So this is my third attempt at writing a new post. I keep trying to be funny, but I’m not really feeling it at the moment, so everything seems strained and not like anything you would feel compelled to pass on to your friends out of its sheer awesomeness. I’m feeling navel-gazey. I’m feeling like taking myself seriously, and I know that I asked that you post something absurd like “balls!” when I do that, so I’ve been trying to avoid it, but I guess sometimes you just have to take your testicles like a good girl when you line yourself up for it.
The trouble is, Seasonal Affective Disorder – and who gave it that pansy-ass name, anyway? It should be called something like Seasonal Anxiety, Hibernation, and Emotional Evisceration Disorder, but I guess SAHEED isn’t as catchy and it sounds kind of like you’re kidnapping Muslims to say “I have Saheed”. What was I saying? Oh, right. SAD. Remember when we all used to think it was really funny when Howie Mandel would inflate a rubber glove on his head with his nose? SAD feels sort of like what you might imagine it’s like to walk around with a translucent, inflated latex glove on your head (it doesn’t have to be a glove, though, it could also be a condom. Or, you know, whatever. What I’m wearing on my head is entirely beside the point. Unless it’s the leggings hat-scarf. Everyone should wear one of those).
On a good day the glove comes off, and you get to connect with the world in vivid clarity; your wit is sharp and life is fun. The rest of the time everything feels cloudy and distant; you’re tired and nothing is funny, least of all Howie Mandel. Trying to write from there is excruciating. Everything looks rambling and whiny. It might be funny, but you wouldn’t even know it for all the fog. When I first started writing this blog, I had just come home from a trip and the novelty brought the glove off for a few days so it all came easy. But I can’t just keep endlessly pursuing novelty, because the next thing you know you’re doing lines with Charlie Sheen and his sister-wives, and nobody wants that. Least of all Charlie Sheen, come to think of it, since he’s clean now. Or at least, as clean as you can be when you’re made out of cocaine.
what happens when you pursue novelty? You turn into a fucking bear, that’s what.
But writing is important to me, and building this blog is important to me, and posting nothing at all for a week does not convey that, though I totally did predict this in my About post. So here: I’m writing. Even if it’s shit, I’m writing. I’m writing about how hard it is to write, which is the writerly equivalent of musicians making whiny meta-songs about how much it sucks being on the road, but it’s writing. Let’s just consider this my sophomore slump & hope it’s short.
We just passed Groundhog Day, which is midwinter, which means that there are literally six more weeks to the first day of spring regardless of what some coddled rodent does or does not see outside his paparazzi-plagued front door. Which means I have about 5 weeks remaining before the fog lifts. If you will stick with me, I promise to keep writing.
For what it’s worth, this isn’t even the lowest I’ve ever gone into the SAD pit. When I was 19, I got it so bad that I stopped going to classes to sit at home in the dark and watch golf on television because it was slow and everyone spoke in soothing voices. Imagine having to explain on your college re-entry applications fifteen years later that you flunked out the first time due to golf, and you don’t even play.
Now that I’m older, I have a gym membership and the ability to cook vegetables. And good antidepressants. And a light therapy box. And even so, some days are more coherent than others. Oh well, at least the company’s good.
don’t even think about trying to escape.
Aphorized 