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2005-06-23 - 10:44 a.m.
I wish that I had been the person to coin the term, �snarky.� It is so utterly perfect. I woke up four hours earlier today than I usually do on normal days when I don�t have annoying things, like language classes or bank visits, going on. And I am almost relieved that I got up early. I was beginning to think that I was going to turn into one of those people who get up at noon every day. And that just doesn�t sit well with me�.not because there is anything wrong with it, I was getting eight hours of sleep�I just didn�t want to be the kind of person that was up until four in the morning and sleeping until noon�because I used to, back where I come from, GET UP at four. And I have found that staying UP until four doesn�t really allow you to accomplish anything. In my mind the hours after midnight are pretty useless, good for things like staring at the TV or writing dark and depressing things. Anyway, it makes me feel better to get things done, like cleaning litter boxes and putting away laundry, before I actually start my day. Because I don�t like my day to include stupid things like scrubbing toilet bowls. So today, while the coffee was brewing, I did my �chores.� And now I have a whole day in front of me. And I want to have a whole day in front of me because�. The other day I woke up and had nothing to do really. I had cleaned the entire house really, really well the day before, had done all the laundry, didn�t feel like cooking anything because it was too hot and murky that day�it was too early (in the U.S.) to attempt to call any of the places I still owe money to for final bills� (which is another story in itself�I am finding it increasingly difficult to actually get a PERSON on the phone at any of these places and then I get thrown into a swamp of depression and panic because I MUST get a person on the phone so I can pay these bills because otherwise I will have to figure out how to go to the fucking post office and I am just not ready for that yet.)�and so I was just kind of sitting there thinking that I should go and�hmmm�.write? WRITING!! Oh yeah, I forgot, the little thing I used to do at every moment of the day!! I have lost a lot of whatever discipline (though I am hesitant to call is discipline because it was necessity for me to write, it IS necessity for me to write, it�s part of how I cope with living, it is the method I employed, years and years ago, to deal and that would explain a lot of why, in the last couple years, I have turned into this coiled ball of anxiety�because I have not, not at all, been writing as much as I need to. And now I have time falling out of my ass�.I could write for eight hours a day and still have time left over to do things like make cookies and hamburger buns (I made hamburger buns the other day, from scratch, and they were YUMMY, the best�) and for sitting outside by the pool and kicking around aimlessly IN the pool. And what did I do when I found a lack of things to do other than WRITE, DAMN IT WRITE!!?? I wandered around. Decided that I needed to wash every single pair of shoes I brought here (which is 27, by the way). (And except for my two pairs of Dansko�s all my shoes are NOT leather so I can indeed wash shoes) And after I put all those shoes out in the sun to dry I came upstairs to write and I got all cozy at my desk, water bottle, mug of coffee, face washed, teeth brushed, hair up, turned the computer on, checked my e-mail and then opened up a story I had been working on last year at this time and I was going to write down some notes of things I needed to look up and I couldn�t find a piece of decent paper so�.for the next two hours I cleaned off my desk and set it up. It was functional�but I hadn�t yet unpacked or organized anything on the desk. I didn�t NEED to do it RIGHT THEN�no. There was paper in the printer behind me had I thought about it. Or actually in a notebook down on the table. But I had some avoiding to do. So from now on I have to make some changes. I am going to keep the house clean, so that maybe only once a month I have to do a big cleaning. I will make sure it is clean enough at all times that I only have those ten minutes in the morning while coffee is brewing to clean. And that simply means I have to take care of things AS I use them. I have already been teaching myself how to keep the kitchen clean while I am cooking. I used to just whirlwind through there, cook like the dickens, never stopping for a moment to throw away a potato peel or wash off a knife and use it for the next chopping task, I would just grab a new knife, leave the potato peels for later, when there were piles of peels and dirty pans to wash. Cleaning, I realize, is a technique of avoidance. Remember for a brief moment I was jealous of those people I knew that kept meticulous homes? People that washed even their pillows once a week? Well, I am not jealous of them any longer; I feel sorry for them�they must be bored and avoiding to do all that cleaning. Because I want, need, to write. I don�t have any sort of deluded dream that I will be some prolific, published author with scores of awards and accolades behind me. Okay, well so yeah, that is a DREAM�but I realize it is a DREAM. I read enough to know that the kind of writer who achieves all that is someone who spends a lot of time working their stories�and I will never be that kind of person. I write because I need to get something out. Because even though my writing is fiction, there is always an element of truth in it, maybe one sentence that was born in real life�it is something I needed to process through and get out. I write for my own being and cannot spend an hour crafting the perfect sentence or thinking of a creative way to describe a feeling of apathy or something. I can�t stand the person I am right now, the person I have been for longer than a year now�I am killing myself, I know this, with my anxiety, with the constant battle to get UP. I feel as though I am roller skating up a big hill, making progress and getting just a little further and then WHAM, I hit a stone, a tiny, tiny pebble and it fucks up my momentum and I roll back down the hill. So I am done with this nonsense�I am done with the avoiding, with the dull heart thudding along to the tune of angsty delirium. I am getting up IN THE MORNING from now on and I am going to write whatever it is I need to write every single day. That is, if I don�t go rolling back down my hill next week after I return to those dreaded, dreaded, dreaded language classes. DREADED. Right now I have to make a big decision. When I went to bed last night, at midnight because my head had been pounding all day (still with the sinus crap) and I was sick of sitting still and either needed to get up and do something (which was impossible because then my head would start pounding again), or escape into sleeping world�my darling husband man was on the couch watching a movie. When I woke up this morning at eight, he was STILL on the couch though now he was asleep and the screen was blue. Usually he does fall asleep on the couch but will stumble upstairs around five in the morning. So I know he will sleep until at least one, he is the type of person that gets little sleep during the week and then sleeps all weekend, and the question is�do I let him sleep on the couch for the next three hours or is it better that I make him get into bed so he can at least have three hours of sleep where he isn�t all twisted and confined on a small couch? This is a terrible decision because on the one hand, I know it is best that he get another three hours of sleep on the bed...but, by waking him up I run the risk that he won�t be able to fall back asleep and he needs to sleep (you should see the rings under his eyes sometimes). HOWEVER�maybe if he wakes up it is okay, this is a four day weekend after all. (I was thrilled to find out that Spain celebrated the Summer Solstice in such a grand way, apparently tonight, which is the actual day, there is big party everywhere�.fireworks, the bars are open all night�and then I found out that they managed to find a saint to name this day for. So it�s the festival of St. Juan or something like that�NOT the summer solstice. There�s something fucked up about that�as though people need to make it a religious holiday so they don�t feel guilty about their all night party. And so�I carry on now. I think I am not going to wake him up. |
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