The Posterchild for:

Relationship ADD.

I remember the complete and irrevocable infatuation I had with my first viable "love interest" evaporated around the same time I was anesthetized for my wisdom teeth procedure. I went to sleep snug with affection, and woke up cold.

Another time, I built a charade from smokey bars, sneaking past locked gates, and a kiss in the rain. A world of perfection that had no hold on me once it became fully realized.

I have had shared moments of heart on a barroom receipt, on a cramped couch, in an apartment power outage, outside a packing van on a beach boardwalk, singing commercial jingles at 5 am wearing sunglasses while the sun came up; and I have called for chauffeuring at a price that I never admitted to aloud. I have been held by a man with trembling, strength, need.

All these things, once started, no longer held any sway. I had peaked, I had achieved. There was nothing left to win. The poetry had existed, had breathed life alongside me, and had gone.

I look at those women with diamonds, with a man, with the new life. I see their contentment, fresh like changed paint. And I search in vain for the poetry.

Where are the eyes that will meet mine downtown as the rain pours? Where are the hands that will find mine in the darkness of an open sky? Where is the laughter that will hold me captive? Who is the human enigma that will draw me in with a perpetual devotion to uncovering the mystery?

Am I doomed by my own inability to focus, to stay engaged? Am I committing myself to solitude by my need to keep turning the wheels once I've witnessed your sliver of poetry?

And is this why I have flitting ideas, which always run through my fingers like mercury?

Caught in the crossfire

I find more and more lately I am caught in the same conversation that I wish I had never started:

Person: "So what do you do?"
Me: "You mean as a job?"
"Yeah."
"I'm an accountant."
"Do you like your job?"
"It has its moments. But there are other things I would rather do."
"Like?"
"If I had my way? I'd be a writer."
"What would you write?"
"Fiction."
"Really? What kind do you write?"
"...I haven't..."
"Oh, no time?"
"...There's no money in writing, so... here I am. An accountant."

By the end of the conversation, I feel broken, cheap, fraudulent. A money-grubbing twenty-something with no soul, a liar with an icy smile and a frost-bitten heart.

But I can't help telling the truth. I gloss over the part where I have lost faith in my ability to channel the written word. With no practice, there is no learning. Stagnation results in stale confidence as well... or none at all. The advice that you should write every day is by far the most true thing I have witnessed. And probably should start listening to as well, if I want to continue hawking myself as a would-be writer.

Justification on the Run

One thing I am challenging myself to do these days is not make excuses. If anyone has ever tried it, you know how extremely difficult it is. I still can't delineate between explaining how something occurred and avoiding saying "so you see, it's not my fault". Here's an attempt.

Statistics, in my opinion, tend to explain circumstances without overly excusing or rationalizing behavior. The extent that is done occurs within the listener or reader. For example:
I traveled over 7,000 miles in the month of August.
I worked about 300 hours in the month of September.
In October, my class has been invited to 3 lunch/dinners to ensure we will not quit, given the unprecedented mass exodus of employees at our rank.
I have 3 bonuses in the form of gift cards I am challenged to spend, with another on the way.

Aside from statistics, I've found another way to explain without excusing is stating facts. For example:
I was finally able to exhaust a gift card with a purchase of a Hemingway anthology. At night I drink a gin and tonic or a glass of heavy red wine, depending on the tone of the day. I have started standing in the shower for a half hour, minimum, to let the hot water unknot my shoulder. How much I read from the anthology directly relates to how unable I am to fall asleep, how much I am thinking about the next day at work. I sit in front of the television on weekends staring at football players run headfirst into each other, and I am fascinated by this entertainment.

All that to say: things have been spiraling out of control. I have not written a word, and I have not blogged. I have been one-dimensional. I have burned-out. I am production-less.

There are no excuses.