My Insatiable Melancholy

It's been a long time. A really long time. Thanks to Don and my insistent depression for getting my brain to want to write for itself again.



The backstory: I'm depressed. I have a job that no longer fulfills me (which, un-ironically, was the impetus for starting this blog 4 years ago). I live in a town where I connect with so few people I might as well not connect with anyone at all. I've tried to remedy this, I've gone out every night for weeks to places I've never gone, being a kind of outgoing I've never been, looking for a group of people worth finding.

I never find them.

A friend from high school was in town this weekend. He, his wife and I had these amazing, topic-hopping, existence-spanning conversations. The kind of thing I haven't gotten in years. It was beautiful. It's the kind of thing I want more of — the kind of thing I feel I need in my life — but am fucked to find it. So here we are.

(One of the great ironies of this situation is that another great conversationalist and dear friend of mine is planning to move back to Spokane — to take a fantastic, prestigious job at a big law firm — at exactly the time this spring I feel I NEED to be gone.)

I need to move away. Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, San Francisco. Somewhere. I need a job before I get there so I'm updating my resume and checking job boards. Teaching kids to beat standardized tests for Kaplan or Princeton Review is one idea. I'm a hell of a test-taker. I could do that, make decent money and still have time for other things. Like the only thing I've ever really wanted to do: write.

Still, not writing full-time feels like a step back. Unless it isn't. Confusing.

I'm also working on a new writing project with a friend and colleague — the kind of person I have great conversations with; the kind of person who lives nowhere near me. I want to travel to old war zones and write about how cultures heal themselves. Our plan is to head to Italy to report a story about a friend who's going to school to be a democratizer and builder of nations (a master's degree! In only one year!). While there, we plan to jaunt down to Sarajevo and then further, to Kosovo, examining two types of nation-splitting conflict — the kind that involves genocide and the kind that doesn't — and how people cope with them.

This requires a lot of money and a ton of planning, so right now we're writing grants and pitching the story to anyone who'll listen. This is a hopelessly long process. The kind that's hard to keep a firm grasp on the culmination of. Suffice it to say: we're not far enough along. That both frightens and infuriates me. I'm beginning to question my friend's dedication to this plan. I'm beginning to question my own.

Right now, in Spokane, I have a lot of irons. Some are dedicated to stoking the tinder I've already built (the job here, my few friends, my family). The majority are working to build new fires in other places. It's hard to manage these things, their sizes and scopes. Their end-points. When it feels like too much, I tend to focus on the already-built fire. I have bills for fuck's sake. Loans. et cetera. It infuriates me that I can't juggle this better, that I can't let go of the current job enough and focus on the future.

I'm a loyal person and I'm also not great at organizing things — finding other writers to write the things I'd normally write, etc. (I'm an editor, this is what I should be doing) — I don't want to be here, but I don't want to fuck those that have returned my loyalty with a career (I owe this place a lot, but not my life or my happiness) by churning out dreck.

That's the long and the short of it.

SO: Last night I'm talking to one of the people I care most about in this world, explaining to her that I feel like shit — a ton of shit — and that this amount of shit is squeezed into an impossibly small sack. I tell her the dimensions. She doesn't seem impressed. She's known me a long time. We've shared almost everything. She knows I feel like a shit sack. I've felt it before.

I then shift gears, telling her the path I see — off in the distance, yeah, but in my line of sight ("I squint, I can see it dear, I swear!" — I didn't really say that, but I should have) — leading out of this valley of chest-tightening sorrow. I start with the most physical, easiest to explain instance of the road: When I workout, I feel better. When I wake my ass up early enough; when I cut through the miasma of dread that confronts me every morning; when I spend the languid minute or two lacing my trainers, donning a still-sweat-soaked shirt, sidling into a pair of mesh-underwared running shorts; when I run the mile-and-a-half to the gym; when I run another 3.78 on the treadmill (in 30 minutes! a personal best!); when I gasp and drip through a circuit of flys and overhead presses and rows and crunches and windshield wipers and deadlifts (sets of 14! four times each!); when I run the mile-and-a-half back home; when I stop sweating; when I stop gasping; when I've done what I've set out to do — when I've conquered it — I feel really, really good.

