A month in (or a month away)
Sunday, Sept. 29, 2019 - 10:50 am.

It's hard to believe that by the middle of this week, it will be a month since we returned from the UK. Like I've said, sometimes it feels like we never left. I'm wondering if I'm suppressing my true feelings, but really, I feel quite all right here and the memories and nostalgia have yet to appear.

I guess I'm not half the wreck I thought I'd be upon our return because, as I told Andrew recently, being here brings me closer to reaching my current life goals. Here I feel I have a true shot at doing something meaningful with my research, and we're allowed to adopt kids. And maybe we can also adopt a dog, too, once we've settled (I guess some people would be horrified that I mentioned adoption for kids and dogs in the same train of thought, and to those people one says: fuck you, adoption rules.)

Furthermore: Andrew and I are together, we have the cats, enough money to get by, a job, a nice house which is far away from the city but we only need to take one bus to get there. We meet with friends regularly (though all of them are friends that Andrew brought to our relationship.) We still have many, many possibilities ahead. Granted, this city, or the country as a whole, will never beat Sheffield and the UK in terms of the quality of life -and subjective well-being, to speak the language of my research- it offered. The city has extremely ugly parts, in appearance and in social functioning, but OK, it's nice and cool in others.

***

I'm currently going nowhere with my writing. My web comic is on pause while I figure out what I really want to do with it (ideas abound, I tell you). My personal blog is on pause, too, and my Psych blog is quiet perhaps forever. I have yet to dare to look at my rejected manuscript to try to make it better. The door is open for me to continue writing at that digital newspaper, but I'm not in a position to commit at the moment (and it remains being an unpaid job). I'd like to get back to writing on paper, too.

Years ago, I reached the peak of this delusion of grandeur about my writing. Instead, I got rejected a lot, and that's finally made me accept my place in the universe as an Unremarkable Nobody...which I know I am! I was just trying to transcend that condition through writing. I wanted to touch people's hearts, put new ideas into their heads. I have, of course, to an extent. To the extent that most people can influence others. What I mean is that I was aiming for a form of immortality. I look back now on all the rejections, and the texts that were rejected, and I get it now. I don't have what it takes to transcend.

Not that I'll stop trying! But see, that's not what it's about. I write for nobody but me, which is probably why I can't find the formula to Make It, but also: How else would I write? For whom? I write because I need to, because it makes me feel good, because it gives me a place to which I belong. I wish what I wrote resonated with others, but usually it doesn't, so tough luck.

Anyway, I just came in quickly to try to get back into my writing groove. I haven't put it back into my routine, because I didn't quite have one. This has been a month of adjusting, physically and psychologically, to our new-old surroundings. We had a holiday week in between this month, and I had to write a research proposal with the deadline breathing on my neck. I suppose the way this upcoming week goes will shape our routine from now on, at least until December, when we have to find another place to live.

Have a nice week.

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