Disconcerting

It is a little disconcerting to click on this blog after not having visited since my previous post of a couple of weeks ago to discover I never logged off. So apparently my blog has been waiting patiently in cyberspace for me all this time, longing for my return. I hate it when I disappoint my digitals. They love me so much. Or so they claim. Sometimes it is mutual, but not always. I do not fall easily for flash and shine. This is a personal trait that some consider deeply boring, which is probably why I don't have a lot of friends.


But this post isn't about lovelorn digitals. It's about online solitaire, a mighty weapon in the fight against anxiety. Online solitaire doesn't love me, it fact it disdains me. And yet I return to its cold embrace and like a black hole it sucks up my fears. For a while.
I should first state that I was born with my anxiety level shot straight through the roof. It might have been an inheritable family thing. In fact, I believe it was. But however it got here, it's got me and I've got it and it clings to me to like a baby trying to eat its mother.

And of late it's been clinging hard. It's been a rough six weeks--the death of very good family friend ; a family member's serious medical issues reaching a crisis point (though hence mostly resolved, thankfully); the death of my wonderful former agent (not the secret kind, the literary kind) as mentioned in my last post; an inability to just write my damn books already!; and a corner of my world turned deceptive and sneaky. (A vague reference to protect the innocent. The guilty don't have a clue, which is part of the problem. It's always part of the problem, isn't it? I think so.)

Anyway, to manage my anxiety level I have been playing online solitaire instead of writing. Not playing obsessively, but probably more than is healthy. And I don't trust it. As already stated, it doesn't pretend to love me. In fact, I am pretty sure it cheats  without guilt, repeatedly turning up weird card combinations that you would certainly find occasionally in offline solitaire (the kind played with actual cards) but not all the freaking time like online. As in, when you first start, all black cards, again? As in, when you first start, three freaking threes all at once, again? As in, when you first start, every single card under the number six? I have to tell you, certain card combinations are just plain depressing. Depressing to look at, depressing to contemplate having even a brief fling with.

And the sly distrust what arises whenever you turn over a new card. Has that card been set in stone for that game, or does the game make up the card on the spot, the better to play you? Am I playing the game or is the game playing me? The mind spins.
And yet, the game calms my anxiety. So I guess you could say we're having an unlove affair, each getting what the other needs: the game gets another sucker, I get a distraction.

A win-win situation. And I sense occasional small improvements in my overall level of anxiety. I opened my novel today and wrote seventy-seven words. Such a paltry sum is definitely disconcerting. And yet I wrote them after not writing anything for weeks, so that is definitely concerting. Maybe I should rename this post.