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Because I usually am in Vino ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** In 2009, I gave up my studies as a medievalist and musician, left my home, my family, my life and moved to Provence in southern France for a guy. In 2012, I moved away from him to study wine. Today, I'm a vagabond sommelier working in Paris at one of the oldest and most famous restaurants in the world, struggling to find some purpose to what I deem the rest of my life. I'm still married and after 8 10 years, I'm still trying to fit-in with French life and culture and to understand why the French are the way they are. Because they're weird in a different way that I think Americans are weird. Perhaps it's me who's weird. |
| Depression. When it hits. It hits. I've been feeling rather depressed the past few days. Working on my story for Camp NaNo. I'm keeping up with my word count and the story is moving a lot at my typical plodding, out-of-practice pace, but it's something to do. And that's all it feels like. Something to do. I'm exercising, I'm cooking and baking. I've started to learn yoga. Occasionally I can bring myself to study wine. And all the while I ask myself, what is the point? This isn't necessarily about the confinement. I think that if I was on one of my home vacations, away from work I would feel the same way. I wrote in my paper journal a few days ago that I just don't see the point in all of this. Eventually, the confinement will be over and I will go back to work, to stress, to fatigue, to real life. I'll forget about writing and yoga and any other positive habits I might build during these weeks. I'll stop cooking because I'll be too tired and won't have the time. I'll continue to work at my job because I don't know what else I want or could do. I'll pick up smoking again. And eventually I'll die. Like everyone else. This isn't a new theme for me. I think I've been having an ongoing existential crisis since I was a child. I just don't see the point of anything when in the end it doesn't matter. Maybe one day I'll get lucky and manage to write, edit, and publish a book. Maybe someday it will happen. Though I doubt it. But what if it does? It'll just be another book in a catalogue somewhere. Forgotten and out of print. My niece and nephew will forget me. They'll have kids of their own maybe, who will have never met me and never know that I existed. Some people might say that it doesn't matter. That how you live your life is important. But is it? Is it really? I don't know. I just can't believe it. And that above anything is what holds me back from enjoying writing. From building a daily routine. From being more productive outside of work (besides the fact that I use up all my energy being productive and putting out fires at work every day). It's why I have no motivation. If I spent the rest of my off-hours playing the Sims and other computer games, eating pre-packaged food, and binging Netflix, who would care? I always say that the worst thing about my job is that I don't have a work-life balance. But I don't understand what that means for me. Anyway, those are my thoughts for the day. It's all very Death of a Salesman-esque. I envision that is what my funeral will be like. It's day 22 of confinement here in France. The restaurant FOH director called to see how I was doing. He wanted to make sure I had made it back to the south and to my husband before the trains had shut down. It was very weird. I didn't know he had my phone number. But it was also kind of nice in a way. At least he's thinking about us. I am disappointed in this entry. I wish I had something more to offer. I wish there was a solution. I'm not desperate, but I'm watching my life slide away like silk threads through my fingers. It's frustrating and sad. I'd go upstairs and hide under the blankets of my bed but a) I would like to write another 1000 words for my story today and b) Pistou the cat is up there under the blankets sleeping. This may be going a little too far in personifying my pet, but he gets cranky if he doesn't have the bedroom to himself to sleep during the day and it was already a struggle to get him to go up there and go to sleep. It's like trying to convince a completely independant and irrational child who doesn't understand a word you're saying to lay down for a nap. We don't really understand how his brain works, but the few times he hasn't been able to sleep under the blankets in isolation for most of the day we have all (me, my husband, and Dumpling the other cat) have all suffered for it afterwards. So now we try to make him go up there to sleep. But we can't close the door and lock him in because... because cats. |
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I think it's awesome that you're using that negative experience to get creative. It's hard not to just wallow when those things happen. I use a paper journal for most of my actual coping process too, but I do share bits and pieces on WDC as well.
Might try a short story a day instead. Stay safe. 
