Mood: Crap (insert emoticon here)

Feeling quite bleh today. I woke tired and have continued to be so all day. I’m feeling a little sad too, but there’s nothing really that bad in my life. Perhaps I’m just feeling the effects of a far too busy “professional” life with not enough “personal”?

The next few weeks are, unfortunately, stuffed with Things to do. Which is particularly boring because of all the things, none of them include just being with my partner for a period of time that doesn’t include professional intrusions and other hassles.

I would gladly tip all these professional problems off a cliff right now. The amount of effort involved with all of them versus the positives that come out are getting difficult to balance. Some things that have been easy to set-up have involved so much negative behaviours, obsession and politics that I may as well not have done them in the first place.

So why do I persist?

Is it ego? God I hope not.

Is it for “the good of others”? Oh, certainly (though this in itself is assumption and arrogance); there are so many holes in services where I’m volunteering that it’s less of a sieve and more of a pit. The holes have joined up with one-another and there is very little actually happening. However, this is observational evidence only; the reasons for this state are complex and are worth a PhD student’s thesis. The reasons are also tempered by my own experience, and not a commentary on those who are out there trying to make a difference.

Do I presume to be a leader, to drag things kicking-and-screaming into a new paradigm, one where good things can happen without being torn down? Am I so arrogant?

Is it because I’m simply stupid and don’t know when I’m running up against a wall? Hah. Probably. The feeling of smacking my head against these bricks seems to have awakened a certain awareness in me that this sort of thing is ultimately futile. There is the idea of bashing my head against a wall to break through, and on the final pre-fatal thud, seeing out of the corner of my eye an open door. Yet I don’t see an open door right now. All I can see are bricks, and blood-stained ones at that.

All I know is that right now I’m feeling out of sorts; I’m trying hard to build something and the harder I try the harder it becomes. But standing back and letting things occur is what everyone does all the time, and nothing happens.

Am I truly fooling myself? Am I arrogant in my presumption that I can help change the community through actions rather than words? Am I simply a fool who should put all this down and concentrate instead on the things that TRULY matter: my relationship, my studies, my writing and my own happiness?

Has this situation finally have brought home how foolish I actually am? That I, Lisa Sinclair, have stomped into a room and tipped over the furniture in a rush to achieve… what exactly? Why am I in this community again?

I stepped away because I needed to find my own way. I saw the people in it, and saw the difficulties I would face. I kept away for 10 years. Then I came back, with a fateful telephone call. That call led me to my partner, and I found some very good friends. It led me on a new path, one I hadn’t considered before.

I’m at a junction. I’m broke. I’m a student in a course I have doubts about actually leading somewhere useful for future work. I run a support group that runs coffee and catchups and is expanding into events.

Yet all I want is to have a quiet, happy, creative life. I want to spend time with my partner that doesn’t include bringing up professional (support group) issues and challenges. I want to be creative. I don’t want politics and roadblocks. I don’t want to find myself as the meat in the sandwich between people. I don’t want to be a people manager, nor do I want to be hassling people. I want this to be simple. I want it to be easy. I want it to be fulfilling for everyone involved. And right now, it’s anything but.

This feels like work. And I don’t even have the satisfaction of knowing that despite how futile things might seem, at least I have a paycheque at the end of the week. That’s because it’s entirely unpaid. I’ve worked like a mad thing on this for 7 months and for what? A neat website, a bunch of coffee catchups and an event which has had severe criticism and politics heaped on it, and which hasn’t even happened.

This rant was brought to you by a Grande Soy Chai Latte with an extra pump, a fake ham and cheese roll and a feeling of unhappiness which will undoubtedly pass at some stage soon.

*sigh*

Back to my essay.

I’m alone as I write this, in the loungeroom. Well, alone except my cat.

My amazing partner has departed and is driving home to nonna.

It feels again like this weekend has been fraught with difficulties merely for the simple fact of trying something. People have been reactionary and melodramatic which has created another rather boring flurry of emails on a group I belong to.

I only stay to support two people. I need to synchronise those circles again.

My main issue, as always, is that this has been an unnecessary waste of time and energy. Something very, very simple has been blown out of all proportion by the same people that usually blow things out of proportion.

Ignoring them was my first instinct, but through some discussion, I concluded that it would be good to clarify a few items and move on.

It’s become boring again. I don’t like boring. I want to have things nice, I want to spend my energy on things that MATTER to me. My partner is number one; I’m equal pegging with them by the way! The support group I’m running is high up as well, and there’s some cool things going on there.

My worry is that it’s become ten times as complicated as it needs to be because, jesus christ, people are so bloody touchy! There’s this possessiveness about their attitudes and behaviour that borders on obsessiveness. There’s attitude that they are in charge and dictate terms to everyone else (while denying they don’t). There’s a whole cartload of dirty laundry behind them and it’s stifling everything that’s being proposed, everything that’s being achieved.

And I’m sick to death of it. This was supposed to be fun for fucks sake. This was supposed to be engaging and interesting! It’s a shit fight every time we try to do something. Even removing from them has caused further shit fighting. What the Fuck?!

