It's eleven forty-three on a Monday night.
I don't have a headache, unless I think about having or (interestingly enough) not having a headache. Maybe that's the nature of headaches, or the word headache... maybe the conservatives are right and words have an objective power to injure and as such must be banned. This is probably why so many of them refuse to read.
For the past week and a half I've been writing. I've been making progress. I'm at 30 or so pages, all roughly sketched dialogue and a few bits of narration just to make it look like I know what I'm doing. But, I'm doubting myself... not really. I'm doubting my work, which feels worse somehow. I feel the only redeeming factor is the fact that it's taken me so damn long to write this much and if I were actually an awful writer I'd have probably not been so consistently forced to stop writing and consider the validity of what I thought I might have been trying to say.
What's less comforting is the realization that I have nothing to do aside from write this goddamned awful story and then, when I feel too tired to continue some train of thought and recognize I wouldn't watch a sitcom with writing so clever, I stop writing and spend three to four hours wondering if I've made my characters too old, or not old enough, or too clever, or too obtuse, or whether a certain character's father, who's never mentioned in the story, having asked his girlfriend to move in with him ten years before the story begins would influence the way said character orders a glass of water.
I guess my point is there's a lot to consider and i can't seem to stop considering it. Ultimately I don't feel it's unfair in any way, given that I continually make the choice to write and it's not like I'm lifting things or wearing a suit. I suppose I could wear a suit... class up the fucking place.
But, and maybe this is where I was going with this, I don't have much else to do with myself. From cartoons and Muppet versions of Robert Lewis Stevenson short stories I was of the belief that cabin fever resulted in crazy hallucination and the desire to eat giant food that might in fact be some poor bastard you're stuck in a confined space with. I guess I'm more misanthropic and given to fits of despair. Maybe I don't have cabin fever. I don't see anything really motivating me though, save for the perverse urge to carry on despite the apparent hopelessness of it all. Hopelessness might be the wrong word. Pointlessness? I don't enjoy television anymore, because after the first season of most television shows (the ones that aren't comedies) the general tone shifts from interesting to desperate for attention... the shows become more advertisments for the next week's episode and rather than carry a story they seem to offer just enough bits of story to hint that something might be happening and I feel less entertained and more annoyed that they aren't just getting on with the damn thing. Notable exceptions to this general rule probably exist, but fuck if I've noticed.
So television's not helping much. Maybe Bradbury was right.
Porn's out, as I've explained.
I don't know anyone.
I have no hope of doing anything but writing in the foreseeable future.
So, what I notice is that I can keep writing because I'll fail at anything else, including being a real person and having any hope of enjoying anything at all about the world.
