Personal Journal

Garbage entry 1

Back to work on Tuesday, lots on my mind.
I actually have two writing projects to do this week. That first campfire I joined… I thought it had died, but people have pushed it along, and lo, two months later, my second turn is up. I think it’s a lot of teenagers in it – people who take themselves too seriously and haven’t stopped to consider how unprofessional a rushed job looks. I haven’t read up on it, but I will at some point today. My and a friend are going to quietly try to blow the rest of them out of the water… gently, if you’ll permit the clashing images…
And that same friend and I have our own little campfire going (which you can read on my portfolio somewhere or other, called Elves). It’s my turn on that one. I take that one more seriously, because it’s an exercise for me, in consistently producing something of sufficient quality that I can look at myself in the mirror and say “you’re on the way again”. I also have some ambition for it, but I have to temper that.
I’ve been watching my soap operas at night on the Soap Network. I’m a little pissed off at One Life to Live for killing off Al, who the new Executive Producer canned because he’s not good looking enough. He’s going out and getting all good-looking people, regardless of acting talent (because he says you can teach anyone to act), and writing off quality people. I hate that … But I digress as usual… They’ve started something new in the commercial slots on that network. The One-Minute Soap. They just finished one, and they’re starting another. They’re 30-second commercial slots, not ads, though. They tell a story, a little soap opera. The first one was about a woman who was set up on a blind date with a younger man, a doctor, and how her predisposition to fail at relationships made her force him away. They run one segment a week, and it ran 5 or 6 weeks (so it’s really a 3-minute soap). This new one looks even better. A writer and an unemployed woman meet in a coffee house, and she strikes up a conversation with him – no romance yet – just about her job search, and he’s sort of kurt and trying to keep her from interrupting him, but she’s very gregarious.
Anyhow, jeezus, what’s with the brain. I’m narrating too much.
That’s what I want my campfire with Orion’s to be. Small enough to manage, but regular enough to require me to think about the writing all the time. To think about what I want to do next.
That first campfire, the one with Griskell – I sure do like my character there, old Griskell. We’ll just have to see where it leads us and that group of novices.

I’m editing my emotional self out of my journal lately. That’s what happens when I fear too much the judgement of the reader here. Frankly, there are some people that I respect reading this, and I think it’s playing into my Chameleon – my instinctive reaction to be what I think “they” want me to be – to avoid conflict, judgement, repercussions.

I’ve been wanting to talk about my intercourse life (I’m writing at work, so I can’t use a shorter, 3-letter word). See, my girlfriend, Jean, is on some sort of psychoactive (prozac, I think) as part of the control mechanims while she’s in seeing a psychologist about her obsessiveness. It’s been a very progressive time in our relationship. It’s helped a ton. But our intercourse life has gone to hell because her body doesn’t respond to stimuli at all well anymore. It’s not negative – it’s just not gaining the momentum one needs for release.

So I’m an empathic partner. I draw my energy from the energy of my partner every bit as much, and in many areas more, than from my own interests. We’re down to having intercourse … once every two or four weeks, sadly enough. Nothing has changed in my drive, which is cyclical anyway. I’m more like a camel than a thoroughbred. I can go a week or two not worrying about it, then a thought grips me, or a scent, or more than likely, an image in my mind, and I obsess and wish to act out.

Not having recourse for expression or outlet, that’s starting to become physically, emotionally, and spiritually painful (I may be wrong about spiritual; I may be at such a close point subjectively that not all of my sense are giving correct input, but rather, are giving selfish input). Resignation.
Why bother?
I of course have ways to vent the pent up energy by myself, and I do, and that gets me back to a level ground. I’m just so disappointed, and I have nowhere to go with that disappointment. I can’t tell her how I feel, literally, this time. Because she can’t help it – it’s a side effect of the medication.

My journal is just a fractured piece of shit now. Hell with it, I’ll enter it and move on.

It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn