I haven’t posted yet because I didn’t want to start off with a whiny post. I’ve become a whiny person who is dissatisfied with everything, but I didn’t particularly want to dwell on that. I also didn’t want to simply relate my actions which aren’t typically worthy of reporting. However, I need to post and am in a melancholic, contemplative mood.
On my desk at work, there is exactly one item that distinguishes it as my desk. There is a little figure made out of red yarn with green pipe cleaner arms and those freaky craft eyes. However, these were made for the student workers for Christmas 2007 and quite a few were commandeered by various librarians and staff members to decorate their desks so this mark of distinction isn't the most original.
I keep meaning to bring personal effects to decorate with or at least a trendy calendar that points out one of my interests. But anything that I could use is packed away in boxes in my parents’ storage building, and I don’t really use non-electronic calendars. So my desk is bare except for work projects and a usually empty, forlorn inbox. Like Ryan in The Office, I could clean out my desk in five seconds.
My room at home is not much better. Yes, it would take me more time than five seconds to pack and move out, but it’s not really mine. It’s furnished with bulky wooden pieces picked out by someone else and painted a garish blue. I’ve crowded it will books and movies and art projects that are painfully disorganized. And I need organization, now more than ever. As a child I couldn’t think or function if my room or the house were in disarray. Recently, I’m exhibiting these same idiosyncrasies. I know that being flustered by a mess is normal for most people, but I’m not exaggerating when I say I couldn’t function. I couldn’t concentrate on anything until I had cleaned up and put everything away.
Living with my grandparents is usually fun, but it’s also a place closely connected to my childhood so I feel emotionally stunted sometimes. It’s as if I never fully grew up or developed that self-reliance all the books talk about.
Back to the point: my life seems so transitory at the moment, and transitory living has always made me uneasy. When I go to my brother’s apartment, I’m always slightly off balance. He only wants the apartment for the space of time before he moves to go back to college so the walls are bare and everything feels tentative. It’s definitely a space built for people to inhabit for small amounts of time.
Unfortunately, my period of transition has drug on for almost three years during which I’ve had two jobs I really disliked, have not lived on my own, and have been relatively reclusive.
All of this is starting to get to me, and my writing has recently suffered. I never work on a single poem or idea anymore. I always have at least three poems open when I write and jump for one to another with no clear purpose. I’m nervous while I write and hypersensitive to the fact that I’ve no real direction beyond “I want to write and write well” which is the chorus of an entire subset of humanity who are usually in overly stark or artistic independent films that also deal with disaffection and/or addiction. However, I’m not disaffected and have no addiction.
Sometimes I have the urge to withdraw all my money, pack some books, my cat, and my clothes into my car and just drive away as if I were a movie character, one of those terribly romantic, impulsive people that probably doesn’t exist in the real world. Of course, if they did exist on a massive scale, the market economy would probably crash, making it impossible to live. So I suppose I’ll stay put.
On my desk at work, there is exactly one item that distinguishes it as my desk. There is a little figure made out of red yarn with green pipe cleaner arms and those freaky craft eyes. However, these were made for the student workers for Christmas 2007 and quite a few were commandeered by various librarians and staff members to decorate their desks so this mark of distinction isn't the most original.
I keep meaning to bring personal effects to decorate with or at least a trendy calendar that points out one of my interests. But anything that I could use is packed away in boxes in my parents’ storage building, and I don’t really use non-electronic calendars. So my desk is bare except for work projects and a usually empty, forlorn inbox. Like Ryan in The Office, I could clean out my desk in five seconds.
My room at home is not much better. Yes, it would take me more time than five seconds to pack and move out, but it’s not really mine. It’s furnished with bulky wooden pieces picked out by someone else and painted a garish blue. I’ve crowded it will books and movies and art projects that are painfully disorganized. And I need organization, now more than ever. As a child I couldn’t think or function if my room or the house were in disarray. Recently, I’m exhibiting these same idiosyncrasies. I know that being flustered by a mess is normal for most people, but I’m not exaggerating when I say I couldn’t function. I couldn’t concentrate on anything until I had cleaned up and put everything away.
Living with my grandparents is usually fun, but it’s also a place closely connected to my childhood so I feel emotionally stunted sometimes. It’s as if I never fully grew up or developed that self-reliance all the books talk about.
Back to the point: my life seems so transitory at the moment, and transitory living has always made me uneasy. When I go to my brother’s apartment, I’m always slightly off balance. He only wants the apartment for the space of time before he moves to go back to college so the walls are bare and everything feels tentative. It’s definitely a space built for people to inhabit for small amounts of time.
Unfortunately, my period of transition has drug on for almost three years during which I’ve had two jobs I really disliked, have not lived on my own, and have been relatively reclusive.
All of this is starting to get to me, and my writing has recently suffered. I never work on a single poem or idea anymore. I always have at least three poems open when I write and jump for one to another with no clear purpose. I’m nervous while I write and hypersensitive to the fact that I’ve no real direction beyond “I want to write and write well” which is the chorus of an entire subset of humanity who are usually in overly stark or artistic independent films that also deal with disaffection and/or addiction. However, I’m not disaffected and have no addiction.
Sometimes I have the urge to withdraw all my money, pack some books, my cat, and my clothes into my car and just drive away as if I were a movie character, one of those terribly romantic, impulsive people that probably doesn’t exist in the real world. Of course, if they did exist on a massive scale, the market economy would probably crash, making it impossible to live. So I suppose I’ll stay put.
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