hey, baldwin, are you talkin' to me?

Things are kind of tense here in pretty dumb headquarters. To be completely honest, I’m just about three steps away from hyperventilating into a paper bag. I’m hinkier than a cat high on crack. I’m bitchy and aimless and nearly spinning in circles with the stress. I’m so wound tight that the idea of a batting cage feels appealing, and less because I’d like to hit a few dingers (I have no hand-eye coordination with balls. I have this weird depth perception issue wherein things that fly at me seem to drop from view about a foot and a half out) and more because I’d like to swing a bat at something hard.

It would probably be a bad idea. I might start swinging and just never stop.

I’ve metaphorically jumped at friends and acquaintances; I can envision the time when the jumping might be literal. It seems I’m permanently rocking my Travis-Bickle-Are-You-Talkin’-to-Me. I’m making small children cry and I think I like it. I have a yowling desire. My desire to yowl yowls. I’d like to get into a bar brawl. Maybe with Alec Baldwin. I bet right now I could take Alec Baldwin. I’d like to pull his hair and punch him in his squashy belly. I’d like to do a couple shots of Jamesons and then call Alec Baldwin names. I bet I could take him.

Stress makes me want to do weird shit. Extreme stress makes me want to do weirdest shit. Right now, I’m so stressed that I feel like a fruitfly with ADD on steroids. I can’t sit still, can’t concentrate, can’t get anything done, and pretty much just want to break stuff. I might be turning into a fourteen year-old male latchkey kid. I kind of wish I liked porn.

I’m sincerely stupidly stressed right now, I mean stressed to the air-huffing, cuticle-eating, Alec-Baldwin-fighting breaking point, because I have essentially committed myself to being a writer. I have left my teaching job, a job that I’ve held for the past eight years. I had started teaching in 1999 when I first started my Ph.D. coursework, and except for one year off in 2003-4, I’ve taught every year since. No longer. I’ve stopped adjuncting, and that means that I’ve no discernable income beyond my freelance writing.

In essence, I’m putting the vast majority of my eggs in my book basket. I’ve been slowly plugging away at my proposal, and I’ve given myself until Thursday to finish it. On Thursday, I’m sending the whole fat lot of it to my agent. He’s a very good agent. He’s a very big, important agent. He strides as a gentle, white-haired, and quite tan colossus through the publishing world. Frankly, I’m shocked and amazed that he wants to represent me. I’m taking it as a testament to the slim possibility that I might a) have some talent and b) be able to sell it. But I could be wrong.

It’s a big change, a huge change, a change that I want so badly that I have a hard time talking about it without reaching all twitchy and wild-eyed to the nearest wooden object and knock-knocking it like an obsessive-compulsive. The stress/excitement/stress of all of this pretty much makes me go glossolaliac. I keep myself tight and close, like a mean dog on a short leash. I haven’t slept for days. I have hollows beneath my eyes that I could keep paperclips in. I’m just about levitating like a very angry, very needy top. I feel like my mind is justhtisclose from spinning apart from sheer centrifugal force. I’m forgetting consonants and verbs.

It’s not good. It’s not pretty. And while my adieu to my life of teaching college freshmen how to read and write was both sentimental and delighted, and though I feel in the center of my solar plexus that my commitment to this writing life is the right thing, I’m fearful and stressed into near-complete aphasia. Which, you might note, is seriously counter-productive to the writer.

Don’t tell me to breathe or to do yoga. Don’t suggest that I meditate or balance my charkas. Don’t give me the names of herbs to infuse or tinctures to swallow or Jungian colors to stare at. Don’t hand me prayer beads or tell me to count to ten. Don’t offer bromides, platitudes, aphorisms or panaceas. Except for maybe Xanax. A Xanax wouldn’t go amiss right now.

Nor would the address for Alec Baldwin. He looks like he has a few demons he needs to exorcise. We could probably do some happy damage to one another.

Comments

[J.J.]

Well, now. Can't help you with Alec's address, but I can certainly put you in touch with Stephen.

This is the joy of deadlines, CG. The difference being that you gave YOURSELF the deadline. Kudos to you for giving yourself incentive not to dally... and congrats on having a mighty powerful agent at your service.

I have a little faith that you're going to just suck it up, buckle down, and focus with laserlike intensity until you hammer that proposal out into a form that's both impressive and intriguing.

And definite kudos for putting the teaching aside to go for the brass ring. Seems we're in similar states.

Go git 'em, CG.

[PMG]

Who know there were creepy sites like this one?

I'm pretty sure that the first address they list is a Whole Foods near UCLA.

[1st Republic 14th Star]

Frederick the Great and George Patton were fond of "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace."

Maybe you'll like my brigade's motto -- "Ready To Go."

You've got one guaranteed sale, because I'll buy whatever you write. Get the proposal done and continue your progress.

[Summer]

Sporting good stores sell these little punching bags that you can mount on a table/wall/doorframe/etc. Which you can then thwack, punch, hit and basically attack to your little heart's delight.

I'm planning on investing in one myself. I'm two weeks on my own, and 4.7 months until support checks stop coming (most likely anyway). I need to either have 15-20 clients a week or be selling all the tea out of China.

I'm not panicked yet. But I feel it on the horizon. At which point I'll be reacting similarly.

Go hit something. It'll help. :)

[Girasole]

Congratulations CG - you jumped. This is how it feels to try to follow your heart and to fly! Can't wait for the book :-)

[Ceara]

That has got to be the best description _ever_ of that feeling. Last time I felt like that, I went outside and threw plates at the telephone pole outside my house. There's something so satisfying about the shattering crunch noises!

[Sweat Shop Sissy]

I remember a friend of mine going a little bit wacko right after her new passport arrived and under occupation, it said 'writer'. In her mind if she did anything other then write to pay her way she'd be a fraud. She was stressed, but it all worked out. Her 6th book was published this year.
For what it's worth, I think you will do very well.
Congrats,
sss

[MJ]

EXERCISE. It burns off my desire to set fires with the beams coming from my eyeballs and/or to strangle colleagues, and I think it works for everyone. Work out HARD, stretch well, and take a nap.

[Mrs. Hall]

hee hee. Ya know, you could volunteer for habitat for humanity or some such organization that tears down parts of old houses by taking a sledgehammer through walls, ripping out electrical wiring, stomping down old rotting bits of floor. Then they rebuild it.

But you could just do the first part, that is fun. I use to do that and it got out a lot of aggressive energy.

just a thought, and by no means a suggestion for you.

by all means, enjoy the frenetic-ness.

:)

Mrs. Hall

[X on the MTA]

If I had known you were still teaching I would have gone stalkeriffic, found who you are and enrolled for the class (kidding! kidding!). Judging from what a friend of mine who teaches freshmen English tells me, I will guess that you were significantly underemployed and greatly overqualified. That class would have probably been worth every phone call I would have gotten from the creditors after I failed to make payment (X on the MTA: You can't afford to waste good money on classes, not on your salary.)