It’s through these kinds of attitudes and behaviours that people burn out. They find themselves not caring one way or another. Their spirit and their drive are ruthlessly crushed by others who are unable or unwilling to let them DO the things they want to. It is precisely this reason that more and more groups are being created in the state: people get stifled and ignored and crushed, and so they go off and do things their own way.

I for one am sick to death of this.

I am a frustrated writer. It’s the kind of low-level irritation that, if it were an audio frequency, would be carried for miles and miles by the perfectly configured woofer; it’s that bass frequency that you can hear from across the continent.

Here’s my frustration:

As a writer, I can churn out stories relatively easily (given the right circumstances and the presence of the Muse – more on her later). A fortnight ago I wrote 10,000 words in 3 days, which is pretty good given a book is on average 80-100,000. The muse was with me that night. She’s hanging around nearby but I’ve yet to get her attention; she’s a bit drunk on what looks like a quart of absinthe… yes, Absinthe, she just swigged the bottle and giggled, the bitch.

What I find irritating is that there seems only to be one way to get work “public” – to rely on publishing companies that are inundated with manuscripts, or to try to find a magazine that has a gap or likes your work.

I’ve whined about this issue to friends: artists have the option of galleries (and I’m not talking the major ones as they’re the equivalent of the publishing companies). Art is something you can look at, regard, like or dislike in a community setting. There are many different open galleries that can exhibit your work.

Musicians have a similar way of getting work out there. My fabulous housemate is at an open-mike night in Northcote tonight (I’d be there too if it wasn’t that I finished work only about an hour ago and was ravenous to the point of tears. Not going into that at present). A musician can stand on a street corner and strum. If I stand on a street corner and start reading, odds-on I’ll be heckled as a religious nut. Could be amusing though.

I’m aware this could be sounding like sour grapes. It’s my blog and I’ll whine if I want to.

A writer is, by definition, a lonely person, slaving over a hot processor creating work of potential genius… for… what? Sure, we can submit work to competitions. We can try and get things published, but there appears to be no way to cut out the middleman and just perform the work in some way, get it out for general consumption without involving the money-men and what’s “likely to sell”. Publishing is, after all, a business.

Am I wrong? Have I missed something?

I just can’t find anything. Writers groups have meetings and chat about their work. It’s a community, sure, and by joining one I get a stack of magazines I’m not interested in, cheap courses that I don’t want to do, the right to go along to meetings (which is nice) and I can even get, in some cases, a professional assessment of my manuscript (for a few hundred dollars that I don’t have. I’m a penniless writer as well as a frustrated one). It’s like when I joined the Australian Society of Technical Writers; what did it get me? A place on a mailing list and nothing else in particular. I’m thinking in purely selfish terms here, I’m aware: the society is great for many people, as are writers groups. But I know (pretty much) how to write, and throughout my life — regardless of courses on offer, being told I should read a great big book cover-to-cover — I’ve learned how to do things by simply DOING them: Practice Makes Perfect. I’m simply not interested in courses on writing, in someone standing at the front of the room telling me “this is what makes a story good” and “this is what makes it bad”. I’m not for formula, I’m for innovation through experimentation. And I know this won’t necessarily make me a bucket of money, either. I’m in it for the enjoyment of the writing; I’m in it to see where the muse takes me.

So what’s the answer?

It’s looking increasingly like I have to get off my arse and just do something myself. Have duplex printer, will produce zines. The magazine I produced with good friends back in 2004-5 worked to a degree. The magazines certainly disappeared from their spots in cafes. And I even managed to sell some. Perhaps that’s the short-term answer to my bleating: take it to the people.

Opinions greatfully accepted at this point. Me, I’m going to eat my rapidly cooling dinner. Au Revoir.

So it’s two days since the event. General feeling is neutral. Just flat. Not looking forward to tomorrow, but if I can hope for the best, I might just get it. It will be hard, but as I’m prone to saying: nothing worthwhile is easy.

Time to eat my own dogfood perhaps?

Much thanks to good friends for their supper invite– helluva way to get a free feed mind you!

Looking forward to the end of this week.

Bring it on I say

“Humans, you grab what you want and then bleed it dry.”

Looks like I wasn’t the only one to have had an unpleasant night Thursday into Friday.

Of course, the book I was reading — The Fifth Sacred thing — didn’t help. I’m up to the part where the army stomps into San Francisco, which has been recreated as an ecological utopia, and they start killing people and the land.

This turned my stomach because, while I know the book is fiction, knowing that there are people out there who would gladly destroy and control rather than create, it’s very easy to see where we could go… and horribly, are going.

Take the Port of Melbourne Authority and dredging Port Philip Bay. The politicians have rolled-over to big money. The authority only gives a damn about its money income, and the bay — by all accounts — will be utterly devastated.

Why?

Because we can. Because money is more important than the world in which we live. Because the whole domination-at-all-costs behaviour pattern is now out of control.

Only after the last tree has been cut down
Only after the last river has been poisoned
Only after the last fish has been caught
Only then will you find you cannot eat money
– Cree prophecy

We only have one place to live. All the money in the world won’t change that. We have no vision, no forward thinking. Nothing can save us but ourselves, but we’re all so tied-up in this cult-of-the-individual, mortgaged up to our eyeballs in slavery to the banks, the businesses and the society, that we can’t see past the next paycheque.