An actual update

[badatapologies]

Apparently I've entered one of those loss-of-signal periods. I've started about fifteen posts over the past couple of weeks but I either can't finish the thought or it degenerates into some kind of sad personal crisis that frankly would cheapen both of us.

Okay, just a taste: driving down the road today I was thinking nobody ever misses me. nobody ever longs for me, looks back and wishes they'd stayed with me, nobody sits alone crying with unrequited love for me, i am the great lost love of nobody's life. i ache for the people who broke my heart, but nobody aches for me. As if I could know that, or as if somehow everything would be better if they did. Ludicrous.

I've mostly been too busy for that kind of self pity--and here I'm lying, because there's always room for self-pity, it's the Jell-o of negative emotions. But I've been working quite a bit, and going on job interviews, and making travel arrangements for Austin, and generally trying to better my situation as quickly as possible. My generous host has fallen in love with a man from her past in Phoenix. So much so that my generous host is moving to Phoenix. Which means that once again, I find myself racing against the clock to find a new place to live. The other night I was watching Doctor Who and I found myself a bit more emotionally invested in the outcome than seemed reasonable. Later I realized that Doctor Who is a television program about a solitary traveler, never quite at home anywhere, who bounces from place to place and crisis to crisis in an ancient mechanical contraption that should long ago have fallen apart. And who periodically becomes a completely different person. That's not a metaphor, that's a fucking documentary. Mind you I could do with a scarf and coat, it's been chilly.

It's been a difficult few weeks but it's hard to articulate exactly why. The script didn't advance beyond the semis at Austin but I'm still going, at least as of this writing. There's more to the final placement result than I can discuss right now but the long and the short of it is, it may lead to a better opportunity with AFF in a few months. So I need to go. I was going to be getting some travel help from my mom but characteristically she backed out, and in doing so she sent me a long email with the following HELPFUL ADVICE (verbatim):

YOU REALLY NEED TO THINK ABOUT GETTING A FULL TIME JOB AND WORKING ON ALL THE OTHER THINGS IN YOUR SPARE TIME. I KNOW THAT SUCKS BUT THE WAY THINGS ARE YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO FACE REALITY THAT YOU NEED FOOD AND A PLACE TO LIVE FIRST. I AM NOT TRYING TO DISCOURAGE YOU NOT AT ALL BUT I ALSO WORRY THAT YOU ARE NOT THINKING ABOUT THE EVERYDAY SUCKY THINGS THAT YOU HAVE GOT TO THINK OF.

Remind me to thank her in my Oscar speech. I must have been temporarily blinded to reality by the staggering $1.18 I had in the bank for ten days. Silly me.

As a person who spent 30-odd years trying very hard to not publicly need anything, to be almost pathologically self-contained, it's beyond uncomfortable and embarrassing to be at such loose ends. (Yes, it's so embarrassing I'm blogging about it. Lol.) It's occurred to me that the sort of unbelievable series of mishaps and betrayals and personal failures and whatnot that have led me to this point would make for some interesting dramatic writing, but I feel like it's against my principles to write it. I wouldn't want to propagate the idea that life is like this, even though clearly life is like this. Maybe it's just too soon. Don't know how it's going to end. This could just be the stereotypical darkest-before-the-dawn moment. God really needs to stop getting story ideas from the Men Without Hats episode of Behind The Music.

I think of it as labor, sometimes. As in "giving birth". Uncomfortable, potentially dangerous, messy, painful process. Agonizing. Seems to go on forever. (Like this post.) But one hopes the results will be worth it. And that I'll block out the memory of the whole thing when I'm sunning on the beach in Maui, knocking back pina coladas while my beleaguered husband chases our two perfect kids around the pool and my ever-reliable assistant fields the eight-figure movie offers and Oprah interview requests and genius grants and whatnot.

I am aware that my husband is gay and my assistant is an incompetent cartoon hamster. Do not harsh my buzz. Self-delusion is my sole remaining comfort.

I don't know. I've been profoundly changed by everything that's happened and I don't like it, I've reached this horrible uncomfortable disillusionment where nothing seems good or beautiful or true. Everything seems to be this gnawing, relentless struggle, and the point of it eludes me. If I could just see daylight I'd drive towards it.

Comments

[chaptal.livejournal.com]

I admit to being surprised by the hamster, but not the gay husband. The hamster needs opposing thumbs to work the Blackberry that's all I'm sayin'

[mcbrennan.livejournal.com]

I am like catnip to gay husbands. I'm like Grace from Will and Grace, only portly and unattractive. But I do have a charming personality. Buried somewhere beneath this one, apparently. :)

Penfold was hired strictly for comic relief. I'm old-school, there are no blackberries in my delusions, only 50s pastel princess telephones to communicate with the coasts.

[uncacreamy.livejournal.com]

(Except you're not unattractive)