The years of unemployment shook my faith in myself. I got lots of support on my blog but I was also attacked. If you choose to write in public you need to be able to process stuff like that.
I lost a few friends. To some extent I have processed all of it. In other ways I might might never let the hurt go.
I'm sad. And I'm embarrassed to be sad. Sadness feels like failure.
There are reasons. Sadness seems a normal thing to feel all things considered. But I haven't wanted to talk about it.
Sadness is difficult for people, especially when they care about you. And the myriad ways in which people deal with those feelings are all understandable.
But. I can't process my own sadness and other people's need for me to not be sad. So I am withdrawn.
The problem is that I am cut off from my inner world.
I heard Parker Palmer talk abut his own depression. He used the phrase: the tragic gap.

"The tragic gap is the gap between what's really going on around us, the hard conditions in which our lives are currently immersed, and what we know to be possible from our own experience"

He goes on to describe flips between hyper-cynicism and hyper-idealism with such elegance. I listen to the interview again and again trying to ground myself in the wisdom. But wisdom ... wisdom doesn't always help.

So I had a weepy weekend but I got a few chores done. I'm not really ready for Monday. Ready or not. Here we go.

Three posts in one day. Is it a trend? I dunno. Doubt it.
Plants are watered. Back room is still a mess. Apartment is generally cleaned up. Paperwork done. What can be packed for lunch has been packed. Swim bag is packed. It's as good as it's gonna get and it's good enough.
Posts for the rest of the week could all read like this.
Woke up.
Ate cereal.
Went swimming ( Monday, Wednesday and Friday)
Got the bus to the train and the train to the shuttle.
worked.
Got the shuttle to the train and the train to the bus.
Checked email Spaced out on Facebook.
Went to bed.
There might be complaining about the commute or love for the pool. But. It's just a push to get through it all. I never have anything left.

Interesting. I spent more than an hour updating my blog roll in a failed attempt to make it more manageable. And that was without much reading. I deleted blogs that don't seem to be on anymore. And some that I liked but knew I might not read regularly. It was surprisingly emotional. I was flooded with memory.
I can barely imagine getting it together to write anymore. Even with a reduced blog roll I don't have an hour an hour a day to read.
And it's more than time. It's about how I experience reading and writing. I try not to be overly precious but I feel. A lot. Of everything. About everything.
I made a new friend last year. We're on the same bus/train combo. The other day she talked to me about not liking blogs. She didn't understand why anyone would want to write about their lives on line and she didn't understand understand why anyone would want to read about them. She didn't trust it. It felt superficial. Her arguments were compelling. I have sometimes been put off by things that people write. And I wrote some really dopey stuff in my time. Personal blogging is fraught. Better to be a pundit, I suppose.
But I have met some amazing people and I love reading about their lives.
There are things I need to be doing. I'm trying to decide what needs to be done (water the plants, pack stuff for lunches, clean up) and stuff I want to be do (clean the back room, clean up a lot). I might just bag it all and take a nap.

Last week was difficult. No matter how hard I work I never feel like it's enough. I leave work emotionally, physically and mentally drained most of the time.
So. I do not write.
Facebook sometimes feels like blogging. And lately I've been connecting with old friends there. They find me or I find them. Something about that has made me want to communicate. I just rarely feel like I have much to say.
Something is shifting. Not sure what.

I'm just ridiculously bad at this now.

Sigh.

I had an idea to make this be my main blog and redirect things here and I was all wound up about it but ... really ... the reasons I haven't done it yet are boring and long winded.

And not being able to do it frustrated me.

And that combined with a short but nasty illness and a manic bout of reorganizing and cleaning.

And I just shut down.

Sigh. Again.

So.

I have been doing massive purging in my apartment. I think they're opening a new branch of the Goodwill with all the stuff I've dumped. I rearranged the furniture in the living room, which involved much stacking of books. The new arrangement doesn't totally work but I kind of like it. The next big push will be the kitchen. I'll need to move the butcher block and shelf to clean the floor. Lots of washing and dusting and tossing out of food stuff that may not need to be tossed but has been around too long to want to use. Like year old olive oil. Yech.

I'm saying that this is all in preparation for Mom's two month visit but I want to do it.

And the weeks just go by.

I'm feeling so many emotions right now. I can't quite parse them. Or articulate them
My little open secret writing project has been discovered. Which is quite all right with me. And Jackie left a very nice comment on the old blog. (If you're reading Jackie, thank you! And. Excellent timing!) A nice antidote to the snarky comment I mentioned the other day.
Really wonderful people have been leaving me encouraging comments all along but I couldn't take them in. I don't even know why.
I'm not impressed with how much I've been able to write here the last two months but it's more writing than I've done in the last two years.
I am not at all surprised to discover how much of my blogging was tied to relationships. I am moved in some deep and overwhelming way when I read the words: I miss your writing.
I'm just feeling ...
I'm just feeling.

