Jan 21, 2013

My dreams have been so strange lately. Beyond strange even for me. It makes me wonder where my head is exactly? Two nights ago, I dreamt my mother had died and I didn't know how to use the phone to call 911. That dream sat with me for days.

Tomorrow, I start working 50 hours a week. It's going to be exhausting, but if I'm going to get out of this place, this space the first thing needed is some savings and this is the way to it.

I've been really separating myself from my social circle. More and more I want to spend time alone, but I am never alone because I live in a house full of teenagers who are interested in being around other teenagers all the time. It's nice to see my own kid get out and start being social, but I need quiet to write and it's impossible to find here. I will have three planning hours for at least the next three weeks and I am going to use one of those hours to just write.

Sometimes, I make these goals for myself that are an over reach.

Goals 2013--

Save money to move.
Move.
Lose 6 more pounds and start yoga again.
Buy a new laptop.
Fix car.
Get debt in check.
Start learning French.
Start playing piano.
Write new chap book.

Okay, see. Doable. Now to find the time for these things. 

Jan 19, 2013

I took a long walk today in the sunshine. Listened to music and got stuck in my own head. Which really is my favorite place to be most days.

I'm being haunted by one of my old poems. Search all through the house and old files trying to find it. All I can remember is the line, "There were fortune cookies at the end on the 3am dinner." I think I'll just take that line and start over. My goal of a new poem a week is going slower than I hoped. Hopefully with my new planning period, I'll be able to take that one hour a day to just write.

I want to learn to play the piano. Must find a teacher. And, learn French.

Sometimes, I want too much. I know.

A month from today, I'll be on my way to Nashville. I'm ready to go back.

Jan 15, 2013

Work sucks. I took this job thinking it would make my life better and all it's done is add a lot of stress and no health insurance.

Dream from last night--

I was with my friend, Garrett, who was visiting from Turkey and he bought me a pair of light blue shoes. He gave them to me while we were sitting at a diner counter having coffee. They were ugly old lady shoes.

Dream-- Jan 14, 2013

I don't remember much of it now, but I know he was wearing a very yellow shirt button down oxford with a large Polo logo on the front and was sitting in a chair.We were older, but not much older.It was supposedly the first time we had ever meet, but I knew that wasn't true. I bent down and gave him a kiss and felt a bit ashamed that I kissed a stranger, but he wasn't a stranger. I knew him.

I know him.

Jan 14, 2013

Today, was slow and easy, but yet no new words were written except for the ones I'm writing now, and perhaps I should be grateful that at least as I go to sleep tonight I have these words which are better than none at all.

And, I did meet my goal of 50 new words on the Nin poem last night. I was thinking last night how the last real poem I wrote was in 2008. There have been many starts and stop, but no publishable material. So, new goal. Two publishable poems a month. But, I'm so bad with keeping goals. This could turn into another thing I make myself feel bad about. But, it is unavoidable. I have to do something. I don't want to be like my poetry professor in grad school who only published one collection.

I dreamt about him last night, but the dogs started barking and woke me up. I hate it when they do that.

Jan 12, 2013

Had I remembered to write yesterday, I would have written about how exactly blue the sky was at 10am when I was in the middle of an airstrip on the edge of town, before a job interview I had at the Kansas Aviation Museum. It was the most amazing shade of cornflower blue and took my breath away. I couldn't help but send Mister a text to tell him about it. I feel so anxious about him at times that I avoid speaking with him when he is who I want to speak to the most at times. He makes me laugh and that in some ways is so rare. He sent me a text back wishing me luck and asking me when I was coming, but when I told him not soon enough and gave him a date, the wrong date, which I later corrected, he never replied. Since our visit in December we've talked less often, but I feel like when we have the words have somehow mattered more. But, I'm probably over thinking it, as I usually do.

