Friday, January 01, 2010

New Year 2010 Procrastination Stream of Consciousness

I have been dying for some uninterrupted time to do some writing for weeks now, but when it comes to me by way of a sleeping baby and a husband watching the Hitler channel (Military Channel, I believe, for those not into weaponry television), I pretty much do everything in my power to dick around and not get down to it. And then I complain about not having enough time for myself. Yep.

And now the baby is crying so I could conveniently forget about this if I really felt like it. I forgot to give her vitamins today, so I could go and do that. Note: I forget vitamins a lot, but only when the administration of the vitamins will get me out of something do vitamins truly become important. Or I could return to my obsessive compulsive project of cataloging and hanging all of her new clothes in appropriately-labeled bins in the closet. See Exhibit A: Attack of the Aunts and Grandmas.



Or I could get another beer. Or go back to reading my book. But it was reading the book that got me to thinking about projects for 2010 and what to do with my writing Fridays, so I might as well just suck it up.

2009 was momentous for a number of reasons (do I really need to tell you about Zygote? The smartest, coolest kid in the world?), but one of the cooler things was having the opportunity to read the right books at just the right time. I don't really understand people that don't read. I'm sure they have their reasons or their other ways of engaging with the world, but is there anything better than reading something and obsessively underlining because 'OMG, THIS IS SO MY LIFE RIGHT NOW'?"

Anyway...I'm reading this book. I was obsessed with Liar's Club when it came out, and read it twice. I liked Cherry well enough, but I LOVE this one. Because of the earlier books, I obviously knew a little about Mary Karr's life, but I literally dropped the book when I read that she had been toiling away in FUCKING TELECOM before the first books of poem was published. Telecom! I am the only person in high tech who dreams of being a writer. Obviously. Eye roll.

This, of course, got the brain spiral going and I wondered why the fuck I didn't take a class with Mary Karr when I was at Syracuse? Why didn't I take a class with Tobias Wolff? Or Junot Diaz? I read (past and present) pretty much everything these people write, and they were right there -- right within my grasp. Shit, I even served these people at Bruegger's, but I never spoke to them and I didn't dare try to register for a creative writing class. At the time, I'm sure I had legitimate reasons for doing so like a double major and a job and whatever else I was "soooo stressed out" about when you live with your friends and drink on the couch watching 90210 every night. But in retrospect, this seems really stupid. Actually, totally fucking retarded. I'm sure I didn't take those classes because I didn't want to actually TRY writing or get critiqued or face the possibility that the pseudo image that I created for myself (misanthropic writer chick with appropriate hairstyle and glasses to match) was way off base. Dumb.

And now we're 12.5 years from college, and I have been toiling away at this bizarre career, dreaming of my other career, but always putting it off. And now I have the time. I have the husband who thinks this is important and has helped us finagle our finances so that I have one day a week to face the page, and I have a bunch of friends encouraging me and the validation of my recent teachers that I'm pretty good and funny for more than my allotted 15 minutes a day. The only thing getting in my way is me.

So I don't have a lot of resolutions for 2010 other than the usual crap about losing weight and saving money and finding a good red lipstick. But I do want to try and stay out of my own way and out of my own head and see where this writing thing takes me. I don't know how I'll define success, but I'm going to try. Trying to control every facet of my life has obviously not worked out well in all areas, so I will attempt to follow all of these cheesy sayings: go with the flow, let go/let God, blah blah blah.

And please dear god, if 2010 isn't my last year in high tech, please let me have an exit strategy.