on being thankful...

exhausted this morning, thanks to the miracle of melatonin. maybe i need to lay off that shit for a couple of days because it makes waking up alot harder than it should be. this is one of the down sides to working late nights. when you get off late, then it's not like you come straight home and go right to bed. one's mind tends to wander a bit, and it takes at least an hour to wind down from the day. so yes, i'm up now and getting ready to suck down some coffee. had dreams of some kind but not very vivid ones, or maybe they were vivid when i was having them but the melatonin haze simply won't let anything seep through. ugh...i hate starting the day this way, especially one where i'm going to have to spend a couple of hours on the highway.

so, despite feeling like i've put the events of 2005 squarely behind me, i still feel like i'm waiting for something. for an opportunity to just come along and materialize out of nowhere, for a suitable woman to come walking into my life, for The Next Big Thing, whatever that might be. i've often heard it said that if you follow your heart and move confidently in the direction of your dreams, then new vistas you could never have imagined will suddenly open up from out of nowhere...well, i'm here to tell you that really isn't the case...i've left behind a life it took me 10 years to put together and made a new start in the direction of passions i've long held close to my heart and there has been nothing else, nothing magical or unexpected, no divine providence of any sort...am i in the right place? how does ever know such things? all i know is that this feels more right than anything else i've ever done for a paycheck. and i am thankful for my family and my life. for having left behind unhealthy associations, poisonous habits of body and mind, and for having managed to stay alive long enough to learn how to be a better man...but the fact remains that i need to find some way to get into a creative routine, to shit or get off the pot because i've been on the fucking pot for far too many years now...unsure of my talents, afraid of doing something less than perfect, afraid to fail, afraid to succeed, afraid to try anything, there's that and the issues of commitment, perserverance and sustained focus...it's so easy for me to get distracted entirely too goddamned easily, and for a writer, for anyone, that truly is the kiss of death...need to find some cognitive mechanism that allows me to short-circuit that...actually it would be enough to just devise and stick to some sort of a writing routine, like a fitness routine...something i do more or less at the same time every day....and i wa able to get into the gym routine for several months but have stopped ever since my work schedule got flipped upside down, but this is the way things go, this is the trade-off you've made for sanity and peace of mind...because i had it, i had what most would consider a "good job" working from 6-3 monday through friday...i had paid vacation and sick tme and weekends off and all that shite and i was absolutely fucking miserable at the sheer bloodless, clockwork monotony of it all, so much so that i lost my mind and my marriage over it...so yeah, a chaotic work week with a constantly shifting schedule seems to fit me better, at least for now, but it does make it more difficult to devote a regular chunk of time to writing, but i must find a way to not only do that, but to get back into the gym too, because i'm not getting any younger, and no novel or screenplay ever wrote itself...i feel thankful, and more optimistic than i have in a very long time, but i still find myself haunted by thoughts of love withering on the vine, and of growing old alone, save for the company of my dogs...a good friend told me that it's never too late to reinvent your life, and while that may be true, i don't think i can ever reinvent myself in a fashion that most women - obsessed as they seem to be with the pursuit of material things and illusory security - would find appealing...