I have been watching terrible TV. Yes, amid complaints of not having enough time to write my own fiction I am taking the time out of my life to sit before the flickering box and watch reality shows about nothing. It’s the people in them that fascinate me. I like people-watching and eavesdropping on strangers, says my excuse, but really the fact is that after a morning of writing on deadline and a day of working toward more deadlines and then the subway ride home I just want to lounge around and do absolutely nothing. I deserve as much, don’t I?

This one particular show that I forced E to sit through last night involves a father and daughter. The father is belligerent. The daughter has not spoken to him, until now, for years. Everyone blames her for her father’s behavior—they see him in her; and she can’t get away from it.

I, myself, have not spoken to my own father for years. I want nothing to do with him. But I would probably be seen as his, no matter how far or long I separate myself.

In the show, the father chooses to save his daughter from a game eviction instead of saving himself.

I turned to E and I said: My father wouldn’t have done that for me, would he?

And E said: No, definitely not. He would have saved himself.

And I don’t know why this bothered me—like my father and I would ever be in the same room, let alone on a reality game show together—but it did.

* * *

Speaking of mindless entertainment, I am reading a fun book at work. It is about vampires. Teenage vampires. I don’t tend to read fantasy or whatever-something-about-vampires would be in real life. I like literary fiction. I haven’t even read Harry Potter. (Please don’t reprimand me about that! I’ll read the series someday, I’m sure.)

But reading this manuscript at work has become a guilty pleasure. I am reading it over the freelance copy editor, entering my own edits, prepping it for the editor and author to see. It’s work. It’s due soon. And yet…

And yet all I want to do is read it! I have other work to do aside from it, and I keep getting interrupted with more urgent things, but all I want to do is close the door and keep reading. It’s addicting.

Who am I, this person dying to get to her desk to see what happens to the vampires, feeling sorry for reality-show contestants, not writing anything worth showing to anyone else?

It’s an odd summer.

* * *

I like my new boss. We had a conversation about books once—he was reading Miranda July’s short story collection and I was asking questions because I wanted to read it—and lo and behold he came into my office yesterday to lend me the book. I was excited because I still have it on hold at the library, and with the queue of people ahead of me it’ll take MONTHS before the book is in my hands. To anyone who knows me, really knows me, they will know that I adore short stories. (They are so delicious.) So, borrowing a short-story collection can easily make my day, and this one did.

I’ll start reading this weekend.

* * *

I have goals when it comes to this current freelance project. The comment on my last post was right: I need to stop this. It will be over by the end of September. In the meantime, I have to be focused to make these deadlines. My goal for today is to finish chapter 3.

I have not yet finished chapter 3.

The scene takes place in a circus.

And here is where I’m stuck: riding around in a clown car, juggling sticks of hissing dynamite, unable to get to the next page.

It’s an odd summer indeed.

Sometimes do you find yourself wondering, Is this my life? I have these moments often. Like now. Sitting here writing on deadline, a project that is meaningless, except that it’s worth more than two months’ rent, sitting here, thirty-four minutes before I have to get on the subway to go to my day job, where there are unrelated deadlines, and wishing I didn’t sign up to do this writing project. Wishing I could be writing something else. Also knowing if I could be writing something else, anything else, I’d probably be talking myself out of writing it. Insulting myself. Making myself unable to write. So it goes with me. So here I am. A song I like has just come on my playlist and I’m shaking my foot to it—out of rhythm probably; in this life I have no musical ability whatsoever—and I see people watching me. I forget where I am often, what I look like to others, how when I might feel unhappy I might look startlingly happy to someone else, and how weird that is. I am writing things I do not want to be writing because we are in the red (I don’t even know what that means except I am told this is true, this state of red) and on days like this I feel boxed up, folded up inside this small compartment, waiting, just waiting, to be let out. I really don’t know how to start my life over, I really don’t. I mean I do, but I don’t have the time to do it. That’s an excuse. In this life, I have too many.

Someone at work quit yesterday.

I ask myself:

How many creative people have you seen come and go from these day jobs you find yourself in? First, the commiseration of time lost. Then the connection, knowing you are struggling with something similar, the comfort of having someone else in it with you. Then the confessions. Then watching them break free.

Dozens of people.

I swear it, dozens.

Writers mostly. Also filmmakers. And artists. People who are braver than you are (and more financially free?).

And you are happy for them.

You are.

You are very happy.

You are also envious.

And you are also sad.

But you don’t want to tell anyone that. Just because you’re stuck living in a box doesn’t mean anyone else should be.

Yep, it’s that time of year again. The winds of rejection are blowing, last week right at me.

