neurotica_redux

Uh duh.

Sometimes I am so utterly dense. I’m a writer because I love to write. It stands to reason that when you spend too much time NOT doing what you love to do, but doing a whole bunch of other unimportant shit, it might make you a little unhappy or discontented, right? Right. Well, I (idiotically) haven’t been making much time for writing lately. At first it was frustration with my writing and needing a break, then it was too much work on my plate, and then it was just laziness. I noticed recently I was having a harder and harder time focusing and concentrating on my work. I was really hating it, and not able to get anything done. For the last two days I have written in the morning for myself, and then spent the rest of the day doing the work I need to do to pay the bills. Like magic, I am less annoyed with work. Less annoyed with life. I’m in the sweet spot where I haven’t fallen into self-criticism yet with my writing and am just happy to be doing it. Sitting down to write is not easy, there are a million other things that I could do that would be a snap to just slide into, but you know what? They’re not fucking important. 75% of the time they’re fine experiences, but very rarely are they important enough, or contributing enough to my overall happiness to override writing. So why is it so goddamn hard to remember that?

If I had an iPhone I would wish for an app to take care of this.

Of Guides and Hiccups

Well, it’s officially a month and three days until I leave San Francisco (again), for lands unknown (but first, lands very well known). I am (predictably) freaking out from time to time, testing my newfound coping skills and weathering the storms as best I can. Ah, Saturn Returns. You bitch. Despite all the changes that are happening, and the emotional hiccups, I feel like I’m moving forward. That was my takeaway from my dinner with Spencer tonight. It’s funny how friends you don’t see that often, people who are not part of your daily life, can have such an impact on you. Spencer is older, and much wiser, and is of the same writerly ilk. We have a great connection that means more to me than he probably knows, he’s the Virgil to my Dante if we’re gonna get literary (and melodramatic). Literally everything I say to him that I’m going through, or feeling, or worried about, or excited about, he’s already gone through. And he’s able to talk to me about it in a way that’s not condescending or preachy or anything, it’s just simply solidarity and gentle nudges in the right directions. We had a similar dinner about a year ago and I think I wrote similarly about it then. The content of those conversations is for me, but what I can share with the internets is that sometimes all you need is someone to tell you it’s going to be okay, even if it’s not okay.