I’ve been here so long I should call it home, though I hate it here. Except when I don’t care.
My days have become a tangled mess of sleeping, introspection, procrastinating, avoidance, talking to my father on the phone, and taking care of Internet tasks that alternately make me sad and really very angry. My insides are being wound up to breaking point.
Last month was a blog washout because of where I was.
This month might be a blog washout because of where I need to go.
My May Jonathan Cainer horoscope says it all: “You can fix the one source of trouble that’s more daunting than all the rest. Focus on it. Don’t be distracted. Once that is sorted out (as it WILL be!) all else will fall into place.” It’s like he read my mind. I know what I have to do, and it’s time I actually did it.
Stick with me, though. I *will* be back, but it might be June. (Then again, it might turn out that I get really chatty during May. 😉 Look up, look waaaaay up.)
*Still* haven’t gotten the actual contract for the job I’m supposed to be starting on March 30. Seriously? It’s supposed to start in a little over a week and I still feel like I’m being dangled out of a window. The fact that I haven’t gotten the paperwork yet tells me that they’re still waffling about the start date, which ticks me off more than a little. Unfortunately, I seem to have a lost a grip on myself when this whole shillyshallying thing started. I *should* have been actively looking for something else and just taking care of the things I need to take care of, but instead I seem to have slipped back into the arms of clinical depression, which isn’t manifesting itself as sadness but rather is manifesting itself as avoidance and apathy. Sad (or even SAD) depression might be better. I’m getting nothing at all accomplished.
I need to shake it off and get my shit together. I haven’t been outside in the daylight in so long — maybe I just need some natural vitamin D to perk me up. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice so I think I’ll head outside.
Two things have always been a part of my emotional makeup: creativity and physical human contact.
They are symbiotic. When I block one, I cripple the other. When I stopped creative pursuits, I withdrew from people around me. And the more I cocooned myself, the less creativity existed in my life. It fed upon itself. And I find myself now half-starved, barely sustaining myself with fast food creation and junk affection. Dribs and drabs here, tiny morsels there. Little to nourish the soul. Some days I think the physical Presence of the cat is all that keeps me from going completely insane. Other days I’m not sure I haven’t already gone there anyway.
I thought I could just concentrate on fixing the physical Me, but clearly I need to reconnect with at least some of my other dreams while I’m doing it or I have little hope of achieving anything, of finding the True Me.
Musique du jour:
This insight brought to you by Imogen Heap on auto-repeat.
Horoscope:
Jonathan Cainer’s week ahead: (Part 1) There are things you have to do. You can’t put them off any longer. Nor can you allow yourself to be dissuaded by those who seem to think there are better times to act. They don’t appreciate the urgency of the situation. They are not going through what you are going through. They will happily push you into an inappropriate course of action – or urge caution, even when a decisive move is surely more suitable. What they won’t ever do, though, is say, ‘I don’t know.’ Few are ever wise or honest enough to do that. To use your power well, you need the advice of someone you can truly trust.
(Part 2) Christmas is going to be different this year. The future starts here. The past however, does not end here. It carries on, influencing the choices that you are now trying to make. That’s appropriate and positive, to some extent at least. You don’t want to break away entirely from all that you have laboured so long to learn. But you do need a break. You need to free yourself from a habit pattern that has become far more than just a cosy routine. It is almost as if you have become a prisoner of your preferences and your prejudices. Here comes a rare chance to make some welcome changes. Look again at what seems to be going wrong. It’s right in more ways than you know.
seem to be eating everything in sight today (well, yesterday and today — I’m having nighttime insomnia again). I’m not stuffed to the gills but I seem to be eating every time I look around. Granted, it’s all “real” food, as opposed to chips or chocolate, so perhaps my body is actually digesting and getting some nutrients out of it all. Seems apropos that tonight’s episode of “Intervention” included a piece about a morbidly obese man. One of the counselor’s said “Food addiction is like heroin addiction — you binge to numb out.” Interesting idea. It does have that effect.
Having a generally introspective weekend. Or maybe month. Hard to differentiate between them sometimes. The latest episode of Top Gear was on last night so I’ve been watching that. I love the show — I love watching men being boys (as long as none of them are “my” man; then it’s just frustrating). Not a huge car fan but they’re fun to watch and, since I’m finding myself thinking that relocating to England some day sounds like a grand plan, anything British just really grabs my attention. (Yay! again for Youtube.) I have a huge thing for the Stig. 😉 The white helmet and racing gear are hot, and you have to love the strong, silent type.
<added> Oh, no!!!! The Stig talks!
(The description accompanying that last one says “White Stig’s name is Ben Collins and he does most of the top gear track tests but since White stig has existed there have been a few guest stigs including Heikki Kovaleinen who drove the F1 car and the Skidoo jump was done by Dan Lang a Swedish snowmobile cross rider.” — I’d avoid actually visiting the Youtube page as the comments are mindless crap, even by Youtube standards.) I’m so disillusioned.</added>
Found a Stig quotes application in Facebook, and then the Top Gear Facebook page. That got me looking at various Youtube clips that didn’t make it into actual episodes. (That’s how I ended up looking at the Stig videos above.) Much as I like the show, sometimes I think they (Jeremy Clarkson, in particular) take the kidding of each other just a bit too far. Then again, man-children tend to do that when they get together. Do they ever grow up? I have to admit that I have a bit of a soft spot for James May, and he seems to take an awful lot of ribbing. In this clip, they’re discussing a “mood steering wheel” and after James makes the very dark comment “What colour would it turn if you were…sometimes when you’re driving along and suddenly you get that moment of absolute black dog despair when you think you’ve wasted your whole life?“, Jeremy takes things just a bit too far:
I don’t believe for a second that no one in that hangar has ever experienced what James was describing. In fact, I’d bet that more than a few of them have. This blog was started because of that sentiment…minus the driving, of course — and, if I’ve learned one thing in the almost two years since then, it’s that I’m not alone in feeling that way. I’ve mentioned that before. But, as bleak as it is to think that I’ve wasted my life, I hate even more so many other people are in the same boat, like knowing you’re drowning and being unable to save the others drowning around you.
Have waves of despair crashing through me, one of those little cyclones of sadness that keep breaking against me. I hope it is a short one as it’s killing me. Cannot feel my connection with the Universe at all right now but I’ll have to trust that it’s still there under all of this.
Reached out briefly to my mother for help and now understand why I cannot share this ride with her. She doesn’t understand the little smoke signal I sent up and I can’t explain it better. I don’t know that she ever went through this — she certainly doesn’t remember going through menopause and I don’t remember her seeming to go through anything like this then. Mind you, I would have been going through puberty and my post-16 depression at the time so I probably wouldn’t have seen it if she had.
Last month was a blog washout because of where I was.
Life Begins at 41...or maybe 43 