are...my underground desires.