Exhaustion. But no, not that, really. A sort of tired behind the eyes feeling. A sort of fed up and still hungry feeling. A persistent itch, that bug bite that expands and itches more when you scratch it, that itch you scratch anyway. A feeling like cold you get no matter how warm the room is. And eyelids heavy but so not to have to face the drawing of the day. Exhaustion, but not from exertion.
Things are getting weird around here. I shouldn�t write about any of it. People get fired for saying even the most innocuous things online sometimes. But look, they�ve had to change everyone�s shifts from 40 hours to 39 because upper management says that even one minute of overtime is too many. To my understanding, when one is assigned a schedule one is expected to keep it and anyone who is unable to do so, either by clocking in too early or leaving late or taking short lunches or clocking in late or leaving early or taking lunches too long, they should face disciplinary action of some kind until they learn to work within the assigned schedule. Pretty basic stuff, if you ask me. Some departments have gone to 37.5 hours for the same reason. When�s the dip below full time that allows them to stop offering benefits? When�s the dip below the line of being a company with morals and values I can accept? They discipline for being late, for missing work, but it is their apparent inability to discipline equally for working outside of scheduled hours that had created this situation.
And what about my country? How many rights and services do they have to cut back before it�s one too many? Can my government fire me for writing about them online? Not exactly, but some people have been contacted in person by FBI agents for things they wrote about the government on their journal. Depending on the test you look at, my political and economic views are pretty Centrist, perhaps with Libertarian leanings. Mostly I try to be rational and logical and evenhanded about what I think the government should and shouldn�t do. And I can perhaps understand a reduction in government services that corresponded to a decrease in overall taxation and/or an increase in personal rights and freedoms. But the current (and now continuing) administration has decreased government services while decreasing personal rights and freedoms and making no effective changes in taxation levels for the majority of the people it governs.
There are other stressful things in my life, although I will admit after some deliberation that I spent most of Wednesday in an extended anxiety attack over the way the election was turning out – I didn�t feel normal or well again until I got to the NaNoWriMo meeting and was surrounded by friendly people whose company I enjoy AND was doing something I love. And then Thursday morning the anxiety came back until I got started writing again. Speaking of which, I only managed to get about 128 words of novel written yesterday. Which is a bit under my daily goal of over 3333. A bit. I am, right now, ahead of my minimum required word count by the smallest margin I have had this month. I should be doing better than this. I should have another 10k words written by now.
No more NaNo meetings in Chandler for me. No more trying to get Heath to go to the meetings. he goes or he doesn�t, and if his girlfriend�s plans conflict then I�m leaving him behind. I have to get this done. It�s important to me.
Do you know what important means?
To do before 2005:
Redesign Modern Evil
Finish some more shirts,
get shirts �store� online
Finish this novel
Write a sequel
Design covers for both
edit both
publish both via CP
re-write �About the Author� for LaNF/D�T
Don�t forget first fridays again
To do in 2005:
find an agent to represent my writing to publishers
get published, rather than self-published,
or at least sell 100 books
Write four more sequels
I don�t know why I write these things, I never come back and look at them… well, that�s not entirely true. I seem to stumble across them years later to see how I�ve failed. Like all the lists that had be making movies by now. I don�t see movies in the cards for me right now. I keep trying, but I keep coming up with ideas that, while good ideas, I couldn�t afford to do. Well, there�s one idea for a TV show, I�m going to look into that at some point, but it involves writing at least a full season�s worth of episodes up front, due to problems with time travel. Or maybe it doesn�t. We�ll see.
Looks like art has fallen almost entirely off my list of things to do. It�s difficult, lately, but maybe it�s seasonal. I know that in previous years I�ve had some success with getting many paintings done during December and January. I�m way behind my goal for the year, and … I�m pretty down right now. Maybe I can paint some depressing, awful paintings. Something about pain and loss and frustration and … a type of lovesickness that equates most closely to being a recovering addict at times. Where do we count sober from though, the last time I felt I loved someone, or the last time someone loved me back? �Cause I think I still feel loves long gone, long passed beyond, and I think that�s why I feel so sick.
I miss kissing.
I miss to kiss.
I miss being kissed.
I keep wanting to grab people and kiss them. Attractive strangers, friendly coworkers, imaginary people who wouldn�t react in shock and awe… I keep wanting to have someone I�m allowed to kiss, at all, ever. I remember kissing.
Do you remember kissing?
Do you have to remember it, or are you allowed to just do it? I think the last time someone allowed me to kiss them was … not too long ago, a year and a half, nearly two years ago, I guess. And then before that day, that kiss, it was … 2001? Is summer of 2001 really the last time I kissed someone I had an emotional attachment to?
I miss kissing.
