Reeling

OK, Facebook friends, I won't stop blogging.

I failed to fulfill my Lenten promise of a blog a day by a long shot but I fell down dead in Holy Week.

It felt like an Unholy Week to me.

It started, really, on Palm Sunday, when I didn't go to Mass, but it became foul the next day when my church held a day of reconciliation in the afternoon and evening.

I didn't go.  I got "busy" or I couldn't ignore the brick in my chest or the fear of telling my darkest shames in my stomach.  I decided there would be confession another day that week.

Of course there was not.

And my soul felt -- feels -- grimy.  There are things I have done I have to admit I hate myself for.  But the worst sin, the one that makes amends impossible, is my hopelessness.  If I did everything right -- pay off my debts, save money, get another book contract, lose weight -- so what?  I do not anticipate anything.  I don't often feel I have present tense friends.  I don't believe in heaven and I've mostly lived in hell.  Sometimes this is despair but mostly it's an absence of desire or faith in the future. 

Given that, why do I care about the few reparations I owe? 

That was with me as Holy Week progressed without me.  I couldn't take Communion in that state and if I can't take Communion, I'm not in step with the Church, not part of it, not even betraying it.

It's a week later and I am simply tired.  My nutrition has been miserable and I think I tried so hard to jolly myself along in the last couple of months that I exhausted myself.  Right now it seems I am better off in My Other Life, where we are on a numbers quest that I am the only one who can do the footwork to achieve.

Is this true?  Yes and no.

I forget that I've been having some fun tracking down my childhood in starting a Pinterest site for myself.  That I was able to listen to a friend who has a worry and have tried, at least, to distract her with tour books for Venice and Florence and a possible joint trip.  And someone called me today simply to witness me saying out loud that I don't know what is wrong with me right now.  Simply saying it out loud to that particular person lifted the cloud enough to brush my teeth and walk Daisy to the bank.  We even dropped a handful of Henry James novel on a stoop (I can download James on my Kindle: serious space made in my bookcases) and was amused to see that someone had spread them all out and was photographing them as we returned from our little outing.  Was it the irony of The Golden Bowl, What Masie Knew, The Americans, The Bostonians in this neighborhood that looks like pure Henry James?  What made them photo-worthy?

So there are two parts of me, one of tiredness and need (I need to be writing; I need to be getting healthier) and OKness, presence and upliftable-ness. 

I'm sure this is everyone's quandary, to some extent or with other polarities, so I'm putting it out there as part of the general human condition. 

But I desperately need some time in the confessional and on my knees.

Hello. Allow Me to Introduce Myself

I've been out of pocket, failing at my Lenten promise for days because I got involved in starting my own social media factory for Love Sick.  It meant combining two sitting duck Twitter accounts which were linked to email addresses I no longer had passwords for, then re-following followers who are still active and tracking down new people to follow.  It has wholly absorbed me from Saturday afternoon to yesterday, leaving me sore and wondering if I was going to throw a clot from sitting in the same position for twelve hours at a stretch.

So I'm sorry, guys, and I'm sorry, Jesus, if you're there.

I'll Tweet this post so I think it's time to introduce myself in more than 160 characters.

I was born, raised and earned BAs in English and religious studies in Missoula, Montana.  I went to Catholic school -- St. Anthony's -- so I have a thing about nuns, shame and plaid.  Lately I've had a lot of spring hymns running through my mind.

I went to graduate school in creative writing at Cornell.  Several famous writers were in my cohort.  We were best friends.  We are not friends any more.

I've had a long life of obesity.  In a 12-step program I lost 188 pounds and wrote a book that did well: Passing for Thin.

Then I gained a bunch back and wrote a book that was calledAngry Fat Girls in hardcover, promptly remainedered, and Eating Ice Cream with My Dog in paperback.  Please buy it because I have $95,000 of the advance yet to earn out.

When you have that much unearned advance you are lucky to get another book deal, even at a serious reduction in advance.  That book, Love Sick, publishes this June 6.  It's a funny, harrowing story of trying to get over Mr. Friends with Benefits.  I have and haven't succeeded in doing that.

