Spring

Oh my, it's March.  Here's how I spent my winter:

• stressing about money
• getting a second writing gig
• looking for a cheaper place
• borrowing cash from everyone I know
• stressing about money
• getting a third writing gig
• finding a cheaper place
• PANICKING about money
• Fighting with Bank of America (seriously?  fuck those guys)
• packing
• inhaling bushels of dust while cleaning the old apartment
• working my ass off
• moving
• unpacking
• stressing about money

So here we are, three months later.  New place, new neighborhood.  The cats are ecstatic -- there are way more squirrels and birds and dogs to watch on the 2nd floor than there were on the 11th.  We live next to an old creepy cemetery, which makes me feel like I'm always on the verge of a grand Victorian adventure.  I'm working a lot, so maybe I'm not on the verge of being hauled off to debtor's prison.

But.

When I got laid off a year ago I was understandably freaked out, but excited.  I promised myself that I would take time off, rewire my life and focus on my own writing.  My own voice.

When the time came to start earning my keep in society again, I got really lucky and got some great contract jobs.  Now, I'm busy, I'm getting paid and back to doing a version of what I used to do.  But when I ride the Red Line downtown, I look at the girls headed to the Art Institute in purple tights and tatoos and think "she looks like an artist."  I'm just a new version of my old self.  A little broke-er.  A little shabbier.  Still spending my days getting letters to the editor placed and on conference calls.  Even the way I approach my own writing seems so businesslike and soulless.

I imagine that girl on the L - working in a studio covered with inked drawings and full of music.  Drinking beers and catching live shows.  Lots of sweaty late-night sex on a mattress on the floor.  Smoking cigarettes in the sunshine.  I want that to be me.  But it feels too late.   

Spring has never been my season.  Especially in the Midwest.  That first warm and thawing day tricks you, and by the end of the week you're shivering and cursing, waiting for the bus in a too-thin coat.  I never know what to wear, what to eat.  What was previously tucked away now lays bare and terrible in the mud -- old pens and takeout cartons and dog shit.  Nothing green to take the edge off., except for gaudy St. Patrick's Day decorations in bar windows.

That's how my life feels.  Akward and ill-fitting.  Wanting to be something else.