Guilt is for beginners

No Glob entries in two weeks. Major guilt because I haven’t written more than ten words in that time. That’s an exaggeration—I’m working on something that sucks and I’ve spent at least three hours on it, meaning more like thirty or fifty sucky words, filling me with even more guilt for not producing something, at least something, of some quality.

During this time, as a partial excuse (and increaser of guilt), I moved. Into the loveliest house in La Banda. It’s called La Kalimera (Good Morning in Greek) and it has indoor heating (in one room) and trees of all kinds: mandarin, orange, grapefruit, lemon, peach, apricot, avocado, guava, walnut, almond, and of course, my favorite, the Pink Peppercorn tree called the Awarivay. There are also eight olive trees, fully loaded and ready for harvesting. Scoring this place was a stroke of beyond-luck and I’m doing everything in my power to accept it graciously and guiltlessly. Very difficult. Despite years of specific battling of the big G, it seems to be, in many ways, my natural state of being. D. says that guilt is for beginners and that I am at least a semi-professional by now so-get-the-fuck-over-it-already.

More guilt (combined with love and shining pride) in the form of my sister’s new book, recently released EVERY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE. It took me about a day and a half to read, every minute of it an odd, relativistic delicacy. The story is loosely (not that loosely, actually) based on her/our family history and never before have I encountered a “me-character” in a story that wasn’t my own. Luckily, “Amy” was just a child and so I had little reason to hate or resent her. As for my sister, an immature part of me wishes I could hate or resent her for having published two books to my NONE books published. (They think Jamie “puts Sault Ste. Marie onto the map with her latest book, EVERY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE?” Just wait till they read my perfectly unpublished SKID!) But I support my sister and instead, hate and deeply resent myself in equal, alternating parts. My lazy self. My more-fearful-of-success-than-of-failure self. My absolutely not talentless self who seems to be waiting for some magical publishing elf to find the novel, the screenplay, the graphic story, and the twenty odd essays and short stories stashed secretly in my computer and send them off to the perfect agent who is DYING to find a writer like me to represent and usher into literary history.

I am such a freak.

I am, almost schizophrenically, my own highly critical, perfect readership of one, and at the very same time, a lazy-assed, addicted-to-guilt-and-literary-self-flaggelation semi-writer who feels an almost desperate need at this exact moment to turn off the computer and go out and collect the nuts and fruits that have fallen to the ground. Or hand wash my scarf collection. Or maybe make a black bean soup. Or play with Rita Ciccarelli the dog. Or polish my Tango shoes. Or maniacally cut my bangs again. Something. Anything to avoid this guilt-if-I-do-and-guilt-if-I-don’t feeling I have about writing. My writing.

Jesus cunt fuck.

I have to get over this.

(Here, the Anti-Guilt Fairy, bless her heart, comes down and says, “Lighten up—at least you managed to write these 573 words. It could be worse.” So I do lighten up and take some momentary solace in imagining a handsome sculptor engraving those exact words onto my tombstone: IT COULD’VE BEEN WORSE.)

And now I guess it's time to mop the floor.