5 posts tagged “life”

It's time to get back on the bus. I go back to work tomorrow, but only for an hour and a half a day. Instead of looking at it as a black hole in the middle of my sunny summer days, I've decided to re-imagine it as an incentive to keep a sensible schedule. In other words, I can't stay up all night if I've got to get up and go to work. Even if it is only for an hour and a half. Especially if it is only an hour and a half! And then because I am yoked to this strange schedule, I plan to exploit the trace element of discipline involved to build a writing schedule around it. I have also told the kids that I when I get back home, around 12:30, I want to have two hours of electronics-free living. From 12:30 to 2:30, we can eat lunch, read, clean, exercise, study, or work on projects. What we cannot do is sit on the computer, growing ever larger asses, talk on the phone, play video games on the phone, send text messages, play on Jinx's new XBOX (that he bought himself with his own savings), or anything else of that nature, with the possible exception of digital photography. (What do you think? Should shooting pictures or videos with an electronic camera be an exception to my no-electronics edict?) I will write during that time on paper, as the ancients did, avoiding the temptations of the machine.

Exactly one year ago, give or take a day or two, I applied for a job. It seemed like a great fit for me and my "skill set," as they say. Weeks went by; I heard nothing. I couldn't help but wonder why I hadn't gotten so much as an interview. Who could they have gotten? Who could be so much better than me that I didn't even merit an interview? It was a blow to my ego, to be sure, but I was already so down-hearted and confused that it didn't make things much worse.

Then, in October, I got a call. Could I come in for an interview? I agreed, interviewed, and within a week they offered me the job. I started working there. I became very fussy about my wardrobe, careful to always have work clothes at the ready. I thought about sustenance differently. I lost some weight. I started to wear a full face of makeup again, which I had not done regularly since high school. I stopped reading decorating magazines and started bringing home magazines about looking and feeling good.

At the end of January, I found an apartment and rented it with Duff's help. Having a new home invigorated me. I stopped worrying so much about my possessions and having all my stuff. Obviously, all my stuff wouldn't fit into this new place. So I had to make decisions on the basis of what I really needed. What my kids needed. This was good for me, since I have a pronounced tendency to hoard things.

At first I slept on my son's twin bed. Often, he slept there with me, which could be comical, and if it wasn't him, it was Felony. Then I found a queen-size mattress and box springs on Craigslist, which I bought for $30 and installed in a corner of the living room. I had a couple of saucepots, but no saute pan, and not one decent knife, and for the first time in years, I hardly cared. I used cheap knives and found they could cut whatever I expected them to cut. On a plastic tarp in the middle of the living room floor, I refinished a bookcase. It was the first DIY project I can remember finishing, on my own, in my entire life.

I suppose I could have felt more embarrassed about these things, my mismatched furniture and broken life, and once in a while I did, but mostly it all felt like a big adventure, just me and my kids, and everybody and everything else was just part of the slipstream.

Lately, though, it seems I've worn the luster off my new life. Which is to be expected, I guess. But I'm back to doing something that I used to do, which is getting through days without really living and enjoying them. I need to fix that. I am not done recreating my life and I need to see it through fresh eyes again.

For one thing, I need to maintain my vigilance. I live here because Duff helps me pay the rent. Which he should, I know, but what if something happens to him? What if he just up and decides he doesn't want to pay anymore? I've got to have a back-up plan, and a back-up plan for that back-up plan. I've got to cover my proverbial ass. I've got to be serious about my writing, and publish, and make money at it, because Obi-Wan, you're our only hope. That was my whole intention originally: to work part-time at the college and write part-time from home (while homeschooling Jinx, yeah, but still). And I'm not talking about writing software reviews, either.

So, yeah. That's what's on my mind. I've been letting down my guard, but it's all got to stop now. My life really is so much better than it was a year ago, but I still have so much more I want to do. Certainly I would like to try to avoid ever again ending up in one of those damn holes I'm so good at getting myself into.

I have to go to sleep.

I have to go to sleep because I have to go to work in the morning.

I have to go to work in the morning because I need the money. Besides, I like my job. Right?

I like my job, but I don't like to get up in the morning.

But this is the last week I have daytime hours. I just need to get through this week and then I can sleep in again.

At least until school starts up. It will feel like only minutes have passed from now until then.

But that's life. It goes by fast. It's difficult to make it slow down. Sometimes I stay up late, trying to slow it down. Like now.

But I have to go to sleep.

Instead of thinking about how much I don't want to get up in the morning and go to work, I should sleep. Let it all go; it doesn't matter anyway. I have to go. And it will be over fast. And then it will start up again. And there is no changing it.

Come on.

I did that thing again, where I Google myself and try to decide, based on the results, if I have lived well or poorly. Usually I'm more depressed than impressed. But I felt a little better this time around. No, you won't find any links to my Vox blog, or any of my better writing, unfortunately; and the only picture of me that comes up is one I can't stand. But I've got a few more bylines out there, and you can tell that I volunteer in my community. That's something. I even spoke at a City Council meeting, comments that were paraphrased (albeit poorly) for the minutes. And I've been thanked in the acknowledgements section of three books. Three! One of which I didn't even know about! OK, it's a little bitty something, but I like it. Maybe I'm not such a complete loser after all.

I couldn't think of anything interesting to say about myself, which is the not the same as saying that I doubt that I am interesting in any way. It's just that what makes me interesting isn't a single, stark detail, such as having had a limb chewed off by a shark. It's more that any given accumulation of my details makes for something notable, incongruous: interesting. Mildly, anyway.

This reminded me that I have yet to really show myself here. It's a time-consuming process, I suppose. So I will start small. I will tell you about myself in increments of words, beginning with five.

Single mother of invention reinvents.

Now fifty words.

I am a friendly but reclusive mother of three trying to restart my career as a freelance writer. Before, I was homeschooling my children and teaching classes part-time, but this summer my marriage imploded. I'm fair, fat, and fortyish; literate and curious, if a bit coarse. I live in California.

Next time, it'll be five hundred words. But I don't want to do it right now. I'd rather do my Christmas cards.