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01.28.13 - 10:02 a.m. I'm not going to make a big deal out of using this again, but I am really happy that Diaryland is still around. Obviously I am at a different stage in my life than where I left off. I am 33, married to Dan who is also a college teacher. We have a Pug, Bigsby and no children. We live on the East coast. It's 33 here and spitting rain. I need to take the dog on a walk because we barely left the house yesterday, the three of us. Perhaps we are co dependent, but I hate it when Dan leaves the house sort of. Tomorrow is the first day of face to face class. We start at 8 am which means I have to wake up at who knows--5:30? And walk the dog in the cold and snow. I have a feeling that my life needs to change again, and that must be what brought me back to Diaryland, because part of my life that is changing is how I am going to start writing on a schedule. I have been threatening this process for years; since 2006 when I graduated with my MFA. That's 6 years and in that time I can only hope that I have been receiving, processing and storing information in such a way that I can use it to reveal human action and emotion. This is what I am afraid of; right now. It's 10 am, I have dinner in the crock pot, its raining, I have no email messages in my inbox and I am waiting for the messages to begin filtering in. I'm afraid of being trapped in this lovely Ritz box house with, alternately, my profession which has become 50% more time online, and my desire, which has become full enough to warrant some output on my end. Im worried, also, that I'm going to have to stop smoking pot every day. This causes me much anxiety because I have created what, for all intents and purposes, feels like a very good life through, because, pot. How will I go back to thinking average thoughts, to battling the traffic on the average thought interstates. The thing is, I'll never know what kind of writer I am if I can only trust myself to write stoned? I used to think I could never write without cigarettes and I've been a non smoker for 1.5 years. Though I -haven't- written, to be fair. Though I can now, cigarettes are a thing that I still crave but know I can move on in life as myself without them; I'm not sure I can say that about pot. But. I have to try because I don't want to get used to a person who can only think clearly when they're stoned. Oftentimes you are called on in life to be very clear on very short notice, so that's something I'd like to participate in. For instance, if Dan called right now and he'd been in an accident and I had to pull it all together to get upstairs and changed and get the dog put together and get on a packed interstate in the rain in a Eurovan that I'm not quite comfortable with. I'd be screwed. I need to start being more available to real life. I'm praying to the gods of creativity that I have stored enough insight, clarity, thankfulness, awareness, trust, love and body awareness from my deep love affair with the Weed, that I can go to the collection of it, as a sober author, and select pieces that will help me reach my readers. I hope that my stoned self is stored within me, like muscle memory, and that I can access it. In any case, I clearly have reservations even though I know I will have to combat those reservations if I am going to move through life in pursuit of my service to society. What if I stop smoking pot and my life becomes a house of cards. If the pot card goes, what does it do to my alcoholism, my non smoking self, my ability to disappear when necessary. Perhaps life is just not going to be very sexy for awhile. Maybe it's February, nose to the grindstone, sobriety, early to bed and rise, humorless, drudge. Though The Sun has placed an idea in my head of Shambhalla (sp?)and the idea of humor. Of having a sense of humor. When praying I prayed for a "sense of perspective" as much as I prayed for anything. If I can see my new sober life as a contribution to the general wellness of creativity around me, then that is worth it, I think. I'm just afraid of being trapped and nothing frees you like smoking pot. I'm afraid of this computer screen where I have to go for two very important jobs: teaching and writing. This little screen is my whole life right now. I'm scared of being trapped by my own thoughts with fiction, trapped by my student's thoughts with emails and assignments, always the deep heavy ball drop of gut fear when I think of grading, all while sitting in this uncomfortable chair. Jesus, we've been making so many purchases lately I'm afraid of getting a reasonable desk chair even thought it is clearly worth the price. So, I ask the gods for a sense of humor, a lightness of touch, a willingness to live sober, a desire to serve, and most selfishly, help in pursuing what I can only believe will be the first real work of my life. I can't say where my conviction for writing comes from, even with years and years of lazy reluctance, especially because I have conviction for very few things; belief in myself on very few matters. I ask for help in integrating that tried and true mechanism of production: scheduling. I ask for patience to let mud seep into my boots while I wait for my straddled, addled sober mind to come up with one decent thing to say in two hours. I ask for the conviction to follow the schedule that I ask for the conviction to create: may I both plan -and- implement. And my I find some reasonably pacifistic relationship between my computer self as teacher, my computer self as technician and support, and my computer self as a fiction writer who desperately desires to make use of her fecund sabbatical with the weed to create a work that makes manifest her very existence. It will be 56 degrees tomorrow. I must not dress too warmly for class. � 
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