escape from limbo

“Yo West! It’s like, now you’re across the ocean and you post pictures of dogs and children (what’s next? kitties?) and that’s great and all but there’s NOT ENOUGH and so if you won’t blog about it you’ll have to deal with me one-on-one.”

 – Mariah Ford, soon-to-be-Law-Librarian-Extraordinaire

I have been staying away from you, Internet. On the ship you were all I wanted– remember? Remember how much I missed you? And then I got here, the single most internet-connected country IN THE WORLD, with flawless wifi blanketing my every waking instant, and I decided I needed to stay away from you. Because, in case you’ve missed this, I have a Mental Illness, and that Mental Illness is called Making Arbitrary Decisions That Serve No Real Purpose And Then Executing Them, Often To My Own Detriment.

It was a questionable move when I made it, right after the pictures of dogs and children, and it remains questionable, because if I know anything it’s that the all-or-nothing approach usually doesn’t turn out so hot for me. So I am trying to ease back in. See that? See this ease? This aplomb?

Basically, grad school applications are due these next few weeks and trying to actually finish two stories to send in has turned me into what Gabe from Videogum calls a ‘garbage nightmare person.’ (I really like Gabe from Videogum. I like him too much. It’s good for no one, how much I like this man.) I write two sentences, then rewrite them, then rewrite them, then make my mom give me food, then I rewrite them again, then I go for a walk and decide that these sentences are TRASHTRASHTRASH and rush home to delete them in a righteous rage. Sometimes this happens with paragraphs, or pages. Several times it happened with entire stories.

I have also officially started talking to myself.

Which is, you know, fine. It’s fine, it’s totally fine.

Anyway, I have been getting emails and Facebook notifications from people wondering if I’m still alive. At first these were mostly sassy (see above: excerpt from Mariah Ford’s missive), but this last week or so people actually seemed to be getting a little worried. So here I am. I am indeed still alive. Korea is being nice to me, though my mother is driving me crazy  in ways I never expected. Like how she never stops moving. Never, Internet. Never. She is always always always moving, from one room to another, from one part of a room to another part of that same room, opening drawers, closing doors, clinking flatware, doing a small dance, loading dishwashers and relocating trash, walking by inexplicably carrying a hammer, wanting my help right now, now now now, to move a piece of furniture that has been there for six years just leave it three more weeks please until I no longer want to die from lack of words and I swear to god I will move it anywhere you want, I will lift it like it’s nothing, a feather, and carry it to the goddamn moon. Last week I lost it, threw my book across the living room and screamed, The CEASEless MOVEment!!  At which point the temperature of the room dropped twenty degrees and we had it out. And just like that, a SNL skit turned into ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.’

With better lighting, we could totally take this show on the road.

In the meantime, I should get back to the business at hand. I think it’s time for another walk-and-rewrite-purge.

Be well, speak soon.