9:15 p.m. - January 27, 2003
I'll rewrite this tomorrow
Telephone rings and it is my sister, speaking over loud background noise. She and the Idiot are gone for a few days, to celebrate her birthday. She asks:
Jason, do you have any credit card debt?
No, sister, I don't. Zero balance. Never use it. Credit is the evil --
Oh, that's too bad.
Why's that? [unintelligible] Oh, you won $600 gambling? That's great - oh, it's $6,700?
What's Jeff's cell number? I'm going to pay off his card. Don't you wish you had one too? I'll call tomorrow!
Click.
This is wrong on too many levels.
Last Thursday Barbara-the-Editor essentially told me I was a deadbeat, though she likely didn't use that word or one similar, but I heard her through my own lens and that is what was impressed. And it's true. I am a deadbeat. I deliberately missed deadlines and now it is too late to push the book this spring and I am relieved.
Thought about this tonight during my walk, thought about why I haven't written about it thus far. Shame, for one, but there's something else there, elusive and sprite-like. Self-destructive tendencies. Head-on collision between fear and desire and fear trumped the other.
Say it with me: Jason's book will not be published in Spring 2003.
Which means Fall 2003, but it misses the spring order rush and thus it will be Spring 2004 and why did I do this? As of Thursday there are now over 18,000 pre-orders. Maybe that has a lot to do with it, facile as it seems. I can't find the locus over which I tripped.
Aside from making what the rational part of me knows are cosmetic changes that don't affect content, the book is done and has been for some time. But not Done enough to silence the dark part of me and its naysaying, its Come on, you can't write a book you're stupid it will be a flop your touch tarnishes grandiose dreams get real get out run away.
I don't believe in what I'm doing. Too facile. I'm afraid. Too nebulous.
I've been going to school then coming home and sleeping. Slept most of my vacation away. Today I slept from 2:00 until 6-ish, yesterday and the day before that even more. I didn't keep my deadline because I've been sleeping and when I'm not, I'm drowsy and just can't sleep enough and I know this is bad, really bad. And worse? I don't really care. Told the agency I'd work again in February and now I'm thinking to tell them another two, three weeks. I can afford not to work until July and rather than hitting the road and outspeeding my demons I'm holed up in my house and I'm being held hostage. Metaphors, all. No need to bring out the straightjacket just yet.
Refrain: You've let yourself down doesn't bother me, doesn't sink in. I just don't care. And as I say that I know I do, because I register shame and disappointment but not enough to wake up. Torpor. That's it exactly.
So point: I'm done with my book and tell Barbara-the-Editor that I'm not finished, I can't let go, I won't. But why not?????? I don't make sense here, not in my paper journal, nowhere. My writing's been affected, and I'm just lost. Lost.
Not making sense. Can't get it out. I feel like rather than having surrendured I've been taken over and my mind, my work, everything, has been pillaged.
Depression? I don't know. Put any spin on it you will, but it's all failure. My failure. I care, I don't. I worry, I don't. I'm tired, I sleep, I'm tired still. I want to go back to work, I don't. I want to publish the book, I don't. I want, I don't want. I want, I don't want. I want, I don't want. I want, I don't want. But I don't know what I want or what I don't want, even.