In between Cornell and Passing for Thin I was a literary agent.  I wasn't very good because I was cautious about advances that wouldn't earn out.  I didn't listen to my own lesson.  Also, my bosses and I were at loggerheads all of the time.

You'll learn a lot about me if you read those three books.  Right now, I'm beginning work on a proposal about saying the rosary for a year.   I'm not a good Catholic but it's the only thing that sticks.   Why would I do such a project?  Because I live in despair, which is a sin, and because I have few trustworthy relationships.  I'd like to build one with, um, God.

So here's what you really need to know about me:

1. I walk some dogs and do social media for some people.
2. I suffer from dysthemic depression, anxiety and borderline agoraphobia.
3. I don't believe in heaven but I do believe in hell.
4. I am left of left politically.  I have insurance because of Barack Obama.  Thank you, Barack.
5. I grew up with Labradors.  Now I am owned by one, Daisy.  She has Tourette's Syndrome and Joan Rivers-envy and can be a real asshole.  She's my best friend and has saved my life.
6. I live in the crappy studio apartment with no natural light.  I call it the Bat Cave.
7. I'm a Daddy's Girl.  My father is 96, in his right mind mostly, still interested in physics, blind, blunt and hilarious.
8. I'm really fat.  I hate it.  I think I need to make peace with it because it is the metaphor, as it were, for hating my self.  And I don't deserve to hate my self.
9. My self is slothful, envious, angry, without much hope.  My self is funny, smart, sees things and has a big vocabulary.  It is generous.
10. I like Bach best.
11. I like Victorian novels, World War II, anything about the Renaissance, 18th and 19th century Europe.
12. I'm a terrible housekeeper and I am owned by too many things.
13. Lately I'm obsessed by House, M.D.
14. I'm lonely.
15. I don't bathe as much as I should.
16. I'm trying to pay off what started out as about $28,000 in debt.  I've cut that by about half.
17. I hold grudges.  I don't get over men I've loved.  Menopause and Prozac prevent me from being very interested in intimacy however.
18. I spent summers, until nine years ago, on Flathead Lake in Montana.  I'm afraid to go back there because it was the best place.
19. If I had lots of money I would travel.  By myself.  I don't like museums.
20. I'm also afraid of my hometown.  All the bodies are buried there.
21. I miss my mom, my Uncles Norbie and Connie and my Aunt Claire.  A lot.
22. I'm adopted.  This is a complex and icky way to start life.
23. I'm nostalgic for large parts of my childhood.
24. I have never read Finnegan's Wake.  I've never finished Moby Dick, Ulysses.  I like Tolstoy better than Dostoevsky.  I get frustrated reading Yeats, Shelley, Pound.  I don't understand a word of it.
25. I used to feel that way about Emily Dickinson, but I grew into her.  That doesn't mean I read her though.
26. I don't watch TV except for occasional reality TV binges when I'm really sick or really depressed.
27. I don't know what Mad Men, Game of Thrones or any other cool TV is.
28. I make annual donations to Planned Parenthood, Macular Degeneration, University of Montana, Spirit Animal, Democratic party, public radio and television.
29. I miss the friends I've alienated.  Every day and achingly.
30. I'm probably as close to my cousins as I am to my sibling.
31. I'm tired of New York.
32. I'm scared of when Daisy will die.
33. I've been living on peanut butter and macaroni and cheese because it's cheap and because I need to get my kitchen sink fixed.
34. I'm in trouble for not having cleaned out the washer and dryer well enough and leaving dog hair behind.
35. I'm 57.  I smoke.
36. I think I will not smoke from tonight until Sunday morning, in observance of the arrest - resurrection of the Christ I don't like very much.
37. Blogging gets me in trouble at least once a year.  It happened recently.  And yes, I know it was you who left the nasty anonymous comment.  And I know you are at the heart of the snarl.
38. There are Rules of Etiquette for walking dogs.  They involve crossing the street when one person has one dog and the other two or more, letting dogs decide who they want to meet and not bothering dog walkers.  I wish these rules were observed, as well as cleaning up dog shit.
39. I intensely dislike 98% of the privileged spoiled princes and princesses and their mothers and nannies in this neighborhood.  Sometimes I hope they would get hit by cars.
40. I am passive aggressive in the streets.
41. I am nice to doormen, clerks, cab drivers, maintenance people.
42. If I have money and you need money, I will give it to you.
43. All I really ever want to do is go back to bed and hide.
44. I speak really bad Italian and German, and worse French.  I'm better when I'm drunk but I don't drink much any more.
45. You'd probably like me if we met.

