solitaire

I would compare my situation to a game of Solitaire, not because I'm lonely, that would be far too obvious. No, it's like when you're playing it on the computer, and you're looking for a certain card. You think, if I can get a black eight, I can move that red seven and see what's underneath. Brilliant. You start to click through the deck, looking for a black eight. Black eight, black eight, black eight... You get frustrated and click faster, clickity clickity and when you eventually find the black eight you go right past it and have to click through the whole deck until you find it again. Sometimes you'll get so impatient you'll go through the deck three or four times before you learn to stop in the right place.

That's me. Clicking so fast that when I find what I want I go right past it, I can't go back and by time I find it again, the cards have changed because of something else I did on my way through, they've realigned and now the one I want is at the back of the three.

I shouldn't be awake right now, playing card games on my computer. I should be asleep, but I can't sleep. I can't get no sleep.

I don't have much motivation to blog recently, but I do because I feel like I should. If I stop I won't start again. It's like any kind of writing, or bible study, or yoga, or any of the other things I'm coercing myself into doing at the moment. If I stop, that'll be it. Like with work. I stopped doing work, now I can't start again.

"What is the difference between a piece of art and a beautiful object?" 2000 words, Thursday. 2 logbooks, detailing every single thing I've done in each workshop since the beginning of term, the end of next week, two of my courses. Three books read, two plays seen, one presentation planned, two points of research done, one workshop prepared, one piece of spontaneous improvisation... not prepared. Why aren't I doing any work?

Why indeed.

Why is it easier to get pissed than concentrate? Why do I make things hard for myself? Why does nothing make me feel worthwhile?

One of the practitioners I'm supposed to be studying talks about 'getting into your head' whilst improvising. There's this game we play, where you have to steal toilet paper from each other's pockets. You don't realise until you've done, but your knees drop, your arms come up, you start moving like a crab, 360 degree awareness. It's called the low centre, your focus is entirely in the space around you, the people around you. When someone loses focus, you can actually see it, because they lose the low centre and stand up straight. It happens when people get ideas, when they start trying to be clever, start to think about winning rather than surviving. 'Getting into your head' - thinking too much, losing focus on the space, fucking up.

That's me. I'm completely in my own head at the moment. I'm paying no attention at all. Bad things happen when you do that. You lose the game, someone steals your toilet roll, you fuck up the improvisation, you get hit in the face with a ball or a stick. You stop concentrating, you forget to hand back library books, you forget to sleep, you forget to eat. People can tell when you get into your head, they can see it in the way you act.

You get withdrawn, you get moody, you don't want to talk, or chill, you want to drink and go back to your room and listen to music, you don't ever want to come out. You can't imagine how you've made such a mess of things so quickly. You wait for the email about your poor attendance in lectures, you get anxious at night and you can't sleep. You lie awake and think. You can't stop thinking. You can't stop writing, you're in the ideas place, which is great for ideas but bad in terms of the game.

You can't have all these thoughts without losing the game.