So yeah. Today.

Today, in which I will try not to tie my posts up into tidy little packages and therefore make them sound like less than they really are.

Today, during which I will try to be more honest about myself, even if that means I get a little mess on your plate too (not literally, but you get it, I hope).

Mostly I am thinking about my tendency to attract people who threaten the be-geebus out of me. I don't mean physical threats. I mean I gravitate towards people who force me to confront things I don't want to know about. 'Member yesterday when I rambled about comparing my insides to other people's outsides? Yeah. I want to feel inside the way other people look outside, like everything's Okily-dokily, Neighbor! I don't feel like that.

I still have to work out what's going on with Mr Pierson's condition -- he's my compromised character I'm so darned in love with -- and I have no brain it seems. Or rather, it's caught up in juvenile hoohah, things that I should have been able to leave behind in the girls' locker room at my old high school. And this means I am nursing garbage -- I SAID GARBAGE! -- that is just not worth my time. It's certainly not worth Mr Pierson's time. Poor guy's hanging out for a diagnosis, and all I can think about is whether my toes got ignored.

But it's all I can think about!

The bottom line is that I am a needy writer. That's not bad or good, it just is. It's what I have to work with and I owe it to myself and everyone else involved to be aware of it and structure my reactions to it accordingly. I am learning powerful, useful, necessary lessons I don't want any fucking part of, about how to handle myself when reactions to my writing don't go the way I expected. A long time ago I learned the difference between my expectations and reality. They are two different things. I hate that, but they are. And so, I have to own it when things don't go the way I expected. It hurts, but that's life. It's not for me to visit my hurt on others.

Only I just did that, and I'm ashamed of myself.

I owe someone an apology, and I strongly suspect I owe someone else the benefit of my slinking away and never bothering them again. I've made a mess I need to clean up, and so I feel ugly and stupid and I don't know about you, but I don't do well in this state of mind. I think I've gone through too many hankies as it is.

And I sure as hell can't concentrate on teasing out poor Mr Pierson's issues. The novel, the poor novel I've been struggling with since 2006, is struggling yet again. I'm struggling not to run and hide in other stories, or in the laundry -- you know it's a sad day when you feel the need to drown your sorrows in laundry. That's beyond pathetic. Better I should twiddle around with Robin Hood stories again; they're such a security blanket anyway. I'm not really clear on why Robin Hood, of all people, is one of my favorite characters and so easy for me to write, but he is. He's an old friend, who manages to take me as I am when even I won't do that. I suppose I could tease that out too, but I don't want to. Sherwood shelters me, and that's good enough.

And that's today's honest snapshot of me.

xx mm