Poopy Barbie and Special Intentions

I did a radical thing today: I fulfilled my self-promise to go to Mass and the rosary at 8 a.m. this morning.  By myself.  Too early for drugs.  Sober.

It was nice, especially because Saturday morning is so sparsely attended that Fr. King asked if there were additional special intentions.  Without thinking, I asked for prayers for the painless peaceful deaths of those awaiting death.  Right now I am several degrees removed from three hospice situations, one of which is someone I know.  I hate the idea of the pain these men are suffering, and of the suffering their loved ones feel because of it. 

And saying the rosary out loud -- !  I don't think I've said the rosary with people since grade school.  It's a somewhat more elaborate rosary than the script I use, with prayers for vocations, to St. Michael, St. Gertrude and the long litany it would be dumb to say alone.  The voices together felt strong.  On the other hand, my script breaks each mystery down and I read and meditate on it in a way that is intellectually more satisfying than the group's nominal attention to the mysteries.  But there is something comforting and distinctly NON-intellectual about saying it as a group that is also good.

I had a credit for books from Amazon and ordered a couple of research items.  They arrived in good time but, not needing the books immediately, I didn't open them.  I was astonished when I did because one was a gift from someone I really don't know well, Poopy Barbie. 

OK, the real name is Barbie Potty Training but I like Poopy Barbie better.

I've been fighting the blues -- am fighting them -- taking one step back for every two steps forward (after church I collapsed into House, natürlich, and rose from my non-life only to walk Daisy, which ended up being a social event because everyone is out on the lovely day.  Poopy Barbie dropped into my life like a feather from an angel wing -- or, more aptly, a feather from Divine's boa.

So thank you Divine/Angel.  Barbie is not going to be unboxed but she stands guard at the foot of my bed.  And I feel like somehow I belong to something, although I'm not sure what.

Goodbye, Slate

I couldn't stand the obsessing any more. I borrowed $150 from my dream stash and paid off my Slate card today. I'd showered in the morning but felt like I'd run five miles by the time I got back from the bank.

I also discovered I paid my New York State taxes twice. It will take sixty - ninety days to refund the second check.

All the elevators were wonky today. It took forever to pick up and drop off dogs.

I made dinner tonight and it was bloody awful.

One of my clients had a realtor's brochure on the kitchen counter.

Another of my clients is in hospice out of state. One of my very favorite people in Brooklyn with the most marvelous stories. I pray he is not in pain and I mourn not being able to say goodbye, although I sort of did in a short visit when he was here last month.

I have a bad feeling about everything but I'm going to try to go to Mass in the morning. It's followed by a rosary. "Reconciliation" is going on all afternoon -- the sacrament I still call confession. I should go but I don't where to begin. I wish we'd have a big thunder storm.

Yellow Dog vs. Black Dog

I binged last night.  I took Daisy out well after sleeping meds had kicked in and the baked goods at Gristides all had my name on them.

I got up with heartburn and a limp will.  I had luckily already done a lot of my social media work for today so I asked a friend to take out my first dog and went back to bed.  I woke at 11.30, ashamed and defeated for the day.  Peeing felt like an impossible task.  I had no idea how I would get through the day I was obligated to let alone had made promises to.

