Last week I bought (yet another) notebook and a lovely skinny pen, and the first thing I did – apart from sketch a thing that could have been a Sunday roast or an arctic roll being frowned at by an angry-looking fish – was write a to-do list on the back page in an effort to get thoughts and deeds in order.
Side note 1. People I currently admire:
- people who are constantly busy, with up-to-date calendars and endless deadlines that seem to thrive off the waves of work, and remain on top of said waves without wilting and having to rewrite to-do lists in 15 different notebooks.
- people who get up in the morning and make the time to put on perfect make-up as a standard part of their routine (regardless of taste in said make-up), because what a commitment to feeling good about themselves every day.
- people who read this sidenote and have recognised that this is an appreciation of the small-big things in other people and every day life, as opposed to wondering why I haven’t listed political figures or scientists.
On my to-do list is an entry that read ‘probably write a blog post’. It’s a less definitive item than the more direct finish the Monster Food music video or finish the fecking short story that’s rattling around like a broken trolley. To be very honest, though, the ‘probably’ is a get-out clause. I worry about diarizing in WordPress, sometimes, instead of writing thematic interesting stuff. But then a quick glance through previous posts shows that it wasn’t always a concern, so. Terrible excuse really. And there is something soothing about vomiting words on to a screen without tweaking story structure or worrying about the character any more than usual. And there’s something nice about knowing maybe three of you will read this and actually like to hear from me. That is not a jab at reading numbers. It is a sincere enjoyment of appealing to a small crowd.
Side note 2: old blog entries makes me think of old Facebook entries. Which makes me wonder – if you use the demon site, presumably you’re also aware of the ‘On this day’ memories function. So here’s a question: do any of you, like me, just use that function to just delete all your old status updates unless they are legit interesting/good memories?
Big numbers are terrifying, in a reading/social media context. This is a new discovery. Obviously we live in a society where the higher the numbers the bigger, ostensibly, the success. But when the numbers rise, they scare me. A tweet that went ever-so-mildly popular (viral would be far too strong a word) on Bi Day ended in my temporarily removing twitter from my phone. Not because people were horrible – far from it – but because the sheer amount of interaction freaked me out. I felt owned and owing, and am comfortable with neither of those things. There are similar issues with releasing music/writing. Obviously I want to release it and people to hear/read it, but audiences and acknowledgement are heftily out of my comfort zone. I quite like singing and shouting into the void or, you know, if it’s not actually a void I’m happier pretending that it is, 95% of the time. I’m not an introvert, but I am a wallflower.
Which is possibly why using an alter ego for music is something I’m doing. It’s not even a real alter ego (… wait, what?) – I sing and write under my middle names, which maintain the spelling confusion of my every-day name, so that feels legit. But just having a different name to release tunes under creates a bit of a mental shield. If I was putting music out as me, it would not actually be being released because that’s a little too much direct light. Especially as people seem to like the songs, which is nice. Possibly if direct light wasn’t such an issue, I’d be more organised about putting music out there. Freely, here, I’ll admit I’m sort of undermining my own work towards success because success would mean exposure and exposure is bad, m’kay.
Side note 3: There’s a possibility I’ll make a U-turn on all of the above in about six months’ time, because my errant pet Depression is back – unsurprisingly. By standard calculations of dates, passing times and life events I was due a plunge back into the nettle patch. But I Adult now, so as part of Adulting I got my mitts on medication quick-smart and have been wolfing down the little pills, and have managed to get through the two weeks (plus coming occasional resurgences) of dopiness, extreme fatigue and massive amounts of anxiety that herald the building of emotional scaffolding. The anxiety is the worst bit, tbh. I like sleep. I like having an excuse to be too tired to function. But while I do harbour an inert, numb, crying, dear-god-don’t-let-me-wake-up-in-the-morning scummy monster, I am not generally anxious – except for the 36-hours pre-period when I turn into a paranoid mess yay-PMT-fuck-right-off – and so chemically induced anxiety really screws me over. Glad to be out of it.
I’m not sure where I was going with any of this, but now I can cross out this item on my to-do list and go back to ignoring this blog for another three months or however long.
Ahem.
What I meant to say is, thanks for reading if you made it this far. If you want to stay up to date on the music stuff, it’s all Facebook and other blog at zarahruth.wordpress.com. Writing-wise I have nothing out on submission at the moment. Shush – I’m working on it. It’s on my to-do list.
Bookworms and Coffee Monsters 
You owe us nothing, but we do enjoy when we get glimpses of you – in whatever form.
I’m not sure how I feel about the FB memories, mainly they make me realise how much I am still changing even though I am now “an adult”. But I don’t delete them, just as I don’t delete old blog posts. They were me at that time so I kind of feel I have to keep them. Odd.
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