We went to Arcosanti last week. Every time I go I want to go live there, help them out. After the last two years of experience working with my grandfather, I�m much more experienced with the things they�re working on there than I was before. Heath and I were looking at what they were doing so slowly and agreed that we both had the experience and work ethic to be able to really get things done around there. The way dad and grandfather have always worked us seems like it would be considerably faster and more effective with a higher quality result in some ways than what they�ve been doing for the last 34 years. Heath�s interested in living there, too, he thinks. Maybe in a couple/few years things will come together for that. If I wasn�t under the financial obligation I am, I�d go as soon as they�d let me. Alas, I must pay down a large chunk of my debt before I can afford their financially sparse existence.
Or come up with another form of income, such as residuals from published books, to supplement what they can pay me there. Something.
Watched Alfie last night. That was depressing. For me. Probably not for you. Probably you�d find it an interesting and entertaining diversion. But there are so many ways that that movie just points out to me the things that aren�t going as well as I�d like in my life. Okay, so not so many. Mostly it�s the whole relationships thing. Sure, by the end of the movie Alfie discovers that there really isn�t anyone that he�s treated well enough that they�d stay with him, stand by him, et al. But he had a lot of opportunities, a lot of chances to get it right, a lot of abbreviated relationships that I would have loved to have been able to step into his shoes and take in the right direction. And there were other people in the movie, examples to him of how relationships can go, and they made me want to have that, too.
Not to mention the people I�ve been meeting lately with happy marriages and cute children and on and on and why is my life the way it is, instead of some other way? Why can some people find people they can be with, and I haven�t yet been able to make it work? Heck, been able to find anyone to even have a short-term something with during the last six years?
I guess all i can do is hope and dream and be myself and live my life and try to be patient. Either I�ll be alone forever or I won�t. Keep my eyes open, but try not to turn desperate or lonely. Apparently women�s hearts are like bank loans, only available to those who can prove they have no desire nor need for them. And I know I can live, I can survive without a partner, without a mate, a wife, a love, a lover, I can get by. I just … I don�t want to have to.
How many times have I said this here? I should go work on something else.
***
Okay, later and later. Writing on break, on lunch, and now after work. I�ve snuck straight from work to the Starbucks to write, hoping dad or somebody doesn�t call me to tell me they need the car, they need my help lifting or moving something, they need my help eating lasagna, whatever. I�m going to write. I�m going to write … four thousand words, okay?
Okay.
But I wanted to put a few of them here, first. I kept thinking about love, about companionship, about all that all day today, and … there�s a love I keep going back to, because it doesn�t go away, it�s one of those unconditional, forever loves. And it keeps maturing. Been maturing for years now. Eventually I think it�ll be entirely palatable, and it�s getting close, but it�s still a little… hard to swallow right now. After reminding myself of that love, after lingering in it, I am uplifted. I am energized and calmed. Which makes sense when you recall that earlier today I was exhausted and anxious, more than when you read it on its own.
And love isn�t like an addiction for me, really. It never goes away, and it�s not something I could really quit, or want to quit. When I�ve got love in my life, it does change the way I behave, and hopefully these days it would be consistently for the better. Love isn�t an end-all be-all cure for all the world�s ills, and love doesn�t just make itself keep working. I know that. And I know I�m rambling.
I was sure, before I began, that I had a point. Perhaps I have lost it.
Oh, yeah. Sara. My love for you no longer requires encouragement from you to grow, to go on. It seems to have matured enough that it asks nothing but to continue to exist, and it asks that of me, not you. I used to believe that my love for you, when it asked to be allowed to love you, was asking me for something from you, some access to you, to shower you with affection, to do for you, to be for you, to share with you – I know better now, and my love is even better at communicating with me. Love, love, love. And you know all those good things about love, all the good feelings and warmth and encouragement that seems to radiate from inside when you�re with or think of the one you love? They�re there for me all the time, even when you�re not. Even when I haven�t heard your voice in a year or seen a word written or typed by your hand in months or opened my wallet to the only pictures of someone other than myself on my IDs I�ve ever put there, all those good feelings are there for me. All I have to do is remember that I love you, and the clouds break. And if I happen to pause for a moment on your face when reaching for some cash, I remember who you were then, and how much more I love you now than then. And if I happen to receive an email typed by your hand, even if I don�t respond, I still appreciate it – it isn�t encouragement as much as putting back into mind what has been displaced by the difficulty of the everyday. And if somehow I were to see you, to embrace you, everyone around would likely be able to feel something in the air had changed, a palpable energy radiating out from me, selflessly. And if I could see you smile…
I shall never lose you, I shall never forget you, I shall never stop wanting for you to be happy and healthy. Even when I have found as great a love for someone else and married them, even when you have found as great a love for someone else and joined their life, even after we have taught our children and grandchildren of life and love and pain and loss, I will still love you, and from the way it�s gone so far, I�ll love you more than ever.
And now, to write fiction. All this honesty and openness, I have found, tends to upset everyone else in the world.
