When I was productive

Confronting the wasting of time

I’m noticing a distinct disconnection between what I do and how I feel, and ….

That feels especially unpleasant.

I’m also tired.

I’m less inclined to push.

And I’m wondering about my own sanity.

Who is this?

Who are you, Tracy Michele Bullock, if not the bitch who checks things off the list? Who has a star above her name and upon her lapel? 

What is this bothersome business of standing still and looking about and not finishing the book in a day and arriving  late, giving up the relationship, forgoing the friendship, not calling your Mother, nor churning out content like words are money and recession is unheard of and your economy will be bailed out around the time you die after living forever and returning again to a similar body in another distorted society in a bankrupt reality to do all of it again?

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You know how it is when you are waiting for  your coffee, late in the morning, on a Sunday, in an off-the-beaten-path neighborhood and it’s been five minutes or more because the barista is talking, like they are the only two on the planet (but not in a flirty way) to the customer before you while you - you guessed it - wait?

In the valid irritation, is there not too a bit of wonder? A bent kind of respect? 

There is for me, oh for sure. Like just in the same way I got to give it to the student who just waited for someone else to direct the school project and was OK with whatever grade that effort, the other person’s that is, won. 

How did they get that?

What do they presume others think of them? And how do those impressions matter to such a person?

I can’t imagine -or rather couldn’t - what the Hell that is like. Like, what is it like to move as one is inspired, feels, and leave it at that? I think it must be like what they mean at the $25 a pop yoga class when the person with thighs so brilliant they dispel any understanding of what stood for legs before they were so lunged forth encourages students to “breath”.

Wherever the admirable gaul and courage comes from, I sure have never had it. That sense of self that allows for the possibility of letting the day slip away or a fork sit in the sink unscrubbed. Of all the monkeys mating and spawning between my shoulder blades their King is the ape that kicks me forward lest I see myself. Live my life. Experience the moment. Leave a thing. Get by. Be OK.

My wins are blindly bright. My failures are Oscar worthy. 

I make the most of the day.

I don’t sleep.

I am rewarded.

I am empty.

And yet, we come to right now when I am, as you may have noticed, older. When I am, as you are aware, am childless. Untethered from genetic mortality and likely to be well tended in the senior years before me by people who did well to look after me generations before I came to be - and things don’t look the same.

I’m not getting so much done.

I think I might be OK.

Sometimes I am not. Sometimes I scare myself with the sobriety of what comes into my mind as a reasonable course of action when so down, but, if honesty is encouraged,that has always been the case. What is different however is fatigue or wisdom (chickens and eggs and the like) has me running less. Sitting down a lot more and tempting the idea that misery is not a thing one can escape when dancing the steps of an alien choreographer just as happiness seems not won by beating a feared image of one’s self.  It is a funny kind of Dorothy-and-the-ruby-slippers kind of thing where contentment is more likely here at my tiptoes, already woven into my outfit than I was aware (Silly me!). A friend that is already in my contact list.  A sibling living next door. Sweetheart from the very earliest moments of my existence wooed by listening vs speaking.

God, what a waste! What a waste of stupid sweat and messy blood this idiotic achievement - all of them. What are they, really? Were they accomplishments at all? Or for those so uncompassionate that they’ve already gone and unsubscribed and won’t read this anyway.

Well, we can’t worry about that can we? They day is already getting on and lets not waste it on another other than our experiencing of ourselves in it.

Xo

Tracy Michele