I collect writing programs for the day I do write

It seems like every other week I'm early trying out a new writing program as if that will be the magic bullet that will catapult me into the blogosphere as a legitimate writer. Ain't nothing that will do that kid except you doing it. Ya gotta write, write, write. And you need to have a niche, niche, niche. Oh and yeah, you can't be anonymous.

The newest one is called Draft by a very enthusiastic young man who is probably half my age. Still, hearing him talk, I forgot I was old. I heard him and thought...cool contemporary. Such a very sad thing, this oldness before we come to acknowledge it.

An aside...I know I'm old because I keep on thinking of my life in terms of "preserving" things as in if I don't start exercising, I'm going to lose the ability to exercise willingly at all. Everything that defines who I am--my writing, my speaking, my teeth, knees, lungs, eyes, hair, skin, intellect...all of these things I keep trying to preserve. Of course in the end it's pointless, they will all be lost one day. But while I'm still 'young-old', I want to enjoy what I have...that's the plan anyway.

We'll see.

Thank you but I got it.

Here is an interesting thing.  Over the weekend...my birthday weekend I might add, my lovely sister offered to decorate my home office.  She's offered to do it before and I've said no...though during a stint when I was in Hawaii and she was house sitting, she did do some small transformations.  It was sweet but the design ultimately never felt quite right.  You see she was designing the room the way she perceived me...rather than the way I saw me.

Physically, I'm a mess.  I'm scruffy, non-linear, scattered.   Her designs and rooms are pristine.

So why would anyone in their right mind turn down a nearly free remodel?  Because the purpose of the office...MY home office, is for me to plum my depths...it's for me to find ME. Her designs though beautiful did not reflect my process, my depths, my quirky underdone weirdness which is where the most creative parts of me dwell.

This is also instructive on a level beyond the herculean effort of appropriately styling a room...as architects of our own lives, we must all become more involved in what we want, not sub it out to a contractor however well meaning and talented. It's a do-it-yourself-existence.

Break out

I have been trying to break out of the world of work for as long as I can remember.  It has been an overarching theme of my life.  Elsewhere in the culture, there has been a return to Stay At Home Mothering (Hat tip to Penelope Trunk), a re-upping  of women to the idea of domestic engineering.  That really hasn't been my thing as I mostly did not have the Mom gene.   I just hate going somewhere each day.

It seemed to me if I could just hone in on the right skill set, or enhance the ones I have naturally, I'd have been able to be self-sufficient and happily ensconced in home a long, long time ago.  But no body gets health care if they stay home.  Not without a lot of money.  With my bronchitis and asthma, I needed work...at least until after 50.  Now that I'm there, I have this continuous record (er CD?  Spotify tune?) playing in my head..."Do your own thing.  Be who you were supposed to be."

But was who I was supposed to be ...a poor elderly woman?

Sometimes I believe that if I mastered the things that vex me my new "able-ness" would be tantamount to a lifetime scholarship that would allow me do what I love...write, read, learn stuff I want to learn, etc.

Here's the truth:  If you want that life, make it happen, even in a tired, broke-down 50 + body.

Period.

Thank God nobody but me reads this crap.

Twenty years on and nothing has changed. Yet.

It's been a long dry spell since I've placed anything here.  Most of my writing has been offline or on other platforms.  Still...I have to say, I haven't written anywhere where it was as satisfying as it has been to write in Blogger (wait...geocities was wonderful but is no more).

I think I don't write here anymore because I lost faith in my ability to make a difference---to get people to read what I'd written...as raptly as I digested other writers on line.  But no one came to my party.  I know, that's my fault alone.

***
In the world, no one...almost no one knows who I am.  I have a very few close friends.  I have a small family.  Just a handful of people are aware of my interests and loves, my passions.  It is very painful to be mostly someone else for the better part of the day...but isn't that what happens when we make compromises for security and supposed comfort?

My world hasn't changed much because I haven't changed it much.  I haven't made the full on commitment  to putting myself over and over and over into the slipstream.  To foreground what I take to be important.

It is instructive that my horoscopes says I am both intensely ambitious AND a ruthless perfectionist.  The combination is strangely suffocating...because I can't be the best ( I am an authority on the fact that I am not the best) I don't try.  I don't telegraph enthusiasm, I don't even feign tepid interest.

Instead, I project a blank slate upon which others project their image of me...typically it's an image that works for them and is quite separate from reality.  I'm a sweet and quiet person.  I am good with technology.  I am a political wonk and a bleeding heart liberal.  I'm a loving daughter and probably a wonderful mother, etc.

Take for example my glass frames.  My family bought me some eye glass frames...very expensive ones.  I hate the frames.  But because I felt bad, I spent a ridiculous amount of money filling a prescription for them...and I didn't even like them.  Why do I acquiesce on such things to my own detriment???

Here's the truth world, I'm none of those things I listed above.  But I admit to being the one who lets these myths persist.

