A.R.G.
I cannot stop procrastinating. I can’t stop. I have so much to do, but all I do is lag around on the internet and look at stories about what other writers are doing and feel jealous. Or watch youtube videos and feel good. Or check my yahoo email for the 200th time that hour. The other day I literally just sat clicking “refresh” over and over and over, like I was picking some kind of cyberscab. What the FUCK is wrong with me that I can’t do any work? The things I find to do instead of working are endless and ridiculous, and endlessly ridiculous. There’s the click refresh thing. There’s googling myself, googling ex boyfriends, googling images of a corgi to email to my friend who is looking for a dog. Then I go to oprah.com to see who’s gonna be on oprah that week. Then I’ll watch Oprah. I joined Facebook, which is another deep, dark, wet, lime covered well of nothingness in which all creativity and actual attempts to make something of myself gets swallowed as I throw my allotted grains of time into the wind, writing on other people’s “walls.”
There’s taking every call and arranging to go have drinks with people even when I just had a drink. There’s feeling anxious about other people, which makes me anxious about myself, and then anxirty about myself. There’s anxiety about being one of those self absorbed middle class white people who thinks about their own anxiety. There’s checking my bank account online. I google image myself (Osama is still there.) I read the NYTimes online and feel like whenever they post an article that won’t be out in the actual paper until tomorrow that I am seeing into the future. I email my ex boyfriend. I think about emailing another ex boyfriend. I help another ex boyfriend look for a couch. I try to write a joke in my joke notebook. I do more emails, and start justifying to myself that my emails are so good they are like doing real writing. I go to the movies. I straighten up papers and open my mail. I throw the opened envelopes into the trash. I enter events on my yahoo calendar. I look at my face in the mirror and try to tell if I look older than a few months ago or days ago. Or am I miraculously ageless (yes! I think I am! Oh wait…) I make dr appointments. I go to a cafe to write and end up just sitting there waiting for my husband to walk in the door. Like if I just look cute enough drinking a latte and reading TimeOutNY some guy will walk in and fall in love with me at first sight and talk to me and ask me to go for a walk and then we would get married. I look at who is wearing wedding rings. EVERYONE. The other day I was at my cafe and kind of thought this super chubby guy was cute, and I tried to stare at him a little bit, to let him know that I loved him in spite of his heft and always would. At one point he looked at me and I could tell he was freaked out that such a pretty girl was looking at him, even though he knows he’s gained some weight. He sat down with his coffee and I got ready for an hour of desirey eye staring. But then I saw that some other girl is already in love with his fat ass because he too had a wedding ring.
I should just do what I have to do.
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:34 pm
1. well, theoretically, if you spend enough time procrastinating, you won’t have to worry about the middle class part anymore.
2. i’m not sure jewish really counts as “white” in the stereotypically racist context it’s usually used in; that you seem to be referencing it as. But don’t get me wrong, i’m totally cool with you guys.
3. i kinda thought that you were one of those ladies not really looking for a husband; but just some occasional hot boy tail. which seems to be what the vast majority of guys are good for at best anyway. i’m just a little disappointed in you. but not really. it’s humanizing too though.
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:36 pm
does A.R.G. actually stand for something? or were the periods just for emphasis? did you mean AAAAARRRRRGGGG!!!!!!!! ?
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:05 am
tim robbins once said that 90% of writing is just beating the writer’s block: staring at a wall or doing whatever you need to until something worth writing occurs to you. i’m sure you’re always writing in your head. you just don’t bother actually typing what you consider to be repetitive or derivative of yourself or others.
for one. i bet most of what you consider ot worth typing is actually better than most stuff. it’s probably just a question of lowering your own unrealistically high standard of how perfect everything you write should be.
or you are so completely committed to the global struggle of world labor that you cannot work on any level during a strike.
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:22 am
trade on your looks. act. sell yourself as the jewish julia roberts. or the tall natalie portman. whatever gets you through the door.
personally, i thought your were a brilliant lucy, devil daughter. the new girl sounds like she’s like some digital composite creation from a new computer at central casting. i mean she does that earily perfect, just like i was trained to do, hit every note, tone, inflection, cadence thing. but the attitude, expression, personality is gone. you gave lucy imperfection, which is what made it dimensional, dramatic, not just a vehicle for the writer’s jokes; which are admittedly funny.
concerning jealousy over friends: Birbiglia is awsome now. initially he kinda bored me. it was like he was acting his own neurotic personality. but now the inner personality he used to seem to be acting has externalized and fulfilled itself and now its beautiful to watch. a couple of weeks ago i saw his ucb warm up/ comedy central preparation gig. loved it. i would not have thought from the snipets i saw on comedy central that he would be my post Garofalo personal voice of a generation level guy but he kinda is. it was the Bush stuff. i’m a push over for political comedians. but i can never take anyone seriously until their hair starts thinning anyway. personal bias i guess.
thought he was kidding about the A-team van. but he’s got pictures of it on his site.
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:37 am
“is it the bad people who think they’re slipping… or is it the really good people who inevitably always THINK they’re slipping, because their standards are SO high?” BROADCAST NEWS
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:52 am
and please don’t bash writing on other people’s “walls”. i think that it’s a perfectly valid and productive way to spend one’s grains of free time; especially if one gets migraine headaches and can’t always get to sleep when he wants to; plus maybe its a little helpful to the wall’s owner in a supportive kind of way; even if from a simple sheepish comedofilic consumer of funny.
December 22nd, 2007 at 2:29 pm
shame. shame shame. get to work.