There was a cartoon in a New Yorker in which a beatnik looking dude is telling someone that all you need to do to be a writer is gather your internal angst and write a diet cookbook. I'm paraphrasing but that was the drift.

I carry breakfast and lunch to work. I get home too late for dinner. Sometimes I eat toast. Breakfast is some kind of fruit and some muffin, bagel, scone type thing. Summer fruit is still around (praise the lord) and I am in peach, nectarine, plum, cherry, berry heaven. Can NOT get enough. Debbie's been bringing me crazy amounts of stuff from the farmers market. She seems to have a crush on the tomato vendor because they keep piling up in my refrigerator. So this week I made concasse out of them and mixed it up with penne and parm.

Well. It wasn't really concasse. Really concasse is peeled and seeded. I didn't peel and seed for two reasons.

1. It's a pain in the butt.

2. I don't mind peels and seeds.

It is true that peeling and seeding makes things smoother in both texture and flavor. Peels and seeds have an acidic quality. But, again, I'm OK with that. I wouldn't be if I were going to serve someone else. If I'd been making lunch for anyone else I would have roasted the tomatoes, peeled and seeded and chopped. I'd have used olive oil and garlic and fresh basil instead of just piling them in a pan and cooking them down. I've been eating them all week and I am OVER THEM.

This is not to say that I'm not careful when I cook for myself. I am. But these days it's all I can do to assemble precooked things. Last week I ate sausage sandwiches because I defrosted the refrigerator and didn't want to refreeze them. I get so bored when I eat the same thing everyday.

Debbie also brings me piles of lemon cucumbers, which I've been eating in salads with red bell peepers, or beets.

And I'm on a tapioca kick.

And almonds. I eat almonds every day.

I guess I could write a non diet non cook book.

I'm just so Po Mo.

When A and I were having dinner she ran into a friend. When she introduced me she said I was a writer. It's dopey to argue about stuff like that but I blanched internally. I don't think you're a writer unless you write. And I'm having trouble writing email.
Shortly after that I was talking to K about some ideas for moving the site and he mentioned blogger. And. So. Then. I decided to write here on the blog no one reads to see if I could build up some writing muscle. I'm not impressed with how I'm doing.
And. Then. I got an email notification from YACCS. Someone had left a comment on an old post. They were letting me know that I had used every day when I meant everyday. Or maybe it was the other way around.
Ah yes. I remember this about blogging. Random person stops by and feels the need to take a jab. I'm very glad to know when to use every day and when to use everyday. It has confused me. It's the flat tone in the comment that makes it feel like a jab. Comments like that rarely come from another blogger. Sometimes they do. I remember a fellow blogger commenting on my miss use of it's. I do know when to use it's and its but I space out. I am flawed. Deeply flawed. The tone was different. Just a friendly reminder. Not a jab.
Most of my experience with blogging has been good. The part that's bad right now is ... that I don't seem to have something essential. Inspiration? Stamina? Time?
And. Yet. I want to keep trying.
I keep editing this .
I keep finding small mistakes.
Sigh.

I had a very pomo moment yesterday. I was playing a game at work.
Well.
That is my job.
The thing is I wasn't playing the game I'm supposed to be playing. We're a little slow right now and I was bored. I had an hour left in the day and I knew the time would sail by if I could play a game. But I was worried that someone would see. In truth, I don't think any one would care. We're all about games here. But I felt funny and if I heard someone coming I'd bury one game under the other. Which was really just silly.
Such a very odd job.

On Friday when I got off the train there were no buses or cabs. That happens on Fridays. There are too many people in the city and things get messed up. I stood on a corner that allows me to see two different bus stops and watched for who would come first. A bus that doesn't usually stop at one of those stops was letting people off. I didn't think he'd let anyone on but he did. As we rode up Third I saw my second bus ahead of us. He was at a stop and had a red light so I took the chance, jumped off my bus and ran toward him waving my pass. I thought he was about leave but he opened the door. Catching these two buses got me home fifteen minutes earlier than I usually get home.

Last night a similar scenario occurred. This time there were no buses because a baseball game was messing with traffic. One came and again my second bus was in front of us. We got to the same place where the red light had stopped the bus on Friday but the light changed and he sped off.

It's hard not to think that I did something right on Friday and something wrong yesterday. Part of me knows better. We make a zillion little choices every day most of which we make without much deliberation. All of which move us in one direction and not another. And all of the people around us are making choices too.

Lately I feel like I'm tossed through a tumble. No sense of agency. Too much frustration with everyone else. And bad meaning making.