I just continue on the road that I'm on, covertly resentful, bitter and resigned.  Ok.  If someone else told me that they were doing that...I'd say they were seriously damaged.

Acknowledged.

September's first Sunday

Sometimes, even when I don't feel like writing, and I do write, I am thankful.  Like yesterday.  Yesterday I got the whole business out of the way early...before getting out of bed even.  And then I promptly forgot about it. I let the entire business drop out of my mind, like yesterday's dreams.

Right around 11:15 pm or so, after a very generous glass of wine, I panicked...had I written???  Indeed, I had.  Thank God.  The streak was maintained at least for one more day.

So when I considered a few minutes ago whether to buy yet ANOTHER book on Amazon, I paused.  Where was the book I have been threatening to write all these years?  It's still stuck inside me, in large part because I haven't yet made writing as regular a habit as I would have liked.  It's definitely not a habit on the weekends where if I don't get the blame thing in the can by mid-morning, I hit the danger zone. I'm lucky right now because I'm home alone and can give some careful thought to what I'm doing.  If I had gone on that hike, I'm damn sure I would not have remembered to pay attention to the voice inside my brain that said...psssst....write!

Presently, I find myself drawn to stories where people just quit the "real world" and go out on their own wits and try to make a go of it. "The Feast Nearby" is the latest to come to my attention...of a woman who is reduced through unemployment and divorce to very modest circumstances.  I wryly note here that these are not circumstances that she thrust herself into...they were thrust upon her so she had to adapt.  I seem to want on some shameful level similarly difficult circumstances (not divorce!!!)  to cast me away from work and into a creative frenzy...a justifyingly, clarifying wind that would right my ship of potential...steering me away from what has monopolized my time toward what could earn me a frugal yet satisfying living.  Why do I think shock and awe have a place here?  We tend not to want to push our fate one way or the other.  Because if we direct our fate, what happens if we fail?  It's all our failure. 

In truth, it's all our failure no matter what-- but we do love our scape goats.  So what if I just work hard at this writing, aware that there's no future in it.  Aware that I will have to work harder than I have on anything.  Aware that to become a life coach or technical writer or web designer are not easy jobs, a lot less easy than the life I have now.  And what if I actually HATE the new life I craft for myself?  I won't have the solace of retirement.  I'll have to work...I'll have to boss myself into working until deep into my 60's or  70's even.  Is that the life that I want?

It doesn't sound  appealing.

Then I consider...is that really the way it has to go?  Can't there be any happy endings for rigorously pursuing a wish?  Or is that just my own Neptunian Pollyanna believing that things work out for those who doggedly follow what they believe is their destiny?  To be perfectly frank, sometimes, things do no work out.  Sometimes things just are.  So.  That leaves me in place, where I am since at least where I am I make enough money to go out to the bar, buy tacos and shop for the occasional heavily discounted designer piece of clothing.  It also allows me the luxury of electronic goods and Amazon. 

Really, what AM I complaining about? (Insert grumbly sound here).

######

All I can say is Thank Goddess for my squirrelly Neptune in the sixth house of daily tasks.  My Neptune sees the pain in people and figures out how to ease suffering. People like it when you make them feel good...and much of what I have done over the years is gently help people tune their vibe. At times, it's even felt like a calling.  But even a good vibe tuner (and I have to say in my day, I've had scores of poor souls waiting for a compassionate assist outside my cube)  has to do at least one or two of the things listed on their actual job description.  Did I mention that I hate my actual job description?

Ugh.

Therapist Oversoul here...
Here is some advice for you little girl.  Put something out into the world.  Anything.  Really.  Because even if you put out shit today, chances are you'll put out a little less shit tomorrow or the next day or the next week.

If you only write here, you will have less angst yes...your emails will continue to become wonderfully pithy and astute.  Works of private freaking literary art.  But you will never achieve anything that is sampled by a wider audience. 

If you write here and you start posting actual words on a public website and use your own name (I really don't care which website), you will feel completely naked...at first.  But in time that feeling of nakedness will diminish though never entirely dissipate.   You will build for yourself a kind of new identity, borne of habit and the rarefied voice resident in your head.  Many will like it though some may not.  Never mind.  It is what it is.

And if you do what is in the last paragraph above plus start to craft essays and send them to other less secure destinations like a publisher's desk, you may in 10 or 12 years have the escape you seek...that is, the financial wherewithal of your pension (limited as it may be after the legislative onslaught) plus the intellectual satisfaction of knowing that you put in the hard work of writing consistently for a population (no matter how minute) who know you...your literary persona you and appreciates that time tested and well-crated identity.

And there it is.  That's all.  That's it.  End of story.  Enjoy what is left because you know?  There are no promises.

