Soul Coughing

I'm tired from being sick, a little tired of being sick, but kind of okay that my body has forced me into a bit of a stupor. Two days this week I have spent on our living room couch, largely confined to soul coughing, reading Anne Lamott, napping, reading The New Yorker, thinking, sniffling, blowing my nose, reading The Sun Magazine, listening to a bit of music (but not much because my ears are stuffed and muffle the nuance of most anything), reading Laurie Halse Anderson, napping a bit, and then reading Donald Hall. I've mostly stayed off my phone and been on the computer only to write and read a few good articles. These have been my days. Well, all that and the usual amount of existential panic. I get that whether or not I'm sick.

This panic (which a more reasoned observer would likely call anxiety) stems in part from the fact that I'll soon quit my job and need another job. I can't think of much I want to do for a job. This apathy could be the sick and tired talking or me just being so burned out by the job I have, but it is a feeling and way of thinking that I have had for longer than this illness, longer than this calendar year, longer than my daughters have been alive, longer than I have been married. It doesn't help to have so enjoyed these days of being sick on the couch, to have savored them more than most any other days this year. I've read an absolute ton, done some writing, and had some ideas become maybe a pixel or two clearer. I still live with my usual panicked anxiety, but if I could live like this, even with the terrible, wet cough, I think I'd be happy.

There are jobs to which I will apply, even some teaching jobs to which I might send applications out of desperation. My hope is that one leads to something more interesting and something more interesting after that. Maybe I'll trip into some connection with writing. It could happen.

This sickness started over a week ago and continues. I stopped taking medicine for it. Rest seems the only cure. I'll get better. That or I'll die. Those are the two choices. It will take some time to figure out which way things turn out this time. To quell my existential panic about these things I remember that I've always gotten better and that evetually we all die. It will all happen.

For now I'm going out for a slow walk. Winter, like this cold, is hanging on longer than it should. The sky is too blue for the cold, and yet there it is. I'll pull on a hat and my fleece. The dog will get excited and whinny. Yes, I'll tell her, let's go together. She won't care where we are headed, whether spring has truly arrived, the quality of my wet cough, or jobs. She feels not the least bit of existential anxiety. Not ever.

Home I'll return to the couch. She will stand next to it, lick my hand or feet, and wag her tail. I'll pet her neck and scratch her behind. She will go lie on her blanket, I'll read more. Or maybe I'll stare out the window, perhaps into the future. When it's all too much, when the soul coughing wracks my chest and will, I'll lie me down to sleep and pray for something my soul to keep.

An Amazing Gift

"...the universe has sent me some amazing gifts just when I thought it had forgotten me."
— Carol Mikoda

I have good friends who write well.

The message above came to me this morning and has stuck with me all through a tough day. I've been feeling very much at the end of my rope for the last few months. There are times when I appreciate the goodness around and within me. Then there is all that dark time when I spiral. I've been so tired all day and while those sixteen words haven't been quite enough to fill me with energy, renew all my hopes, and get me over all my troubles, they have certainly buoyed me and allowed me to float a little better than otherwise.

What amazing gifts has the universe sent to you?

Open All Night

I have at least four friends struggling at least as much as I am. Each of us has hopes for how things will be and feel that we're coming up short. We all feel the gravitational pull of depression, the whirlpool spin of anxiety. It's said that misery loves company, but I wouldn't wish any of this on my worst enemy. I wouldn't even wish it on management at my job.

Speaking of which, five colleagues said today that they don't think they can come back to the job next year. One day, five people, desperation swimming in their eyes and vibrating in their voices. I nodded and said I'm sorry. Not that it's my fault, but I know the feeling. The mood on the job is dismal and getting worse. I don't see any hope there as I prepare my jump out the side door and pull the rip cord on my chute. I'll drift to a landing. Everyone left on board will crash and burn, I'm sorry to say.

