Mindfulness be damned…. while my night became considerably less full of the annoyances that were putting me in a bad mood earlier- I sort of fell in to a state of bummed paralysis fueled by indecision. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to venture out to get more wine or beer (I stayed in). I couldn’t decide if I wanted a beer or wine (I chose wine). I couldn’t figure out how I wanted to spend my evening – I was feeling anti-intellectual, so reading and writing seemed out. I screwed around a little and played a video game, and tried to figure out what to do with my life. My friend Katherine just returned from a condo with private beach in Florida and says she wants to go back – already misses it. She sent a Zillow listing for a beach front condo.
I found myself in that familiar space of wanting everything and yet nothing at all. A day or two ago, I set the location of one of the dating apps to Southern California. And while I hate to make it sound like shopping, the selection is considerably better than it is here in the mid-south. Though, there also seems to be too much focus on being pretty, which is kind of a turn off for me – I prefer effortless. My profile says I’m from Memphis… either people don’t read, are bored, or are cool with it – I’ve gotten more responses than I was expecting… and as is my MO, I’ve done nothing with it. I spent the next hour or so toggling between dating apps where nobody sparked my interest, job searches where nothing sparked my interest, and thinking about how it might be nice to be near both ocean and mountains. And by spark my interest, I mean allow me to dream a little. I want to be excited about whatever comes next. When I can’t get excited about it, I start to compare it to how excited I was a year ago. Toggling back and forth got to the point where I started to think I’m crazy or extremely unmotivated, or that there’s something wrong with me, or that I’m a petulant child digging in and saying I don’t wanna. Most people would take a pretty methodical approach. Get a job and move on. I, for some reason, feel pretty stuck. I can’t quite figure out where to put my efforts. I began to wonder if being stuck is a result of low expectations for my efforts. I can’t possibly get all of the things I want (geography, partnership, employment, time to pursue my own interests) so why try for any of them? Or more specifically, I don’t really feel like settling on any of those things and I’m struggling to prioritize any one over the other.
By around 9pm, I felt a little defeated. I hadn’t really done any of the things I had planned to do. I was ok with devoting my time to writing this morning – I felt good about coming up with a visual model for the self and relationships. I liked thinking in a different way and thought about what it might look like mapped out. What’s in the sphere of the self, what are the different rooms and what is still in them, how have they been furnished? Which rooms are bigger than others, which ones are badly damaged? And these aren’t all romantic relationships. I began to think what might the individual look like in this form…. But the rest of the day was a bit of a dud. I didn’t even set aside time to describe the sky.
Somewhat bleh, I brought my laptop in to bed and decided I would give it one more go at being productive. A dearth of suitable jobs and women were bringing me down. I did some research and submitted three poems to another journal. If I submit to one more tomorrow, I’ll have met both of my writing goals for the month (at least five new poems and submissions to at least three journals). Other than that, I don’t feel like I did a very good job of “celebrating” poetry this month. I read some, might have quoted a line here or there, but not much else. I’ll try to post one more poem before the end of the day tomorrow, and maybe I’ll find some lines to share from Robert Hass in a clippings type of post.