But I did, somehow, at least as far as the obligations went.  I have a load of laundry going, so I will have fulfilled one part of a promise to myself.  I'm in a bleak mood.  I haven't said the rosary in days although I've managed to keep up the blog of my Lenten obligation.  I've jollied myself through weeks of financial fear and trying to write and trying to be upbeat here wherever I could fake it and I'm fucking exhausted with it.  The cool sunny spring day mocked me.  Wherever I went, my nemesis seemed to be a half a block away.  It's left me feeling angry, resentful, scared, ashamed, slothful, disgusting, unworthy, failed and afraid I'm heading for the dark place.

I could whine some more but I need to thank Daisy.  She slept soundly until I staggered from bed, had some coffee and brushed my teeth and got dressed.  It was closer to noon when I finally gave her her first walk.  She's an amazing nurse and seemed to know she had to suck it up this morning while I had my breakdown.

A friend recent got a CPAP machine for sleep apnea.  It made me wonder: does Daisy stand growling softly at me in the middle of the night because she's a pill, an attention-hog or because I've stopped breathing?  This behavior has been going on for a year or two -- she growls, I wake up and invite her into bed, and she settles down quickly.  It can happen three times a night.  I sleep on a futon on the floor.  There's no reason for her to do this unless she needs love or needs to know I'm alive.

When I had the flu in February, she slept so close to me I didn't have access to the blankets.  Who takes care of whom here?

In any case, I came in from my few dog walks, did a little work for the Other Side of My Life, and crawled back into bed until it was time to walk and feed her.  And yes, we crossed paths with someone I would rather not have seen.  I think there are three people in this neighborhood I feel that way about, so my sadness and uglier emotions are on high tonight.

I really want this other social media thing to come through.  I want to pay my debts.  I can't bargain with God for it, as I've written before, because my faith is too weak to survive the disappointment.  But I have promised that if it happens, I'll take a Tae Kwon Do class and go to the rosary at the church on Saturday morning.  I won't let a deeper submersion in working from home an excuse to retreat further from the world.

I'll even get Daisy to the dog run, where she can best be herself after being so good to me.

And for now, a load of laundry -- enough for clean pants and underwear -- is in the dryer and I have time to say the rosary.

Spring

Today was scary.  I had to walk to dogs who have moved down to the Brooklyn Waterfront, where I have managed never to go, who live in a new and complicated building.  Knowing I then had to go walk Donald, an 18-month-old Lab/Great White Pyrenees who is aggressively friendly, I took a Klonopin to deal with my fear of leaving my narrow safety zone, a new place and a dog who can drag one across three states in search of a butter-stained napkin or friendly teenager.  The pill didn't seem to kick in until after the walks however and the afternoon was lethargic as a result.

I love going new places, once I'm there.  The waterfront walk introduced me to a building, once a Jehovah's Witness warehouse, that is now uber-luxurious.  Gyms on every floor.  A concierge desk for laundry and dry cleaning.  The halls feel like hotels.  In the lobby, a mother was giving her toddler a bottle while her tablet played "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands".  Incessantly.  On my way in on my way out with the dogs, on our way in, on my way up to the hill.  Lots of kids in that building, I think: there are two brand new colorful crowded playgrounds for the very young just up the walkway from the building.

The view of Manhattan at East River level was amazing; the view up Brooklyn Heights up the hill was fascinating.  It was a long expedition to make $20, but I've got to take Daisy down there.

Tomorrow is domestic.  Laundry, clean the bathroom, fool around with the Liquid Plumber and, especially, the plastic snake that came with it.

I'd like to have a kitchen again.  I'm tired of living on peanut butter.

None of these things will help clean out the chaos but I'll at least know there are some clean places in my apartment.  I'm broke enough that I jokingly asked my father if he'd buy me a new PC.  He said yes and none too soon: I'm working on Windows XP here and I want to take some theology courses from Notre Dame which require a microphone.  This will mean clearing off my desk and cleaning under and around it, so I have another cleaning project to come up.

All of this is good.  I was able to look up a few questions inspired by the rosary: what exactly is the "rapture of divine love," for instance.  That means I did something toward the proposal and/or book.  I've hit the heavy slogging through my friend's book, which is invaluable information: I know where the problems are.

