Redux

You know all that I spewed yesterday? Yes, well last night I was B-O-R-E-D. And I would have welcomed an evening out even to meet some stranger.

Now that I think of that, it’s not necessarily true. If I did have a date with a stranger last night, I would have whined about it and dreaded it all afternoon, wishing I could just stay home and do my own thing.

That’s crazy. Yet true. Is everyone like this? You don’t have plans and that makes you unhappy then you do have plans and hey! Guess what? That makes you unhappy, too? Maybe it’s just me. Probably it’s just me.

I’m in a mood this morning. I’m in pajamas, I have my coffee, I even worked out a little this morning. All should be right with the world.

Instead I feel a vague discontent. Disgruntled, discouraged. Lots of “dis-“ words. I think it’s the routine of my life that’s getting to me. Every evening is the same, every morning is the same. It pains me to say this but I think it has much to do with going off the online dating thing. I thought I was doing SO WELL. It’s been a few weeks of not IMing and emailing every evening. Of not having a somebody to obsess and daydream about at work. I thought I was okay with this.

But it is a good thing I’m convinced. Still, though. I guess the honeymoon phase, so to speak, of my going the independent route, is over. Now it’s the tough job of staying the course. (Whoa look at all the clichés flying.)

I think I told you that I was really happy about the way the fall season was looking – quite busy. I’ve got several book signings scheduled, I’m going to a few Ole Miss football games, then there’s Halloween, dear son’s birthday in November, and before I know it, I’ll be headlong into the holidays. I hope it plays out that way. After last night I think the glaring flaw in that plan is it glosses over chunks of time when I am not somewhere signing books or busy with other events.

I’m reading “The Sportswriter” by Richard Ford, a great novel. He has this way of recognizing things that I’ve never thought about and putting them in words that makes me say, “YES! That’s right on.” He says something – and I’m paraphrasing mightily – about how – okay, actually, I can’t remember how brilliantly he said it but what I recognized was this: that as adults, days seem to glom together. Sometimes I have to remember how old I am and what time of year it is. For the greater part of my life, there were visible and present touchstones for both my age and the timeframe; back to school shopping, mid-term exams, a school day Valentine’s party, spring break.

Of course, now I have this down and see it in black and white (don’t you love writing? It’s so therapeutic!) a couple of things occur to me. One is that this may be attributable to the time of year. It’s been the same season for something like four or five months now. Dear son has been in shorts and I have been in cropped pants and short-sleeve shirts the whole time. Everything looks the same, ergo it feels rather the same as well. The other thing is that dear son begins preschool in two weeks, at which time, I’ll likely be firmly back in mind of the calendar. In other words – snap out of it.

Maybe I’m just being whiny. That’d be a shocker, wouldn’t it?