On adulting. And the lack of it.

I haven’t updated this blog in a year and a half, and I don’t even really think about it — I can easily go days without remembering I even have a blog in the first place, which is actually dawning on me as a little bit sad… Wasn’t writing supposed to be a core part of who I am? The 24-year-old Ryeginald couldn’t have imagined a life without writing in some form; I think that’s her in the corner over there, sobbing quietly at the wreck we’ve become. The 39-year-old Ryeginald kind of wants to punch 24-year-old Ryeginald in the face, though. I’m not saying it would be justified, but I think 24-year-old Ryeginald is still woefully unaware of how difficult life is going to be; how in a few years, simply getting through a single day is going to drain every last ounce of energy she has. She also has no idea how much energy she’s going to lose as she gets older, how much creativity is going to elude her to the point that she’s not sure she was ever creative, and how much of her already minimal self-confidence will be slowly eroded away by years of being ignored, undervalued (because literally anyone can be a designer *eyeroll*), and steamrolled by an incredible number of short-sighted, tunnel-visioned people whose egos should have their own zip codes.

And so that’s where I am. I realize that objectively, I am lucky: I do have a roof over my head, a job that pays the rent, and plenty to eat. There are so many who can’t say the same that I’m truly ashamed to admit it doesn’t feel like enough. But it just doesn’t — I can’t ignore how personally unfulfilled I am. I’m trapped in an empty cave, its walls built by years of missed opportunities, disappointment in myself, and an underlying non-specific anger at everything around me.

Anthropologically speaking, I have failed to meet nearly all markers of being a successful adult, which leaves me feeling like an abject failure at life. Instead, I am an overweight, single, almost 40-year-old with an intensely frustrating work environment and days that regularly swing between “I’m invisible” and “I’m generally disliked, disappointing and pathetic.” This was not the plan. I don’t even really know what the plan was, but I’m sure it wasn’t this.

Part of me wants to believe it’s not too late. I want to think I can still write a book and maybe a few songs that don’t entirely suck; that I can somehow rebalance my life, finding some personal time to bring back that 24-year-old who still believed she had things to say and the creative energy to say it. That maybe I won’t have to spend the rest of my life alone. But that part of me is only alive in very short bursts: as I’m sitting in traffic, as I’m trying to fall asleep. Soon enough, I’m back in that daily slog — Juggling unrealistic expectations from people who are pushy, self-absorbed and ungrateful; the mundane chores and daily necessities that won’t get done unless I do them; all of the little daily interactions where I struggle to remain agreeable and diplomatic when I would much rather be honest and a lot less forgiving. These things consume the rest of my day, and by the end, I’m too emotionally exhausted to do anything at all, including social or creative pursuits. So I don’t. Instead, I detach entirely from the real world — I eat until I fall asleep, and then I wake up in the morning and do it all over again, like a ferris wheel that could only be designed and constructed in the depths of hell.

So at this point, I won’t even lie to myself that it can get better. It may not, and that’s something I will probably have to learn to live with. But I do want to believe I’m not alone in this pervasive sense of disappointment with life. I’d like to think there are other people who struggle with the same feelings of inertia and mediocrity. So if you happen to stumble on this blog post and maybe relate to it in some way, feel free to let me know.

 

Dear Writers of Holiday TV Movies…

Seriously, guys… we need to rethink these storylines before I go fucking apeshit.

I get it: the holidays are a great time to capitalize on schmaltz and twinkling lights and happy couples for your viewing audience. I myself have been known to binge watch your ridiculous holiday tripe because apparently, it doesn’t really feel like Christmas until Melissa Joan Hart drags a handcuffed Mario Lopez off to a cabin in the woods. (Which now that I’ve written it out sounds suspiciously like a seasonal slasher film, and I think someone should get on that.) But over the last few years, I’ve noticed some troubling clichés throughout this ever-growing collection of holiday — clichés which threaten to end my occasional dalliance with this modern holiday tradition. So, on the off chance anyone gives a shit, here are my top 5 requests:

