With apologies to the writer who first used the expression serving as a title to this post. I can’t remember his name, and am in no mood to go searching for it.
To write is to hope. What does that mean? This isn’t a school essay. I’ll let others read whatever they want or need into the expression. At its simplest, for me it means staying alive i.e. refusing to give up no matter what a fuck-up your life may be, at any given moment. Writing is my way to push through the dreck. Life is absurd. May as well avoid the lush violin strains as an accompaniment to that basic fact, especially if the maudlin – an ever-present temptation – happens to give you hives.
In the most practical of terms, yesterday brought me the assurance I’d have money with which to pay my bills not only in Feruary but in March and all the way to August (another six-month contract); the guaranteed three-year contract is indeed guaranteed, meaning it should-may-might kick in next September. When I broke down in her office, my boss told me there was no way she wouldn’t find a way to keep me. So, that part of the equation is as good as it can yield.
There was also lots of talk about addiction, yesterday at work. Not idle bar-type talk or learned discussions on the whys and the wherefores of. Factual, as non-judgemental as possible and, in some cases, straight-in-your-face talk to a person sitting in the office to whom two or three others are saying: here’s the nature of your problem. We all know it. There’s not a damn thing we can do to help you, if you don’t acknowledge what it’s doing to your chances at a real job, and if you don’t decide to use the help that’s being offered – or find some other help, if that makes more sense to you.
As always, in my case, that kind of hard and necessary talk leading me right back to asking myself how best to cope with those parts of my life proving intractable to empathy, compassion and loving kindness and/or where combinations of those fine traits have proven as toxic as a modified strain of the common cold. Meaning: when those people I wish to know don’t want to know me; and when those I don’t want around refuse to leave.
Fiction-wise, what I can make of anything of this or of other matters, I have no idea at the moment. All I know, is that writing is the only addiction that goes on making sense to me, no matter what.
