Year of Quotes No. 43
Oct 24
Pumpkins and Pick-Me-Ups
As I look at what I’ve put out into the world here recently, I see words I don’t like staring back at me. Struggle. Disappointment. Discouraged. Stressed. “Where does this restlessness and anxiety come from all of a sudden?” The truth is it’s not sudden. It’s stealthy. It’s silent. That unhappiness is creeping up on me again, slowly, slowly insinuating itself into my everyday. But I am getting better at this. I am getting better at seeing those telltale signs.
The frustrations and pressures of my jobs seem to be compounded daily. But is that really true, or is it just that my ability to handle the stress is diminishing? In any case, I feel myself stepping away from the emotional ties that bind me to those places. While that serves it’s purpose, which is to eliminate my stress and anxiety, it also deadens the thing that makes me good at what I do. To not care about the place and its problems is to not care about its people. I can’t kill one and keep the other. So they both die.
The thing is, it’s a creeping death. That pulling away spills over into the entirety of my life, into my personal relationships, into this world. Usually I just disappear. Where that’s not possible, I put the shield up. Mostly you can’t tell the difference, because I can laugh, I can smile. I can interact like a normal person. But I don’t feel, not in the same way. My emotions stay inside the shield where they’re safe. And yours stay outside, where they can’t touch me.
Now I have to choose: shut down, protect and conserve my emotions; or refuse to shut down and replenish them.
I said choose, but it’s not so clean and simple, because this is like a full out war. And I am not in the rear, methodically plotting and planning the best means of attack. I am in the front. I am fighting in the trenches, where it’s dirty, and fast, where the enemy is staring you in the face. It would be so easy to surrender; I’ve surrendered before without even realizing that my lines had been over-run. But now that I know, now that I understand, the only real choice is to fight.
I can spend time with people who love me. I can take walks with Louis. I can chat up my customers and remember why it is that I serve. I can obsorb the joy from those situations.
Yesterday I spent the afternoon at my sister’s house with my great friend, Toni, and her son Duncan. I had fun, I laughed, I replenished some of my emotional reserves. On my thankfulness bracelet, I have a bead for my family and friends, and a bead for all of the places that welcome me in. That’s what I have to keep in mind. Those are the things that I’m fighting for, and the things that are fighting for me.
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♦
the Infinite Monkey speaks: on the see saw
Random brilliance from across the blogosphere…
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It’s a learning experience, an exercise in trust and communication, and screwing over your partner when the moment is right.
– Nicole Smeltzer
from:
Promise No Cherry Bombs (comments)
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The Undead Interview, Part One (with Clay Morgan)
So, on Monday I shared a little pop culture quiz that I did with Clay Morgan. Today I have something bigger to pass along. Literally and figuratively.
Clay was gracious enough to answer a lot of questions, talking to me about himself and his book Undead as I stumbled my way through my first interview ever. (My plan was to ask more questions than I needed and then edit down, but I can’t bring myself to cut anything.) Thank you so much, Mr. Clay Morgan, for indulging me, for being patient, and for being such an interesting person to interview!
Here is part one of the interview; I hope the rest of you enjoy it as much as I did.
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I thought about posting the second half tomorrow, but I don’t like to wait – so I won’t.
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Audio File:
Tune in next week for part two, where we dig into Clay’s awesome new book, Undead!
Just as an aside…
As I’ve been editing these pieces, a lot of things kept running through my mind:
- I totally feel like Yzma from The Emperor’s New Groove, “Is that my voice? Is that MY voice?”
- Is Clay a mind-reader? He keeps answering my next question before I ask my next question.
- I really want to put up the Clay and Michelle icons so they can have some fake conversations, basically to let out the running commentary in my head about how awkward I am.
- Yeah, so I use about 10 words where 3 would do just fine.
What’s running through my mind right now is, “Only one of those things is about Clay and the actual interview; you’re, like, completely self-centered.” The worst part is that the little Michelle icon is saying it. *sigh* I’m thinking there’s something really not right about that.
Anyway…
Don’t forget to check out Clay’s Undead page at ClayWrites.com/Undead
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steadily skipping stones 