I have much higher hopes for my friends outside of the job. Tonight I finished reading Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore which is one of my favorite books this year even if it came out 2012. A paragraph near the end gives me the hope I need. It says:

There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care. All the secrets in the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight. It takes forty-one seconds to climb a ladder three stories tall. It's not easy to imagine the year 3012, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. We have new capabilities now — strange powers we're still getting used to. The mountains are a message from Aldrag the Wyrm-Father. Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.

A lot of that doesn't make sense without reading the book, so buy it now and read it already. Even without reading every page, there's enough in that paragraph to build good hope.

To each of my friends struggling, we are immortal because of our friendship and the careful work we do running, reading, teaching, making art, raising our kids, loving our partners, cherishing our memories, or maybe even writing.

The secrets are right here before us. Yeah, I know you can see them too. The mountains, the drumlins all aligned, the Finger Lakes, the Thousand Islands, the sunset off the shore of Oswego, the path the dog takes through the neighborhood, the accumulating and then melting snow, the electronic signals connecting us across a world wide web, all of these are messages of hope.

My job is in a closed and walled ghetto, but every so often I remember that life is an open city and just reading a book is one way to wander in and invite others to join me. Come on, it's quitting time. There's plenty of light still in the sky and we're all together in this. I have the feeling, tonight at least, that we might just go on forever.

Hope Is A Good Thing?

“Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well.”

— Stephen King

““Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -”

— Emily Dickinson

“Everybody’s got a hold on hope, It’s the last thing that’s holding me”

— Guided By Voices

For three months I've hoped for a good thing. I have tried to keep that hope from overcoming me since things depended on other people's decisions. I applied my best efforts, showed the best of who I am, and did well, but Tuesday the funding was erased and my hopes evaporated. I had gotten my hopes up far enough that the fall knocked me pretty much out.

Austin Kleon wrote about Groundhog Day and a quote from Bill Murray's character Phil Connors:

In my favorite line from the movie, he asks his bowling buddy, “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?'

And his buddy, who’s a little drunk, looks at him and says, “That about sums it up for me.”

Yesterday, I was that drunk buddy. Such is the effect of disappointment on me. Today, I wonder am I using hope the wrong way. 

I've said that I write without the goals of getting rich or published, but maybe that's not honest. I don't believe I'll get rich by writing, but what is posting to this site but an attempt to be published? 

My therapist says it's natural to want to be heard, seen, and noticed. I asked, isn't it childish to need that? I'm caught between wanting to be known and thinking I should find worthiness from within. Needing approval seems a bad sign. She said, needing to be heard is different from wanting approval. I suppose so. 

This week's disappointment was the result of having built things up such that I was already on my way, out of unhappiness I've felt for years. I soared on that hope then crashed so hard when it disappeared that I still feel broken. 

To hell with the thing with feathers. 

Why am I even writing this? I'm trying to write without hope that it (or I) will be noticed. Austin Kleon seems to say, do the work, learn the craft, and keep going. Do it as if nothing matters. Keep writing and go through the days. But why do something without hope it will lead somewhere? How do I go forward without hope for some result? 

This week I wrote my 4,000th Morning Page. That's eight reams of paper. I've written three pages by hand every morning since July 5, 2014. After this week's disappointment, I wonder, so what? Why am I doing them? What do I hope for and expect from them? I don't have a good answer, but I'll do three pages tomorrow anyway.  

My wife suggests, instead of hoping for some specific or trying to figure out what it's all for, that I concentrate on doing one thing to make today good. What can you do to live well today? 

So I write without hoping it's enough to live well today. 

I feel I'm supposed to be more than I am. I keep hoping and when that hope fails, I lament how little I've accomplished. I'm sure I've written about being content and understanding the good life comes from acceptance, but what role do dreaming and hope play? They seem utterly not of the moment and lead to disastrous falls, but I can't imagine going ahead without them. 

About now, both my wife and therapist would suggest that it's not either hope or the moment but both at once. There are times that makes some sense. Right now, not so much. 

I want to say I'm letting go of hope, but this week of hopelessness has been too awful. I don't know what to hope for or how. Disappointment broke me. I'm not convinced hope is a good thing, that it never stops at all, or that it can hold me. As for one thing to make today good, I've written this. Has it worked? I guess I hope so.