Unholy Mess of a Girl

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.
-William Faulkner

Yes, it is sad but true, my life is a mess, completely and totally. This was the thought that struck me last night as I lay in bed trying to drift off to sleep at 5am. My eyes stayed wide open despite the fact that I had to get up for work 3 hours later. These were the terrifying thoughts that swirled around my head:

• It was the most beautiful, sunny, fabulous weekend EVER and you spent most of it inside, in the dark, dismal basement editing on your computer - good move idiot! What if there is never another sunny weekend for you to enjoy, ever again?! Sucker.
  
• Your room is a mess, dirty clothes piled up everywhere like a cyclone hit it, what are you going to wear tomorrow? Will you ever have the time to sort through it all?
  
• Your home office is wrecked too - clothes, papers, notebooks and technical doo dads piles on every surface - how will you ever find anything, more less accomplish anything?
  
• Everywhere I look are half started projects, partially completed To Do Lists and things I need to install, back up, transcribe, figure out, tie up or catch up on - when will I ever have time to do them all?
• Your work office is a mess - piles of paper, half finished projects, plants, nick knacks and kid art all over the place. How will you ever finish all of these things? Have you looked at everyone else's offices? They are clean and orderly with wiped surfaces, one or two personal artifacts and everything where it needs to be. Compare that to your explosion of photos, memorabelia and mad artwork which combine to look like a "nest space" - you are like the crazy bag lady of the office!!!?
• In order to get your new cable access episode ready to air Friday night, you will have to spend every free moment (when you are not at your 40 hr/wk day job) at your home computer editing - you will not have time to sleep and only minimal time to breath, eat and check your email - and who am I kidding, no one cares if you finish on time except for you, you crazy nesting bag lady pyscho! Still, my fear is that if I don't finish it by Friday, I won't have the motivation to ever finish it...and it always takes a deadline to put a fire in my belly and transform me into an editing hermit locked inside the house...damn it!
• You overdo things! For instance, you agree to make a nice good-bye video for a co-worker and what does it morph into? A ONE HOUR montage overload of insanity that NO ONE will want to sit through! You could have saved yourself the trouble and kept it to 10 minutes BUT NO! You had to go and show off like a madwoman and meanwhile, you have not slept in a week! Time well spent!
• Oh, and here is some more about sleep, who needs it? They tell you that you have to sleep 8 hrs every night but do you really? Me thinks this is the man trying to keep you sleepy and under thumb. I am a real sleep rebel and I get no more than 5 hours of sleep every night and you can tell because I am a total mess at work most days but hey, no sleep for the wicked, right? Oh, and I can sleep when I am dead, which will be any day at this frantic pace, yes, lots of very sound, deep sleep under the ground.
• Oh yes, and I must not forget that I have a dance concert in one week and I haven't had time to practise my dances one bit, plus I am out of shape from all the sitting on my ass editing! Public humiliation on a large stage, always a joy! Maybe I can trip over my heels and fly into the audience face first? Yeehaw!
• Oh, and don't I have a TON of things to do at work tomorrow...?
  

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings. - Jane Austen

So, it took me a while to drift off to sleep with all these mad thoughts swirling around my head. Not to mention my restless leg syndrome (maybe I should take that new pill they got for it!?) but eventually I slipped off to la la land. Waking up was tough and I didn't ride my bike to work this morning because I was so groggy. Now I feel like a sloth, a sloth with bags under her crazy golf ball eyes. And did I mention that I am inside in an air conditioned, flourescently-lit, VERY QUIET office on the most beautiful, sunny day of the year?

He who's not busy being born is busy dying - Bob Dylan

Ah well, despite all of my complaining, I am happy it is spring and happy for the beautiful weather and the little snatches of it I got to enjoy with Tanner this weekend. And also happy because Suzanne's sister had a baby named Paige Elizabeth and she got to witness the birth and then told us all about it! Sunshine, babies, boys and frantic, thought-filled heads, it does not get much better. And I will just have to accept that this unholy mess of a life is mine and keep on aiming toward some sort of zen lifestyle that is more empty, slow and less hurried.

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
Confucius

The life I dream of involves leisurely mornings spent sipping tea with the New Yorker, aimless jaunts down empty country backroads, hours spent reading novels on the front porch, cuddling with my sweetheart in the hammock while watching the sunset over the lake and FAR, FAR, FAR less time lying awake at night with my mind in 5th gear. Keep on imagining it unholy-mess-of-a-girl and perhaps you will figure out how to make it real...?

At present, I am mainly observing the physical motion of mountains, water, trees and flowers. One is everywhere reminded of similar movements in the human body, of similar impulses of joy and suffering in plants.
Egon Schiele