There are the slips, the ones smaller than your hand that fly out of the envelope when torn open. The ones so flimsy they drift, because you let them, deep into the unknowable caverns under the couch. Some envelopes contain beheaded stories—first page shorn off and stuffed in. And sometimes there’s that scrawl on the bottom. Advice. Or thanks for trying us. Or meaningless drivel I can’t decipher. My favorite scrawl of the summer (e: yes, I found the rejection hidden on the shelf) was the one that said my story was passed around to the editors, asking me to try another story with them; standard slip encouragement. What I liked was this choice line: “You’re good,” it said, causing me to blush, maybe, just a little, except that between the lines what it really says is: “You’re good but not good enough.”

I’m not too bothered by it. And I’m not too bothered by the other two unsigned and unscrawled rejections, not one bit.

What I am is detached. I’m looking on from far away. A spectator in the stands, high up in the nosebleeds… I don’t feel much of anything except the spins.

Meanwhile…

Meanwhile my time is otherwise occupied. So many writing projects at once! And some I don’t want to be doing!

So meanwhile, here’s my Meez. Everyone else is doing it, and I love to distract myself so I couldn’t help it:

I pay no attention to the world around me and I also slouch, so I guess it’s fitting. Plus, I’m very partial to red shoes.

I am a study in extremes.

One day I feel good about something I’ve written; the next day I want to tear it up and spit on it and stomp it into an unrecognizable mush and kick it around a little after that, get my aggression out, make myself feel worse than I already do.

There should be a middle ground here: Certainly my writing needs work, I can’t deny that. But do I need to be so catastrophic?

Maybe you have to hit rock bottom with your writing, with your confidence in your writing—and without any semblance of confidence, there is no writing. Maybe you have to fall. And fall hard. After that maybe you can go on.

By you, clearly I mean me. Maybe I have to go splat.

Yesterday, let’s not talk about yesterday. E asked me how it went; I told him we couldn’t talk about it, so we watched an awful movie instead. He wanted to talk about it, he tried, he doesn’t like seeing me dangling here, but I couldn’t put it to words, this hopelessness, I get all defensive when I talk about it, so it’s better to be quiet on the subject.

To avoid it at all costs.

Things are not going well. But today feels a bit—a solid smidge—better than yesterday, so maybe I’m climbing back up.

(If you want the truth, I know I haven’t hit rock bottom yet: there’s still a ways to fall. But let’s pretend I don’t know that. Maybe I can avoid feeling worse.)

Avoidance is one of my great talents.

My laptop was fixed in a matter of hours. I sent it out Monday night. It arrived in Memphis on Tuesday morning; it got its new top case by lunch; it was sent back for early a.m. delivery before I got back from work. Wednesday morning it was back home. I didn’t pay a cent, not even for shipping. All that angst, all the plans for productivity on paper, plus the allowances to sleep in late… well, thanks to Apple being incredibly efficient—really, thank you!—I didn’t get to try my experimentation with the good old-fashioned pen. I’m sure it’s fun and all, but I sure do like having this laptop back. And the new top case came with a new keyboard… such soft, luscious keys. I swear the keys are even better than they were before. What spring! Anyway, do I have anything to show for this?

I didn’t write.

Instead, I’ve been thinking.

I had a conversation with another writer who works in a non-creative, repetitive job just like mine. Our job is to be perfect—no joke—our job is to find other people’s mistakes while being sure to not make any of our own. It is an impossible job, really, if you think about it.

Anyway, this other writer said she feels squashed, her true nature—the creative person she really is—squashed under the unending details that we must pay attention to in this job. To check ISBNs, that at once meaningless yet immensely significant string of numbers used to identify every book sold in stores. Books could not sell without those numbers; therefore those numbers must be correct; but do you realize there are people bent over desks with pencils clasped in their cramping paws checking those numbers digit by digit, the zeros and 978s and hyphens in just the right spots swimming in their muddled brains? She hates checking ISBNs, she told me. How is this her life? It’s not just the ISBNs that are squashing her, but the idea of pushing so much of her personality aside to be who she is when she is doing this work. She doesn’t know if she can do this anymore. She’s exhausted, immensely exhausted.

Do you think I am talking about myself, that “Other Writer” does not exist and she is really me pining away at my desk, staring longingly out the window at my very own brick wall?

Other Writer is not me.

She does exist, I promise you, though her feeling of being squashed rings true to me; how could it not? I do have to be someone else to be at my job. But that’s how it’s been for me in every job. Worse were jobs where I was expected to be more social. I was a terrible reporter, having to ask searching questions of strangers. I was a horrendous salesgirl, very lucky to not be working on commission.

I don’t mind the ISBNs; they aren’t squashing me to a pulp, not yet.

Besides, we are all squashed, I tell myself. Though I do believe there are people out in this world who get paid to do what they love. We have heard of those mythic beings; they’re not all Hollywood actors and pro surfers. (Are they?)

I hope I can last at this, I said to Other Writer.

And she said, You will. You have your mornings, where you get up early to write.

And I nodded.

And looked away guiltily.

Because not one morning this week did I get up early to write.

Let’s change that, okay? Next week.