Day 247: The needle and the damage done

File this one under: a bad day. Don't feel I can do this. I'm ragged. Physically, mentally. Down to the bone. A cosmic horror has got my soul shoved into the grindstone of the universe, and it is grinding, crushing until all that is left is bloody stump.

I felt better at work this morning, with drugs in me I felt the worst of the flu was over, and pub was quiet, and it was nice to joke around with Zoe and Liz, take it easy, have a laugh.

Then we were not quiet, and I could not handle it. I was dizzy, faint, couldn't concentrate, every step was exhausting, I was on an uneven keel. Got to 5pm and I grabbed my coat and bolted, left the pub a mess and everyone struggling, which, like, I hate to do, but I haven't called in sick the last three days, so you get what you get. Came home and made Earl Grey, got into bed, passed out.

Now it's 11pm. I haven't eaten. I'm working the close tomorrow with minimum staff, because last year was quiet, but I'm worried this year won't be quiet, and I'm running at 40 or so percent right now...

And, more, I'm just struggling right now. I'm lost. I feel I'm going nowhere with the writing, it's all I can do to force myself to write this little blog every night, but I'm building no momentum, working towards nothing, it all feels harder rather than easier day by day.

I guess that's not true. Guess I am improving, though it never feels like it in the moment. It's always struggle, but that is life, you feel caught in marshland, slippery stones under foot, the way ahead hazy, but you look back, and you have journeyed from where you were.

And the writing has improved. I don't feel the anxiety of people seeing me imperfect and unguarded that I did. I'm better at putting up rough pieces and moving on. And those pieces, all first drafts, which everyone involved in creativity agrees is the stage to be loose, to make mistakes, to get it wrong - some of those first drafts have actually been very good. Sometimes there is energy, and there are intriguing sentence constructions, and I can feel the music, and I am borne along. And when there are not these things there are still words, one after the other, forming some kind of structure, and it is always worthwhile to have done that. On the worst days there is still this.

And maybe that cosmic horror isn't grinding down my soul, but my ego. The process is unbelievably painful, exhausting, but the shards that fly off are in the end everything that wasn't me. And maybe the cosmic horror is not a horror, but God, disguised, as all horror truly is, and he is simply trying to make me small enough to fit through the eye of a needle.

Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

......

Music: Don't Delete the Kisses, by Wolf Alice. Oh, man, I adore this electro indie 80s throwback stuff. Driving rhythm, breathless vocals, aching longing etched in neon moonlight. Gorgeous.