Guug

It is one of those melancholy days... who knows why, although the Monday after a holiday, wherein fun was had, is always a bit of a let down.

Or maybe it's just my negative voices getting the better of me. I am trying to ignore them. I've made committments (only to myself, but those are the ones you beat yourself up for the most) to write/perform a play and to write a novel. Here is where my years in Hollywood-baby (S.O. taught S.O.v.1 to say "LA baby" while on our way there the other weekend) failures kick in... It is the same conversation that comes up in my head over and over. If you already failed at something what makes you think it will be any different this time? It is hard to get around all the 'no's. Nos for acting, nos for improv, nos for scripts - even to read them!, nos for gainful employment in the Industry, nos for 'gainful' employment in any industry (although I've always been wildly successful at getting those barely-scrapin'-by jobs) - someone at a temp agency once told me, "Ms. Ryan, you're really ONLY qualified to work in the entertainment industry so we can't really send you out on anything else" - because my BRAIN stops FUNCTIONING when I step into a doctor's office or real estate office of course!

So the negative voices in my head challange me with all this imperical evidence that has been logged for the past 20 years and all I have to combat it with when they say, "Why should you succeed in anything when you haven't so far?" is "'Cause I wanna. So there. Nana-na-nana". This is where some religion might come in handy, I suppose. But since I don't really want to take sides in the spiritual wars, nor do the research to find the one best suited to my disposition, or to just leap into the path of least resistance (i.e. the ones my family members practice/have practiced), I'm pretty much on my own. S.O. looks at me like a deer caught in headlights when I complain about this sort of thing (the inner voices thing, not the religion thing) and doesn't know what to say. I, frankly, wouldn't know what to say to myself either if I was complaining to me about my uncertainties - OK wait I am talking to me about... but I'm not... never mind.

The tacit impulse is to just crawl under a rock, or a corner and rock, or listen to loud rock... and weep, "I can't do it". But I have also made a committment to myself to not let my negative voices get the better of me.

On days like this it is dangerous to get back to work. As anyone who has tried to create something when you are having a bad day knows it can be a disaster. If I went to my writing today the negative voices would just start picking on specifics and that's never good. And then you make bad choices and screw things up that you just have to fix later... hell, it's not even a good idea to make dinner when you're in a bad mood.

Perhaps the only thing to do is to try and deflect. Work on something else, start a pretend project my negative voices can tell me I'll never succeed at, practice my guitar - 'cause I already KNOW I suck at that, go to the gym, get them to criticize my appearance! and then when they are on a roll I can work again... yeah, that's right negative voices, my thighs ARE abominably large!