It’s 9 p.m. and one project stands in the way of me having a vacation day tomorrow. And even if I write this article tonight (about what, I have no idea at this point), I suspect the phone will be ringing later in the day anyway.
I still don’t have much that I want to say in this space, yet the only creative writing I do is for the newsletters and Web sites I oversee professionally and my name ain’t on a damn one of them. Or on this one, for that matter, but still. 😉
There’s a part of me that wants to immortalize these days, and another part that is living in the future anyway and these times won’t matter then. I’m working on saying more positive mantras and looking at life from where I want to be as opposed to where I am. It helps. It really does. There are a lot of situations, personal and otherwise, that have the potential to make me want to figure out how to slit my wrists with a spork some days.
But looking at my goals as though I’ve already conquered them makes them seem so much smaller. And that makes them easier to surmount. My colleague calls it “micromovements” — that any movement is still going forward and achieving little parts of big things. And that makes the bigger goals so much more manageable in comparison.
Someone came into my life at some point, of the male variety. My best friend started referring to him as my husband right away. Which, hah. THERE’S a story better left for telling over about 14 rounds of drinks, but it’s funny. She swears that if I get on the bandwagon and start to look at someone special in that kind of way, someday it won’t be wishful thinking on her part.
And to say that’s SO not ever going to happen is a reflection of me living in reality. But maybe it’s a reflection of the fact that I have always had a hard time doing anything beyond living in the moment. I always thought that made me more attractive to men, that I’d rather talk about football than ask them what they’re thinking or feeling. And it keeps me from falling in love, too, because without any real connection, I know I’ll be OK if/when either one of us walks away.
On the other hand, it’s challenging to blur the line between reality and delusion. I would hate to walk around telling people, absolutely convinced, that I’m a 5’10’ supermodel who’s had lots of plastic surgery and who is a self-made millionaire. I mean, is that how psychosis starts? Telling yourself that something is so when it’s SO NOT?
Or is it OK as long as you keep your eyes focused straight ahead and know that it’s OK to dream but not OK to count on it happening? If I approach it differently, would it end differently? Are the chapters that are closed and the ones that never really opened still fair game?
Does wanting something enough for two people actually make it possible?
I’m trying not to be skeptical on this one, because my cynicism might have been what’s been holding me back.
My colleague told me that she read somewhere recently that procrastination is a symbol of a lack of faith in ourselves. And she’s right. I have this big-ass project at work that is going to kick ass and make us millions of dollars when it’s in place. And it’s not that I’ve been dragging my feet on it, as I’m up to my ears in a boatload of other, more-pressing projects. But there’s that certain feeling that maybe I’m not going to be deserving of all the success this project is going to bring. I mean, I know inherently that I am worth it. But what am I going to do with all that glory? Am I going to know what to do with it when it comes?
I have always had a dream to write cheesy, trashy, beach-reading romance novels. I’ve written a few of them. I’ve been writing notes on them since I was 14. But I let work and life push them aside. My reasoning? That I’ve never had the great love that I want to write about. That I’ll write them “later” — whenever that may be — when I start living and loving the way I want to write about.
Maybe my friend is on to something with this procrastination/motivation thing.
Anyway, I saw a class on romance-novel writing. And I thought yeah, right, like I can ever get an evening to myself. And then I met a gal online, someone awesome and interesting to follow on the Web and who I’ve typed with a few times, who edits romance novels for a living. Two back-to-back signs. Is the universe trying to tell me something?
Perhaps it’s trying to tell me to see if I can’t get past myself on more than just work issues and see the “me” who’s going to exist in the long run, not just the short-term. So I won’t grow six inches, but if I become rich, I can let plastic surgery take care of the rest. 😉
I’m sorry — WHEN I become a millionaire.
No more “ifs.”
So whether my friend will get that particular guy as her brother-in-law, well, let me think on that one for a little bit more. And while you can’t really talk marriage with a man before you’ve known him 40 years, maybe I thought I was doing the right thing by never letting myself fall.
And I could fall easily, if I wanted to.
Which means that I’ve never gotten what I think I do want because I never let myself want it. So it never really came.
Was I my own cockblock?
Someone I dated recently didn’t necessarily have me at hello, but he did have me at acknowledging that I work too damn much. I was never available. I would have made myself available more. I could have. What he had said to me in regard to the hours upon hours that my work consumes, “We’ll have to do something about that.”
I mentioned that very phrase today to a friend. It’s the pickup line that gives me butterflies. My friend repeated it back to me, to process it, and I realized how much I love the sound of it.
I want that someone who wants to help me do something about the “now” to build for the tomorrow that I’m slowly learning to speak into existence. Because I’m the one who’s in his mental picture, too. Maybe the universe has kept me from seeing myself in certain situations with certain people because it wasn’t right … then. But now that I’m older and wiser, and I’ve had enough of what I don’t want, I can find and keep what I do want. He’ll be the one to help me do something about that, after all.
And mark my words, I’m marrying that man.