Up at 4:30 AM, unable to get back to sleep.
I've been short on sleep ever since this "vacation" began, but there is much to do and I lay in bed, trying to get back to sleep and there's a tightness in my chest that reminds me I must quit smoking, must exercise, and I make my lists and plot my plans and worry that this is what it feels like to have a heart attack (it probably isn't, I know, but if you haven't had one it could fool you...).
I must get a job, new job, any job, a job I love. A job that pays well, not the best in the world, but that leaves me time to think and work on other things. But that has to wait.
I must get theater tickets. Soon, today, commit to this, get it done, life awaits.
I must write, transcribe notebooks filled on vacation, notebooks under the desk that have lain there forever, ever since I was a child.
I must move to the new place, now empty, awaiting me, there's much to be done there and I am saved some slight labors by the fact that I have have worked so often that I've never unpacked from my last move. This new move, it will keep me busy but it's not the end of the world.
Breathe, deep, this tightness in the chest, it's caused by my not breathing, breathing, deeply, I forget to breathe, remind myself.
There are the lists of things to be done in the new place, the agreement, I have plans and there are lists to be drawn up.
Thrift shops, but I have no muse at the moment, am loathe to acquire new things when I still haven't rid myself of the old. I must take in some watches for repair, art projects forever on hold, stale writings awaiting transcription in notebooks...
And I think about departures and arrivals, the coming and going of relations, about the dentist who's first visit I survived but has me scheduled for many, many more, and there are countless distractions that need be sorted, I think of absent lovers cold in their graves and warm in their beds and eventually I just give up and make some coffee, start the day, 4 hours sleep with no hope of a nap but I have only to stop thinking of things and begin...