Open House

I’m getting close to finishing the essay that I’ve been working on, on and off, for several weeks. I keep visiting it, like it’s an open house. I look around for a while, and I move a piece of furniture a bit to the left or the right. I stopped in yesterday and hung a whole bunch of pictures on the wall, and I was pleased with my work. It really popped, I thought. Lots of color and texture; lots of different shapes and images. Today, though, the light changed quite a bit, and what looked charming and eclectic and artistic yesterday looks like an explosion today. Cluttered. Disorganized. No unifying theme. Maybe I should just empty out the whole place, slap a coat of neutral paint (Swiss Coffee! Parchment! Eggshell! Sand!) paint on the walls, and start the hell over. 

That doesn’t make any sense, does it? Because why would I redecorate a house that I don’t own? I don’t know why I bother trying to get fancy with the metaphors. It seldom works. 

*****

My annual spring anxiety and panic is back to its pre-pandemic intensity so at least something is returning to normal. Yesterday on Twitter, I found that a certain right wing white supremacist Trumpy internet dope who is quite popular among the Tucker Carlson-watching public was trending because he was opining on the subject of anxiety as a mental illness, which it isn’t, according to the Trumpy trolling internet dope. Slow news day, I suppose. This is a person who is well known for talking directly out of his ass, so after a quick visit to see why the topic of anxiety was trending along with the internet dope’s name, I muted the whole thing and moved on. How’s that for mental health? 

Anxiety and its place in the DSM-IV aside, I am really just stalling. I did make some progress on the thing that I was writing, enough that I now feel compelled to finish it but not enough that I can easily do so in one sitting. So why not write about something else, even if “something else” means imaginary real estate and online dumbasses? What with the state of the housing market, the former might be the only kind or real estate available for purchase right now; and the latter? Well, they’re everywhere, so that’s an of-the-moment topic if I ever heard of one. 

I have some renovations to do. Sigh.