5.28.18 - Blog Post #12

Memorial Day, 2018.

Tropical Storm Pool Day

I wrote a thing

(also not 100% sober so I apologize for the format)

This must be a bit of heaven
Swimming in the late May rain
College nostalgia loud on the radio
Waiting for the girls to come over
Waiting for the other shoe to drop
Waiting for our lives to finally start
Waiting ain't so bad if the company
Be as good as this brotherhood

and a dedication,

Thank you two.   When I'm gone, hopefully before you, you should know this was the best part of my life

I blame 2000's cookout rap radio, a lil' chill feeling, and the hope for memories to look back on in the next few weeks.

So it looks like I'll be spending the next month in Birmingham, taking care of my mother.  I'm not sure when I'll be back.  I'll be putting my life on hold and that's okay with me, because this is my mom and... to be real, I'm not doing much anyway.  

I mean sure I'm: working a career, in constant long term relationship negotiations with a lovely long distance blonde, working out two hours a day, finishing up the last wedding album before a likely month free of shooting, writing as much as I can (even leaving comments to myself marking the amount I'm doing each day)... going into debt buying a suit to go to a wedding where I looked good but felt nervous the whole time and debated leaving several times just because of my own anxiety... not teaching summer school after all, missing out on a 4 grand extra paycheck... 

So, it feels busy.  But why does it feel empty?

Look at that picture, tell me those aren't friends to treasure.  Look at the pictures of the blonde, and think about the last time you held each other and talked about the next time... one day... whenever that might be.  Look at the book, and think about all the things you want to accomplish and the dreams you want to live out.  Look at the progress you've made on your body.  Look at how willing you are to move to a city you don't know, where your already near-terminal social life will be put on complete life support.  Logically, it doesn't matter.  I probably will find a way to make my routine fit into this new set of needs.  Swap out eight hours of teaching for helping Mom whenever she needs it, look for opportunities to get to the gym, and write.  I won't be able to play video games or get in the pool.  I won't be able to sit on the couch, next to Loki and laughing along with David to a stupid movie like Sausage Party while Topher cooks brats and I joke about how it's all ironic since we're three bachelors on Memorial Day.  

I'm scared to leave them.  I'm scared I can't do this.  I'm scared I'll fail.  I'm scared Mom will die.  I'm scared about how I will spiral when she does, and how self-destructive I'll be.  I'm scared I'll get in trouble for the green supplements.  I hate that I'm so paranoid about it I can't even use the real name.  

I'm so paranoid lately, worried that something will happen to the boys.  Worried that the finances won't make it.  I know it's not being helped by what's going on with the mother and grandmother.  

I haven't spoken about it much.  Topher and David know.  Apparently by now everyone at work knows even though I only told three people going with me on a work-related trip I've had to cancel on.  Two dance friends know because they date each other and one overheard the phone conversation with mom last week.  Julia knows, because long-distance girl.  I haven't told a lot of people I've been debating on talking to about it... I think because talking about it means it's real.  Real means it's happening and I can't control the outcomes.  

Am I handling all this poorly?  

I need a therapist.  I need to see a cardiologist because of low blood pressure and iron deficiencies resulting in possible anemia.  I dont think I'm going to have the time until this is done.  I need a list of things to get done the day before I get called to go to Birmingham-

Update Gym Membership
Pack two bags - one with gym clothes, the other with rec clothes, both laptops.  
Take the BRZ - leave the keys for the Jeep
Take two shaker bottles
Hike the dog one last time before I go

If all goes well, I'll spend my days in Birmingham split between the gym, hospital/home recovery time with mom, and writing.  I'll flip through Bumble, consider going out to a blues night, if there's one there and mom's condition allows it... 

In my head, I apologize for my existence for everything.  Like I feel like I inconvenience everyone.  Insecurities galore.  

I figure, fake confidence until you make it right?  Build a body and hope you look good, it'll make you feel good.  Sure... that's the theory.

5.20.18 - Blog Post #11

Today was hard.

My autistic brother and I went to visit our octogenerian grandmother just diagnosed with Stage 4 Renal Cancer.  Our mother, who moved back home last year to repair that relationship between mother and daughter, let us know she's been diagnosed with Rectal Cancer.  We find out the stage of it Monday.

I believe we say things out into the universe hoping anyone will hear us.  People want to know they're heard, that they matter more than the atoms that make them.  Maybe it's the lost love we're hoping will be listening, or a deity to offer kindness, or a voice of hope, but we say things like the starting second and third sentence hoping it finds the right amount of probability and luck that helps save those we love.

