Musings on a Sunday Afternoon Filled with Heat, Lethargy, and Ennui: or writing when you’re not a writer.

Apparently, I’ve had my start logic account for a year. They’ll be billing me for the annual fee this month (and probably overdrawing my account in the process): I’ve made five posts and uploaded two pictures in that time, and all of that was fairly recently. The service sat there for months and months while I either forgot about it or dithered about how to do it. The dashboard for it is way above my knowledge. Wordpress and my friend Amber to the rescue.

So, along with a renewed interest in actually doing something with my site, my husband’s interest in adding his site to my service, and a need to have somewhere to air my ramblings, I’m back. Or here. Or something.

I used to fancy myself a writer. I’m not, at least not a writer in the sense that my friend LDA is(she has a nom de plume, but I won’t tie her to this post, if she reads it, she’ll know who she is). She’s a real writer, with two nonfiction books published and a novel in the pipeline. (It’s finished, now she’s trying to find an agent.) She has this way with words that I just don’t possess. I’m good technically and used to be able to write a damned good essay, but the prose, not so much. My stuff is kind of plodding…plod plod plod. My daughter has a flare for words, too, if she’d only admit it.

The things I really have talent for, sewing, drawing, creating things with my hands…I can’t do so much anymore. My hands are numb most of the time, making it really hard to do things, and I did something stupid way back in November of 2005. I used to be really near-sighted; I took my glasses off to see things up close. Then I had Lasik and now I can see mostly okay at a distance, but have to have reading glasses to read and work on the computer, and +4.00 lenses to do the kind of thing I used to be able to do “bare-eyed,” as it were. I gave up any sort of desire to do the sort of things I have for which I obviously have no talent for years ago. I’m not athletic, I can’t sing worth doodle and public relations is right out.

What do you do when you discover that you can’t draw anymore and weren’t really a writer to begin with and all the other things you did with your hands are painful to do? You read a lot (but even that hurts because of the hand issues), you watch way too much TV, and sleep and daydream. Or you bore the poor college kids at your office with endless chitchat…I’m sure they appreciate that. There’s confusing the cats, or running the puppy silly with the laser mouse (actually, I never tire of that one; it’s hysterical).

Or, you can stare at the mounds of clutter and crap, knowing you can handle it, but not knowing where to start. You annihilate the laundry amoeba, and hope it never grows back again, you doodle and toss aside your lame attempts at art, where once there was talent. You stare at the wall where the shelf used to be and think, I need to paint and patch that, and keep typing.

I’ve deluded myself for over a year now into thinking that I finally have friends and a life. But the friends don’t call me, they call each other. The life is one big boring pile of wastedness. A house full of fabric, art stuff, craft stuff, nifty stuff that is absorbing dust and turning yellow with age. There are times when I just want to put on the old print muu-muus and admit I’m middle-aged and boring. Dish up that goulash and let’s see what Dr. Whoozen of…egads, I don’t even know the titles of any soap operas.

Perhaps there’s hope for me yet!