It Might As Well Be Spring

I'm so restless. You'd think that without a job I'd be all rested. No. The website is done and loaded onto the host server. It is supposed to be active tomorrow. My marketing postcards are designed and tomorrow I go to a printer to get a quote. I need letterhead, but that will take me two minutes to put together. I've been a cleaning fool all day. The office and bathroom are spotless, the shower rod is fixed.

I'm eager to get this photo thing off the ground. It will help give me a feeling purpose. Monday there are a few things to do for the business, and of course the resumes to send out, but there really is no putting off the PhD applications. The time has come to face the beast of a writing sample and get it done.

For a writing program, DePaul really required very little writing, and almost no research. My last research paper was absolute crap, so I have to reach back to my second year to come up with anything. The idea is actually pretty good: Edmund Burke, the father of modern whiteness. But I know it's not strong enough to submit to the University of Chicago, so I have to go back through it. If I decide to go for an MFA, the fiction I have is better, but I have absolutely no confidence that it's any good. This photography thing is a sure bet when compared to these PhD applications.

Yet, the past few years have been all about facing the demons and doing what seems to be the most impossible. If I get that paper whipped into shape by the end of October -- and that's a generous schedule -- I still have two months to get my applications in.

A competitive drive and an utter fear of failure are a deadly combination. Add to that the growing feeling of self loathing if I do nothing and I have created a situation where I am absolutely assured of being miserable.

Rehearsals for the chorus started last week. I sit in those rehearsals and look these guys, most of whom have held the same job, lived in the same home, dated and lived with the same men for years. Decades. They all seem completely happy, and I wonder how it is that they stand it. Yes, the comfort must be nice; the security of knowing what next month is going to look like, knowing your bills are going to be paid. But I wonder if they look at their lives and think that this is what they had in mind as a kid growing up. What is it like not to yearn for more, to feel complete and content? There have been a few times in my life when I've felt that, and shortly after I realize that I'm comfortable I become bored.

I feel like being laid off in July wasn't the start of a new chapter in my life, but the beginning of a whole new volume and right now I'm stuck in the introduction. But, it feels like the biggest and best volume yet to be written. How don't know how to define it, but I feel like I'm on the edge of greatness. I don't mean history-making greatness or vast fame and fortune. I'm talking about the pinnacle of success. If life is a mountain climb, I've cleared the foothills and now I'm getting serious.

I'm wrestling with the differentiating between feeling restless and feeling fruitless. Yet, I have a website about to be born that didn't exist last week. I created that out my own brain and a book. I have a collection of short stories that is shaping up. So, fruitless this time has not been.

But, it's tempting to feel that way when there is no objective external validation. External validation at times in the past has been my reason for living. Feeling like I need it is more a habit than a real need. Still, it would be an indication of progress.

Meanwhile, I wait for the birth of my website and I have a bedroom to clean.