Fighting An Obsession

I started this post 2 days ago with this:

 In contrast to the unprofitable group therapy session, I like Juliet Escoria Wants to Bring Back Fistfights. Whoever Juliet Ecoria is, this section helps my mental state. It helps that it aligns with my own thinking!

CE: Is there some minimum amount of normal you have to maintain in order to write? In order to publish?

JE: Eleven years ago, I wrote an essay-thing about how I thought this Flaubert quote was bullshit: “Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so you may be violent and original in your work.

I feel like that essay has come back to haunt me. As life has become more and more bourgeois, I feel simultaneously like my writing has gotten better and weirder. I don’t think that quote is bullshit anymore. I don’t think it’s universally true, but it’s been true for me. My writing has also become a relatively healthy outlet for the self-destructive urges that at one time nearly killed me. If I’m dead, I can’t write, and I need a bit of normalcy to stay alive.

But really I think it’s a sense of duty that is required, and that some normalcy is required to fill that duty. You have to be a consistent control freak to finish a book. But too much normalcy also can kill writing—it’s a balance. But oh God, publishing is rough. I think you need normalcy to not have publishing turn you into an insecure mess, or an ego-driven monster.

Oh, to be fishing: On Foot in the Golden Trout Wilderness.

Now is Sunday morning.

The group therapy session consists of this: people reporting on what they did this week. Well, anyone reading this knows that my life is very boring. 

CC picked me up - a little late, I had time to get some groceries. We went to the post office; no discoery from Kokomo but I got a response to my petition.

CC has her problems and there is little help I can give her. I certainly cannot fix them. I see now she needs inpatient care. She is to come around today, maybe go swimming and definitely to eat. I cannot udnerstand why she will fall for a SSI scam but not talk to a lawyer.

When we got back her Friday, the apartment smelled of sewer gas. CC went off . She called Middletown Properties and gave them an earful before being put on hold. I called back and gave them two earfuls in slow, measured tones. I do not like CC being upset; I may have even felt a little embarrassed. After all, I did finally get the trash out. The heat is getting to me, too. Until I was in the middle of the call, I did not understand how annoyed I am by no overhead fan and no oven.

I did turn on the air conditioner.

Then I went to work on the article. That got me through Saturday. Yesterday, I leeft only when I was out of cola and smokes. I kept taking naps - under the air conditioner - it was that miserable.

I do not feel that I am nattering on with the article. Even if either of the Indiana law journals publishes it, I know it will be ignored. That is the fate of law review articles. For me the thing is paying back my old profession, my state, and finishing a project that began over 30 years ago.

Reinstatement has been on my mind thanks to MW and Stephanie R. I do find myself missing the law and still wishing to have no clients complicating my life.

Now, I need get ready for church. 

sch