Enough with the whining already!

Yeah, so that last post may have been a little complain-y. Every once in a while I get so passionately unhappy that I lash out at the keyboard. But I feel better now.

The problem is not 'normal life,' it's not the suburbs, it's not being a housewife--it's not any of those simple things that are so easy to blame. These are just surface things. And when I'm honest with myself, were circumstances different, I could easily love all the things I complain about.

So I'm trying to delve a little deeper to find the true source of my dissatisfaction, and, more importantly, to resolve it. I'll let you know what I come up with.

I'll be back soon. Hopefully.

I realize my blogging has been very sporadic lately. The main reason for this is that my life feels like it's on hold, and meanwhile I'm spending all my energy just surviving the transitional phase (I am crap at transitions).

We are moving back to Scotland. In a month. Plans have been in the works for a while--we've found renters for the house, bought our obscenely expensive tickets (which cost more than any trip I've ever taken--and that includes far-flung places like Fiji or the Cook Islands), and begun packing. Meanwhile I am so ready to be gone from here that all routine maintenance has fallen to the wayside. The house is ridiculously dirty, I can't be bothered to even do laundry, and I just cannot, cannot, cannot wait to be out of here. GET ME OUT OF HERE!

The suburban life has been an utter failure for me. I'm glad we came here, glad we bought a house that has proven to be a savvy investment, glad that Jack spent the first year of his life close to his grandparents. But I just cannot handle the boring, pointless, repetitive nature of my life right now.

I get teased quite a bit by my friends who wonder when I'm going to "grow up and live in real life." Not all of my friends, mind, but a select few who have viewed my vagabond, nomadic lifestyle as some kind of immature Peter Pan quest to never grow up. I dispute that. My lifestyle has always been the result of conviction, from the time I was in high school and decided that I didn't want to live a Normal Life. (What is a Normal Life anyway? What is Real Life? What the hell does that mean? But I digress). Well, if this is Real Life, people, then I want no part of it.

I didn't intend to write this post just now. It's meant to be a longer, more thought out post about the competing desires that control my life choices. But as you can see, my frustration with feeling trapped in my home (remember that I have no car? Yeah, it sucks), and my impatience to be in a new place, doing new things, is particularly overwhelming now. Hopefully I will find the time and energy to expound tomorrow.

For now, I'm off to purposely not clean my disgusting hovel.

Jack's Daddy

My boys. Pretty damn handsome, the two of them. Wouldn't you say?

Where she been at?

I know my blogging has been a bit sporadic of late. It all started when I watched the final episode of Lost a little over a week ago. It was so terrible, such a huge disappointment, that I was severely depressed and angry. Yes, I take my fiction very seriously, and as far as I'm concerned this was the biggest narrative failure since the Star Wars prequels. I'd like to pretend it didn't exist like I pretend they don't, but unfortunately this failure happens at the end of the story instead of the beginning so I can't really allow myself to unimagine it in the Lost corner of my brain.

Anyway, then I spent many days attempting to write a post on just how awful it was, which I have saved in a draft but which never quite achieved the level of outrage I was going for but may still get published on this blog one day, and then I sort of lost steam and sat on my arse for a while. So here we are.

For a post that almost perfectly describes my feelings on the epic awfulness that was the writer's total screwing over of their characters in Lost, you can go here.

Waiting for a good day

So I have good days and I have bad days. And by that I don't mean some days good things happen and some days bad things happen, but rather some days I feel good and some days I feel bad. It dominates my life, really, this feeling good or feeling bad. Tragically, irritatingly, frustratingly so.

On a good day, I wake up and get straight out of bed, because I am anxious to greet the day. I have energy, hope, expectations of goodness. On days like this everything feels effortless: I make sure the house is clean, because it makes my mind feel in order, I write at least a thousand words, I update my blog, I work on projects. I get stuff done. I exercise. And I still manage to have plenty of attention to give to Jackie, slobber him with love and affection, and even cook dinner. I feel happy. I feel alive. I feel normal.

On a bad day, I have to work really hard to drag myself out of bed. I feel bone-weary, so tired I can't keep my eyes open. When I walk downstairs I feel overwhelmed by all the tasks that lay before me. I don't want to do anything. I can't. I actually can't do anything. I make sure Jack eats and naps and is taken care of, but that is all I can manage. The rest of the day I sit on the couch, staring, wondering why in the world I feel so bad. Just so, so bad. Everything feels hopeless. I can't write a word, because walking to the computer feels like an enormous chore. My life feels stifling. The feeling is one of flatness, boredom, and mostly just an entire lack of energy.

On those days I can take emotional stock, can step back and look and realize how incredibly weird it is that just yesterday I was a whirling dervish of happiness and activity, and today I can't. I just can't. I can't tell you how strange it is to recognize that this is just a mood, a feeling, a rogue chemical emotion, and to still--still!--be powerless to change it.

So on a day when I feel good, I rush to do as much as I can. I am depressive, not bipolar, so this feeling good is not mania. But I still feel the need to take advantage of it, because who knows if I'll feel this way tomorrow?

Today I feel okay. It's not a good day, and it's not a bad day. On days like this I can make the choice. If I start moving, I can make it a good day. If I take the lazy route early on, it will almost certainly turn into a bad day.

So I'm posting. Taking the bull by the emotional horns and claiming this day as a good day. Already I am starting to feel my spirits lift, just from having accomplished one small thing, just from the joy of a few quiet moments to myself while Jack naps. Good day, I will it to be. Good day, good day, good day...