Hey Fuckface,
She’s back. She is me. And here I am. Back! Back in action. So action-packed. Can you believe the level of action. I am doing backflips and somersaults and high kicks and some very complicated dance moves and I am somehow actually coordinated and can learn choreography finally. Believe it or don’t! You can’t see me, so if I’m lying you’ll never know! NEVER! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Truthfully, I feel like I have been very action unpacked. Action on the back burner. I am the cliche of the Reductress article, “Woman Foolishly Thinks She Just Needs To Get Through This Week” and have been getting through the weeks. The action is the metaphorical balls I have in the air and how I am somehow keeping them all up there even though logically it should not be possible. The rush of adrenaline I get from completing tasks is disgusting. I was struggling to complete something because it required other people to respond to me and when I finally got things sorted I wanted to scream with joy in the street because of course I was checking email about this one job while waiting for public transit to get to another job. Like, I’m pure filth! What a slobbering, little productivity pig.
Sidebar: I hate when people saying sweating like a pig because pigs don’t sweat which is why they are wallowing in mud, you fucking dinguses! Sweating like a horse is a better metaphor. Use it! EDUCATE YERSELFS!
I am trying to make choices that, like many people I love and respect, allow me to say no, make more time for things I want to do, enjoy doing, etc. But you know what? It really feels like you already have to have some serious shit in place to do that. Lots of money and stable housing and maybe someone in your life who shares domestic chores. Or you can afford to pay someone to clean your home, or do your laundry. But that’s not my life. Women can have it all. And by all I mean every fucking annoying task in the world. I am so grateful I don’t have children. Neglecting them would put my guilt really over the top.
The work things I have been pushing away the past few months are my personal projects. My books. My writing. Writing is always what gets pushed because it pays the least, and requires the most care and attention. That time and space is precious, but precarious. And balancing and juggling are skills, but they also are really exhausting skills, much like I imagine real circus performers are exhausted. Like what if we could fucing Cirque du slow down? Yeah, I said it.
On my day off this week I truly did nothing. Partially because my uterus made it impossible for me to enjoy life, but also because I actively said, nope to attempting anything productive. This included laundry and dishes and toilets and organizing the mess on the kitchen table that I made the week before because I didn’t have time to clean up things I was just dumping there in the red formica dumping ground.
Listening to music I let the algorithm take me away and songs kept popping up that I loved. The algo knows. And I found myself just lying in a nest on the couch singing along, happily, with feeling. The first song that got me there was “Softer, Softest,” from Hole’s Live Through This, one of the most important albums of my life, obviously. Yes, I am a little, dirtbag 90s cliche too. And then it went on like that, me singing with my whole body, enjoying every second of it, and on some level remembering a little of what I learned in singing lessons, which I took around the same time that album cam out.
Sidebar 2: my singing teacher was a middle-aged dude who was a total perv and later on I found out he did some pretty bad shit because of course a small town singing teacher who taught out of an abandoned clinic building was creepy as shit.
That was the action I needed. To feel like a person in my body, doing a thing I liked which was enjoying art. It’s so simple it almost seems bad! But it’s not. It’s not bad at all! I can list bad things. I am always listing bad things. It’s too easy!
Even if I’m not able to sustain a life that allows me to work less or say no, I will find my spots to enjoy shit. I will. I am gonna do it. I am also going to work less often at my day job that requires commuting (stealing my time and life!) so I can focus on everything else that is more meaningful to me. Just for the summer. Then back to chaos.
But summer is my favourite season anyway, so fuck the rest of the seasons!
xoxo
A Fuckface
“Neglecting them would put my guilt really over the top.” 😆💀