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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

First Blog Ever

This is my first blog ever, and it's going to suck, but it's going to get written, and that's the important bit. Writing something that's sh**ty on purpose is better than never having the courage to write anything at all, and I have Anne Lamott, the excellent writer, one of my very favourites in fact, to thank for that.
To wit:

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a sh**ty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

So,...I have a blog! Yay! Hooray I set up a blog and now i can write all sorts of stuff...now to do jigsaw puzzles online for a few hours. Sigh.

Okay, but the blog: I imagine that it will be melodramatic at times (here, the author cleverly foreshadows) and at times humorous (she hopes), sometimes more of a diary entry and sometimes more of a podium, but always full of parenthesis and run-on sentences, which I actually fancy, to be honest. Web + log = blog, it was explained to me long ago. So...seeing as I am WAY too disorganized and ADD-ridden/riddled to write out everything in a paper-and-pen journal , but rather have lots of bits of things on lots and lots of pieces of paper scattered hither and yon...well, keeping a log of this and that is rather a suitable thing for me.

Kat's log: Star-date: a weeknight in October. .. I can tell that I really like ellipses.
One thing that definitely makes me a born writer who must not try to dodge that destiny is that I am one of the most frighteningly, hideously run-through-with procrastination people (I know, it's a terrible sentence, but after all, it's meant to be sh**ty). One of my boyfriend's favourite quotes (and mine as well) is something to the effect that 'a writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for others'. It fits me perfectly.

Did I mention that jigsaw puzzles are fun to do online?
Trying very hard not to try to make it perfect....still there is urge to make it momentous ... okay, fine: a bit of meaty subject matter.

My youngest cat - "my baby" -- has some mysterious health problems that aren't able to be surmounted. I'm going to have to let her go, give her back to the universe (or perhaps I mean the Upstairs Cat), and it really hurts.
I tried to be ready at any moment for a previous cat's death back in junior high school - people mentioned that because she was old, she might not last much longer. So I was a hawk. I made myself expect it every second, night and day, until...I had fallen down on the job. I was sitting at the dining room table, distracted by math homework. I had forgotten to expect anything bad. When my mom and my brother appeared in the doorway, I looked at them and instantly knew. They told me anyway. She had died peaceful and happy in the shade of the greenhouse, and then they'd brought her out to the hood of the car to effectively "lay in state" so that I could say my goodbyes. It wrecked me for a time -- but now I realize how much better that was.
Ghost was an old cat, and she died peacefully in her sleep.
My babycat is only ten, too young for a cat to die, but there's some kind of mass in her stomach, and she's on an IV because she will no longer eat of her own free will. I don't have the right to borrow the thousands of dollars needed just to pay for further diagnosis and what's already been done, not to mention surgery and aftercare and checkups - the thousands are not there for me to have, and she's already been through enough being poked and prodded, etc. Besides - anyone who knows me knows I don't have what it takes to care for a chronically sick cat. I can't even get to my job on time, or manage to take a few pills every day.

I'm trying not to think those morbid "must be ready - outfox bad things with my mind" thoughts, because I know that for one thing they don't work. But it's hard not to hear the running commentary of the psycho heckler in my head:
HA! says life NOW your precious blog will be momentous - congratulations - a momentous blog, something meaty to build something around...
(but i didn't want it to be momentous like this...)
No, no, says life, you said momentous - well now it is - GOTCHA!
Haha says life you didn't appreciate her enough well now she'll be gone TAKE THAT!
Oh says life so you're fond of the Kinky quote* well now you have a real good reason to use it SO THERE!
Haha says life you said you were tired of cleaning up messes well now there'll be less of a mess THERE ARE YOU HAPPY NOW? HA!

Okay, no! She's tired, and in pain, and I've loved her and always will, and I left her my sweater to sleep beside tonight, so I won't let myself hate myself. Tomorrow will hurt, though.

I have tried to avoid sad things for my entire life so far, and it doesn't work, because when you are done putting together the jigsaw pieces (literally) and hit the tab of your blank screen or your bank's website or whatever you were avoiding, it's still there. (Obviously. I mean, it's not like this is some amazing truth that you couldn't have figured out yourself, but it's apparently surprisingly hard for me to believe, or perhaps admit.)

Here's Anne Lamott again, with good advice for me:

“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
― Anne Lamott

*Kinky Friedman is another of my favourite excellent writers, and years ago he had to have one of his cats put down, it being the only humane thing to do. Here is the postscript to one of his books:

"On January 4, 1993, the cat... was put to sleep in Kerrville, Texas, by Dr. W. H. Hoegemeyer and myself.
A few days ago I received a sympathy note from Bill Hoegemeyar, the veterinarian. It opened with a verse by Irving Townsend: “We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle . . .”
And it might as well serve as the ending to a blog.