I hate being an adult. Today was hard. I used to have two bills to my name (my car insurance and my phone) neither of which were too much to handle. Now I have those two bills as well as four more payments via credit cards and loans that I have to make throughout the month. This wouldn't be a problem except that I make between four hundred and five hundred a month at my job and I'm the bread winner. And our cat, Yoda, was diagnosed with diabetes today. Boohoo to me, though. That's life. I am trying to build credit and trying to take care of myself and Hannah as best as I can. Student Loans end up being a real life saver when they come in allowing me to get airfare for school as well as the books and supplies I require to fulfill reading and writing requirements. This time around they will also go to fixing my poor car.
I worry that Christmas won't be as fantastic as I'd hoped. Most of my long distance family and friends will have to wait for presents until my taxes come in (and I should get a decent enough return), but for those who live near, Hannah and I were actually pretty on top of things and already have most of what we want figured out for people. We were doing so well and getting ahead but it's impossible to maintain the 'ahead' status when the output is higher than the input.
We're on Foodstamps as well. And contrary to what everyone in this judgmental as fuck country believes, we're not just poor, lazy, white trash working the system. We really need those stamps to get us through the month. We used to get close to four hundred dollars back when I was on unemployment. Then unemployment ended and I made 'less' (yes, less, not more, but less) via my job than through assistance, so they cut our stamp amount by a hundred. The logic is lost on me, but whatever. We went from high in the three hundreds to high in the two hundreds because let's kick 'em when they're down. And then recently, because my hours at work range from fifteen to twenty-two, and I'm a full-time student (which means I can't work more than that or I won't succeed in either), they decided that I no longer qualified at all. So now Hannah is the only one bringing in Foodstamps and we're at a nice solid $190. Sure this is probably no one's business and sure I probably shouldn't be whining about this on my blog but what the hell? Let's penalize people who are actually working and getting an education. Right?! Every time something negative occurs (less income or less hours) the fucking Foodstamp office sends less money. Really? Really, how does that make any Goddamned sense? Whatever. That's old news.
In new news I'm having an artistic crisis. All of these 'real life' issues seem to either kill my writing drive or completely suck away the time I have to get my MFA homework done. I end up scrambling almost every month and I know and own that it's my fault for having shitty time management skills but at the same time, I have so much fucking stuff going on. I am truly bogged down by reality and by the time I get to play in the fantasy realm of my Death Man, I have no drive, no confidence, no desire. I get excited once in a while and then it disappears the second I read over my fresh material and realize how amateur and immature the writing seems. It's so frustrating.
I want to impress my mentor, want to make him proud. I want him to remember me and my writing when I graduate and I want him to think to himself, 'Gee, that girl's got some talent and she's got a shot at making some real art.' That's all I want, I just want to be validated as an artist - fuck money, fuck publication, fuck everything! I just want to be a good writer. And right now... I'm not. I'm really not. I'm second guessing everything and I'm manipulating scenes, characters, situations to the point that I'm losing all sense of rationality. Maybe it's not really that bad. Maybe in the morning it'll seem brighter. Tonight I'm going to write a death scene and I'm not going to bed until I finish it. I don't care if I sleep at all. I'll eat straight coffee at work if I have to.
I hear you on the creativity doldrums. It's frightening. I panic and think "OMG! I'm having a writer's block and I'll never be able to write a decent paragraph as long as I live!"
ReplyDeleteStress can do that. Stress will do that. The muse cannot flow and function under the burdens of heavy stress. This is one of the reasons why I feel hesitant about writing for publication, what with all its deadlines and whatnot. The problem is that when you decide to write for a living you are forced into the 'work' of writing when the muse is off doing whatever fun stuff muses do when you're flailing around in your own inertia. Gee, thanks, right? That's when you have to knuckle down and write the way everyone else does, one painstaking word at a time.
Just remember your pocket muse quote: "You have to be willing to write badly." Even if what you write sucks balls and sounds hollow, write just to get the idea down on paper. You can always flesh it out later during an edit. A couple of days ago I pulled out the paper I was writing a chapter of my angel story on. I basically trashed 2/3rds of what I'd written but what was left was much cleaner. The other 2/3rds was purely empty calories, filler with no purpose other than giving bulk to the story. I think all writers do this. I've caught Stephen King at it many and many-a.
As for the food stamp and work situation: No, it doesn't make sense, but there's a term for what it is: austerity, which is basically penalizing the poor for the mistakes of the wealthy. It's a deeply dysfunctional system that doesn't play fair from the perspective of those who are unfortunate enough to be stuck in it, and dictated by people who probably never had to go hungry and who never bust a grape even one day in their life.
I wish I had something more encouraging to say about all this but it's hard to when you're sort of flailing around in the same muddy pond as the person who needs encouragement. Like two people in hell. One says to the other, "Oh, well at least it's a /dry/ heat." ¬__¬
Actually what you said was very encouraging <3 Stress is such a killer -__- But you're right I just need to get it down. And yeah, no I think the most important thing of all is writing because you're an artist and you desire to create. I would like to get published but I am not looking forward to the idea of deadlines and things. Writing is indeed 'work' and the muses flee at the first hint of stress and exertion ><! Sometimes when I just ramble on and on about setting the Muse gets curious and deigns to give me some attention lol. I'm hoping that happens tonight with Death Man. <3 *hugs* Hopefully I'll have a nice segment posted up here by tomorrow. It might be rough but it'll be on paper (or computer at least).
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