I don't want to do SQUAT today. Everything seems pointless. I try to walk and find I'm on a treadmill rapidly moving backwards. I don't want to leave my chair. I don't want to put away the dishes, thank you very much, or clean the birdcage. I don't. I don't want to check the mailbox, with that creak when you open up the top, and find rejection letters, more rejection letters. I don't want to sit here and diddle. I don't want to think about Christmas. I don't want to think about Christmas with dread. I don't want to think about how Christmas has been ruined. I don't want to think about the fact that my blog tells me I've had 30,000 views in a year, when I only get 2 views a day. Obviously it can't do math. I don't want to go take a shower. I don't want to feel like this. I want some hope. I don't want to feel this alone. I don't want to stare out at my cedar boughs and see rusty, brown, dead growth. I don't want to hand back a review copy to my editor because I don't goddamn understand the book, or perhaps it's because I loathe it. I don't want to see a writer win every award in the book after my rapturous review of his novel. I don't want to keep handing the lifeline to the next person, and the next person, and the next person, until I drown. I don't want to think about the future. I don't want to think about my grandchildren getting older and not wanting to be seen with me. I don't want to think about how they will soon see through me, and therefore probably stop loving me. I don't want to think about how the best moments in my life flew by so fast that I didn't even notice, and can only be longed for in retrospect. I don't want to sit here. I don't want to not sit here. I don't want to think about positive thinking and all that crap, I hate it. I don't want to be accused of being "negative" even though I know I AM "negative". I don't want to feel that my whole life has somehow been a miss. It went wide and I don't know why and I can't retrieve it. I don't want to realize how late it is for certain things and how I will probably never achieve them now. I don't want to think about my dream slipping through my fingers like a nasty little bar of soap. I don't want to think about something awful happening to my loved ones. Being widowed. Not wanting to live any more. Living thirty more years alone. I dont want to think about the sense of living in a void where no one hears me. I don't want to think about publishing this and having one or two people (or maybe zero!) read it and think I am a loser and/or haven't tried hard enough. I don't want it to be Thursday. I don't want it to be today.
If it's any help, Margaret - and it must be because some wise ass got it right when he or she said misery loves company - but I feel exactly the same way right now. Exactly. Maybe even worse because I'm a man and I'm supposed to be manly about it and I feel like curling up in a fucking fetal ball on the floor whimpering and sucking my thumb. Instead, I'm going to bed early, read a little Con Chapman, who invariably makes me laff, and then try to shake off this damned cold which is bringing me down even more.
ReplyDeleteHey, on a barely positive note, here's the URL to a free IP-tracking website with codes you can embed in this blog and it will tell you where all the visits are coming from. A lot of people don't like to have to register in order to comment, but they could be huge fans of yours who don't want to miss a single post. They might also be bored bureaucrats with Interpol or the Royal Canadian Secret Police. You might well be winning them over to our side.
http://statcounter.com
Whenever I feel shitty, as I do now, I remember the words of the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia who told us, whilst strumming his electric guitar: "We're going to hell in a bucket, babe, so we might as well enjoy the ride." I try, I really do.
Going to Hell in Bucket
ReplyDeleteYes. In today's post I describe what is known as a "mood". Strange how when you say "mood", or, worse, "moody", it is automatically assumed to be "bad". Then there is the deep mystery of the "good" mood. What's a mood anyway but a storm front that moves in and levels everything in sight, or, for that matter, a sweep of blossomy sunshine, a high pressure-system that blows away just as mysteriously as it came in.
ReplyDeleteWe associate the word "mood" with "bad" because when we're in a good mood we like to think that's our natural state and only a bad mood can bump us off that golden cloud. You notice it's always someone else saying about us, patronizingly, "Well, we're sure in a good mood today, aren't we?" Suggesting a good mood is not our natural state. I prefer your analogy of weather fronts.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't "good" and "mood" rhyme? "Food" and "mood" rhyme, don't they? And let's not get into "hood".
ReplyDelete