Haze

So over the past few months or year, or two years because every time I look back I seem to have written less and less of substance than I thought I had I've sunk into a doughy lump of unfocused laziness. I haven't sat down to write. I've thought of some reasonably entertaining posts, but like the old Doug Stone song I was too busy enjoying the feeling of of creative juices filling my head to pour them onto the page. The time passed, and I didn't write, no matter how energized I was.

When I wasn't thinking of something analytical or enjoyable or humorous I was sinking into an ever-deepening pit of depression. I say depression rather than misery because I haven't been miserable. I've been unmotivated. I've been uninspired. I've lost interest in the hobby I used to spend hours perfecting. I'd lost the will to write. It's a down feeling, a form of depression where everything seem gray and uninteresting. Whenever I sat down to put my thoughts into words a haze to rival the thick fog outside my morning window settled in and I'd look for other things to distract me. I've walked around the village, I've obsessed over American politics, I've watched the entire series of Futurama, Arrested Development, Maude, and Scrubs, I've viewed movies I hadn't seen in years, I've surfed the internet randomly, I've been lost in several German cities and villages, I've sampled the wide array of dirty movies available in cyberspace purely scientific purposes for that one, I assure you, I've gotten to know new people, I've annoyed the living shit out of Kalinara over instant messenger, I've attacked the ever-growing pile of unread books in my living, I've dumped my heart and soul into the neglected paperwork of my new workcenter, I've eaten European food, I've baked, I've cooked, I've taken so many baths that I legitimately fear I'll grow gills, I've learnt about the gods of my ancestors, I've raged at coworkers for parking in places people aren't fucking allowed to park would it kill them to fucking walk a few extra feet?!, I've taken pictures of Germany, I've driven around the countryside... I haven't made it up to Uppsala to visit the temple yet but I've managed to do a lot to distract myself.

All meaningless frivolities. Not an ounce of substance in the whole pile. Because whenever one of these activities--the large or the small made me feel the slightest bit of real emotion I started to write about that emotion in my head. And I fully intended to act on that, and actually write down these thoughts once I reached my computer. Then when I turned on the damned thing I lost the motivation. It drained from me, leaving me as a lump of formless, functionless--my god someone's gotten into the vocabulary shed and set loose my prized collection of adjectives!--goo sitting in a bathtub trying to will myself to pick up that half-read book of Robert E. Howard stories on the windowsill.

Or heaven help me I've written it and it's turned from something witty and clever to a muddled mass of bleakness, so I don't publish it.

I'm not the sort of person who labors under the misconception that only she feels this way. This is not the first time that this dear god I do not want to use ennui to describe it that is so fucking pretentious I could crawl under my kitchen table and die ennui has set in. It certainly won't be the last.

In the past when I've felt this intense lack intensity I've pounded out a rambling stream of consciousness post and put it up on my blog. Thereafter this gelatinous apathy clears up and there's once again room for the rage that blends with my venomous blood in the darkened chamber of my heart to produce that thick, vicious hatred that I gleefully spread upon the internet. And that leftover goth melodrama from my wasted teenaged years still soothes my soul whenever I fling it onto the page.

There's a problem, though. See, I live for your comments. I crave your attention, your adulation, your animosity. I don't like your pity, though. It rubs me the wrong way. It's uncomfortable. Give me a pack of snarling misogynistic wolves beating down the front door, a thousand trolls at my back gate--I'll face each and every one enthusiastically and come out of the fray laughing with their blood on my teeth but send a candy-striper and I'll be hiding in the basement with the lights off until she goes away. It's awkward and I shouldn't have to deal with it. But whenever I do one of these depressed stream-of-consciousness posts it never fails-- I get sympathy comments from those of you more readily suited to living in human society than I am.

I don't like those so I stopped writing the depressed posts. That was wrong of me, because now that I've taken such a long break I'm not sure I'll be able to shake it properly and get my anger-fueled writing energy back.


Usually about now the post peters off, because even I fear I sound too unhinged when I let my uncensored thoughts free to roam cyberspace and I get too nervous to continue. Though I'd lay money down that not a single one of you sound saner inside your own heads, and if you do think you sound sane in there you need to get yourself checked out because that's not normal. Sadly, I'm never sure how to stem the tide of stream of consciousness writing so I just turn off the faucet.