I feel amazing.

I feel like I used to feel, like the world is open and I can just walk out into it and be embraced for my natural talents, my hard-won skills and for my personal goodness. I also feel like the world will forgive me shortcomings, my personal quirks (which, I've learned recently, are more numerous that I'd ever imagined!) and, generally, the person I am. This is a rare thing for me, and a beautiful thing.

At first, I thought I felt this way because I was losing weight, getting in shape (running faster! jumping higher!) and looking better. That's part of it, certainly. As I continue to do it, though, as less fat falls off, as less muscle is built, as I experience on my body what is called diminishing returns in economics, I realize that can't be it entirely. The biggest thing is taking control. Affecting change. Creating the person I want to be in that small way.

Realizing this: rewind to the part where I've accomplished the task I set for myself. Now I reflect on the times when I've been most happy. Professionally: when I first started writing the blog. When I first started writing for a paper. When I first started writing for an important regional paper. When I set about rehabilitating the music section of that regional paper. When I set about trying to make a difference for a community I saw as needing more than was being provided. Personally: when I am open to the occasional emptinesses caused by my self-imposed solitude and seek to fill them with people who edify and excite me. Personality-y: when I see my flaws of character (there are many of these, which I usually only see after I've really, really hurt someone I care deeply about, as I was about to do last night), and set about righting them. When I set about becoming a better person. The person I deserve to be and the person others deserve to be around.

I'm happiest when I'm becoming better. I'm often happy too when I'm not doing anything, in periods of flatness, but this is always fleeting. I inevitably feel a stirring. I always come back around to it. I eventually want to move forward.

I tell her this, in much less detail, but just as emphatically, because whenever I even talk about it, it energizes me. Then I ask her what she thinks. "I don't know man, it just sounds like a lot of words." She's right, in a sense, of course. It is words. The difference is that she doesn't have much faith in words, whereas I've build my entire life around them.

I ask her what she means and she comes around to basically that same thing. I'm talking, but not doing anything. This is partially true, partially false. There are things I'm doing. There are things I'm not doing. I am doing things, though, and I need to keep doing them. I need to do more things. I need to do everything I've set out to do. Words help me organize that ... "I mean, why aren't you seeing a counselor?" She asks. I feel like she's not listening.

This snaps something in me. Something deep and hurt and childish. "Fuck, why aren't YOU seeing a counselor?" Then immediately regret it. I've done what I often do. I got hurt and, rather than allowing that hurt a voice, I lashed back. It's one of the things that makes me a shit-heel to a lot of people I care about. She gets quiet the way she does, says she's going to go to bed. She's sick. I apologize. She says she'll talk to me later. We hang up. I'm fucked up, I know that, but I'm getting better. I lash out less than I used to. Every day I get better. Every time I blow it, I learn.

This is it: I have career problems and I have personal problems and I have personality problems. I'm not the person I want to be in any aspect of my life, but I'm excited by the prospect of becoming. I see the roads leading out of those several valleys and it's like, "fuck, which do I take first?" Maybe that's what a counselor is for. Maybe it's for seeing other roads. Maybe, though, it's for becoming comfortable in the valleys. If there's one thing I don't want, it's to become comfortable in the valleys.

Comfort scares me because, besides a life writing, it's the thing I most crave. Comfort comes in many forms, it's easy to come by, and it's immensely destructive. It dampens the spirit and makes things seem better than they are. It breeds complacency. It stultifies. Last time I went to counseling, I felt like I was being taught how to be comfortable with myself. If there's one thing I don't want to be comfortable with, it's that.

I don't know what I'll ultimately do vis-a-vis this whole thing. know I need to find an edifying career and an edifying group of peers — neither of which can be found in Spokane, I've looked for so long with so few results it makes tears squeeze out between my bitter eyelids. There's nothing left for me here.

I know I need to achieve a better self, but I can do that from anywhere.