Whoa Nellie

If there were ever a time to write my little heart out it's right now.  I am in a foul, foul mood.  I feel trapped, sapped and tapped.  I rationally realize this state  is generated by hormones brutishly coursing through my viscera and grey matter; emotionally I've been combative in almost each meaningful interaction I've had this morning.  I can't seem to contain my anger and since last night at dinner, I haven't been able to stop it from splashing unceremoniously into the laps of almost everyone I encounter. As a former young adult who prided herself on her self possessed emotional control, I am incredibly uncomfortable admitting that  this is who I have let myself become...a thoroughly unpleasant woman who hasn't the decency to cloak her unpleasantness.  It's like being a bull always reacting to red. The vitriol is UP and won't come back down. The fact that I've been more anxious to down my evening cocktail lately is telling as well...this fugue state is wearing thin.  My coping tactics of yesteryear...eating to great and delicious excess is off limits too so...I've got just the one recourse left:  to write myself back down from the brittle ledge of peevishness. (nope...not there yet...) What else can I record here that will make a lick of difference?  I'm still filled with bile.  Still ready to bite someone's head off.

Oversoul to harried incarnate woman: Try pretending that you are counselling the beast within, Leese. It might help. OK Analysis: what is happening is your capacity to defer gratification has eroded.  You desperately want change...that's not surprising because everything around you is changing...but you feel unable to make a move lest you actually lose whatever precious ground you've earned.  You are famously risk averse and there currently appears to be no effective strategy to reduce your alarmingly increased risk factors other than showing up every day and do the same gd thing.  Mars in your 5th is egging you on suggesting all manner of wild rebellious and altogether bohemian undertakings, while Saturn in the 6th is fueling an "irritable disposition" .

To wit: you are "over concerned about details in outer life as a way of compensating for a lack of inward organization." Yup. You also have to raise your hand when attendance is called for a state of " inner anxiety regarding physical and mental disintegration".

Translation? My mellow is seriously out of whack. So oversoul, how do I bring the outside and inside into greater agreement? Answer: Give up some stupid-ass dreams. Rev up your enthusiasm for lesser but more stalwart bright lights.  An all around buckling down and bucking up is in order..sooner rather than later.  Realize that you are still smack in the middle of a fight that can't be finessed through a TKO.  You've got to keep slugging and slugging and slugging away at your opponent. That's the only way the bad is pushed back, the only way  the angst gets resolved and the hostage taking ends. It's the only way the cutting stops. S'all there is.  Period. Sigh.  All friggin right. Crap and amen.

If there were ever a time to write my little heart out it's right now.  I am in a foul, foul mood.  I feel trapped, sapped and tapped.  I rationally realize this state  is generated by hormones brutishly coursing through my viscera and grey matter; emotionally I've been combative in almost each meaningful interaction I've had this morning.  I can't seem to contain my anger and since last night at dinner, I haven't been able to stop it from splashing unceremoniously into the laps of almost everyone I encounter. As a former young adult who prided herself on her self possessed emotional control, I am incredibly uncomfortable admitting that  this is who I have let myself become...a thoroughly unpleasant woman who hasn't the decency to cloak her unpleasantness.  It's like being a bull always reacting to red. The vitriol is UP and won't come back down. The fact that I've been more anxious to down my evening cocktail lately is telling as well...this fugue state is wearing me down.  My coping tactics of yesteryear...eating to great and delicious excess is off limits too so...I've got just the one recourse left:  what remains is to write myself back down from the brittle ledge of peevishness. (nope...not there yet...)

What else can I record here that will make a lick of difference?  I'm still filled with bile.  Still ready to bite someone's head off. Try pretending that you are counseling the beast within, Leese. It might help.

OK Oversoul analysis: what is happening is your capacity to defer gratification has eroded.  You desperately want change...that's not surprising because everything around you is changing...but you feel unable to make a move lest you actually lose whatever precious ground you've earned.  You are famously risk averse and there currently appears to be no effective strategy to reduce your alarmingly increased risk factors other than showing up every day and do the same gd thing.  Mars in your 5th is egging you on suggesting all manner of wild rebellious and altogether bohemian undertakings, while Saturn in the 6th is fueling an "irritable disposition" . To wit: you are "over concerned about details in outer life as a way of compensating for a lack of inward organization." Yup. You also have to raise your hand when attendance is called for a state of " inner anxiety regarding physical and mental disintegration".  Translation? My mellow is seriously out of whack. So oversoul, how do I bring the outside and inside into greater agreement?

Answer: Give up some stupid-ass dreams. Rev up your enthusiasm for lesser but more stalwart bright lights.  An all around buckling down and bucking up is in order..sooner rather than later.  Realize that you are still smack in the middle of a fight that can't be finessed through a TKO.  You've got to keep slugging and slugging and slugging away at your opponent. That's the only way the bad is pushed back, the only way  the angst gets resolved and the hostage taking ends. It's the only way the cutting stops. S'all there is.  Period. Sigh.  All friggin right. Crap and amen.