See Change
And the wheel turns . . . for so long now, I've been focused on my writing project. On getting the book completed in time to submit to the contest. And I did. I was happy writing, not so happy with the end result. But still, reallyREALLY happy to have written. And it's nice to know that.
There was a long period of time--8 years, roughly--where I couldn't commit to the writing. I'd start. And stop. Start and stop. Start. Stop. . . yeah. Every time I stopped I'd try to embrace the stopping. There. Got that out of my system. Done with the writing. Now I can go on and be a normal person. But the stopping never lasted. Finally, I decided to embrace the inability to stop. Because if I can't stop, I must really, deep down even though I can't commit to it, be a writer.
That attitude, combined with hooking up with some local writing friends from back in the day (aka the days when I was committed to my writing) got me started down this contest path. That got me writing steadily. That got my book finished.
But now . . . what? Now my house is a wreck. My hair is a wreck. My cuticles . . . don't get me started on my cuticles . . . I've gained weight and lost muscle tone and my holiday shopping hasn't even really started . . .
I guess now I reassess. I have my writing goals in place already (symptomatic of being committed to the writing again, yay). But the rest of my life.
Oh, the rest of my life. Picture it. A foggy morning (like today, for instance) and there's the rest of my life. It's just across the street but I can only barely see it. I remember what it looks like--but that's just a memory--so when the fog clears, I might find it's not the same anymore.
That scares me and excites me.
You wouldn't know it from this, but I actually came here to bitch. Because I've been sooooo crunched at work these past two months that trying to take even an afternoon off has been impossible. But, get the entry out the door and--Voila!--Friday off. I cannot tell you how much I could have used a day off before this. Pretty much any day before Wednesday. And now . . .
It's like a perishable gift that arrived too late in the mail . . . something that would have been divine but now just sits there, covered in mold.
It came about because I was summoned for jury duty. And though it's impossible to get time off from work, it's also illegal to refuse to let someone answer their summons. So I cleared my desk yesterday in preparation for hanging around at the courthouse all day today. Only, when I called in last night they'd excused everyone over #73. And I was #82.
So I came here to bitch about the O. Henry irony of it all. (Or is that actually A. Morrisette irony?)
But when I started writing about it, I realized that fuck all! A day off is a day off!
I may do nothing at all today. Not shop. Not write. Not work out.
Whatever I end up doing, in the background, I'll be thinking about the rest of my life . . .