Such are the small events of my life.  Twelve days of looking for something to say left.  I feel like I'm stretching but Klonopin may not help that -- I'm calm today.  I wonder what I missed by not having my usual crisis...

All About Me

Big Five Word Test Results

Extroversion (44%) moderately low which suggests you are reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and private. Accommodation (70%) high which suggests you are overly kind natured, trusting, and helpful at the expense too often of your own individual development (martyr complex). Orderliness (50%) medium which suggests you are moderately organized, structured, and self controlled while still remaining flexible, varied, and fun. Emotional Stability (38%) moderately low which suggests you are worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious. Inquisitiveness (76%) high which suggests you are very intellectual, curious, imaginative but possibly not very practical.

Take Free Big Five Word Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

13 Days Until Easter

Yesterday was a day of rest.  No blog.  Not a lot of anything except digging into an editing project that will be quickly done, I think.

I'm not sure, but I think Sundays are not counted in the forty days of Lent, so I'll call it a draw.

Lassitude has set in, maybe sloth, probably acedia, which is the Latinate form of the Deadly Sin most commonly called sloth.  I read a few pages of Katherine Norris's memoir of the same same every once in a while but the book is so on the mark I have to put it down quickly.  Few other books have affected me that way.  The Noonday Demon, which I finally put out on the street yesterday for someone either stronger or equally hapless.  Naked Lunch made me dream in Naked Lunchese but with which I did not identify.  Now Acedia, which is very close to home.  On a good day I can make it to 7 pm before it sets in, on a bad day I can't make it past 10 a.m.  Acedia is sloth with despair mixed, or futurelessness.  A heavy dose of ennui.

A hairball of pointlessness.

Good thing I have this editing project.  A friend has interest from a literary agent and had very specific comments and questions.  I coached her through her response to the agency -- no, don't ask them questions about what they mean: if they wanted an open dialogue with you they would have signed you with the understanding that you'd revise, and yes, do tell them you'll turn it around in a month.  Having cut off her hopes that they'd coach her through, I then felt I had to read it so I could help.  It's a good book.  Very smart with some cliff-hangers.  But as always, I want to scream that the words just, very, all, so, then be banished from the written word.  If you've said your character is in Brussels two paragraphs ago, you don't need to name the city again for ages.

Free help to anyone who wants to at least know where to start cleaning up their prose.

So I'm doing that, and about to go walk a dog in the rain, oh joy.  What made me happiest yesterday was putting out a stack of books to give away and see them taken and reading my friend's novel.  Today I pulled more books to give away and read another 50 pages before going to House, my acedia stall.

I'm not worried at my mood but I'm disappointed in it.  I'd like to be on fire with writing and I'm not.  I also know that I'm not because I'm scared to death.  I wish I was the kind of person who could admit fear, admit to being frozen and go take a shower.

But I haven't even done that.

Shopping vs. Buying vs. Writing

Today, after two days of hiding from it, I began the formal proposal for the rosary book.  The six pages I thumped out in three hours may be the easiest if dullest part of the proposal: the nuts and bolts of the rosary in terms a non-Christian or non-Catholic would understand.  I had to explain things I take for granted -- the descent of the Holy Spirit and his gifts -- briefly and unemotionally.  This is not the place to be any more clever than clear, cadenced writing requires.

Still, it was writing something that will be part of Something, which is, I'm afraid, different than blogging, here or for Psychology Today.  Once embarked, I was no longer crossing something off my list.  I was gone, in the zone, that place where even though I had eight Google windows open, the most self-conscious I got was when I couldn't immediately come up with a synonym for "misfortune" and had to open another window.

It was wonderful.

When I go into hiding, I also lose a lot of awareness but it's different.  I'm know time is passing, I'm determined to burrow further into my escape -- into House or the New Yorker or a book -- I am passive in a way that writing is not.  Writing is stenography.  I write down what I am given.  Reading or watching TV or playing mah jongg is giving up my end of the conversation.  That determination to lose myself takes work.  Once I get into writing, it's not work.  It's an open channel.

