The Daily Hell Vol. III - Bumsville: The Daily Hell Vol. III - Bumsville - Issue 36

June 16, 2010

The Daily Hell Vol. III - Bumsville - Issue 36 - The Daily Hell Vol. I Revisited

I have gotten into the ugly habit of not writing- not only not writing, but really not doing anything creative. I only pick up my guitar the day before I have a show, in order to relearn all my songs. I have been busy lately, but you can always make time for something if you really want. Perhaps I’m afraid of what would come out if I just turned on the faucet and left it running for a while. Months of stored up angst and self-pity for the crappy job that takes up all of my time and gives no fulfillment whatsoever. See? There I go. Just as I predicted- angst and self-pity.

In my current situation, I don’t like hashing through my day, let alone rehashing it later on in order to write. I don’t want to torture myself, remind myself, think about the life I’ve given myself at the end of the day. Songwriting is good for the tortured, but I can’t write when I’m unhappy. It would appear that it is times like this in my life when I turn to hobbies in order to avoid the painful self-reflection eventually becomes unproductive self-pity.

So I guess it’s not that unusual that I find myself poring over my old coin collection, scrutinizing details in pocket change and staring into price books, determining if the 1939 nickel I have is a G-4 or a VG-8. It’s a meditation that wipes the mind blank of all outer distractions and interference. It takes focus and it takes me out of my mind and into something else, where at least the lines are straight and narrow and there is no feeling of imminent suffocation. It’s my way of ignoring my life instead of belaboring it, or possibly dealing with it, changing it.

A feeling of unhappiness, maybe hopelessness can be a very difficult wall to break through and always easier to ignore. A job that allows you just enough free time to think of how much your job sucks, but never enough to change anything about it can only be overcome if you stop using that time for wasteful negative thinking and instead start taking steps to change it. Or take up coin collecting and slowly go insane.

Perhaps chronicling my daily comings and goings as I did when I first moved to the city would help to overcome them. Back in 2005 at Harper Collins, I was about as unhappy as someone with a regular paycheck could be. The one thing that kept me going was telling myself I wouldn't be there forever. I knew I was moving forward and just had to deal with it for a while in order to get to something better. Well, after many peaks and valleys, good times and bad, here I am five years later and little is different now from then, other than my hours and what I wear to work. For better or for worse, it might be time to put away the Coin Price Book, and take out the notebook again. And see what tomorrow brings.