what's the life of a journal on the web? I bet it's about ten months before it has given all it can to an intrepid reader (accidental readers merely click-through). Unless it is the journal of a life.
I have withheld no succulent bits of embarrassment. I have been sincere. At least I thought I was—maybe I am deluding myself. I allowed myself to cross a line several months ago, when I loosened my criteria for what appears on the page and allowed the launch-point of these words to drift somewhere nearer to my heart, and further from the top of my head. When that happened, I worried over my writing's change; purple prose began to make my palms sweat. Grammer and punctuation gained an undeserved significance, like religious ultra-conservatives. And visitors receded.
I wonder if this became, then, less the journal of a life, and more the life of a journal.
i am a spoiled brat. I know this. I give depth to shallow things, like popularity, opinions, and complaints. And I have developed a good working relationship with these flaws; I feed them a little here and there, and they leave me alone. I work around them.
It's like having a crappy desk in the newsroom, the desk that nobody wants, that's hard to get to through the maze of desks and dividers that overpopulate the newsroom. It's the desk that has no phone, no drawers, no place for my purse (!) or my pint, and a dumb terminal which is so old, it now qualifies as 'dumber'. I know who I am, and I know how to go up the aisle to the right, where there's a phone I can use regularly, and around to the other side of the block of desks on the left, to a desk where, by arrangement, I can occasionally use a full-fledged network-connected computer. I know who I am, and what I have to deal with, and I thought I was getting around those obstacles pretty well.
There are advantages to a crappy desk. Nobody expects anything from it. Nobody puts anything important on it. Petty interpersonal politics peter-out before reaching the crappy desk, and conformity is never imposed there. And there is nothing sweeter than to watch the men with ties when they discover with astonishment that the perfect piece they just read came from the crappy desk.
the time may have come to move on. Not a slithering move into conformity, for it's own sake. Nor a move of undeserved advancement, or any that results from the prominent presentation of a lubed-butt seeking the favor of a petty-powered tie-guy (there was a time when I could have made that work).
The time may have come to abandon the security of the crappy desk.
night has fallen, too soon it seems, though I only got out of bed at noon. I spent yesterday at Stephanie's, conducting our Thanksgiving observations a day early because she is working a double today. We had a luscious dinner, attended by her kids and a few of their friends; a blessed paucity of adults. Then we watched As Good As It Gets, again. My third time, Stephanie's fifth, or seventh, or something. I got home at a reasonable 10:00 PM, but made a pot of coffee and stayed up til 4:00 AM.
More coffee now. And phone fear. Eduardo called at 8:00 AM (obscenely early!) and left a message which I have still not retrieved. I thought that mis-perceiving the holiday as yesterday would have given me a head-start on this moment where I find myself once again, belated and postponing the well-wishing calls to family. I thought I might have made those calls last night, even, getting them out of the way before bedtime. But, also obscenely early, are everyone's bedtimes—nine-ish.
That's a wimpy excuse. I never make those calls. But I thought I might begin to, since my sisters death.
Holidays do not suck. The barren parking lots across the street; the empty streets, absent traffic; the occasional group of festive friends and family visitors, strolling together, savoring the days departure from the routine; the pressure to engage in similar warm relationships, or at least be willing to; the sheer volume and proximity of social activities and events of sharing, where we are expected to be relaxed and pleased, but are instead anxious and terrified; these suck. And, to be adult about it, my choice to stand apart from it all and just not deal; that sucks, too.
Sometimes I feel like Melvin Udall.
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