here’s Shortie on xmas day –
here’s mom and me, looking very glamorous on xmas morning –
Ok, the new year hasn’t gotten off to a great start. When I wrote that last entry, on xmas morning, I was planning on writing more later in the day, and then a bunch more the next day.
The day after xmas, though, I was horribly sick. Weirdly sick, but only for a day. I got out of bed, but felt so sick and drained that I had to get back in bed. It went like that all day, sleeping and feeling bad. I’ve had the flu, sure, but never to the point where I couldn’t lie around and watch game shows on TV. A weird day. After that I felt better, but kind of weak.
So what’s been my excuse for the past three weeks? Hmm, I just don’t know. Apathy combined with bitter cold temperatures. But that’s not entirely accurate either. The bitter, bitter cold only started last Thursday. As a matter of fact, last Wednesday was fantastic – the temperature reached about 66 degrees, and it was heaven. I sat out in the yard in a t-shirt eating ice cream, because I could. I went running in shorts and a t-shirt. I felt like life was suddenly an old-time Hollywood musical, and felt like breaking into tap dances all day long.
I knew this was one atypical day, though, and that the cold was coming. And it did, and it was supposed to be MINUS one last night. Today it’s going to “warm up” into the 20s, and it makes me a little crazy, thinking that it’s come to that – thinking that the 20’s are somehow warm. It may be 37 tomorrow, and that seems crazy warm.
Perspective, it’s all about perspective. Today my parents are getting back from a Caribbean cruise, and I talked to Mom on the phone yesterday. They’d docked in New Orleans, and she talked about how it was “chilly” there. It’s all relative, isn’t it?
So anyway, apathy. Yesterday I decided that maybe I have writer’s block. I’ve never felt any writer’s block in my life, but I decided that maybe this feeling of not wanting to write one more word about anything to anybody ever again might be writer’s block. I’ve felt too surly to reply to e-mails, and if you’ve ever corresponded with me, you’ll know that’s quite a radical statement. I’ve generally been fanatical about writing long responses to missives immediately after receiving them. But lately, nothing. Yesterday I finally managed to write a few replies to things that I got a few weeks ago, and I felt I’d really accomplished something.
The good thing is that I haven’t had to worry about getting attacked by any kind of evil computer hacker spammer hijacker bad people. There’s a very small risk of getting attacked when the only thing you use the computer for is playing solitaire. I have been managing to open the laptop to play some solitaire, which I consider to be a bad sign of my mental state. I’d sit there playing over and over again, and after days had passed I’d finally pry myself away. But I felt like playing solitaire on the computer was a step up, actually – before that, I was playing it with actual, real playing cards. But on the other hand, maybe the playing cards were better, because at least then I wasn’t dully staring at the computer screen, and I was exerting the effort of actually counting out the cards and physically turning them over and shuffling.
Yesterday morning I forced myself to go work out at the fit club. I got on a stair master, it started out, but after about a minute it suddenly stopped. I started it again, and the same thing happened, so I gave up. I figured somebody was going to kill themselves on it, and it would probably not be so great if it was me. I decided to run on a treadmill, instead. Because it was a holiday, most of the treadmills were full of people (sometimes two and three on one machine). I got on one and started running. I plugged my headphones into the headphone jack in order to listen randomly to the eight different tv channels, but there was a loud SCREECH in my ear. I jiggled the cord, kept trying to get it to settle in a position that didn’t produce the screech, but to no avail. Annoyance upon annoyance. I glumly watched the screens, reading the closed-captioning on the bottoms. Sometimes I’d turn the sound on low, just to get an idea of what was going on, but the screeching was starting to make me deaf.
But at least I actually worked out, right? I got ready to go work out this morning, too, but then I thought that maybe I’d write, instead. So here I am, at 7:04 a.m., writing away. The problem with NOT writing is that I love writing. Last night a guy asked me, which do you like better, writing or acting? Acting I said, but then I said, no, writing. I like them both. What I wanted to say is that I really liked writing and then performing what I wrote, but I felt that would sound like I was bragging. I was at dinner with some people, and I had a steak to celebrate my earlier running accomplishment. It was delicious.
I went to a party on Saturday night, forced myself to go out in the bitter cold plus it was snowing and I had to drive all by myself down a very dark deserted country road. Gee, I do manage to force myself to do things sometimes, don’t I? But not enough.
Anyway, I’m very glad I went to the party, because my mood had been VERY VERY BAD before going, and it helped to go mingle with people. It was a Mardi Gras theme, and I’d planned on wearing my very fancy new green skirt that my friend Randy gave me for Xmas, but I decided I couldn’t bear the thought of wearing anything that didn’t completely cover me. The food was delicious, there was a band that was great, and I met some interesting people.
The one thing there that kept happening that made me feel both good and bad was people talked about the column I used to write. And I kept telling them I’d been fired because the editor made the retarded claim that nobody wanted to read me anymore. And they’d then tell me they LOVED the column, and one woman told me that her husband had been addicted to it, stuff like that, all night long. It felt flattering, but mostly it made me mad all over again. I need to get over that, right now. Move on.
MB gave me a digital camcorder for Xmas, so I can continue making videos and putting them on the website. So why don’t I do that? I can see I’m going to have to do a bunch more forcing here. I can be pretty darn resistant to the forcing, though.
The one thing that’s made me ever so slightly less mopey and surly lately has been the play I’m in, “You Can’t Take it With You.” I like being in a play. I like rehearsing, I like doing the work, I enjoy working with talented people. There are some very talented people in the cast, which is really nice. I’d like to perform more. SO WHY DON’T YOU START MAKING THE VIDEOS, THEN, GRACE? MB also got me editing software, so I can edit them myself, and I love doing that, too.
One problem with feeling surly is that I’m too crabby to want to do things that I know I’d enjoy. So illogical. Why can’t I be more logical?
Ok, close on some kind of positive note, surely there must be something, something good, something positive and life-affirming.
Well, TV. I don’t watch TV anymore, but my friend Randy watches plenty of it. He was telling me the nights he couldn’t do things because of the various stuff he watches, and I told him he watches too much tv. “But I like the shows, watching make me happy!” he said. So that made me think, go ahead and watch as much as you want. If you’re watching a lot of TV because you’re entertained and you like it, go ahead. I guess this would be along the “follow your bliss” line. If you want to do it, and it doesn’t harm anybody, why not? Watch TV! Run in sub-zero weather! (I met a woman who did that and I don’t understand how it could be anything but utterly torturous, but she seemed extremely happy about it.) Go to lots and lots of movies! (why don’t I go to a movie, for goodness sake? I like movies! OK, gonna do that this weekend.) Eat Indian food! (Why don’t I go to the Indian restaurant more often, since it’s so darn delicious? I’m going to do that, too!) Go sledding! (My friend Randy keeps insisting that we should go sledding, but I try to encourage him to sled with somebody else. I’m pretty opposed to going fast downhill in the cold. Look what happened to Sonny Bono.) Move to a warm climate! (I’ve been thinking about that a LOT these past few days. but I haven’t actually packed up the car. Yet.)
Ok then, enough already, maybe next time I’ll attempt to think up some sort of plan for the new year – not resolutions, just a strategy for living the best way possible.
Whew. Ringing in the new year with surliness and apathy. But I try to look at it this way – it has nowhere to go but up (and next time I’ll have to tell you about how I spent my new year’s eve).
Ok ok ok,
grace