Wave of Mutilation

In High Fidelity (both the novel and the film), the main character Rob drops out of college, ends up working at a record store and generally loses the plot all because of a woman. I can empathize, though not just because of the whole been done wrong by a Jezebelle thing (that comparison would be too easy and as such, a bit too trite as well). Instead, I'm talking about the whole losing the plot.

When you go through your own life, working that nine to five job, living for the first and the fifteenth of the month when that check gets deposited into your account, and maybe if you're lucky, the pleasant chats and the odd back rubs that lead to some rumpty rump, you get complacent. Not necessarily content, not necessarily happy, but complacent. It's that routine that lowers your guard and dulls the mind. And it's only when something unexpected and dreadful gets thrown your way do you realize how fragile that routine is. I keep thinking of a spinning top on a table that gets shaken--before it was spinning in a steady upright position, and not it's just swirling and toppling chaotically. Maybe there's more apropos or clever imagery, but give me a break, I'm just saying shit off the top of my head right now.

So September and October was full of routine. I was writing consistently. I had a sorta kinda relationship. I had a routine. And then at the end of October, the person that I had kept letting back into my heart managed to burn everything down. But still, I kept writing. I wrote the thirty-plus pages that would serve as the ending to the novel then. In the middle of November, I found out that my blood potassium level was dangerously high, and that my kidneys (which had already been significantly damaged by the malignant hypertension) were starting to deteriorate again. At the same time, I caught a bad cold which has left me with a hacking cough that I still have.

I kinda lost the plot these last couple of weeks.

I've been wondering about what I'm going to do with my life. I can go back and do contract work if I need the money, but the legal lifestyle probably contributed to my health issues to begin with. Plus, I fucking hate the law and its endless grind of worthless conflict. And writing, well, most writers have day jobs. In fact, the paralegal at GatewayGig had previously written a published book--and she was still a miserable paralegal at GatewayGig.

And I haven't been contemplating not just the professional aspect of my life, but the social aspect as well. I used to be the intense melancholy romantic, looking for the one who would melt my heart and make it beat faster at the same time, searching for that soul mate over the horizon. And now, well, some time has passed and that hurt, angry part of me was right--I have nothing to give. Well, that's not accurate. I can give a warm body, some clever words, but after that, I'm afraid I'm spent. And if that's all I can give, then really, what is the point?

But the worst thing about the past couple of weeks is that I had lost faith in my writing. It's a horrible feeling to write sixty thousand words (two hundred and fifty pages) and hear that internal voice telling you that you're a fraud, that what you've written is crap, that this isn't the novel you have in you, that you've wasted your time.

I am trying to get it together though. I might as well finish the fifty to forty pages left, and see if it is really crap. If it is, I guess I gotta revise it till it's not, or starting working on another novel.