stuck mcdougall mentaly and physicaly mentaly stuck in a state of confusion. the question do i want to be here in wisconsin or back home in south carolina is keeping me awake. next week i'll weigh my options and try to descide. new information against past memories and presant friends. physicaly stuck here in wisconsin, and where ever else i find myself. i have to vehical and my only means of transportation is walking or a ride from a friend. i need a car 031222 ... mcdouagll slowly falling asleep aw too tired for a spell check sorry guys 031222 ... anomalous in the muck 050426 ... nom in my mind 060124 ... unhinged sometimes my body betrays me. inflammation, pain, depression. doctors say its all about brain chemistry. it is not that obscure. it hurts, beyond words sometimes. sometimes i cant hold a fork or a pen. sometimes i cant get out of bed. sometimes the aloneness is so profound physical pain is preferrable. i have a really hard time reducing all of that to electrical impulses in my brain. i have this list of all these things i should do. i look at the list and dont even know where to begin. so yeah, sometimes the thought of doing something as simple as going to the post office becomes daunting. especially when, instead of help, someone you love is just flinging more shit at you. thanks sister 140814 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Hang in there. Or not "there" there - I hope you can inhabit a different mental space soon. Stuck sucks... I feel this. At home. At "work": home is work and I can't seem to get different enough habits to do the things I'd like, to take on challenges. 140814 ... unhinged again 150326 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Like a broken Olympic record. Different, but still the same competition. 150330 ... unhinged as soon as he said he was a sagittarius i knew i was destined to be a passing amusement 160519 ... tender_square “i’m realizing i’m stuck,” she said. “my job is different this time around; the people are great still, but what am i even doing?” her heart was in another country. she was a lit fuse, the wicks of her hands burning to reach a state of enough restlessness that warranted movement. 220803 ... tender_square it doesn’t matter where i am; there, or here, it’s the same. my restless heart wanders at dawn. and when it’s time to turn around to head back to the house where he sleeps, i force myself to return when i’d rather flee. freedom lasts until 8:30 am, and then we’re pretending that everything is as it was between us when it’s irrevocably altered. i spend the day in separate rooms, at a distance. work is a refuge i miss on weekends. when we eat together and when we walk together there is nothing to say. or rather, so much is left unsaid and all my thoughts are consumed with leaving. as night nears, i can’t wait for sleep, to drift through hours of dreams i can’t remember, to be back to another morning, alone, my feet carrying me away for temporary respite again. 220819 ... kerry is to keep asking people for advice and not bother to take it. i said to carrie "the most annoying thing about this is that it's a problem i have to deal with on my own, no one can fix it for me" and she nodded. i wished she would do more than nod and rest her chin on her fist. but there was nothing more for her to do. what i thought of as boredom is really restlessness, stuckness, every day devoted to maintenance--eat reasonably well, get a reasonable amount of sleep, exercise a reasonable amount, etc.--and that is all necessary and importance but maintenance does not lead to inspiration. carrie suggested friction, the need for some discomfort. perhaps that will cause the spark. i imagine striking a match, the quick gritty feeling of the match dragging across red phosphorus, a flame that lights at first small and uncertain-seeming and then before you know it has nearly reached your fingertips. (i collect old matchbooks and have begun actually using them, and it seems the older matches light with more fervor than the newer ones, why is that?) a girl i just met told me about getting a concussion from a dog attack. she described two weeks of not being able to read or write. i told her i'd experienced the same thing. she said the doctor told her to take it word by word--literally read one word at a time, cover the surrounding text--and i remembered how the words came back for me. i found paperbacks i read as a kid, held them close to my face, and scrutinized each word, one by one. and soon the words became phrases that became sentences that became paragraphs that became stories, and i could read again, even though my doctors had said maybe i would, maybe i wouldn't. and that all reminded me that when i feel stuck in writing it helps to pick up a book that i found energizing when i was young and hormonal and more receptive, when life had a rawness that wasn't depleting. so i did this last night, curled up on the velvet couch with a belly full of chicken curry, and that feeling came back. the pages glowed, i glowed, like a tiny match was struck inside me. 240125 ... epitome of incomprehensibility David left for London today. He's headed to Oxford for a conference and then to Cambridge for his new research post. It's not like he was right next to me when he was in Pickering this past spring and summer. But closer. A train ride away. I had plans to be a sea away instead of an ocean away, but then the University of Vienna sent out an email to potential international students: "Hey, we have too many applications, so if we accept you, you won't have time to get here this year. Next year okay?" I guess that's okay. I don't even know if I want to do more linguistics yet. I can't really afford it, anyway. But so far I've hardly looked for the job I know I should be looking for. What job? Whatever job. I don't know why I'm not busier writing the second section of my book. Okay, I do know. I find the writing-from-scratch part intimidating. I also need to look up the Montreal Gazette archives for the year 2001. That would help for the background of this part. There we go. Good. Break down goals into parts. Email a former prof to ask if he has any job leads, even if he doesn't. Will it hurt to ask? Not literally. It will just make me stuck when I avoid it, and a wasp_sting will only be a temporary distraction. Stuck stung. No stack stang. The i-u pattern not the i-a-u one. 240904 what's it to you? who go blather from