I suppose this is as good a point as any to confess, I've been procrastinating. Maybe that's not the right word, because I've actually been doing an awful lot of the thing I'm self-reporting here as avoiding (writing stuff) and in a timely fashion, per the made-up rules of deadlines I've set for myself. The only consequence for missing a publishing window for one of these crucial blogs is the lung-pressing panic of knowing a part of the predictable structure of the week has been abrogated, an apostasy against the orthodoxy of routine that can scarcely be borne. You miss one regular weekly ritual (gym days, taco night, the Wednesday evening masturbation window) and its like inviting chaos into your home as you would a vampire, with now free rein to come and go as it pleases, disregarding the mirrors and interfering with the cat. I stacked a metaphor in a metaphor (chaos is also a vampire?) and see, just considering the idea of altering the schedule has made me all disordered and incomprehensible. And yes I mean more than normal, shut up.
So yes, I have been writing, and actually kind of a lot if we're going by word count alone in the last couple of weeks. But I've been writing about fairly trivial things sort of on purpose, if only subconsciously. If there's a word for "diverting yourself from doing a thing by doing a lot of that same thing, in high volume," I'm sure it's in German and has the same number of syllables as the phrase in quotes I just used to describe the idea. You know, English is technically a Germanic language, but there are way more "not really translatable into English" words in German than there are in, like, Vietnamese. But I guess that's fair as English and Vietnamese have both been pretty heavily poisoned by exposure to French.
Riffs on popular culture and francophobia are lazy reflexes of deflection and avoidance. It could have been worse, I will say to my credit, as I could have easily included a review of Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver, which I actually watched even though the first one was easily one of the worst films I've ever seen. But look, we started this blog off talking about compulsion, you know everything you need to know about how my personality works.
Like how we're already into the fourth paragraph and I'm still playing the coquet and not just coming out and saying: we've entered the month in which I will turn 50.
There. It's out. It looks bad in print. It sounds bad out loud. I want to comfort myself by saying what my dad used to say every year on his birthday as he got older, "it beats the alternative," but he died last year, the fucking quitter, frozen* forever at 71. I'll never trust him again.
I'm still deciding how I feel about 50 in the main, but luckily I thought way ahead and had all my kids' birthdays packed in right before mine. One was about 10 days ago, another is in less than a week and the third is about six days before mine. The oldest one (whose birthday is last in the calendar year) also this year will push me over the threshold where I will have been a dad longer than not, as he turns 25. I was six days shy of 25 when he was born, so now all that childhood and personal development time I experienced pre-parenthood has shifted a sliver to the left of high noon on the ole pie chart of life. It's not that at 50 now I'll be old, it's the prospect, mathematically and proportionally, that I've now always been old. I have two degrees in the humanities, but I'm pretty sure that's how ratios work.
Honestly and so obviously I am not indulging in any self-pity or existential panic. I'm fine with it. I'm fine. Totally and absolutely, just fine. Regular. Normal, I'd say is the primary thing: I feel a normal way about it. Non-plussed. Fine. Haha, I'm even laughing about it, look, that's how much it doesn't actually bother me.
There's too much going on to sit around and be all mardy about it anyway. I'm less than a month into my new job. I'm back on the stupid dating apps for the first time in like six months... My oldest is moving out to go live with some woman, so I'll be here in the house by myself full time for the first time I think ever? But I'm definitely not gripped by dark, unbidden fantasies of falling heavily down the stairs and shattering my pelvis while here by myself, slowly expiring on the orange Mexican-restaurant tile I picked out in like 2006 because it made me laugh, struggling out my last breaths, unheard by anyone, through the obstructions of thick irony and my own blood. It'll be fine! I'll have so much more time to do whatever I want, like finish Ulysses finally or that stair-death thing, whatever, who knows?! A new decade, new possibilities!
---
*Absolutely not literally. I shall not elaborate.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment