Today's balls.

I have mentioned this before, but I feel like I have a million balls in the air and that at any moment some of them might come crashing down around me and I will just fail. Perhaps I take on too much at once?

I haven't done any writing challenges in weeks because I have been trying to get ready for that super secret project that I have been working on - now we are less than a week away from the scheduled launch date and I am scrapping things and starting over. I haven't told my partner this yet, but I suppose if he wants my help he will have to deal.  Long story short, since I don't want to reveal much before the launch, I offered to create a website using Wordpress. However, it's been ages since I've managed a Wordpress site, and frankly, after using Squarespace for so long, I don't really want to use anything else, ever. 

I figure that if I am going to be the manager on this project and do most of the work, I have to at least make it enjoyable for me, right? I don't want to struggle with Wordpress when I can sail through things happily with Squarespace. I should seriously be a spokesperson for them. I just love the company that hosts this blog so much.

So yeah, there's that. There's also been a lot more writing of my secret porn stories. I haven't published another one yet, but I finished one yesterday and I want to get its sequel written before publishing so that I can market them before publishing a third and then bundilng them into an anthology. Yup, I have a plan. I really want to make 2012 the year that writing pays off - literally. I've spent way too much time lately on the erotic writer's forum, way too much time gaping over other people's sales figures and the fact that most of them on there are making thousands of dollars a month and have quit their jobs. Yes, I am fueled by my desire for the money. It might not be becoming of me, but whatever. There it is. I want to write for a living and I am really giving at a go, so unfortunately more creative and friendly bits of writing are going to take a backseat in the meantime. I'm okay with that. 

And that's just the stuff I've been doing online. My life? Sometimes I think I just want to go live in a hut somewhere in the woods where no one can bother me. I'm pushing more people away lately than I ever thought I would, and yet I am not doing it with any sense of regret or apprehension, I'm doing it with relief. Because just as I am pushing people out of my life, people who I feel have been toxic for me, I'm pulling in people who are just the opposite - it just takes... time. Something I always feel is in too short supply.

So anyway, that's what's up. Busy busy and feeling like my blogs are falling flat and being boring lately - another thing that I want to change. One day at a time..

Where am I?

So, it's February. Oh, time.

An old friend of mine, Brad, used to yell at me every time I made a comment about how time feels like it's flying by so fast. "Time never goes faster or slower," he'd argue. "Time is just arbitrary numbers we give to to sunsets and sunrises." Which, yes, it could be true.

I hear there are people in the world who argue that time as we know it isn't really a straight line that we imagine it being, that it twists and curves and folds in on itself, and that's why when we look back at our memories we sometimes have trouble remembering what came first in any sequence of events to lead us to where we are now, at whatever particular moment in time. 

Sometimes I wish there were more hours to a day, or that sleeping wasn't necessary - at all. As much as I hate to leave the comfort of a warm bed on a cold morning in winter, a bigger part of me always resents that moment in the wee hours of the morning when I have to tell myself that it's time to lay down and give up the day, and it always pisses me off, because very infrequently do I feel like I've done enough with the hours I had, or at least did enough of the things I wanted to do with them.

This blog, I'm not using it like it should be used. I'm not saying the things I should be and want to be saying because within all of us there are secrets and in my case they can't be given up, even though I'm coming to realize that one of the secrets I am keeping is shaping my life into something I don't understand and haven't been able to come to terms with. 

What things do you hold on to and what do you give away? What does it mean to be authentic in a place where you are still constantly admitting that you are a secret keeper because some things just can't be discussed online or with anyone else in your life? And really in the end, what does that matter?

I could tell you about how this morning as I was walking in to work there was shattered glass in the parking lot, and the clear shards I stepped around twinkled in the sun and momentarily blinded me, and I was half annoyed and half amazed that trash really can be beautiful. I could tell you that I have listened to Britney Spears pretty much non-stop today and her music does more for my mood than chocolate or sex put together. I could tell you that in the last week I've panicked over my financial situation, and that I am not proud of the fact that the only snacks Elise has to take to school right now are string cheese sticks and baggies of mommy's cereal, and that we've eaten pasta with butter and cheese for days on end because putting gas in my car to get to work takes precedence over grocery shopping, and the cost of milk and fuel only rises. 

I could tell you anything, is my point, and I usually don't because I am hiding behind this wall of fear. Fear like I've always had as a writer on the internet - of being rejected by people who know me. Fear of being considered a fraud or a fake, because even if those things aren't true, they are impossible to defend against when you don't have a posse to back you up, to explain things to people who don't understand.

I don't know where I am now on this life journey we all have going on, but I'm starting to understand, slowly and painfully, who I am. That's something.

Another List

Today I wrote another list - 100 Things About Me. It's something people do on blogs, but instead of it just being a random list, these are things that I have been wanting to talk about, or should talk about, but haven't. You know, it's part of that whole being open and honest and authentic thing. Also, writing more, which obviously I haven't done much of lately.

Also, today I had a little fun on archive.org, drudging up some old posts from old websites that definitely need sharing one of these days soon. Memories are tough to look back on sometimes, but that's life I guess. I'm glad I wrote them down to remember them. I am glad that I USED to be so good at documenting life, and now I just sort of suck at it and muddle through it, all half-assed. 

But, I've blogged every day since November 1st, and I don't see a reason to slow down now. I just need to SAY things. I'm sure, if you are there, you agree.