Does anyone have any cheese?

[bodlon]

I am giving myself permission to use this morning to re-center. Or, at least, to vent.

For a week that was all about respecting my boundaries, I sure seem to have spent most of last week and this weekend feeling crushed by Unfinished Stuff. Friday was meant to be a free day, but it turned out to be the sort of free day that’s all about catching up on coursework. Saturday got eaten by a random project I’d agreed to. Sunday was supposed to be fun; it was, instead, double-booked.

All of which basically comes down to the fact that I’m staring down a Monday full of yet more Unfinished Stuff.

This has happened every week in November thus far. My would-be free days have been consumed by Unfinished Stuff instead of downtime or catching up on the NaNovel. I haven’t written in three days. I have a bajillion tabs open. In spite of all my efforts, the kitchen is still a fucking disaster. I am not-so-slowly going crazy.

I knew this feeling would crop up again when I went back to school. It’s why I left in the first place. It’s possible that I could mitigate it with adequate assistance with the Unfinished Stuff that’s consumed my off days, but sadly I’m not in the right economic bracket to conjure up someone just aching (or at least willing) to do it.

It’s frustrating. I don’t like to fail. I had plans for 2010, and while I’ve managed some pretty fantastic stuff this year, I’m profoundly disappointed in other areas. The state of the book right now is a big one, and that NaNo is starting to feel like a wash just compounds that. And sure, part of the reason I’ve failed with the book thus far is that I feel like my story and I are still circling one another, trying to figure things out, but my inner critic has a field day with that kind of thing. “You’re a writer,” it says. “Just pick a direction and write something.”

Which isn’t how it works, but there you go.

(As I write this, there’s a voice telling me that seeing the new Potter film, or attending a monthly pagan forum, or even setting my alarm on Sunday morning so I would have time to watch Moulin Rouge! — something that’s been deferred for weeks — all defeat this argument. Surely I really do have the time if I just give something else up? It’s not as if I really need that 15 minutes a night in bed reading a book, is it?)

All of which is to say that I’m having the sort of Monday morning where I wonder if perhaps I would be happier if I were a little less ambitious, or less inclined to Do Things. The honest truth, though, is that I don’t think I could sustain the loss of that impulse and still be particularly human. Frankly, the only thing I’d really get out of that is a tidy kitchen, and if history is any indicator I can more or less survive without one of those.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com

Comments

[onceupon]

I know that when I get rid of my ambitious things, I wind up just sort of... slowly circling the drain. I don't feel creative, I don't feel motivated, I don't feel capable of creating things. I hate to think that some of us really do thrive in an atmosphere of constant pressure but sometimes I'm afraid that's what I need.

Without that Unfinished pile, what would I DO? My last little experience with unemployment (two months) showed me that I am extraordinarily bad with too much down time.

[pocketmouse]

Only you can decide what's important and what's something that you can give up. Sometimes you really just have to bowl through the stress period, and live with the fact that you're going to be stressed out for the next however long. It depends on how important whatever's causing the stress is (and, of course, the more important it is, the more stress it causes).

It's a tough place to be. But it's worth it, and I think you know that. So I'm just going to cheer you on, and agree that yes, clean kitchens are not high priority.

[bodlon]

On the topic of my kitchen, you have seen the current state of my hair. I REQUIRE MORE WINE.

[pocketmouse]

Yes, but do I get to be Fran or Manny? I have Fran's neuroses, but Manny's hair.

[bodlon]

Depends. Are you heat sensitive or do you have a mysteriously shrinking flat?

[pocketmouse]

Well actually I have mysteriously expanding flats. Then again, I also don't need heat as an excuse to take off all my clothes. But I do think I have whatever it is Manny has that makes him need to eat fudge or he'll die.