Holding On To the Crack of Doom

The nasty azz dark night of the soul does not care how you got to that dark side only that you stay and keep it company. I keep finding escape holes but I trip up and fall back in.

What helps me to stay out the pit is knowing that a lot of blogging friends and friends in real life are doing great things. I'm happy for them and want to witness and support their efforts.

For example, Lania Dawes new book "What Are You Doing Here? on black women and heavy metal is coming out in September 2012. You can check out her Facebook page.

Liz Rizzo is working on getting funding for her directorial effort Missing Miranda via Kickstarter.

Other folks are starting new jobs, new families, traveling, inventing stuff. What am I doing? Not writing a book. Not directing a film. Not speaking to fascinating people. I blog. I go to work. I fight to stay out of the dark miasma and sometimes I fail.

I'm not the bright shiny penny I once was. At 54 years of age I can be bright but it is hard to accept that people will not look at me if they perceive I am old.

I fought freaking hard to be this age. I know stuff. I've seen stuff. Yet the invisibility cloak others extend is trying to hush me up.

I keep meaning to slap in some hair dye. Not as a way to stay young but to put a fuzz filter on other people's perceptions. Haven't done it yet. I will in a couple of days. I want to spend time with a little red in the hair to see what it is like.

Redefining Success

It is getting up out of the bed. It is doing work for pay. Not because I want to do it but because I am exchanging labor for money. And security. It will not always be this way I tell myself but I haven't found my path.

Part of my path is invisible and the other is down the road a spell. It has always been like that. It has lead me to good places if I remain open.

Redefining success is not judging myself by other people. That part is hard. I know some really neat, kind and spiritually (not religiously but those people emanating a light of joy. ) successful people.

I'm honored to know them. But boy, do they make it hard to be a shlub.

Redefining success is understanding that menopause just kicked my azz and the heifer won. She snatched some of my energy and super powers. I'll get them back but I have to look for new ways to access those powers.

I had to re-learn to write in my own voice. I have to allocate time and not over book or under sleep. I can do it but not all at the same time. Freaking resent that part.

So I am indeed holding on to the crack of doom. Which might come in December. Or a long time away from now. Because if Malcolm Gladwell is right that it takes at 10,000 times to master a skill then I got a ways to go before I can declare myself as an abject failure.

In a few weeks I will introduce myself to people I don't know. They will ask what I do. I will not actually say this but I want to say I'm majoring in survival with a minor in lunacy navigation.

Not far from the truth.