Bad boyfriends

Writing is like a psychotic boyfriend, now that I think about it. You know the type – your parents love him, your sisters adore him, your friends think he might be ‘The One’ for you. And none of them notice the way you walk hunched over all of a sudden to keep your heart from breaking, and the bruises that are the reason why you suddenly wear a lot of make-up.

Writing is a lot like that. Sometimes, when it’s good, it’s very good. But when it’s bad, it’s worse than anything you can imagine.

I haven’t been writing for a year and a half now. It’s like being in heroin withdrawal, with the added bonus that your drug of choice doesn’t work anymore. I still love writing. I still love the feel of a character or a story inside of me, waiting to come to life. I imagine that that’s what being pregnant must feel like.
I just can’t do it anymore. I am filled with ideas, pregnant with them…but when the time comes to put them on a page, I just can’t do it. I write perhaps two pages and think to myself ‘what utter shit. Nobody will ever read this!’ and it’s true. Because somehow, somewhere, I seem to have lost the confidence in myself that made it possible, even when I despised myself and wanted to die, to write and get myself out of there. Writing was my lifeline back then, lifting me out of myself and taking me to places where I could be whoever I wanted to be, do anything I wanted to do. And it doesn’t work anymore.

Because since this thing happened to me – this thing that turned my art against me – writing has been my pain. Not my drug against the agony of life, but the cause of it. And that’s never happened to me before.

And I still want it. That’s the worst part. Maybe I’m just too stubborn for my own good, unwilling to give up on the idea that I will be a writer, or maybe I’m meant to get through this and go on writing, someday even something worth reading.

And that’s why writing is like a psychotic boyfriend. You know he’s only going to hurt you. You know he’s bad.
You know that ever time he says ‘it’ll never happen again,’ never is really only ‘until next time’ because it will happen again.
And you still go back.
Because despite what the world wants you to believe, there are more important things than being happy. And art is one of those things.

Thingz

I made a brochure for work yesterday. It was brilliant and wonderful and CORRECTLY SPELLED – which might sound like nothing to brag about to you, but in good old S of A, that’s a pretty unusual sight.

It took me hours to get it just right, because they had to have it right the hell now and wouldn’t give me time to, y’know, think, and kept making me change it when I was almost done…they drove me mad.

Know what they did then? They sent it to the printers, and then had them change the whole thing. What I did was stunning. Clean, classical lines, not too much fuss, goes perfectly with the hotel. Pictures placed where they made sense.

The printers covered the whole thing in orange, so that the text is hardly readable. The moved the pictures to the top of the page, where they are completely out of context. It’s gross.

But hey, that’s their problem. They’d just better not ask me to do their bloody brochures again.

I’m not in a good mood today. I am tired, and grumpy, and my head feels as though a herd of elephants are doing the flamenco in it.

On the plus side, in twenty minutes I’m going shopping with my mom, which is always fun. I love my mom, btw.

And on the other upside – I’m getting a new, big, hard drive for Elvis (Elvis is my laptop. Shut up.) and also some more RAM. Yay!

I feel better already!

Off shopping now! My relief came early.

Quote for the Day: “It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.”

Pierre Beaumarchais

As epitomized by my manager, who will argue to the death to defend her wrong-headed opinions about things she doesn’t know a damn thing about.