1. Please, for the love of secret Santa, stop portraying all workaholic women as ladder-climbing narcissists. Some of us are workaholics not because of an obsession with getting that high-rise corner office, but because of an obsession with somehow paying our rent. That shit’s expensive and merely keeping our jobs often means working overtime.
2. Can these “sad” single women please be over the age of 30? Speaking as a 36-year-old single woman, the insistence that these 20-somethings are somehow past their prime is both insulting and horribly, horribly depressing. You might as well film 90 minutes of Alicia Witt pointing at the screen and laughing, because that’s how watching that bullshit feels. Though I can’t speak for all 30-something single women, I know that for some of us, the holidays are depressing enough. We don’t need that pinch of salt in the wound.
3. Please never make another movie where a successful working woman discovers her life would mean more if she’d married her high school sweetheart and had four kids. It insinuates that working women without husbands and children are living empty, meaningless lives, and that’s an amazingly shitty aspersion to cast on an entire subsection of modern society. Especially during the holidays, when marketing ploys and family get-togethers are already doing quite well casting this aspersion without your help.
4. Let’s stop acting like finding seasonal employment is the fast track to holiday peace and joy. Because you know what sucks far worse than a shitty holiday season? That rapid descent into a shitty January living in your car because your seasonal employment ended and you still can’t find a goddamn job.
5. Can we please stop featuring female elves, angels and daughters of Santa? Portraying human men repeatedly falling for these fantastical creatures is not really helping the whole “Men, let’s be more realistic about our expections of women” cause. (Hell, Summer Glau is an unrealistically fantastical creature even without elf ears…)

I know there’s a reasonable argument to be made for simply not ever watching any of these holiday schmaltz-fests ever again, and really, I would do that — if not for my inexplicable penchant for seasonal everything. I love the idea of holiday movies… in theory. I just wish that, as long as they’re going to churn these out by the score every year, they’d maybe stop perpetuating the worst of our societal stereotypes, leaving some of us wanting to stab everyone we meet with a sharpened candy cane.

…If anyone needs me, I’ll be looking up those seasonal slasher films.

It is Sunday, January 19th…

…And I am kind of only posting so ya’ll know I’m still alive.

And by “ya’ll” I mean “whoever stumbles across this blog since there hasn’t been a legitimate reason to follow it in years.” I’m not the kind of writer who can come up with entertaining content on a regular basis. I’d like to think a more accurate statement is “I don’t live the kind of life that lends itself to entertaining content on a regular basis,” but I don’t think that’s true. The plot line doesn’t always have to involve me directly; there are plenty of things to write about wherein I’m merely a commentator, not an active participant.

But the fact remains that I still haven’t figured out how to muster the energy to actually write about much of anything. If I force myself to write, I usually find myself eventually staring at a few intro sentences that go nowhere, like a match that sparks but doesn’t catch. Those matches are really depressing. If I’m lucky enough to hit on something which actually leads to several more subsequent sentences, it inevitably snowballs into the kind of raving lunatic post that goes so horribly awry, I exhaust myself in the process. Like accidentally dropping a lit match on its matchbook and the whole goddamn thing goes up in flames. Those matches are also depressing, but in a totally different way and I usually need a nap afterwards. It probably goes without saying that the remaining ashes of lunatic post are not suitable for public consumption.

And that’s really where things stand. All I can say is that I feel notably directionless and still bored with several aspects of my life, but I’m not excessively anxious about that. It is what it is, and this life is the kind of life that someone like me is probably going to lead. At some point, I’ll have to decide what I’m going to do with that, and actually be proactive about making some new life choices. But for now, I’m just going to poke around the issue and kick some tires and work on racking up fewer instances of exhausting myself. I have learned, the hard way once again, that keeping busy is often counterproductive when your actual goal is to find a new direction and a sense of purpose. Those things are difficult to find under pressure and deadlines. Sometimes they require space and silence and as many naps as you feel like taking.