struggling

I’m fighting with myself.

On the one hand, I’m making progress. On the other, a lot of things are falling through the cracks.

I’m neglecting friends – not answering e-mails in a reasonable time frame, not calling. I hardly read any fiction at all. I’m struggling to keep my blog halfway alive and to read my friends’ blogs. All this is bad, because I love my friends, I don’t ever not read and I love my blog and the connections into the real world and the world of blogging it is bringing me.

On the other hand, I have, for the first time in a long, long time (roughly two years) a kind of plan of what I’m doing. I’m organized about my writing, I have a plan, a real plan, with different steps and goals and dates when these goals need to be reached. I also have a plan for “surviving” or “becoming independent” – meaning, how to survive financially. I’m building connections and I have a goal that I’m working towards. And these things are good. I feel focused and like I know what I’m doing – which has not been the case for …. oh, such a long, long time…

So – what’s right or wrong? How to find a balance? I don’t know. I’m putting it out there. Maybe someone else has an idea of how to do this thing called life. Anyone?

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lost

Last week was the first time since I’ve been back, the first time since I expected it upon coming back, the first time since I was a teenager, that this senseless, panicked aggression, that sense of suffocating and having to claw and shout and scream at other people came over me. That feeling that if I don’t scream, don’t burst through walls, don’t shock people, don’t hold on to myself while raising my voice above all the white noise, all the muttering, murmuring, mumbling, stumbling, … if I don’t assert my self, I’m going to slip under and just sink into the deep, well-lighted, comfortable depth of routine and stability and expectations and days going by and never come to the surface again where there is wind and laughter and storms and danger and change and waves and dreams and space.