d102918 megan wants to know if i’m OK with her and Ian taking naps in her bed. she says “now i know we gotta keep our shirts on” good lord. i don’t know if i’m ok with it or not. so i just won’t answer that one yet; the shower noise goes on upstairs; milie’s right on schedule. it’s like there’s two of me in this sack of crap i call my body; one of them “wants to be a writer” and the other one is like “why the fuck am i up at 5:09 typing random bullshit for no reason”? one of them is like “it’s OK; we’ll catch up on grading and everything else” and the other one is like “Nigga you gonna lose your goddamn job if you’re not careful” i don’t want to do a shitty job at my job. it’s just SO HARD TO WORK on the weekends or at night. and it’s so hard to actually be focused and efficient during the day. I sit there and stare at the emails until a new one shows up and then i take forever to answer it and in between i fiddle aorund with random shit like the formatting of an announcement or something, i don’t know. if i could just get my shit together is something i’ve been telling myself for years. now to be fari i must have got some of it together, or else i wouldn’t have this job in the first place. i have managed to get some shit done. it would just be nice to be able to live day to day without needing the panic monkey to make me keep up or get caught up or keep rushing to get caught up and then slack off and let myself get behind again. it really is rather draining to do it that way. i moved the computer in the basement ostensibly because i wanted my bedroom to not be my office too. but why? i think it has something to do with the part of me that “wants to be a writer”--that part also wants to not be on the comuter all the time. wants to not just default to sitting down and staring at the screen, being involved with work but not getting any work done. just kind of surfing the edge of work, while staring at a screen and clicking and pecking and acting basically like a hypnotized zombie in a stew of disjointed informational signal. signal is signal. searching searching no signal. but who knows. maybe that was bullshit. am i really going to go donw in that wretched basement to work? while no one is in the house? no sunlight? faint smell of bleach and cat pee? weird lighting? dusty concrete blocks? is it even ok to keep the computer down there or will it get damp and moldy or something? I don’t know, dude. I just needed a change. the part of me that “wants to be a writer” gets a little desperate sometimes. i think because the part of me that oversees the parts of me sometimes thinks it has to be all or nothing. Like either i have to be a full time professional succesful published writer, or else it’s all bullshit and i should stop wasting time. i mean, maybe that part has kind of a point. but i don’t know. maybe not. maybe there is an in between if you can find one and define one for yourself with some kind of honesty and integrity. how do you get honesty and integrity? usually by having friends and talking to them and getting a little inspiration from them and then comparing what they say and what you say to them with the stuff that goes through your mind in your quiet moments. so that’s why it’s hard to have any kind of in between or any kind of vocation or avocation when you’re isolated. you have no one to help you figure out what’s bullshit and what’s not. meanwhile, people are figuring out mathematical proofs and equations that other people have been trying to figure out for years. quantum computers are becoming a thing, slowly but inexorably. hyperloops. charter rockets. self-driving cars. it’s all real, and it’s all dangerous, and how does stuff like that becaome inexorable? Why is it inexorable? I used to think progress was inevitable, because i had this robert heinlein comic book boy scout idea of how politics and science and the human spirit worked. now i’m not so sure. the part of me that “wants to be a writer” wants to be involved in all that somehow. but he’s not sure how, and he’s scared that he’s too dumb and unimportant (which is why he sometimes tends to self-medicate; because he can’t quite reconcile what he wants to be working on with his fears of inexorable failure). But he thinks there may be a chance that he could be plugged into that somehow, make some tiny difference to someone, somehow, be a revolutionary or something, good god i don’t know, he’s a grandiose poetic little fuck is that part of me, but at least he has a dream and wants to know and do and be somthing besides just a series of paychecks. at least he’s up here at 5:27 typing this when he wouldn’t have to be, even though he’s like a blind guy trying to describe the sunrise, even though he doesn’t know for sure if it’s worth it or if it will lead to or amount to anything; at least he’s trying. the chorus of voices saying things like no try just do and is it enough and try harder and yeah but you’re not doing this or this or this and what about your actual job, bitch? well, they’re important too, right? all the parts are important and have something to say. what is the next step? how do you push yourself? keep getting up at 5:00 is the first next step. connect with other human beings is the next next step, i’m pretty sure. i think that will lead to knowing all the picayune details of like how to write and what to write and how to go back through and make something of it other than just pages and pages of whatever. i’m not sure why i think that, but i do, and my big fear around that is that i’ll just think that, congratulate myself for being so insightful as to have figured that out, and then never do anything about it. because other human beings are scary, man. i got issues, man. yeah ok. the part of me that’s like “god damn it grow up and get some work done” is like shit. we never gonna get out of here. you can write all day; it ain’t gonna make that barbed wire fence disappear. part of me that’s a writer, that is a writer, looks over at him and knows he’s right. knows there’s more to finishing the story than just sensing when the sentence or the phrase is just right, dramatic and resonant and leaves that stinger, you know? they look at each other, these parts, while the moon rises over the enclosure, and the night creatures start to sing about freedom.