Someone asked me yesterday how I’ve been. The succinct answer is “I’m boring and bored” and perhaps I should stick with that; but four words does not a blog entry make, so you shall be regaled with the extended edition (four word blogs shall perhaps be forthcoming, followed, of course, by four-letter blogs). I’m boring and bored, as aforementioned. I haven’t been doing much. I look for jobs for a few hours every day, until I am too frustrated to continue. Most of the rest of my time is occupied lying in bed, trying to sleep, and thinking. Or playing Freecell and thinking. Or taking solitary walks and thinking. Thinking, thinking, thinking.
Thinking about my life and how this is not where I want to be right now. Not locationally, but vocationally. Thinking about words, like how I just made an internal rhyme in the last sentence and I’m not sure if either of those words should take the adverbial form, but I like it, and I’m not going to change it. Thinking about things that scare me, like unemployment, and family problems, and a body that feels like it’s falling apart. Thinking about things that make me angry, like my last job, or things that people did to me years ago that I really should forget, or Republicans, or people who drive too slowly, or crows’ incessant cawing, or my own apathy.
Thinking, thinking, thinking until my thoughts swirl and glom together.
Thinking that, with all this mental energy expended, I should have solved the mystery of the universe. Or, at least I should be able to solve my own fucking problems.
Thinking about conversations I have had, will have, or want to have.
Like yesterday, when my boyfriend discovered that I had been smoking again, even though he hates it. Even though a lot of people hate it. Even though I hate myself for it. I was only smoking because I was drinking. Well, because I was going to be drinking, and then because I was drinking, and then because I damn well wanted to. I wanted him to be angry, because then we could fight, and some of these thoughts could come tumbling out in words and they wouldn’t be in my head anymore; and all this animal aggression that kept my ancestors alive but is making me crazy would be released. I thought of what I would say and what he would say, and how I would respond, and mapped out the whole argument. I was excited. I haven’t had a good fight in ages. But we didn’t fight. We had a civilised discussion like adults.
How crushing; how dull.
My life is a Virginia Woolf novel. A phrase I found inscribed in green gel ink under the table of contents of my used copy of To the Lighthouse sums up my present feelings suitably: “Pointless, all pages”. Thank you, disgruntled anonymous reader.

