I spoke with Christa today and she said I need to come up now with a name for my web project. What would be the title of my autobiography? How's this? " Like sands through the hourglass my life slips away minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day." The movie version to be filmed by Bergman, endless scenes of black and white nothingness.", or to shorten it "What a waste!" But wait I want to be more positive. How about "Better late than never?" or "How I finally learned to live at 58 and other stories." Perhaps a scholarly sounding name like a dissertation title. "A study of the effects of extended late night TV watching, while eating cookies and ice cream, on a nearly comatose middle aged woman."
I want to be positive but I'm feeling cranky. My old bad habits are calling to me and I'm not putting up much of a fight. I'm trying to make the new good habits stick, and they do feel good when I'm in the writing, or talking with Marc or Christa, or telling someone else about the work, but when it gets to be just me, I'm not sustaining the feelings. Animus goes back to being just a word, a concept in my head. And here just a few weeks ago, I felt him physically touch me. I'm going to chalk this up to the one step ahead, two back theory and I'm going to carry on. The old ways are fighting for me and I'll keep fighting to push them out. And I'm not alone. I have the Animus and I realized today how very grateful I am that he doesn't hold a grudge. That He'll keep giving me the chance to connect with Him no matter how many times I've blown Him off in the past.
I think I'm cranky because I thought that if I did start to write regularly that the old bad habits and doubts and fears would just fall away. Sometimes it does feel like that. And maybe, my battle with them this week is because the old me senses the change and is fighting for it's miserable life. Gee I feel a little better just writing that thought. It's a pitched battle and I'm the prize. Will the forces of the dark side convince me that catatonia is the way to go with my life? None of those ugly ups and downs, just a flat line. Lifeless, but tidy. Loveless but predictable. No need to fight, like drowning I suppose. They say at the end it's quite pleasant. Think of all the extra money I'd have if I stop seeing Marc and settle into oblivion. So much more for cookies and cable and ever larger clothes.
This reminds me of a time many years ago when I used to string squash rackets. I'd never order the string in time, so when I needed more, I'd have to order it with special handling and extra shipping costs, which cut into my profit. Then I'd have to stall my customer. Mostly I did this by avoiding him, or lying to him about having another big order, or blaming the string company for not shipping in time, or blah, blah, blah. I was very skilled at lying, or at least I've fooled myself into thinking so. I could then spend all the time waiting for the string, feeling anxious, terrified each time the phone rang, telling myself what a loser I was and here I'd proven it once again.
So one time, I managed to get my act together, ordered my string way in advance of need, sent a check and sat back all satisfied to wait for it. Well, something did go wrong, the string was never sent, and I could tell that the women on the other end of the phone was lying to me and putting me off, just as I'd done dozens of times to my customers. I recognized myself in her lying and I was furious to be lied to, I hated it and I felt hopeless. Here I could always tell myself I was a worthless piece of shit because I screwed up, but then I didn't screw up and it still didn't work out. So I was still worthless, but I had to experience fury and despair instead of just my companion anxiety. Is the same thing happening with this writing? Am I thinking that I just have to do something right a few times and 58 years of old, bad habits will just evaporate? Maybe it's just the roto rooter effect, that you need to stir up the sludge to clean out the pipes. OK, so instead of feeling all warm and fuzzy and teary because I'm writing, I'm feeling cranky, but I'm feeling something. That's good isn't it?