May 6th Rambles

I am definitely highly intuitive. Tonight, I sat down with my laptop after a 14 hour day and as I flipped it open, I thought to myself, "I haven't heard from C in so long. He didn't even send me a birthday greeting. I bet he's given up on me because I haven't been writing....I've let him down." And there was an email from C, telling me not to respond to his email, but to blog instead. So here it is, C, for you (I know, for Me).

I started a new full-time job this spring and have been so worn out by it and by life that at the end of the day, I just want to veg. Veging has taken the form of reading, movies from Netflix, and, embarrassed as I am to say it, online games like MahJong and Solitaire. I love the emptiness of mind I get when I am playing these games, I am only focusing on the tiles, and all worries about Finances and Immigration Hassles and Loneliness are absent. I realized recently it is a form of meditation, the chicken-shit version; when you can't actually stomach the idea of sitting in silence and letting all your thoughts swirl and then settle, (having been burned by one too many wanna-be monks to be whole-heartedly ready to try it again), MahJongg or Solitaire makes an excellent escape. It's different than the mind-numbing you get from TV, because sitcoms, no matter how devoid they are of substance or nutrients, or perhaps because they are so lo-cal, allow the mind to wander all over, to connect the dots way too many ways to the events and caricatures portrayed for any true silence to mature. Movies too: you may forget your own worries for the two hours during the film but instead you worry for the artistic man who needs a good mate, or the family surrounded by hatred - again, not true emptiness or stillness.

I know what C would tell me, what others have told me, what I know myself and have refused for some self-defeating reason to listen to: writing is so incredibly cathartic, an half-an-hour of writing can calm me, cleanse me, cheer me. Better to spend your precious time writing. Life is short, don't waste it with silly games.
The computerized clicking of the Mah-Jongg tiles has been my choice these last months because why? Because I am afraid what will come out if I began to click instead at the keys of my laptop.

One of the things I dislike most about my mom is that she has always set up so many obstacles between herself and doing what she loves:creating art. I think now I am beginning to understand how and perhaps why that has happened. It does definitely take a degree of courage to attempt to do what you love if you have any vague ideas of it becoming more than just a past-time, an end-of-the-day hobby that takes place after the "true" work of the day is done. What if you fail! I seem to deal in absolutisms often, so for me, to fail once is to fail always, and if I were to fail as a writer, what would I have to dream of?
What big carrot would be left dangling before me to lighten my daily tasks and keep my eye keen on "that magic future date when I will have the perfect time to write" ?
Then there is the terrible agony of having once opened the cupboard and invited the words to start jumping down off the shelves, they do NOT want to stop, and keep tumbling down, sometimes at very Inopportune moments, like driving to work, or trying to get to sleep at night. The frustration is incredible. I am angered that I don't have hours ahead of me to just dive into the luscious sea of words I have released.
A very poor and sorry excuse I know. I know and repeat to myself as a form of cheerleading that many well-known writers wrote while a whole lot of other stuff was going on in their lives. Full-time jobs and motherhood did not stand in THEIR way, so it shouldn't in mine either.

So C, here is what I have to say for myself. Thank you for the nudge. Your timing was perfect.

P.S.
A phras related to our near-poverty that I wanted to write down weeks ago:

The frig is so bare you can see its ribs.

I liked that - (the phrase, not the emptiness).