Can I just say though, and maybe this won't be judged too harshly a decade from now when someone actually reads this:  My grandmother on her deathbed said some racist shit.  The Texas school shooting was on in the background.  She tried to blame it on the de-segregation of schools in the fifties: "We want to educate the blacks sure but it takes more than a generation to breed the violence out of them."  

Never-mind that the majority of all school shootings and gun death violence is at the hands of white men, but whatever, you're on your deathbed.  I didn't know how to respond.  It's been a fucked up day, leading to all kinds of bourbon-drunk anxiety that I can't manage right now.  

I just want to write a book that gets published and marry a girl that loves me; and have my mother live long enough to be proud of both events.

4.20.18 - Blog Post #10

What is it about a toxic combination of depression, guilt, anxiety, embarrassment, and loss that makes me feel I have to chronically apologize for my existence?  I'm quick to apologize when I do things wrong, but as I've been told more often lately than not, I'm also apologizing for things I do right or things I have no part in.  

There needs to be a DSM condition for chronic awkwardness and insecurity.  

Example:  Every day after the gym I usually go to the Smoothie King a mile or so down past my house.  I get the same smoothie every time.  It's rote, routine, but I've lost fifty pounds this way.  There's no basis to it as I doubt the staff there knows my name, but I struggle all the same feeling like I'm taking to long, or I'm slurring my words (combination of fatigue and endorphines), or I cant put my wallet in my damn bag fast enough cause I'm holding up the cars behind me oh God here I go spiraling again.

It's the dumbest thing, but I do things like this all the time.  The best way I can describe it is that I feel like I'm a fraud and a horrible person and I'm just waiting for someone to expose me for what I am.  None of this makes sense if I look at it logically, but the tremors running up my veins tell me I'm wrong and bad and am wasting everyone's time.

I feel guilty for things I have nothing to do with, for things I didn't even do.  I feel guilt that I'm not doing more, that I should be further along.  I feel guilt that I'm letting people down.  

Mathematically this makes no sense.

I have a stable career, do well at my job.  It doesn't bring in the money I want but I somehow make ends meet.  I feel guilty that I don't devote enough of myself to this job or these kids.  I feel guilty that I also do photography on the side that at worst would be characterized as saucy.

I work out daily, a routine that is at it's kindest described as obsessive.  At my worst, it's compulsive.  I feel guilty that I haven't gotten my brothers to join me.  

I write six out of seven days of the week.  At least a page, hopefully more.  It's not enough to have the draft finished by December, and I realize that.  I feel guilty that I'm not writing enough.  That I'm writing crap.  That no one will read it and I'm wasting my life chasing a fruitless endeavor.

I help my family as best I can.  I get out and go to blues at least once a week, as requested from various friends I have there.  I feel guilty leaving the guys alone, that I don't call mom and dad enough.  I feel guilty that I didn't talk to the pretty girl that I have amazing dance chemistry with, and I didn't ask her out because I'm so terrified of being hurt again.  I feel guilty about my long distance relationship spanning six thousand miles, that I'm wasting her time and feeding her promises I can't deliver. 

I feel guilty for feeling alone.  I feel guilty for wanting to be alone at times.  I am a paradox of the dumbest, most self-defeating order.

J said I needed to stop saying "I feel."  She's right.  

155 finished first draft pages.  294 total pages written.  80 of those are liner notes and long scale outlines, the bible if you will.  The rest are hit points I'm aiming for.  I'm guessing the first draft will be between 600 to 800 pages.  There will be a lot to cut.  Maybe this summer, in the one month I have actually off, I can ramp up the scale of writing and knock out the majority.  Maybe.  If I'm lucky, if I work hard and stop being so hard on myself.

4.6.18 - Blog Post #9

I finished a scene tonight, something really really hard to write.  It's for a character I really think is the most pure and noble in the story, also the most tragic and short lived.  The topic it'll broach, and the concept behind it... controversial.  But I want to try to make this about how this character makes choices as best she can in the time she has.  She is the most tragic, most worthy, and she gets cut short.  Without spoiling anything, I have reason,  an entire other possible series of books that would allude back to it, and her.  Killing her here to resurrect her somewhere else.  It might add an extra layer of possibility to the mythology and prophecy I'm trying to create.  But, in the end, I'm writing a scene about rape.  i hate it.  It hurts so bad, but I feel like it's something that needs to get exposed.  There's so much vulnerability when it comes to money and privilege.   There's also what it does to the victims...  

