Remember that time when I sounded like I was ready to strangle myself and everyone I know with rusty barbed wire? Well f*ck that! I’m over that! Hooray!
I just wanted to drop in to say thanks to all the folks who called, emailed and tweeted me after that post went live. I feel much much much better now. Much better, thank you. Wanna know why? Because I landed my dream job! You’re looking at Anna Torv’s new personal masseuse, baby! Station! … OK, OK, that’s a big fat lie. I’m still workin’ my 9 to 5 copywriting gig here in Austin, and Miss Torv’s well-toned fleshy parts are far far away from my grasp. The real reason I’m feeling cheerier these days is because … well … I found out I was sick, and then I found out how to get better.
I have hypothyroidism. It sucks. It depletes your energy level, lowers your metabolism, makes your brain go all foggy, and makes you depressed. (Like I said, sucks. Like, a lot.) I was feeling tired, sick, sad, confused, and angry for months, and I had no idea why. It was bad.
I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism more than a year ago, but I wasn’t on the proper medication, so I never really started getting over it. My treatment was all wrong. Things just got worse, and I felt like I was losing control. But I found a new doctor recently and I decided to make some healthy life changes. I feel healthier and almost normal now, which is pretty good for me. Hell, some days I even feel like He-Man kickin’ ass in front of Grayskull. So rejoice, because troubled Mike is gone. I have the power! (For now anyway).
Listen, folks, it’s been a hell of a week. Actually, the past two weeks or so have been pretty damn hard. I’ve shouted, I’ve shed tears, I’ve broken down, I’ve stayed in bed all day … It’s just been … not good.
I’ve been having a hard time, and it’s coming from all fronts: work, home, dreams, outer space. Everywhere! That’s why you haven’t heard much from me in a while, and that’s why I failed to recap the last episode of Falling Skies. I’m just totally sideways these days, and it’s been a struggle to stand up straight again. So please excuse me while I play my flute and cry, Picard style.
I just wanted to pop in and let you know … I’m out of sorts right now. I won’t get too specific, but this has been one of the toughest years of my life. But, thankfully, I still have my lovely wife, my dreams, and my favorite TV shows. Older shows like Twin Peaks, Black Books and Spaced have been helping me ride out this horrible wave, and newer shows like Louie, Torchwood: Miracle Day, and Wilfred have helped too. (Yeah, I’m one of those people who hugs the TV when no one’s looking.)
I’d appreciate a prayer or two, but don’t be too concerned. Things are already looking up. I know we all have our problems, and I’m only going through a bit of a rough patch here. To everything a season, right? The light at the end of the whatever is in sight. Now, only to reach it.
I have a day job. Weep for me.
If you stick around here long enough, you’ll probably read about how my day job is turning me into a tired, angry, and stupid sack of sleepy flesh. I crap on my day job a lot because, well, it’s a day job! It’s not exactly what I want to be doing with my life. I’d rather sit at home all day and write incredibly meticulous posts about the evolution of Captain Sisko’s facial hair on Deep Space Nine, but that’s just not possible right now, you know, with the economy and all. Apparently no one will pay you $70,000 a year anymore to write about Starfleet captains and their grooming habits. Sucks. So, yeah, I hava a day job. But it’s not really as bad as all that.
Like most fleshy humans, I tend to complain more than I should. Deep down, I’m quite grateful for my day job. I know people everywhere are going through hard times right now, and, like comedian Larry Miller says, these days, if you have a job and someone to go home to who loves you, then you’ve won. I have those things. I’m secure. I’ve won. Joy.
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Ladies and gents, enjoy the first in a series of wildly irrelevant, self-indulgent navel-gazery …
“I can’t work for a living, Simon, it’s impossible. I’ve tried once. My genius will be wasted trying to make ends meet. This is how great men topple, Simon.”
– Henry Fool
I’m not having any fun.
I’ve been working more, but I’ve been writing less. And while I’ve seen some success in the day job here and there, and I really like the people I work with and the job itself is pretty fun, I still feel like I’m neglecting the one thing I was put on this sad, stinkin’ Earth to do – write!
It’s not that I’m a great writer or anything. It’s not like I’m going to become a great writer either. I have no delusions about my next Warehouse 13 recap uniting the planets and bringing peace and harmony to the galaxy like a Wyld Stallyns song. But writing is the one thing I’ve always been able to do with some level of … what’s the word … adequacy. You know, you probably have that one thing that you do that makes you feel adequate, like you can do more than fake your way through something because you care about that thing and it just comes so damn easy to you. That’s how I feel when I write, gloriously adequate. It’s a good feeling. One I don’t feel too often these days.
So, yeah, writing. It’s not easy being a writer. It’s frustrating. No one will pay you for it. And, besides that, the need to write turns you into a crazy person. It’s hard to go through the day walking and talking and trying to tie your shoes when all you wanna do is sit at a computer and get it all out. And brilliantly. It has to be brilliant! If it’s not brilliant, then it aint worth a damn, and nobody will care.
It’s like I told my wife the other day: sometimes, as a writer, you just don’t feel right until you can put it all up on a computer screen. (Paper? What’s paper?) Well, I haven’t felt right in quite a while. Sure, I’ve written a few things here and there that have made me some money, and a few of ‘em aren’t half bad, but I still don’t feel right. Life has been yanking me away from what I really want to do and from what I want to write about lately. It’s pretty stressful, not having the time, energy, or patience to write.
So what’s keeping me so busy? What’s eating up all of my time as my youth melts away to reveal the grey old stump underneath that no one wants or cares about?
Making money. I’ve been making money. And not even a lot of money – just enough to get by, really. Making money takes time. Takes life. Away.
Things will change. Soon. Not soon enough, but soon. I believe that the salad days are on the horizon, and, despite sounding so pessimistic here, I can hold out hope that I’ll soon be able to sit at a computer for hours, days, hell, even weeks, and get it all out.