The interview did not go as well as I had hoped. My mind was other places, and I wasn't exactly sure what it was they wanted. When the director called while I was taking a late afternoon nap to say they had chosen someone else for the second interview, I was relieved. It was a fairly large pay cut and more hours.

 Nin and I have been together today beside the fire. Her trapped inside a book and myself trapped inside a house that as badly as I want it to feel like home, does not. Home is somewhere else right now. Some place unknown and slightly terrifying to think of as it means leaving behind the child and allowing him to grow into something I may not recognize. And, I too, may change again. I'm entering what I think is probably the third stage of my life and I'm not exactly sure what that looks like. Not that I could see the other stages of my life before they happened, but now that I am older I think i like having a bit more control--perhaps insight is a better word. But, I still know that for my own growth to happen, I must leave and I must do it soon. I'm was thinking the fall, but if something happened to move up that date, I would go. I know I'm ready even if the child is not (though he is probably more ready than even I know).

 It is Saturday night, and I am sitting here alone, listening to the man who I may or may not love sing through cheap speakers, "Will you be the one that loves me" over and over in a sad chant and drinking whiskey. Nin wrote in Fire,  It is hard for me to believe in continuous, sustained happiness, just as it is hard for me to believe in love. I take whiskey and I think, Oh, to hell, to hell with caring so much, to hell with everything." Nin and I walk the same tight rope. She is the subject of my latest poem. Which is going so slow, I wonder why I still write at all. Why I have not just stopped and moved on to something more sublime, like painting or fencing. In 59 days, I will be 39. I have been trying to think of things I would like to do before I turn 39. I have such a hard time being consistent in most things. Like this blog. I said I would write everyday in 2013 and already I have missed at least four days, but maybe it has been six.

What I want to do is find a new job. That's it. I doubt that will happen before then though, because I am where I need to be for the time being, but I am looking for something nearer to him every day. Checking the classifieds everyday applying for things that may fit. I know that the fall would be a better time to move, but I feel such need to leave sooner. Which is sort of silly. We have barely spoken since I was there in December, but yet, I'm still drawn to him. I want to waste all my words on him the way I did Jason, the philosopher, for the years between. Thankfully, Jason finally broke my heart for the final time last month. He is gone for good and I am happy he is. It was really much easier to give him up than I ever thought it would be. There were no tears when I finally said goodbye. Just relief. I wasted so many of my best words on him. So much writing energy that I could have been turning into poetry.

 Next month, I will back in Nashville. I think I will know for a fact after that trip if that is where I should be. It felt so right last time I was there. Like it was where I should be for this next stage of my life. Where I would hopefully write and grow.

 Time to work on that poem. My goal today. 50 new words. No less, but hopefully more.

Jan 6, 2013

I have the flu, so I've drank my way through the day with whiskey and honey. Such is life sometimes.

Jan 5, 2013

Dear Reader, Have you been wondering why I have no followers and why you can not leave a comment? I will explain. This is not really a blog. If I were being more tradition this would be written with pens on paper. A journal. The kind of personal affair that when you are reading it you know you're looking into someone's deeper private thoughts. Which is slightly like snooping, and therefore is being slightly naughty. Am I correct? Do you feel slightly naughty now? Even if you do, by no means, stop reading. I'm just getting to the interesting parts.

Jan 4, 2013

I couldn't decide this morning if I should order How to Think More About Sex by Alain De Botton or How to Stay Sane by Philippa Perry. I chose sex but I probably should have chosen sanity.

Jan 3 2013

I woke up this morning so sad that my bones hurt and not just my wrist. I haven't been the same since I left the South. Blue and listless for no good reason. If I was more romantic I would think I was in love, but I know better to believe such things. 

I spend more time worrying about writing than I do writing. I've been looking for a way to change this for years and still no answers. I know the first step is to just write, but that is hard when nothing strikes you as worthy.

The classroom is quiet.
Maybe my students won't spend the day complaining. It's hard to listen to them for 10 hours straight.