volcanic's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- playing solitaire and feeling crap I've been playing Solitaire for hours. I've only won once, so far. This isn't because I'm stupid, it's because I'm stubborn. I won't play the easy way. I have to have Vegas scoring, which means not only have I wasted a phenomenal amount of time today playing, but I also owe the PC about a thousand dollars. I had planned to do some more writing today- some more Processing. It hasn't really happened. I attempted to go outside and do a little gardening, because I thought it would soothe me a little, and give me a much-needed blast of contact with nature, and that maybe getting red cheeks and fresh air and dirt under my nails would buoy my spirit. Unfortunately, the weather decided to do an about turn, and about twenty minutes after I went out- all wrapped up in fleeces and socks and unsexy things like that- it got ridiculously cold and started to rain. I thought it might change again, so I came in for a coffee and a cigarette, and never made it back out there. Feeling pretty crap again today, as it goes. I'm finding it irritating that I think about Arthur so much. I know that there's a certain amount of normality in that, given that he was my most recent big love, and the circumstances surrounding the break-up. [I'm listening to national radio right now, and I've just heard that my town is flooded again. Bizarrely, the people in London- about 150 miles away- have just told me what's going on 500 yards from my house. It's a strange old world we live in...] As I was saying, Arthur is still on my mind. I'm very emotional today, although in a curiously detached kind of way. I want to feel profound. Everything feels a bit normal and predictable. It's quite unsettling when you can sense the gap but can't imagine what would fill it. I feel beige and bland, and I want some excitement, some joy- something extreme. I feel bogged down in mundanity. I've got a house and a job and a child and it all feels very safe and boring. Ordinarily the "safe" bit of that gives me security and a sense of accomplishment and achievement, but today it all feels a little bit too much like a millstone. My friend said yesterday "You've got a great life. You can do whatever you want, you can take any of the opportunities that are open to you." I wasn't convinced at all. I'm struggling to see the opportunities that are open to me... Arse. I'm getting a bit too self indulgent here for my liking. And yet, there's like this kind of blockage. I can't work out what it is. There is definitely something stopping me, and it stops me doing so many things. It stops me taking up people's invitations to pop round and visit them. It stops me taking my driving test again. It stops me from doing new things, things that might really give me pleasure, or enhance my life in other ways. It's all bollocks, really. I try and get things in perspective- one of my friends has been through some hellish stuff over the past few weeks, and compared to her, I've really got nothing to get stressed about. And I'm dealing with it in really crap ways. The other night, when I couldn't sleep, I went on every online horoscope site I could find, in the hope that one of them would give me a clue, or some hope or some inspiration. I've been revisiting my collection of self-help books (which is not quite of Bridget Jones proportions, but close) and all of them are full of rubbish. Well, apart from The Invitation, but then that's just a good book to read anyway. it makes me think of that bloody Friends Reunited website. I go and check it out sometimes, and there aren't many surprises. One girl has come out as a lesbian, but that's the only shock. All the tall, blonde, sporty, brainy people seem to working in publishing or the media in London, living in leafy suburbs with their dogs or luxury lofts in converted gasworks. And I could have predicted that twenty years ago. The dossers and drifters are still dossing and drifting, and people like me, the ones who appeared to have some kind of non-specific "promise" are still failing to blossom in any particularly fulfilling way. I can't work out what I need to change. 2:36 a.m. - 27.02.02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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