Until I don't know what to do next or my motor runs down.  A kind of tiredness comes on: ideas are harder to come by, I find myself staring at the screen.  That's when it's time to quit.  Every task, every inspiration has its enough point.  Three hours is a respectable run for the money.

I tried to piddle around with social media obligations but I was tired from my shitty chair and of the screen looking at me, measuring me.  I decided to go down to Montague Street and run some errands.

It's a slightly chilly, sunny day, very early spring.  Some daffodils are up in sheltered places.  Crocuses are wide open in those same sheltered places.  People have been filling planters so there are tulips and hydrangea out that are artificially forced.  Many people were strolling along Montague, which is the High Street of Brooklyn Heights.  I'd brushed my teeth but hadn't bathed or put on clean clothes and I was grateful for the latter because I'm wearing my warmest sweat pants and needed them.  The first thing I needed to do was pay my Verizon bill, which takes me almost a block beyond my usual rounds and I realized that unlike me, hunkered down for errands, the people around me weren't consumers, they were shoppers. 

They were in a zone as well, deciding whether they wanted Spanish food or Vietnamese, what color show they liked best, what they wanted for dinner, what they wanted to pack for their kids' lunches next week. 

I think it's only when I travel alone that I become a shopper rather than a consumer.  Even in my pre-agoraphobe life, if I went shopping I went buying.  When I went to Key Food, I bought the four things I need to get through the day.  I chatted with the clerks and I didn't rush, but I didn't shop either.

I want to say that, financially challenged, this isn't going to change any time soon, but isn't that sort of stupid?  A shopper looks for the best apple, thinks about a red versus a yellow pepper, knows that there will be dirty pots and pans.  A shopper thinks about what someone else might like or what will look best on their own shopper-self.  A consumer grabs and goes.  The only shopping I did was to make sure I didn't get spaghetti sauce with mushrooms in it.

By the time I got home I was tired from my morning, shaky after scratching errands off my list, hungry.  For once I'm not second guessing what I wrote, probably because it was like writing the rules of a complicated card game.  I'm reading a friend's novel to help with revisions suggested by a literary agent.  I have to call my father back.  I have this promise of a blog a day to fulfill.  I have stuff to do.

But I feel like I've touched two completely different realities today, one that is active and participatory but silent, and the other also active and participatory but...turned outward, visual.  I wasn't imagining much as I wrote but I was fitting facts together in a melodic way.  The shoppers were more imaginative, fitting objects together in a music I don't understand.

Why I Do This

I've gotten a couple of lovely responses to this Lenten project of blogging that have made me consider why I blog at all.

I started blogging after Passing for Thin was published and Amazon invited authors to blog.  It was hugely successful and led to the next book.  At some point, however, I began to want to be able to manipulate things -- add links, advertise my other web stuff, post photos, so I left that blog space and started Car on the Hill.  If anyone wonders about the title, it's taken from the Joni Mitchell song of the same title.  It's a sad song about waiting for a man to show up, which is an apt description of my life.

I wonder, if I were a consistent blogger, if I'd be some web cult figure.  I don't regret not being one so this is purely speculative.

It's nice when people say they like my writing or offer consolation for my various nervousnesses, but once in a while someone says I've written about something in a way they have needed to explain it to people in their lives.  Sometimes someone says my muddling on gives them courage to muddle on through life with their own demons nipping at their ankles.

And those are the comments that make me feel OK about what I do here, that maybe I'm even doing a service. 

I worry that I am perfecting my anxiety, fear, obesity, introversion, writer's block, financial precariousness, House addiction, smoking, borderline agoraphobia, regrets and misanthropy for the sake of something to say.  I worry that I'm another person yammering on about the last least incident.  Readers have, in the past, told me to get over myself and shut up.

Oh, Lord, if only I could, I just sighed upon writing that sentence.

I splatter here what I hurl at myself.  It seems that sometimes it helps to know one is not alone in that silent dialogue, that everybody fucks up, that other people are weak and insecure.  Part of my insecurity, and I'm sure other people have it too, is that I'm a public fool.  So thank you to everyone who reads this morass, and thank you especially for letting me know that I'm not alone in the Horrors either.

