I'm starting this blog entry at nearly 3 am after a 5 month absence from blogging. I woke about an hour ago and went online in the hopes that it would have a soporific affect on me. Silly Jen. It almost never does. My friend Stacy, who's in LA and wide awake responded to my Facebook status update of "Why in the hell am I awake?" with "Why the hell ARE you awake?" and suddenly, with a capitalized "ARE" my question became less rhetorical.
Why am I awake? I'm eating well. I've finally gotten to the point where I can run a mile without hacking up a lung or getting a debilitating side cramp (something I'd never actually been able to achieve until now). Things are on the horizon, and I'm not having the terrible anxiety I had last summer. My social life at the moment is rather lovely. My apartment is secure and large and in a great neighborhood. I have a cat who loves me, or at least uses me for my ability to open the food canister.
It's just hitting me. I have no routine. None.
Well, I have a couple. I wake up 7 or 8 by the sunlight and eat about 20 almonds. Then I either go back to bed, or I check my email. Then, depending on what day it is, I wake up or close my computer or go to the gym. I have also been making breakfast, lunch, and dinner from home. That's it. My daily structure around which everything else has been happening..
Since the school year ended, I've been tossing this around: In the city that never sleeps, or rather, never ceases or yields, when one of its once productive residents is actively yielding, actually saying, "Sorry, City and everyone in my peer group, I've decided to take a break!" said resident might be tempted to feel, well, incredibly and undeniably guilty.
My last day of work was June 18, and in the past month, I have dropped out of the city. One could say, if one lived in the 19th century, that I have disappeared from New York Society. I have gone weeks without taking the subway, preferring to bike in Brooklyn or simply stay in my neighborhood. My friends are so encouraging of this. They tell me I work hard. A vacation was long overdue. I needed some creative time. I can finish my play, finally. How great is it that I have all of this time to commit to writing that play!
Ugh. That play. That's why I'm awake. I love that play and I hate that play. I've forged those characters from nothing, and slowly they have become so lovingly real, their story lines so undeniably personal, that I've been so afraid to continue. The fear of failing is so cliche to me. I've
read about it, I've written about it, and I've talked friends out of its clutches, but here I remain, now at 3:19 am, one of its most tortured victims. Please allow me to wallow in my excuses for a moment: I've written myself into a corner. It's too cheesy. I'm not the same person I was when I started writing it. I don't know if I believe the main character anymore. Who would want to watch this, anyway?
If I were trying to give myself a pep talk I would definitely try my hardest to convince myself that the fact that I am afraid to keep writing is the fact that the play is getting good-that I need only the courage to forge on, like Atreyou and Artax in the
Swamps of Sadness scene from The Neverending Story. Poor Artax. I feel like he might have been a metaphor for faith and a part of Atreyou that had to die, if not for the expense of paying someone to take care of a horse on a low budget film. Atreyou was never the same after losing Artax. That's why he was so balls-out for the rest of the movie.
I think there is a part of me that has to die in order to finish this play. The routine that I've kept has been aimed at killing her. I'm going to the gym 4 times a week now, and while I need to adjust and enhance this routine, I have to remember what I've been doing it for. There is a part of me that needs to die, and it is my weight and my past that has been holding me back. It' s been hiding my bravery.
It's 3:40. Thank you. Tomorrow, I write.
