Tag Archives: Thoughts

Dark thoughts

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It’s dangerous when I’m home alone. I have nothing to occupy my time, and the dark thoughts that usually cloud my mind are free to run wild. My insecurities are ripping at my soul, and I feel lost, afraid, alone. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this way. At least to this degree.

I’m working on my project, reading and rewriting one scene at a time, but there’s something that is driving me crazy, a hope, a desire, a connection that I was praying would come about that I feel is slipping through my fingers, if even it existed in the first place. I’ve been beginning to question if it had.

The uncertainty is weighing me down, making me reevaluate what I want to do. I have nothing to tie me here anymore, and I’m beginning to believe it may be time to walk away and search for whatever it is I’m missing elsewhere. I don’t think I’ll find it here.

When I look at my job, it’s going well, better than I thought it would. I’m now considering my future with the company. Do I want to move up? Would it be possible to move out of working at the store level? What am I capable of doing? Do I possess the skills to be successful in this company?

I have always maintained that money is not what motivates me. It isn’t. Money, for the sake of money, doesn’t sustain my soul. I need something that motivates me, something to sustains me, something that makes me feel proud. I haven’t found that anywhere. I need something that does.

I have my writing, for sure, but even there I’m slacking. I don’t know if I have the skill necessary to write well enough to succeed as a writer. I don’t know if anyone would care to read what I write. Maybe all I lack is confidence, though I haven’t had anything to boost my confidence, either. I’m probably being too hard on myself.

As much as I’m complaining, I’m probably happier than I have ever been in my life. I feel freer than I ever have. I’ve been coming to terms with who I am, which has been a difficult road to travel. I’m not yet at the end of that particular journey, but I’m further along than I ever dreamt possible.

But for all my happiness, I feel as though I’m missing something, and that’s what has my dark thoughts depressing me. I’m looking forward to trip to Georgia later next month, and in a few months, my trip to Florida. I need an adventure, but I need more than that to sustain me. I need to recharge my soul, my sense of purpose. I want someone, too, to connect with. If only I were so bold.

And at that, I’ll get back to my writing.

Febrile thoughts…

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It’s after four in the afternoon of my snow day, and I’m getting cabin fever. The walls are closing in around me. I spent the past ten minutes talking to sock puppets. Okay, that’s all a lie. I went to town to buy ingredients to make meatloaf. I feels it’s the perfect meal for a cold winter’s night, and frankly I’m sick of chili.

But while I sat here playing on my computer, scrolling through a few introvert-oriented Facebook pages, I had a thought. I’m an introvert. The thought of spending time with people exhausts me. I take my lunches alone when I’m at work, just so I can recuperate and face another half day dealing with customers and co-workers. That’s one reason writing appeals to me. It’s largely a solitary activity.

Here’s what I was thinking. I live in a small town of less than a thousand, where everyone pretty much knows everyone else, if not by name at least by appearance. I want to move to a large metropolitan city of well over a million. On the face of it, that sounds silly. One thousand is a lot less than one million+ people, why would I want to make that move?

Simple. It’s easy to be alone in a crowd where no one knows me. I can get lost in the crowd and mind my business. I’m a lot less likely to run into people I know and would rather avoid than I would in a much smaller town. What’s worse, I run into people here that recognize me, greet me by name, and I have no idea who they are. It’s embarrassing.

Just a cabin-fever induced thought from the mind of a man who’s about to make meatloaf. And mashed potatoes. I’m not a savage.

The voices in my head go round and round

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The voices never seem to stop chattering, or at least it feels that way most times. As a person who lives in his own head, it can get pretty loud up there. The conversations I have to and from work are brilliant and captivating. The conversations I have in real life, well…, aren’t.

I also play out scenes in my head. The characters usually are faceless, but I typically see them playing out like a Hollywood movie. There tends to be a lot of dialogue, and very little to no action, just a lot of talking from imaginary people who seem to be well-spoken. I, however, am not.

I can see and hear the scenes I want to write. I imagine them going on at the most inopportune times, when I am not near a computer. Everything seems to flow smoothly, with well-reasoned arguments, logical progressions, and a clear order. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Then I sit and try to write out the brilliant scenes that I imagined and it’s gone. There’s no spontaneity. The conversations seem stilted and dry, the arguments lack conviction, and I can’t seem to muddle my way through the labyrinth to find the end I had originally intended. It frustrates me, I’m not afraid to tell you.

When it happens, I begin the suspect that the brilliant conversation I’m having in my head isn’t really brilliant. Maybe it only seems that way hidden in my secret world. Maybe my fantasy is to be able to be a good speaker, to be concise and articulate, and I create a fiction where I can be, whether it’s me talking, or one of my characters.

In the real world, what I think is so articulate really isn’t. Then I begin to suspect my own intelligence. Perhaps I’m just too fearful or guarded with my thoughts and words that I’m unable to let them go. I wonder if other writers know what I’m talking about. I doubt I’m alone, or at least I hope I’m not.

This fear also defines who I am in life. The older I get, the more negative I become, in part due to the voices I hear. Too many things have gone wrong in my life that all I imagine for myself is one tragedy after another.

At the moment, a co-worker is pushing me to ask out a sales-rep who visits our store once a week. Though I find her attractive, and she seems friendly enough, but despite my co-workers assertions that she finds me attractive, all the scenarios I run in my head turn out badly.

Every single one.

Maybe that’s what I should write about, the tragedy I imagine for myself in life, love, and everything else. I’m sure the scenarios playing out in the deep recesses of my psyche are far-fetched and ridiculous. Too bad I have trouble writing out what I imagine and rarely do my thoughts justice.

You know what I think? I think my voices are jerks. I need new voices.

Just checking in

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I miss my laptop. It’s been more than a week since it died and it hasn’t been easy, though I’m not really having that hard a time. Does that even make sense? I hope it does in spite of the obvious contradiction in the statement.

Not much has happened lately. Since I have no computer, I have no way to write. Some may wonder why I don’t try to write with a pen and paper, but it’s not my process. I could try but I know I would not get far. Besides, I can’t read my own handwriting. Sad, isn’t it?

I have a couple of books that need to be read. The first is Susan Cain’s book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. The second is by James Rollins, The Blood Gospel. I’ve started on  Quiet, I just haven’t gotten too far. I need to sit and read.

What I have been doing during my writing break is work on my truck. I hope to start putting it back together on Friday, my next day off. So much to do, and so little money, but it’s coming together. I’m thinking that once I’m done, I’ll start looking for a job.

I know I’ve said this before, but being without a vehicle of my own limits my freedoms to such a degree that I’ve been limited to this small area. I hope to be able to become a little more aggressive once my truck is complete. Then will come my own place to live, and later a new car.

But one step at a time. Seriously though, I need to get a computer soon. I’m borrowing my father’s tablet, and though it comes with a snap on keyboard, I hate it, not least because it isn’t mine. Also, I keep making typing mistakes that I would not do on a real keyboard. It’s better than nothing, so I need to breath and get on with it.

I know I haven’t said anything profound, but I just want to check in. I’m still alive and planning world domina…er…finishing one of my books. As soon as I can get a new laptop, I’ll be back and better than ever.