There is nothing profound in this post
I am having what is technically speaking a "hormonal dip." It's been years now since I've been tested, but I remember what it feels like, and I still don't like it. I'm probably the only thirty six year-old out there who is looking forward to menopause, because at least once I'm through it my body will have more stable hormonal levels. And that's part of my problem: part of me is already there, or at least likes to occasionally visit. Sometimes I cycle through fine, and sometimes, like this week, it hits me like a frying pan to the head. Except the result is not so much pain as a stupor. I've gotten good at faking it, and I can do functional things like dishes and laundry and feed my kid, but anything that involves engaging my brain is a trick. I'd like to say that this is a restful fallow period, but it's restful in the way that locking someone in a closet is restful. Technically, you could use the time to sleep and rest, but it's really hard to forget you're in a closet. Not much air, stinky shoes, and no bed.
The nice thing is this time I'm not having a mental meltdown along with it, which is very pleasant, because it means I don't have Weird Emotional Shit stuffed in here: either there isn't any, or I put it in the sub-basement, and it takes a serious fucking smackdown to get me in there. So this post isn't going to be full of unburied angst or sorrow or even frustration. It is full of meh.
(The funniest part of this state is that it fucks with some neural pathway in my head and brings on the aphasia and something else that makes for the damndest spelling errors. Earlier I for a few minutes I was "thirty-sex" and I was, briefly, full of "meth," not "meh." Ah, brain. You are so strange.)
I'd just ride this out and say it's a chance to sit on the couch and eat bon-bons before NaNoWriMo starts, but I have gotten a bee in my bonnet, and I'm obsessed with two things: making money and getting my body back on a better track. Which means technically I should be exercising right now, not blogging, or that once I post this I should go to the gym. Maybe I will. God knows if I try to write I will just blather through another three hundred words, aggravate my shoulder, and slip into another hormonal coma where I find that it's time to go shadow a BD classroom at noon and the morning just went into the toilet, again. The argument could be if I go to the gym I will stimulate other chemicals which will override the hormones and make me Fabulous! and I will slide into the Writing Machine Mode, draft a few short stories, a novella, and finish the research for DOUBLE BLIND all before midnight.
The problem with this hormone thing is that on the surface it looks like a nice chance to rest. One could argue that I could just let it go by, knowing it will pass and that I'll probably come out perky as all fuck once it's done. If it were just about writing, I would, but I've found that when I give into it, it's like sinking into sludge, and nothing at all whatsoever gets done. I've given up hating it, because it does no good and just puts me in conflict with myself. I guess my best strategy is this, blogging about it and taking a flashlight into the closet and shining it into the corners until I find the sorry little green blob with sad yellow eyes that is this Whatever The Fuck It Is. I don't hate it, and I don't exactly embrace it. I just aim the flashlight at it, then lean forward until it can see me, too, and then I say, in my best teacher voice, "Is this really what you want?" And the truth is, it doesn't. But it doesn't know what it does want, exactly. So once again I will sit with it, like I have learned to do with every weird thing my body throws at me, and do my best to be patient and learn.
Except today, green buddy, you're going to talk to me while we're both on the elliptical, or while we're doing lat pull-downs.
The nice thing is this time I'm not having a mental meltdown along with it, which is very pleasant, because it means I don't have Weird Emotional Shit stuffed in here: either there isn't any, or I put it in the sub-basement, and it takes a serious fucking smackdown to get me in there. So this post isn't going to be full of unburied angst or sorrow or even frustration. It is full of meh.
(The funniest part of this state is that it fucks with some neural pathway in my head and brings on the aphasia and something else that makes for the damndest spelling errors. Earlier I for a few minutes I was "thirty-sex" and I was, briefly, full of "meth," not "meh." Ah, brain. You are so strange.)
I'd just ride this out and say it's a chance to sit on the couch and eat bon-bons before NaNoWriMo starts, but I have gotten a bee in my bonnet, and I'm obsessed with two things: making money and getting my body back on a better track. Which means technically I should be exercising right now, not blogging, or that once I post this I should go to the gym. Maybe I will. God knows if I try to write I will just blather through another three hundred words, aggravate my shoulder, and slip into another hormonal coma where I find that it's time to go shadow a BD classroom at noon and the morning just went into the toilet, again. The argument could be if I go to the gym I will stimulate other chemicals which will override the hormones and make me Fabulous! and I will slide into the Writing Machine Mode, draft a few short stories, a novella, and finish the research for DOUBLE BLIND all before midnight.
The problem with this hormone thing is that on the surface it looks like a nice chance to rest. One could argue that I could just let it go by, knowing it will pass and that I'll probably come out perky as all fuck once it's done. If it were just about writing, I would, but I've found that when I give into it, it's like sinking into sludge, and nothing at all whatsoever gets done. I've given up hating it, because it does no good and just puts me in conflict with myself. I guess my best strategy is this, blogging about it and taking a flashlight into the closet and shining it into the corners until I find the sorry little green blob with sad yellow eyes that is this Whatever The Fuck It Is. I don't hate it, and I don't exactly embrace it. I just aim the flashlight at it, then lean forward until it can see me, too, and then I say, in my best teacher voice, "Is this really what you want?" And the truth is, it doesn't. But it doesn't know what it does want, exactly. So once again I will sit with it, like I have learned to do with every weird thing my body throws at me, and do my best to be patient and learn.
Except today, green buddy, you're going to talk to me while we're both on the elliptical, or while we're doing lat pull-downs.