Tag: #StayFocused

  • Feeling Better

    I’m feeling better today. I was able to sleep last night, so I have to admit that all of the everything that was balled up in (the anxiety, short temper, loss of interest) was completely based on the impending surgery.

    And the surgery did go well. The kid was home before lunch, and she was feisty as ever. Her eye is bloodshot, and it does itch, which drives her insane as she can’t touch it, which is the only thing she wants to do. The other funny thing was that she refused to take a nap even though she was completely exhausted. (She gets that from me.) But when she went to bed, she crashed out, lost to the world. Until 6am, when she woke us up. Yeah…

    I am the caregiver today. The wife has meetings and is in the office with the door shut, while the kid and I are on the couch watching tv and movies. Well, I’m trying to read, and clearly, I am putting together a blog post. I know that I will need to make lunch and dinner later. Then, a doctor’s appointment to make sure that the kid’s eye is healing correctly. Somewhere in there, I think we’ll take a walk with the dog.

    And though I am feeling better today, I know that I’m still not back. I can feel my anxiety at the periphery of my vision. I’m still not sure what is the best path for me to take.

    What I do know is that right now, I need to be the best dad that I can be. There is a little copy of me on the couch trying to explain the plot of “Ghost Writer,” and that’s my focus for today.

  • Cop Out

    I tried to write about writing, and you know, it just felt like a cop out. Like I was trying to show that I was doing something, when in reality, I haven’t done a whole lot. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I was trying to pass off a lie, but it felt insincere. Not authentic.

    Where I am in my day today is that I dropped the kid off at school, walked the dog, went grocery shopping, and I am now trying to put a blog together.

    Going through motions?

    Maybe?

    As I sit on the couch and the wife works at her desk, I think I am trying to validate my worth right now. Trying to create something that I can point at so I can at least say I accomplished something creative. And then I also feel the need to share it. And share it to get validation.

    Is that all that this is boiling down to? I need someone to notice me?

    Maybe I do need someone to say, “Hey, I see you,” to feel like my day has a purpose. I still can’t tell if that is wrong or not. Somedays, it does feel wrong. That I have accomplished nothing, and that I am creating a false reality to have the appearance that I am doing these things.

    I don’t think there is a clean way to make wanting to be the center of attention altruistic.

    Hmmmmm…

  • A Tie is Worth A Point

    I have just about made it to the weekend. This was a pretty crappy week. No doubt about it.

    Still, I sort of keep going back to the hope, the magical thought that me and my family will get vaccinated and that we will be able to go back to the way things were very soon. That idea of returning to the life that we had in March 2020 is very intriguing, and it is now met with a heightened level of nostalgia that is becomes both sad and wildly unrealistic.

    I went back through my journals, and even looked at the picture on my phone to see what life was like in March 2020. For us, it was awful. The wife and I were still without work, and our bills were getting out of control. What little money we did have was drying up, and we started talking about what options we had to stay in our apartment. It was dark, and it was bleak. The only bright spot was that I got hired on the Friday before the whole world shut down on the following Monday.

    I look around our apartment now, as I type on the couch and the kid sits next to me drawing and singing, and things are… not exactly better, but clearly, things are not worse. The wife is employed at a good job that gives all of us insurance. We are starting to dig ourselves out of the financial hole we created. The kid is in school, albeit remote, but she can read and write now. And we are healthy.

    Can that be counted as a win? In the Premier League, a tie still gets you a point.

    I think we won one point then.

  • New Ideas to Work On

    I am trying to stick to my plan and just get the work done that I have been journaling and thinking about. Making the time, and even having to say no to kid this afternoon, which I feel awful about. I needed to hold myself to the promise that I had made which was that I was going to work.

    And then all these new ideas popped into my head today, and I have spent the day doing research and trying to figure out when I can get to these ideas.

    The idea is to look into what became of historical locations that have disapeared. Espically around here in the Northeast, progress has bulldozed over building and landscapes in the name of progress, and where history was made, in most cases is a subdivision, or a parking lot. It is an idea that asks the question how we lost our history, and were people aware that history was being lost.

    Not sure when I will get to it, but I like the idea.

  • New Writing Schedule, and Some Inspiration

    Well, the good news is that I think we are finally coming to an understanding of what our daily schedule will be with the wife working at home, the kid remote schooling, and me floating around all of it, while writing when I get a chance.

    I can write this, a blog, when the kid is “in class” and my involvement is at a minimum. Writing in the journal is still during park time, which gives me a solid thirty minutes. Working on fiction is happening during the kid’s hour of TV time in the later afternoon. In the end, I get about two hours of writing during the week. Clearly, I would like more time, but this, right now, is keeping the balancing act working. With this tentative schedule in place, I am feeling a bit more relaxed, and have a reasonable expectation of what I can accomplish in a given week.

    The bonus effect of establishing this “schedule” is that I am now finding that I am inspired to go back to old ideas, and flesh them out more. Notes and sketches that I tucked away months and even years ago, have sprung to a new life, and are interesting to me again. I found myself working on an old story that I had shelved about a year ago, because I thought the idea had run out of steam.

    This isn’t really surprising, nor a revelation, but I had lost inspiration and drive of late. Small changes can make a difference. I have to remind myself that this is a marathon, and will take more time than even I expect.