I need an excuse. I do not have one. I have spent the last two days with my dog. I don’t write even though I have the time, plenty of time. Too much time? I have decided to give up my two male adult cousins for adoption. I am going to call the Cook County Guardian on a research mission. My mother has two care givers, one for the mornings and one for the evenings. All those things I felt were keeping me from writing are being managed, I think. I still have those two kids, ages 11 and 13 but they are being taken care of by a Television, or two. Then there is the dog, the true love of my life. The truth is I lay on the floor next to her for hours doing absolutely nothing, and I feel guilty about it, well just a little. Notice all my sentences have these dangling qualifiers hanging off them like misplaced tails.
If I put all the energy and time into writing and it ends up being a piece of crap no one reads then I will have been proven to be a fake, a failure? Okay, I need to get back on the horse. I keep thinking about writing. I keep thinking there has to be a hundred great stories in all those ideas and life experiences I have had over the last 49 years. I imagine they will eventually pour out. Is this wishful thinking? I am reading a book called “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett. It is fantastic so far. I wish I could write like that. She probably had small kids while writing. I would feel so much better if I had a good excuse. I need an excuse. If I don’t find one soon, I will have to make one up. I have no intention of going back to spending endless hours helping my special needs cousins. I am totally burnt out on that mission. Besides, helping them turned into a vicious cycle of crisis management. The more I helped the more catastrophes they were able to create. I think they did better on their own. They started feeding off the attention and that was too distracting for everyone involved.
I promised myself my Blog, my creation, would not simply turn into a recording of my diary, another journal like the spiral notebooks I have been filling up for years, but I fear this entry is just that, my diary but on the internet instead. This is some of my worst writing and I am still going to post it, as soon as I finish eating this bag of pop corn. Yes it is not even 9 a.m. on a Friday and I am eating pop corn. The breakfast of boobheads. When I was a junior in college Roberta and I would eat potato chips and cottage cheese for breakfast every Sunday. I was living in Scott Hall and she was in an apartment. I had transferred that year from University of Illinois in Chicago to Champaign/Urbana. I still look back and wonder if that was a good move. My mother taught me to always keep looking back and fearing forward. What a gift! So maybe that is my excuse, my crazy family life growing up, but that is also the source of all my material. Oy, now I am confused. How can I blame the one thing that might prove to be the answer to all my troubles, the golden ticket?
I see other writers, the ones modeled after Robert Redford in “The Way We Were”. I hate them. They did not have tragic childhoods; no they had the best suburban schools and colleges, and well educated somewhat normal parents, professional like doctors and lawyers. Yet, they are the ones producing and publishing. Just like in the opening scene of the “Way We Were”, a troubled average looking Jewish girl struggling to escape some hidden traumas from a dark past, and the blond boy wonder. “Everything came easy to him….” And then the teacher decides to read one student’s paper out loud and whose is it? Yeah, Blond Wonder Boy who then goes on to become famous author. I was never consumed with the love story aspect of that movie. For me, it was all about the opening scene. Who was the teacher’s favorite. Who was the better writer? Angst and drama don’t guarantee a publishing contract. Hell, this is really going to piss me off. I live through the stereotypical neurotic Jewish Mother (is that redundant?). Hell Portnoy had nothing to complain about compared to me! I have the father who was a Holocaust Survivor. I had the house filled with fights where WW II would simply not die. I had the loss over and over again when one relative after another would die unexpectedly and prematurely. I had the crazy ass older brother who made my life a living hell. I had the weight problems, and eventually the drinking and drug problems. Come on where the fuck is this story!!!! Meanwhile the Suzy Sun Shines of the world walk around accomplished because they are inspired by something in the news or a class they took, a family they once knew, but they did not PAY the PRICE of PAIN that I did, or that I would like to think I did.
Sad truth. I have a fucking luxurious life right now and it is getting me nowhere. I am sitting in a (very messy) two story home, typing away on a lap top with a perfectly beautiful caramel corn colored dog behind me. Someone else is bathing my 90 year old mother and all is right with the world. My two kids are at a somewhat (Lord I hope) safe suburban school and I am pounding away on these letters hoping that at some point I will be motivated enough to get my ass in gear and organize and SELF-MOTIVATED to see a project through to the end. So, I just realized this blog entry has been my way of
EXCERCISING my WRITING MUSCLES. Hip hip hooray. I am sorry if it bored you, but that is what exercising is for most people, boring, and hard work. But necessary. I hated having to drag you in on the process. But at least you got some insight into my neurosis. Pain is not rewarded. Damn it. But hard work is. Damn it. Now I have to go lay down next to my dog and nuzzle my nose into her soft brown curls. As soon as I am done. I will return to this lap top and writing something really good.
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