Stir crazy

Every once in a while I get in this rut, this low point, this frustrating doldrums where I want something to change. I feel like if I do the same old routine one more time, I'm going to lose my tenuous grip on reality.

I end up fighting with myself about it, too. There are plenty of normal, mundane things I've neglected to do or outside-my-circle adventures I've either postponed or suspended.

I had an itch a few months ago to create some paintings I was going to use in my rather bare apartment. I had great ideas that I wanted to put on the canvas. I got through one painting. There should have been at least two, but I haven't made a single move of brush to canvas to create that second one. The supplies and the painting are in the closet.

And I don't know how to hang on to that crazy tangent moment. I go off and start something that makes me happy, then work and daily living get in the way ... and it ends up shoved into a corner somewhere until I finally take it out again or dispose of it. It's a blip on the radar that inexplicably and sometimes irretrievably disappears.

I'm frustrated by lack of follow-through, yet I don't know how to keep the circle from absorbing the tangent. Maybe I'm stretching to make that analogy a running theme, but it really feels like these lightning moments in which I actually produce something original get stifled by the typical me. There's no time for cultivation save for these random outbursts.

That goes for so much more than just how I spend my time. I do it in social interactions, too. The real me strikes without warning and then gets put back in her cage of propriety and insecurity once I see the reaction on people's faces. I must seem so manic.

I can play it safe only so long until the vitriol starts to stir up. Then I scare myself and retreat for a while. I'll stay calm and content for a time until the comfortable becomes banal. I break out for a while until I feel too unstable. Then I duck back into safe mode. I don't know what my problem is.

It's probably just angst.