Thankfully, I have the best possible person coaching me through that psychology.  A woman I admire who has been through so much.  She is acutely and uniquely aware of how PTSD works.  Once she reads through the draft, she needs to approve before it goes to print.  Maybe one day I'll ask her another question if all goes right, if we're lucky, if we work hard enough, if we don't stumble too much.

I want to prove to her that I can do this, that I can write.  Hell, really I want to prove it to myself.  I hope she proves herself capable of what she aspires to be.  I want, in 2021, to look back on this passage and smile knowing I was on the right track.  I want to be humble in success and learn strength through struggle.

Hootie & The Blowfish -  Let Her Cry

This is what I need to remember at the end of the day, a sense of progress and drive.  A feeling of small success, another bit of stone chipped away from a sculpture I see in my head.  I feel better more often than not.  

I'm still sad, but I've kind of accepted I'm just going to be sad all the time and I'm okay with that.  I can use it to motivate me, to push me.  I've found comfort in the daily struggle, the idea that pain is a form of progress.  I have to thank the gym for that.  Every day I learn the same lesson about pain and gain.  It's true in so many stereotypical ways.

While folding my laundry and putting it away, I had the following thought exercise:

What does Sysiphus think about for eternity?  Assuming he gets used to the strain and daily struggle of rolling the boulder up the hill, he's got a lot of free time for thought.  Kind of like how a runner uses the boring act of running to let their mind wander.  Sysiphus has the ultimate ability to let his mind wander, so what does he think about?  How many inner truths has he discovered?  How many stories has he created in his head just to pass the time?

You can survive doing very little.  But I hope that feeling alive is the product of hard, focused work and what it must bring.  That will make the sadness okay, knowing I could use it to make me better.

3.13.18 - Blog Post #8

Productivity is a silent thing.  A chrysalis of a kind, grinding away at this big block of stone.  Every day chipping away hoping in the end it'll mean something.  

Always afraid you're wasting your time.  Doing everything you can to believe you're right.

Taylor Swift - I Almost Do

Music helps really.  It's kind of great, one of the roommates playing a video game (currently Dragon Age Inquisition), the other watching a video on his phone.  The dog letting me use his back as an elbow prop.  I have my headphones on, and just write a page or two a night if I can.  Some nights are better than others, some are easier.  I try not to feel too bad if I don't get it all done.  I figure it's like the gym; it doesn't matter how great it goes, what matters is you get it done.

So I'm averaging around a page a day, give or take.  Some days I won't write at all, but I'll think about it at least five times and send two text messages to myself with small notes.  Other days I'll sit down on this recliner and bang out five pages straight.  But I'm committed, good or bad.

The gym helps too.  I'm beginning to fear I talk about it too much and I'm becoming one of those bros.  But... I'm proud of myself.  Which is something I don't know if I've ever really been.  I'm still insecure and worried as hell about the future and finances, but I feel good and I'm starting to look better little by little.  I have been in the gym two hours every day since New Years, except one day when I had to go to urgent care.  My chest hurt like hell, and after an EKG and X-Ray the doctor concluded I tore a pec.  I felt stupid. 

Magic - No Regrets

I've lost around 40 pounds of fat gained maybe 5 back in muscle.  Quick observation: fat seriously does store so much heat.  I am so much colder all the time now.  I had to go outside at work and I'd only brought a fleece jacket because this idiot forgot to check the weather before leaving the house.  It's freezing in March.  Figures.  I ask my colleague if I can borrow her massive winter coat.  She giggles and says, "if you're cold enough to go out in a woman's coat it must be cold."  I was eternally grateful.  I also looked ridiculous.  Whatever, it was warm.

I have a long long way to go in the book.  I have a long way to go in the gym.  I am better about recognizing this undercurrent of sadness, and doing more to face it head on.  I have time to think this way, to learn, hopefully to grow.  It's time to be better.

Like I said, chrysalis.  If I can be smart and nothing goes tragically wrong this year... maybe I can make this real.  I just want to make them proud.

The Fray - How To Save A Life

But it's funny, while I'm here I'm choosing isolation.  I think I'm getting flirted with more but I respond negatively.  I panic when women talk to me.  I don't want to be flirted with?  Like... I'm lonely but it's not worth putting myself out there just to get hurt again, or even worse, hurt someone else.  Also, I'm living in the margins right now but it's way tighter than I want.  I don't think I could invest in a relationship, so why try?

I figure it's all a discipline game.  Grind away and you have something one day.  If it's good, someone will buy it.  At least I can say I tried.

That's all any of us can do.