I'm still damp from the rain, and the A/C is on right above my cube. My hands are stiff from the cold. The rain caused enough traffic backup that it took me 50 minutes to get in to work this morning, and I live less than 15 miles away. Yet still no destructive hail that would destroy my roof and necessitate its insured replacement. Just a lot of water, all at once.
I'm having to force myself to write today. My instinct, or resolution, or whatever you want to call it is to just hide away and be a hermit, and refuse all human contact. This morning I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror. All I see is failure.
(I told you this would be whiny.)
See, my life has been kind of a shambles for the last couple years. There isn't any one particular point at which I can say "and this is where things went wrong"-- it's been a sort of cumulative process-- but the last couple of years with the breakup and the year in the Gulag and the mess with back taxes and all has borne naught but ill fruit.
The thing that has kept me going has been the vision of being a filmmaker/auteur/artist, of making things that people like. I've had a couple of small successes in varied arenas, but nothing has ever really come from it. And now it's hit the point where I just can't do it anymore. I have to crash.
So for a moment, take away the dreams and look at the details of my life:
1.) My house is a mess. It's called the Big Broken Box™ for a reason: aside from the general clutter, there is a lot of repair that needs to be done. The only time-critical piecs are the roof and the front porch; the rest is liveable if uncomfortable, but it is uncomfortable enough that I can't have people over.
2.) Money. I'm in debt, though not as much as I was-- but the tax fairy has a way of fucking me in the ass every few years that puts me into a spiral of playing catch-up, which is where I am now. as much as I firmly believe in savings, mine have been rather thoroughly decimated, and I have no buffer for things like emergency car repairs or medical procedures or the like, and money to finish the porch and fix the roof is right out. Plus the 'Sploder is getting long in the tooth and will need to be replaced soon, and as a trade-in it's not gonna pull a lot of weight.
3.) My love life is pretty much nonexistent. Various reasons, but I think a lot of it has to do with my sense of self and purpose, which is now very much on the brink of collapse. I'm very much hiding from any romantic involvements right now, in every sense of the word. Part of the self-worth has to do with my desire to complete my own feature (i.e. on that I wrote and directed) before feeling like I had accomplished anything. I know that's a little twisted and wrong because I've never been able to sit back and rest on my laurels, so there would always be the next project to do.
I've been getting advice to essentially look on the bright side, that this is a time of cleansing and regrouping. One can say much the same about an enema, but that an enema is (usually) voluntary, and it's over relatively quick.
Look, this is a dark time for me. Where I once had a pretty clear idea of the future, it's now a big, dark, gaping maw and I can't see past it. Everything is shaky.