The Creation (Or: Proof Of Chronic Depression Through Terrible Poetry)

This blog has turned into a pout-fest, so I'll just stick with it and keep that vibe going. I don't mean to get all Angela Chase on you or anything with my angst. Or yes I do. I don't know.

I pulled out some of my old high school journals recently and skimmed through them, and although much of it is the same boring woe-is-me teenage crap that you'd find in anyone else's old notebooks, I am slightly impressed by how dramatic I was about shit. I mean, I may have been in the throes of adolescent misery, but some of the stuff I wrote was suuuuuuuper intense.  For instance: "and now we are useless slugs incubating in this place, growing fatter and lazier with each passing day." Huh. I'd forgotten how much of a (kind of honest) downer I can be until I found this stuff.  A bit much for a sixteen year old, no? But how funny that almost 15 years ago I was feeling very similarly to how I feel sometimes now, but was more capable of fluidly articulating it then. My brain is supposed to be getting sharper, wittier...isn't it?! (ETA: And I'm supposed to be getting LESS depressed, right?) So...why have my creative juices dried up, and how can I can them back? I desperately want to feel the urge to create like I used to, although those rare times that I do get the inspiration to create I can't seem to get anything OUT; it gets congested and stuck somewhere and dissolves as though it were never there. I need Mucinex for the soul, something to force all the icky dark stuff to ooze out onto a page/canvas/tissue/sleeve.

I need to cultivate my inspiration and my execution. I'll start small with a daily excersize like writing one page of something, ANYTHING, and then move on from there. I think some kind of class could really benefit me right now too; a photography class, for one, would really wake me the hell up right now (I think). I've always had what people have called "an eye", and there's something soothing about viewing the world through a lens (or in my case, digital screen) and seeing your vision transformed into permanent evidence of a Moment. I wish I had more talent for visual arts-- drawing, painting, sculpting, and whatnot-- but unfortunately it just isn't so. I've tried before (trust me, I'VE FUCKING TRIED!) but the results are crushingly pathetic, and similar to the style I imagine a vision-impaired preschooler would embody.

One time my daughter asked me to draw her a dragon and after I was done trying she narrowed her eyes at me and accused "That's NOT a dragon!" So there you have it.



(This is NOT the dragon that I drew. I stole this one from Google Images, and it's much more technically advanced than my dragon was.)

Atrophy

Things aren't awful, but things aren't great. I find myself in the position of not having much "going" for me: I'm jobless and broke, my relationship has nosedived straight into the ground and exploded on impact, I need a cervical biopsy that I can't afford, and I can't stand my home. You'd think with this stuff happening that I'd be miserable and sad, and occasionally I am....but mostly I'm just *nothing*. I have this funny feeling sometimes that I'm dissolving, that my entire being has atrophied and turned into a puddle of vapid goo. I keep trying to remind myself that "an object NOT in motion tends to stay NOT in motion," but it doesn't do much to shift myself into action.

I'm paralyzed by an indecision about what the hell I'm supposed to be moving TOWARD. None of us really want to be floating, free-falling, but if we're not in motion toward something real and tangible isn't that kind of what we're doing? I try to map it all out, put it all out in front of me and figure out which road I'm going to start down, but so far I've got nothing. There's the typical things I'm "supposed" to want: a partner, a house, a job, another kid or two....and I DO want those things, but there's some mysterious secret ingredient missing that makes it all seem kind of trite and...dull. I must want more than that, right? but....DO I??

Existential crises are all pretty much the same when you think about it, so I know i'm no more or less interesting in my quest for inspiration than anyone else is... and maybe that's a little bit of the problem; maybe all I want is something DIFFERENT, whatever that is. I guess maybe I just want my identity crisis to be more...special...than everyone else's.

I recently saw that quote "You must not find yourself, you must create yourself." I agree wholeheartedly, but that doesn't mean I'm actually any closer to finding the energy to start creating than I was before. And so it goes, this battle for contentment, this neverending search for meaning. It's all par for the course, really, so I guess I'm doing okay.

Never Fear, The New Year's Here?

Resolutions.

Unlike most of modern civilization, I'm not crazy about the idea of the new year being a chance at a whole new life...like HERE'S YOU, NEW AND IMPROVED! In the grand scheme of things I guess the passing of each year is kind of exciting; for example, does anyone else feel like we're living in *THE FUTURE* right now?!? "2009" sounds like the perfect year for some futuristic sci-fi horror movie to be set in, doesn't it? But really, what does the beginning of a new year actually mean to most of us?? A brand new chance to fail at self-improvement? A half-assed goal of self-discovery botched by the mundanity of reality? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for both self-improvement AND self-discovery...I just don't pretend to do it every year on January 1st.

I pretend to do it all year long!

I've spent most of my adult life waiting to feel like a 'grownup', with varied results. There are certainly moments when I'm blown away by my maturity and ability to handle life's little shit storms, but there are just as many times that I feel like a twelve year old kid nervously reading lines off a cue card: "Being a mother is totally fulfilling!" "This isn't terrifying at all!" "I'm so happy!"

Maybe underneath all the resolutions and self-discovery bullshit we're all just trying to find the most sincere way to read our lines without being discovered as frauds. I'm sure I'm just as full of shit as anyone else. And the closest I'll come to a new year's resolution this year is deciding to admit it, publicly.

Wish me luck.