Journal: 04/27/06

Slow day, Constant Reader, but then again, all my days are slow since Joann died. I realize that I’m deeply embedded in this rut where everything I write is about Joann, but I can’t seem to help myself. For me, everything right now is about Joann and how the loss of her in my life affects me. I’m sure that at some point in the future I’ll get out of the rut, but I don’t know when that will be, it may be a long time in coming.

I called the mortuary today alerting them that another $200.00 is ready for them to pick up. Bill agrees that half is better than nothing, and we don’t want Paul Mortuary getting the wrong idea.

Coasting On SSDD

Aside from the first ten days I was back behind the front desk, I usually work a six-day week, nine hours a day. It is the slow season on the Monterey Peninsula and there isn’t a lot of foot or reservation traffic. This makes for very low-key days with a lot of time on my hands. Normally, I work on some personal project I have going at the time, like the current book I’m working on. I am trying to get published and the only time I have to write is when I’m at the office. Not that I don’t do my job justice, but running the front desk isn’t exactly rocket science. Whatever paperwork I have to do takes about an hour every couple of days, and there aren’t that many guests now who pester me.

Since Joann died though, I have been just going through the motions of work. I spend all my time when not engaged with a guest or on the phone, reading the newspaper and surfing the web for more news to read. I guess I’m about as well informed about the world situation as anyone can be, reading news nine hours a day.

This is a departure from how I occupied myself in the past, pre-Joann’s death. Certainly I played games, BigJig, a jigsaw puzzle for Windows is my favorite time waster, but I hadn’t played for months until a couple of nights ago. Taking care of Joann occupied all of my time and when I came back to work, I just wasn’t interested. I spent a lot of time working on the current incarnation of my novel as well, aside from this blog though, I haven’t written a creative word. Again, I just wasn’t interested.

I do write and post a blog entry every day, sometimes I post two every other day. These five hundred to one thousand epistles have kept me focused on the present and not the past, but they don’t require a lot of creative effort as I’m simply reporting what I observe of myself. What I lack is a personal project to keep myself engaged with the world instead of merely coasting through it. Maybe this "coasting" effect is a form of depression, as is probably my lack of consistent eating, but I can’t seem to break myself away from the rut on the shoulder of my road of life. Even my work on the blog appears to be becoming less urgent and I have to prompt myself to put an intelligent entry together.

Everyone keeps telling me that "this too shall pass," and I do believe it. It’s just that when you are in this paralysis, it gets frustrating and there’s no way to work through it. Is it possible that this frustration with myself is a sign that I’m finally coming around?