Caterpillar blues

I'm having one of those, "I can't get anything useful done today because I feel so bloody miserable" kinds of days and I'm amazed I even submitted some information for a job this morning.  I actually submitted a bid for advertised work involving something I don't want to do at all but could probably do with my eyes closed just because I'm getting that desperate for money.  (Don't worry - we're not talking prostitution or anything, though I imagine someone could do that with their eyes closed...)  I ought to be portrayed in some kind of sci-fi horror film where you slowly watch the character degenerate into something that's not quite human anymore.  Like, "The Fly" but without the transporter machine.  Or the fly.  But maybe a peppy Geena Davis character, at least, as the narrator in my head.

Except this experience is entirely human.  That's what's so sad and pathetic about it.  I am trying to bargain with myself that if I just do my aerobics this evening and call it a day and spend the evening doing nice things that I really enjoy then I can get back to feeling better, have a guilt-free conscience and start afresh tomorrow.  I also got to the point of feeling so low and so isolated today that I had to bring forward my little less-important plan of making a 'Love Folder' and printing out nice encouraging emails from people and putting them in there.

I got the idea from Marie Forleo's team when I wrote them an email with lots of love and gratitude in it myself last week and was told that I had reached the honour of being added to her 'love folder'.  I guess all of us could do with one.  Especially when you're giving out lots of love but somehow not getting the same in return.  Like saying lots of loving, supportive things to someone in a text and then getting a reply of, "thank you very much" and that's it.  And all you feel is just pure disappointment at the emptiness of the lack of reciprocation.  I guess a lot of people are in relationships like this.  I just never thought I'd be someone who would tolerate it.  Anyone out there want to help fill up my 'love folder' by way of commiseration? 

I need to stop feeling so low and remind myself of the fun things I got to do lately.  Namely, lounging in the shade on a hot day on a lovely balcony with a view of the hills of Šumava with a mini, Cleopatra-style bowl of grapes and apple slices:

and pedalling around the island known as 'shooting island' [Střelecký Ostrov] on one of those pedalo boats

followed by a congratulatory new Infinity magnum afterwards which was almost equally as good an experience.  (No photo of the magnum, as I was too busy eating it!)

And I got the cutest ever picture of the cowboy later as he sat with a contemplative look while waiting for food at a brewery/restaurant combined place (his idea of heaven) in Prague 2.  But I can't show you that either, because that wouldn't be fair on him.  You'll just have to take my word for it that he looked super-sweet!

So I'd better get myself up and into my aerobics gear and see if I can revitalise this tired little semi-caterpillar like entity and persuade it to do something energetic now.  I wish I were back in California.  I miss the palm trees.  And the beaches are a good incentive to get into shape.   I feel so landlocked in this country!

The world and universe

I feel like I've been walking through a tunnel that's lit with strangely orange lighting and I've forgotten what time of day it is outside.  I have not been sleeping at all well and the weirdness of this current point in my life is very disconcerting.  I have flashbacks of times in London in my room in a dark and gloomy West London house, watching ER on Monday nights with a glass of red wine in a shapely green wine glass I got from a charity shop somewhere.  I used to watch ER for the stories that unfolded about the character who started out as a nurse and then became a doctor.  I don't know why I was drawn to that character so much.  She just had a sort of inner strength but also total inability to open up to people that I related to at the time and I found myself routing for her as her stories developed.

I don't know quite how my story is developing at the moment, but I'm having strange incidences of not recognising myself in a situation.  I used to be super-cynical and razor-sharp at throwing out the worst of my frustrations in crystal clear prose or rebellious ranting, but I seem to be being drawn away from all that now.  (Bloody hell, you go to California once, and look what happens..!)  I have found myself listening to Marianne Williamson and Tony Robbins, trying to learn and re-train my brain to stop criticising myself and to try to be more focussed about the things I love and want to have more time for.

I made two videos at the beginning of this week, in order to enter two similar competitions for business training.  I wonder if either will yield anything?  I at least learnt a fair amount about filming and editing on iMovie, which I'm quite pleased about, as that's a useful little string to my bow.  I need to tackle Wordpress.org tomorrow.  I also have to go on a Treasure Hunt tomorrow, can you believe it?!

There's a firm that make these treasure hunt trails for 'team-building' projects for companies, and I'm getting paid tomorrow to go and check that all the things on the list of clues are intact and still visible and so on.  Weird, right?  If only I had enough cash to actually enjoy wandering around Prague for three hours by stopping for coffee and cake at Kavárna Slavia for example.  Unfortunately, as things stand right now, I'm down to 300Kč for food for next week and that might have to include travel for this work tomorrow, until I get paid for it.  But I will at least make the rent that way.

In the meantime, I'm really stressed about a publishing contract that's come my way as part of a (now geographically distant) pool of musicians I know and is subject to a 4-branch 'tree' of collectors/publishers that makes things so complicated and so divided up that I can't even see how much money I would get from it in theory.  I had the reply from the MU solicitor today with my free hour's worth of suggested amendments and advice and the whole thing was brilliant work but totally filled my head with stress and questioning and fear and irreconcilable confusion.  

