Couldn't work out why he couldn't

I am walking up and down, up and down on the spot. Never a step forward. I do not believe any more there is a forward.

I get good advice from friends online. They say, have fun. I haven't had any fun for months, bar the fleeting moments of laughter with my children. I don't even know what would be fun. I doubt I had fun even when I had it. Fun, it seems to me, is another way of saying waste your life, let it pass, try to laugh as the clock winds down. But I can't even do that. I am clueless what would actually be fun. The problem is, you have to do something and then want to repeat it. I do things and never want to go near them again.

They say, try to change things. If I could change things, they'd be changed. I'm ready for it. But what to change and how? I don't know the answer. I'm like the poor soul in Aimee Mann's Ghost world, waiting for someone to tell me what to do. But when you are *mumbles*, you are supposed to know what to do.

***

I would like to be blogging about things I enjoyed. I am not in the least bit miserable or sad by nature. I just haven't been enjoying anything.

Why are you reading this shit? I mean, what the fuck. I don't even enjoy writing it. I'm only doing it because I can't concentrate on work and it's one of the ways I distract myself, so that eventually, I will lose my clients and destroy my life. I wonder whether that really is my aim: break it down so I have to rebuild it. I love change, renewal, undoing, repicking and restitching, so maybe that is what it is; even though I do fear it. My finances are a bit knife edge. I do not know where I am coming up with money for January, although I expect something to turn up. (What is the most fucked is that I don't have work for December but I have too much tomorrow: one of my sisters is coming from the UK and Mrs Zen is going away for a few days, so I have to take time off, but can't.) I feel that it's slipping away a bit; that I have been fucking about just a bit too much and I'm going to pay a heavy price. But separating feelings of foreboding that are just the baseless growlings of the black dog from those that are merited sniffings of what's in the wind is not always easy; I would hate to dismiss my concerns and then find myself out of work because I didn't pay them enough mind.

I feel like I am a complaint in search of something to complain about. I could try harder to get by, just for now. I am scared though by time passing. I feel like I have a life that could be fixed, that could be joyous, and I fear that it will run out before I make that happen. I will have been capable of anything and able to do nothing. (Well, that sounds good but I am not at all capable of the things I actually want to do: I will never, for instance, be any good at poker; I'm just not "getting" it the way some others do -- or, I should say, and it's a curious thing, I get it but can't do it and can't work out why I can't. That will be my fucking epitaph! And I cannot write, not even an article, not even a publishable short story. I get it -- I am confident I get it thoroughly -- but I can't do it. This is not the old if you can't do it, be a critic thing. It would be a lot easier if it were.)

***

I need a friend. I need someone who will not think that telling me that if I just took some drugs I would be okay helps. I need someone who does not think my life is like theirs, because it isn't: it's mine and it feels the way I feel, not the way they feel. I need someone who likes being with me enough for me not to want anything from me but just to be me. I need to feel there is a forward, somewhere to put my foot down that is taking me anywhere but here, anywhere but here and now, where I am a shell that cannot believe it ever held a man.

posted by Dr Zen @ 3:10 pm