Really happy with progress in Appearances today. Feel like I've turned an important corner in the project. 126 segments written so far. 4 of them today!
That said, have been struggling with my depressive tendencies lately. Which I'm thinking about a lot as I read the new biography of David Foster Wallace.
Depression, anxiety. Have wrestled with them all of my life. Since before I even knew what to call them. This is not unusual, I know. Small comfort though.
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I'm 59 years old. I retired from my job in public health at the end of last year. After 34.5 years of service. The idea was to shake off old routines, to get out from under the stress of enforcement work, etc., and to embark on the project of Appearances: A Novel in 365 Fragments. The writing project was to be my new job, my purpose.
Of course nothing is ever simple. Not an object, idea, plan or relationship.
Before I started Appearances I knew a little. Not what it was going to be about. I knew some of the elements of the constellation of characters which would populate it and I knew I wanted to try to stretch myself into a larger form than I ever had before. To see if I could keep it up and make it interesting to myself, and--potentially-- others. And if I could do that, perhaps I could do it one more time before I die. That was quite literally my thinking.
It still is.
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Reading and music have always been my salvation. Writing threads a path between both worlds.
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Sex is just a dream indistinguishable from writing.
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i recall a piece, tom, you'd written a few years ago. a little anecdote that has stayed with me. you wrote about a coworker that you did not know very well but saw often. there was one afternoon you encountered this man in, i believe, the cafeteria by himself eating quietly and alive. a short time later he was dead.
ReplyDeletei think of that because i am getting older too. everyone is of course. yet i am keenly aware that we have just a limited amount of time here. one moment we are eating lunch, the next moment we are simply nonexistent.
which might sound like a melancholy thought. it isn't. rather that knowledge of time feels me with joy. i know i am here for a spell, and then that's it. death is the mother of beauty. i am happy to be alive and breathing, sharing, loving, reading, and writing. is that enough? no. but it is far more than i can ever ask for.