Doing what I can
/Writing is hard.
Writing is particularly hard when you’re lost in your own head. It’s hard to get much of anything done in that state, but to have to put a coherent string of words together is particularly challenging, especially when you purport to represent your inner self in your writing. If you’re still working out what that means or aren’t ready to show the world who you really are, it’s even harder.
I also haven’t felt like writing reviews for the other blog in a little while. I’m not going to force myself to write something just for the sake of generating fresh content if my heart isn’t in it. I just want to feel like my free time is my own again; I feel guilty when I call in sick to work or spend an evening doing nothing, so I’m trying to just let myself have evenings where I watch TV shows for the fun of it. I’ve been bingeing Baroness von Sketch Show for a little bit as well as Schitt’s Creek, and I just finished Bojack Horseman.
Nonetheless, I’m posting this week, and want you to keep reading this blog.
I met a Facebook friend for coffee shortly after I published the last entry. It’s always a little daunting to meet a new person outside the curated confines of social media, but we both had some common touchstones in our life experience and had actually gone to the same university at the same time.
A few days later, I went shopping at Old Navy with Alecia. Until recently I always viewed clothes shopping as a necessary evil that I would reluctantly endure whenever I found the clothes I had were worn out or that I needed something appropriate for job interviews, but this trip was particularly fun because I tried on and bought a bunch of stuff that really made me feel more like myself. Alecia told me I had a huge grin on my face as I stepped out of the change room in some of my outfits.
I still need to recover for some period after I spend time with other human beings, but I’m going to try not to go so long between these kinds of visits.
I’m still having the same old dreams. A recurring theme in a lot of them is being forced to relocate to another city with my parents, but not being able to give notice to my current job, which is a better fit and better paying than any opportunities where I’m supposed to be moving. Sometimes my current “job” in the dream is conflated with call centres where I used to work in my 20s, and once I had a dream where I was frustrated about being transferred to a new contract that I wasn’t familiar with. I still dream where I’m trying to squeeze into openings that are too small or trying to avoid being caught trespassing.
Why won’t my brain let me enjoy the relative stability of my life? Maybe it senses I want to do some Major Things that I never felt I could when I was more precariously employed or dependent on others for food and shelter. I still feel like one small misstep will unravel the life I’ve built for myself here and keep my survival tied to others’ approval.
There are a few more things I want to write about these days, but they’re not the kind of topics that should be rushed out to meet self-imposed deadlines. I’ll probably just tinker with the drafts bit by bit for months until I lose the spirit of what I was trying to write and delete them.