Carpe Diem - Oh, My!

I thought I did the right thing yesterday.  I took care of enough of my social media life to create space today to do things for myself.  As a consequence, I woke in a sick-stomach anxiety that isn't wearing off. 

Me?  I don't do "me," contrary to what blogging suggests. Any readers who are new to this blog can go back and see how sparsely I actually post except for this Lenten promise.  What did I do in the months between blogs?  I did my social media gig, walked dogs, hid in books or reality television (bring on The Shahs of Sunset!).  Sometimes I was working on Love Sick.  But it beats the hell out of me what I was actually doing beyond hiding from myself and plotting paying down my debts.

I will say that blogging and my failing willingness to say the rosary have kind of woken me up.  I'm still deep in re-watching House but it's mostly because after a day of tweeting, pinning, posting, researching, Googling and trying to make rain, my back hurts from my shitty chair.

No, wait.  That's not quite true.  That's why I lie down.  Watching House is escaping things like reading the Gospel accounts of the Passion or any of the other reading research I should be doing for "me".

So here I am, 15 minutes away from the first dog walk of the day with pretty much the whole day wide open to -- what? 

I'm overwhelmed with the what and I don't do well when there's so much to do.  I panic.  I hide.

There are things for the rosary proposal I can do now, like explaining what it is to non-Catholics/Christians.

There is work I need to do in advance of Love Sick.  Start a Pinterest page.  Write some proposals to websites and other publicity venues.  Update my webpage.

I want to start a story about someone under the influence of a cult.  The cult is not the story, only background.  It would be the seed of a novel.

I have a half dozen emails from friends and family I need to attend to.

There is housework to be done.

A lot of what I'd like to propose to other `zines depends on blogging for Psychology Today.  I have two ideas to pursue for them.  I should get going.

I have a lot of books to read in research.

So I'm twisting on the end of a string here, going around and around, unable to prioritize.  I could take all these things and put them in a hat, pull one out and try really hard to ignore the siren call of the others that feel equally in need of tending.

Or I could walk Honey Bear and bury myself in bed with Greg House, telling myself I'll tend to something later.

And this?

Is how I make myself crazy.

Fading Fast After a Stubborn Streak

OK, I missed a day & barely wrote anything the day before.  I am feeling rebellious about my Lent resolutions &, yesterday, overwhelmed with obligations.

So here's what's been on my radar:

• What addiction are most commonly accompanied by what cross addictions?
• What is the nutrition status of alcoholics and heroin users during addictive abuse and upon entering recover?
• Personality disorders.  Most of the ones I "need" don't survive into adulthood.
• If I don't believe in heaven, what is the point of the rosary, Catholicism, the prayers for the forgiveness of sins?  What is my metaphorical interpretation of these things in light of non-belief?
• Helped a friend sort out what he needs to tell a story at the Moth.
• Money worries.
• I want to write a novel based on four women in my family: me, two nieces, an ex-sister-in-law.  I'm thinking of writing a short story or two based on the characters and have had to look at personality disorders but found my solution by Googling "tin foil hat" & found a nice cult that fits perfectly,  the Aetherius Society.
• I'm thinking of writing the stories on this or a sister blog and charging readers $2.00 to read the last two pages.
• Begging God that the new gig for social media I wrote proposals for comes through.
• Wanting: a decent desk chair, the Barbie that picks up her puppy's poop,
  
  some cute clothes for a change
• Writing and sending proposal to xojane as either an advice columnist or reviewer of self-help books (I'm so fucked up that I think I'd give great advice).  Proposing a series of artist dress, writer dress, poet dress, dancer dress, singer dress and whatever to eShakti, who appreciated a mention I made of them in a Psychology Today blog.  The writer dress would come with a copy of Love Sick.
• Stumbling with horror on to a pro-anorexia website.
• Wishing someone needed a short story for an anthology with a deadline on it so I'd have to write fiction again.

That's it.  Now I'm going to bed.