Now anyone worth their salt knows where I’m going with this. “I get knocked down, but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.” Oh, how I do heart a one hit wonder!
Many moons ago when I was belting this song out, at the top of my lungs, at some random Boylston Street bar in Boston, I doubt it ever crossed my mind that it would become my theme song all these years later. But here I am. Waxing poetic about a band that probably got called "Chewbacca" a lot.
What can I say? It’s been a bad day/week/month/stretch. And just when I thought it was getting better, well, you guess it…I got knocked down. And sometimes I stayed down. Because when you’re in the middle of a hurricane it’s hard to see anything clearly. (How’s that for epic imagery?) I'll admit I can get caught up in the minutiae. I’ve been here before and sometimes, to be honest, I can't see the forest for the trees. Can't figure out what I want to do, even when I know what I need to do. Or figure out what my first step should be. Or know for certain if I'm ready to take that next leap of faith. (But is anyone every *really* ready?!?!??!)
And then comes the “a-ha” moment. And the feeling that my horoscope is speaking directly to me. Now I’m the first to admit I read a lot of daily horoscopes. It’s ritual. There are three sites I’m pretty much faithful too. And no, I don’t keep reading until I find one that applies. I just like to cover my bases and be prepared for what’s to come. Some days it’s a big old case of “say what”? And other days, like, oh I don’t know, say today for instance, it’s a case of hello, nail. I’m going to hit you on the head.
“You have arrived at an important starting point. Set out on the path that you have always wanted to take. You are in the perfect position. The road may seem long, but it doesn't have to be daunting. You need only take one small step at a time.”
Now it hopefully goes without saying that the path I’ve always want to take, that the big dream, is to be a writer. I never set out to have a corporate job, despite my childhood love for 9 to 5 and the fact that I used to make chocolate milk and pretend it was coffee while I “played” office. (I was never one for playing house.) But by high school I knew that writing was what I wanted to do. I had so many fantasies in college about writing novels from the comfort of my couch in my pj’s, noshing on Cheetos and Diet Coke. (It goes without saying that I would magically not gain any weight or turn my computer keys orange from Chester Cheetah’s heavenly treat.) I could make up stories and weave in pieces of my own life, getting revenge on ex’s, respect of my favorite authors and having a happily ever after in my books and in my life.
But then reality came crashing down. And writing internships at magazines in Boston don’t pay. (Though I did get some bylines which was cool.) And rent checks bounce. And I temped my way into a full time job where I stayed and stayed and stayed. Several writing classes and groups and stories and contests and one novel (as yet unpublished) later and I was back in New York, ready to start over.
And then mortgages and the last of student loans needed to be paid. And I enjoyed my corporate job, until I didn’t. And then more writing classes and a mystery novel and more contests. And then rejections and revisions and the job plummeting downhill into a whole new level of rock bottom, fifty feet of crap, then me. (Thank you Rachel for feeling miserable when Ross comes back from China with Julie and uttering one of the best lines EVER!)
And then there was settling. UGH! What an ugly frigging word. To settle. Just writing it makes me shudder. But I gave up. Gave in. I stopped working towards something more. And I know how pathetic and cowardly this all sounds, but what can I say? Sometimes it’s easier to stay when you know you should go. So I settled. I bitched and moaned and complained my ass off about work. And got seduced by the money and the security. But it has nothing to do with writing and at the risk of being dramatic (I’m getting in the mood for disc one of Dawson’s, Season 5, that just arrived from Netflix, so drama is in order), this job is completely eating away at my soul. I’m unhappy all day and then unhappy for part of my night. I’m just a big old ball of settle.
And then came today’s horoscope and it was like Moses parted the Red Sea and I could cross over. (These analogies seem to be taking a weird turn. And I’m sure my religious naivety is showing through. Nativity? A non-church-goer say what? Don’t shoot the writer. I worship in the aisles at Barnes & Noble.)
But I digress. And I have seen the light. Cue me some Green Day.
I had this same epiphany four years ago when my company got sold to a shit-tastic company full of pompous, condescending, very short men. I am better than this! I deserve better! I will leave and they will be sorry! (Yes, I have revenge issues). And here I am, in a similar looking boat, knowing that my destiny is not to work at this company anymore.
And then I had a dream. Literally. I was hiding out in a house with two other people and there was some murderous creeper outside who was shooting at us. (There’s a chance that my recent obsessive Murder, She Wrote watching slash I’m-reading-an-amazing-new-thriller may have also contributed to this theme).
But, anyway…
So in my dream we’re all crouched on the stairs and rather than run down them we just keep hunching down when the guy shoots at us. And what pray tell does all this mean, you ask (and should I be embarrassed that I had to Google “pray tell” to find it how to spell it properly?):
To dream that someone is shooting you with a gun, suggests that you are experiencing some confrontation in your waking life. You feel victimized in some situation.
We were never shot, but the bullets were lodged in the wood next to me (for the record I jotted all this down very sloppily sometime after midnight when I woke from this weirdness which is why the details are vivid). So dreaming about seeing bullets pretty much means anger, aggression, or just needing to “bite the bullet” and accept a difficult situation.
Ah, how wonderful to have a dream telling me to suck it up.
And maybe I do. Maybe I’m being just a big, whiny brat. It seems like everyone I know is unhappy in their job. It’s an awful time to be unemployed. And it’s a hard time to be working. It seems like none of the old rules apply. Any ounce of fun is long gone. And while I don’t need ass-slaps and high-fives all day long, a simple “thank you” on occasion would go miles. Though I’d settle for being treated with respect. I’m crazy like that.
If money wasn’t an object (or health insurance for that matter) I know what I’d do – I’d walk in heartbeat. I would stay home and put all my time and energy into writing. I read about so many authors who hated their corporate day jobs and it drove them to write and they landed agents and are now free to write full time and do what they love. I can relate to the drive, but lately, with all the distractions, I can seem to get my ass in the chair. Or if I get it there I wind up shopping and buying crap I don’t need. Filling a void, much?
But in reality I’m scared. Scared to stay where I am and let it eat me up inside. Scared to leave and struggle and not have a job or security or money to pay my mortgage or to travel or to buy crap I don’t need. The proverbial Catch-22 and what feels like a classic case of damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
And just like the horoscope rang true, so did the words of Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile.
“Look only forward. Remember time heals everything.”
(Have I mentioned my obsession with mysteries? And my love for Angela Lansbury who is a wonderfully funny, always drunk, eccentric novelist in this one?)
So I’m trying to do just that. And when I do get back up again, I turn to another old friend. One who has gotten me through many runs on the treadmill, when I’d rather be laying on the couch, with or without the Cheetos.
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