New Year, Old Me
Another one for the bad poetry folder…
Stifle the Scream
There are times like these that I
find the pressure and weight and pressure of
being myself
is too much to bear
I want to scream
but I don’t
out of cowardice and appeasement but mostly
because I think that if I give up an inch
I will lose everything
Because it’s necessary
Here’s one of my latest… the tone alone should explain the lapse.
Here
i am here
i am here i am here i am here
but not the way you think
not on my terms and not in my heart and not in the way that lets me forget the shackles and weights that keep me pinned
but it counts…
it still fucking counts
because for as long as i am here, as long as i still breathe, as long as i can ignore, as long as i can endure
i can be counted courageous and brave and a Survivor but mostly
NOT a quitter
i am here
in body but not in mind
in mind i am in the endless valleys of death
of drear
of discontent
of dissatisfaction
but mostly of guilt because
i am here
in body but not in mind
because the endless valleys consume me and i let them
i let them
but for the love of god i don’t know why
Confessions and priorities
I have to make a few confessions right now:
- My Untitled Sci-Fi/Fantasy Project has been on hold for the past 3 weeks. No excuse except, I haven’t worked on it.
- Though I made some decent strides the first few days of NaNoWriMo, I basically haven’t done any WriMoing in at least 9 days… and confessing this does not come with the promise that I will change my ways to get back on the WriMo Wagon.
- Since November 6th, writing has not been my priority. It hasn’t even blipped my radar.
- I have been beating myself up pretty hard about each thing on this list (including this item here) for awhile now (yes, this means that I’ve been beating myself up for beating myself up… I never said I was the pinnacle of mental health).
A project came up.
No… scratch that. It didn’t come up.
About two years ago – perhaps longer – I committed to help someone develop a website and the extensive content within that site. This is not a simple blog or corporate “hey! This is who we are and what we do!” site. This is a fully interactive, content rich, and seriously complex project.
I never expected the project to start.
There were some delays and procrastinating (amazingly, not on my part!!!!). We’d have some discussions about getting things started (“hey, we should work on that project…”), but it never turned into anything. I would always end up twiddling my thumbs and waiting for things to get started so I could begin work.
As I said, two years went by and nothing. So, imagine my surprise when the “we should work on that project” talk went from just talk to actual action. Suddenly, it was in my face – I had to start working on something and fulfill my promise! I have to actually get things moving on someone else’s time table.
Secretly, though, I welcomed the distraction. I liked having an excuse not to write because I was running into problems left and right with the writing. I liked being able to dive straight into a project that I am not in any way emotionally invested. With this project, if there’s something I don’t like, I can voice my concerns, but rest in the knowledge that the project is not my own.
It’s kind of freeing.
But there’s that nagging in the back of my head, constantly reminding me that my own projects are languishing and dying for some attention. Then the guilt comes in. And the brow beating.
So, yes… there’s a project. It’s not mine, but I have committed myself to work on it. Even though it’s time consuming, I really don’t like what it says about me as a writer (and my commitment to writing) to just so happily chuck aside the writing for something that’s not writing at all.
What that means to me is that I need to stop living in excuseville and get back to writing. Yes, I have my project commitments, but that’s not EVERY minute of my life. There will be moments to myself. There will be free time. Maybe I won’t have the time to sit blankly at the screen and will the words to come to me. I won’t have the time to complain that I have to write because I didn’t hit my word count. I just have to get over myself and make my actions fit with my priorities.
Also, I think it’s high time for me to start acting like writing is the thing I get to do rather than the thing I have to do.
The long absence
I’ve been gone a long time.
I could come up with reasons and excuses and all kinds of things, but it will do no good.
Depression is weird like that – and yes, I can now admit in public that “depression” is exactly what’s been going on here for the past several months.
First it was because the hubs was gone. Then it was because he was home, but it wasn’t really him – it was a mere shell of a man who might as well have been on the other side of the planet. But the entire time it was because I was being a whiny brat about the fact that I am stuck back here in San Diego – a place I never wanted to return to – with no friends, no family, no job, no… anything really. Except my thoughts, which, really, if you were stuck with these things, you’d be depressed, too.
So, the writing didn’t get done. Neither did the blogging.
I’ve since taken a grown-up pill (figuratively, not literally) and am starting to finally make lemonade out of the crap life has thrown at me this year.
Slowly but surely, I’m getting my shit back together. This includes blogging and writing again. If I can’t find a real job, I might as well try to make a real go of writing as a career. And I have to actually DO it if I want to actually make it profitable.
Now, I just have to find what I did with that lemon squeezer.
A Corporate Restructure of Sorts
This past week and a half of writing… it’s been kicking my butt.
The Good: I HAVE been writing daily.
The Bad: I have not been writing AS MUCH as I had wanted to during my daily writings. To be fair, a lot of this is because my outline just straight up did not work. I’ve had to put a pause on the progress I’ve made so far to restructure my outline. The problem, simply, is that in this first of three novels, I didn’t have enough tension. I was focusing too much on back-story and explanation and not enough on ACTION. Novels 2 and 3 of this series are jam packed with tons of action, but I didn’t realize when I was outlining quite how much of Novel 1 was just nothing but build up for 2 and 3. It’s great if I’m going to write just one gigantic epic novel, but it’s not so great if I want to hit my goal of writing a trilogy where all three novels can stand on their own.
The Ugly: Getting one area of my life structured is highlighting that there are other areas of my life that are vastly unstructured. Literally, the only structure in my day is my writing. I don’t have a specific bedtime or wake time. I don’t have specific meal times. I don’t have specific chore times. Pretty much I just sort of float around doing whatever when I’m not actively writing, and because of that I’m feeling VERY lopsided. So, in addition to restructuring my outline for the novel, I’m restructuring my days.
All in all, I’m pleased with my progress – more than pleased, in fact. But I have a lot of work to do and I don’t think I really will do it in one month. I’m not taking that as a failure, though, because within this month, I’m actually tackling a lot of issues that I’ve been slacking on that may not have anything to do with writing, but definitely effect my writing. In the long run, I think getting these issues resolved – or, at least, well on their way to being resolved – will ultimately help me be a better writer.
I’ve learned one thing for sure: blogging can’t go by the wayside. It really, really helps me sort out my thoughts and feelings. Already, just writing this, I am feeling less anxious and tense about all this restructuring going on in my life.
