Don't Write March...

I feel like this should be a "music free" post, but I'm also in the middle of a nostalgia-dive on YouTube so have a belated "Vale Peter Steele": Type O Negative - I Don't Wanna Be Me 

I'm tired. 
And sick. 
Sick and tired, in fact. 

The cost of doing business... took a lot out of me. For most of January I was convinced I'd never finish it and just wanted to purge the lot, but whether through deadheaded determination, or belligerent bloody-mindedness, I got there in the end and... I'm actually fucking proud of what I created. 

It says what I wanted to say, and more besides, with both depth and nuance that I've spent the last couple of years practicing how to deliver. In conversation recently, Ian described the way I write as "meaning-dense", his way of acknowledging how much meaning I try to load into a sentence by way of reference and repetition. Scott mirrored that sentiment beautifully, in his own way, when he told me "it's obvious how carefully and intentionally you pick each word to say all the things you want them to mean." 

It's so nice to be 'seen', isn't it? 

But... this used to be fun, and it's not any more. It used to be an escape, and now I feel trapped by it. What used to bring me joy (which is something you can share the taste of, and is indescribably more valuable to me than pride which no one can really stomach when it's anyone else's) has gone a long way past the point where it started to hurt (and in doing throws into sharp relief how well correlated "the things I'm proud of" are with "the things which hurt me to do" in my personal history). Now I'm somewhere in a zone where (all the session-drinking and chain-smoking I do to keep me) doing this is causing me actual damage. 

A week ago I closed the tabs I've had open to this site for the first time since I moved back to Canberra, and spent the time (between then and shortly before I started writing this) both sober and nicotine-free. I've decided that I'm going to spend the month of March not writing (much). I've long-since gone past the point where I'm "on" edge to the one where I'm on the verge of being "over it", so I decided to take a break before I do. 

Or more than I already have. 

Today I found myself winding up a punch I almost didn't throw and while it didn't connect, that moment (which I'm far from being proud of) was connected to more than a thousand words could graph. It might not be enough to Save Me, but the only way I know to start means that first I need to Stop;