No, that’s not it.
Close, but no.
There we go!
Had therapy today. Talked with my therapist about how I am trying to loosen up inside and let myself be more emotional, which I didn’t know was true until I said it.
It just works out that way sometimes, especially if you’re a writer. You process your emotions by writing about them that means that sometimes you do not know what is going on inside you until your write about it.
Hence, this blog. I write about my feelings and my depression as a way of processing things as I express them.
Often, I feel like I am pulling the top emotion off a stack of unexpressed emotions, like dealing cards, and I honestly have no idea what is coming next.
Might be more of the usual mustiness. Might be something totally unexpected that I did not know was even in there.
It’s actually pretty exciting.
I had the weirdest feeling earlier today. It was around 11 am, and I got this cold, despairing, sinking feeling like all hope had gone out of the world and all I wanted to do was go back to bed and stay there forever.
It was quite disturbing. I’ve been depressed in many ways over the years, but I have never felt something quite like that before.
It was probably a blood sugar crash of some sort. At least, that’s where my desires for an accurate answer and a non-scary one coincide.
I still need to order myself a new blood sugar meter. I broke down when it came time to pick one because there are so many out there and option paralysis is a thing.
Especially with me.
If I had a meter, I could actively manage my diabetes and be much, much, much healthier. Right now, I just take my pills and pray, which probably means my blood sugar is too high most of the time and that means my sludgy syrupy blood is currently damaging me all over but most especially my nervous system.
The clock is ticking on that. I know it. Right now, it;s confined to weird pains and twitches, but any moment now, I could end up in the hospital again, and this time for something even more serious than pneumonia.
The kind of serious which makes you unable to walk, or talk, or use the bathroom by yourself ever again.
And I try to focus on that thought in the hopes it leads to a constructive panic and sense of urgency, but the dead flesh of my soul refuses to respond.
And that’s probably what is going to kill me one of these days.
I think the real dark truth is that I can’t do this by myself and yet I don’t feel like I can reach out for the help I need either.
I am so scared of making myself that vulnerable to rejection. Anjd if I reached out for help and got rejected, that would just about kill me.
I’d rather risk physical death, I guess,
More after the break.
You know, when I was a child, I thought Americans on TV were all wimps because they got all stressed out by “subzero temperatures”.
And I was like, big deal, it’s called winter. Obviously the temperatures are going to be below freezing. That’s why there’s all that white stuff on the ground!
Of course, the Americans on TV were talking about temperatures below zero FAHRENHEIT, and seeing as zero Fahrenheit is almost -18 Celsius, yeah, that’s pretty fucking cold all right.
But fair’s fair. A lot of Americans know as little about Celsius as I do about Fahrenheit, so they look at weather maps on TV and see that it’s 32 degrees in Detroit and zero degrees in Windsor, and think “wow, it really IS colder in Canada!”.
Think that would work as a standup comedy piece? It’s funny, relatable, and keenly observational. So it works on paper, at least.
But I have misgivings. Something about it isn’t quite right. It could be stronger. Funnier.
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it.
Which would be quite the thing, because it would mean that not only have I written down a joke on my computer for the first time since I started doing standup, but that I will also have worked on something after I completed it.
And patient readers know, I am Mister First Draft. I write it and fire it into the world and forget all about it.
In my defense, it’s always worked out fine for me. I have been submitting first drafts for grades for my whole academic life and I’ve always gotten great marks regardless.
That grinding sound you hear is countless keener high achiever types grinding their teeth at how unfair that is.
Well, talent isn’t fair. I didn’t do a thing to earn my gifts.
Deal with it.
Bringing it back to comedy, I am thinking it is time for me to start taking it more seriously. I have done three open mics now. I am not quite the fragile embryo I was when I first started. I have done it enough to know I like it and will keep doing it. And I really do want to improve.
So, it’s time to get more into it.
Which means writing down the jokes from my joke list. This serves two functions :
- it saves them to my computer and/or the cloud so that if I lose the pieces of paper, I don’t lose the jokes, and…
- once they are typed in, I can work on them as text instead of as thoughts in my head, and that will go a long way to making them better
And then the real jokesmithing can begin.
After all, I already know that I am a very talented comedy writer. It’s just a matter of adapting that skillset to writing jokes.
Plus I am also getting the urge to write longer things. Bits, not just jokes, and eventually maybe even whole routines.
No rush though. These things come in time.
And remember, sperm whales come in waves.
And wrestler come in small packages.
I slay me.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.