Wednesday, July 30, 2003
I FEEL LIKE A HUNDRED BUCKS, to paraphrase Paul Westerberg. Actually, I'm not exactly sure how he meant that, but I know how I mean it. If I were a weaker person, I'd be bandying about the phrase "nervous breakdown." (I didn't bandy just then, did I?) Between Bryant and yesterday's crap with the refinancing and the aborted gift, I'm just emotionally drained. I haven't even mentioned various work nonsense and that two-day colonoscopy ordeal.
All this is manifesting itself in a strange way: I'm alternately being excessively nice and excessively mean to people. Last night at work I turned into the gruff manager that those who think they know me but really don't probably think I always am. And then today at Safeway, normally an obstacle course of rage for me, I was a font of tiny kindnesses. I spared a little old lady the walk to return her shopping cart. I went to the manager's office to report the cashier's excellence (too bad the manager wasn't there). I refrained from yelling at the bastard who thought the grocery-loading lane was his own private reserved parking space.
The melancholy has left my lazy ass more creative than usual. Look at all these posts! Last night I actually got started on what I hope will be my third book, and my first one about something other than editing and writing. I was stunned at how easily the ideas and words flowed. (Four paragraphs down, 996 to go!) And then, this morning, I moved my other blog, the embarrassingly sporadic one about tennis, over to Blogspot. No actual new writing there yet, but there is a dynamite list of tennis links and some kick-ass use of color. It's a start.
All this is manifesting itself in a strange way: I'm alternately being excessively nice and excessively mean to people. Last night at work I turned into the gruff manager that those who think they know me but really don't probably think I always am. And then today at Safeway, normally an obstacle course of rage for me, I was a font of tiny kindnesses. I spared a little old lady the walk to return her shopping cart. I went to the manager's office to report the cashier's excellence (too bad the manager wasn't there). I refrained from yelling at the bastard who thought the grocery-loading lane was his own private reserved parking space.
The melancholy has left my lazy ass more creative than usual. Look at all these posts! Last night I actually got started on what I hope will be my third book, and my first one about something other than editing and writing. I was stunned at how easily the ideas and words flowed. (Four paragraphs down, 996 to go!) And then, this morning, I moved my other blog, the embarrassingly sporadic one about tennis, over to Blogspot. No actual new writing there yet, but there is a dynamite list of tennis links and some kick-ass use of color. It's a start.