I had to laugh though, because the solicitor brilliantly and simply crossed out all the bits of language where the contract-writer had sought to appear 'clever' by adding in unnecessary and confusing terms.  I love it when people do this.  Or when people try to use a saying that they think will make them sound grander, but then they screw it up and look like a total prat.  Such as, "it always ceases to amaze me when.." when they meant "never ceases" or a casual misuse of 'literally' for emphasis that just isn't possible.  Or an overzealous attempt at pomp and circumstance that fails when they get to the end of their sentence and can't finish on a flourish for want of a perfect synonym for something they said right before.  (Boris Johnson does this a lot and he allegedly received the best education money can buy, so he's got no excuse!) 

Maybe I've just become impatient with Britishness.  Or I'm finding it irritating unless demonstrated in the finest form of years of tireless, self-motivated education.  Or maybe I'm just wound-up that a company like Sony are trying to rip people off by getting them to sign 20 year deals that can't be negotiated down to less than 10 with no obligation on their part to guarantee any payment during that period whatsoever (and you can forget about an advance..!) while retaining the right to the copyrighted material whether they make any money out of it for you or not.  By god, they put some weird nonsense in those contracts.  I notice the MU appointed solicitor has crossed out the definition of the 'territory' of the jurisdiction of the contract from "the world and universe" to just "the world".  Seriously, who writes these contracts?  Would they like to outline the exact boundaries of the universe, just to clarify?  Perhaps I should ask for that. 

I feel so tired from all these rapid thoughts and corrections of those thoughts.  I can't take the constant sleepless nights.  You'd think I were on drugs or something.  (I'm not.  More's the pity...)  The last two nights I've been ready for bed and about to go to sleep when I burst into tears uncontrollably.  And then that's me occupied for the next hour until I can pull myself together to make a milky drink and try to go to sleep again.  It's been torturous actually.  My head is full of flashbacks and visions of myself as being alone and small and almost invisible forever.  All that utterly calamitous stuff.  It feels like there's some kind of monster within me being exorcised.  And I don't even know when it'll end, or what the world will look like when I come out of all this.  And the really hilarious thing is, I don't even have enough money to buy a bottle of wine to have a glass before bed as some kind of last ditch attempt at a sedative.  But I guess that's probably a good thing.

Thoughts, fantasies and a wish for adventure

"The vitality of thought is an adventure.  Ideas won't keep.  Something must be done about them."  A. N. Whitehead

I'm feeling quite low today.  Something about the proximity of Christmas and the way in which it seems designed to pinpoint and expose those of us who don't feel we really have a home to go has begun to gnaw away at me already.  Additionally, the reminiscences about this time last year, before the final throes of the end of the dredges of my former relationship has started pecking away at my mind, like an insistent and anxious bird.  This is obviously not helped by an overwhelming tiredness.  I'm not sure how to combat it, when I know what I need is some time off and a bit of hope for the future.  Which, of course, will require some planning.  

I also know this is part of the call of the creative stuff, begging me to come back, when I can't.  How can I come back, when I don't even have a whole day off anymore?  I am doing what I said I would.  I'm paying my way.  I sold my piano to do this, but I have no hope of ever buying a replacement, let alone having a flat to put it in.  And even if I could, it's already too late.  It's still painful to look back at how long it took me to think I could even begin to call myself a musician, how much I dedicated myself to trying to prove I was, to make up for my total lack of formal music education.  And the suspicion in the eyes of many that music was not where my 'talents' lay at all and I was heading for a fall by liking music so much, did so much more damage than anyone could have imagined.  (They were right on the latter, but for the wrong reasons.)

And so it is that I find myself a little lost today, away from a real sense of home, speaking three different foreign languages in one day (French, Czech and German, in that order) and wondering what on earth constitutes 'home' anyway.  I keep thinking of that Christmas when I was cat-sitting in someone else's flat, looking after the two cutest cats in all Christendom and being paid for it.  I knew I was the luckiest person on earth.  I also knew it would never happen twice.  

I was slightly envious that the couple I cat-sat for had such a lovely life of heading off to LA one month, Stockholm the next.  I still have a silly little dream of going to California one day and hanging out on some under-populated beach somewhere there (if there is one).  Oddly enough, on the other hand, I wouldn't mind heading way out to San Francisco instead, even though the two are not even remotely close when you look at a map.  Still, fantasies are fantasies.  They work fine in your head.

Just like the idea of being able to change trajectory and run different groups of meet-ees, maybe even for singing/songwriting or even do some playing, writing and performing of my own, keeps circling my mind but there's great doubt it'll have a real landing place.  And all the while, I long for a couple of days of luxury, such as a long afternoon reading books and magazines, followed by a languid bath with all sorts of potions to pamper myself with.  Or a day just playing and writing and even recording songs.  But fantasies are hard to convert to reality.  Especially when you haven't even got any time to think.