Days Like This

I have spent a good part of this day trying to fill in an application form. It isn’t the hardest thing and I need it tomorrow for an interview but I can’t seem to do it. I have a kind of form dyslexia. Faced with one, I can barely remember what my full name is let alone the names and addresses of referees. Anything more complicated than that and I don’t understand the question. I once let a sum of money go because I couldn’t complete the form that might have released tax owing to me. I think, not for the first time, that I am not a proper grown-up.

It is, in any case, a rag-doll day. Last night I slept for thirteen hours. I have sawdust in my head and limbs. I do not let it get me down. I lie; it does get me down, but I find it best to pretend otherwise. I will not go so far as to make Affirmations, I am almost as bad at those as I am at filling in forms, yes and I speak as one who has worked through the whole of Julia Cameron’s “Artist’s Way.” There's one by Louise Hay that goes, "I love my ears. They hear well and enable me to listen. They have a beautiful shape. I love my wonderful ears." It's just not my thing. But pretending is something I can do and often it works, at least for a space of time, and sometimes that is what you need to get you through. Distractions are good, and I have a few: blog-hopping is one of them and I have spent some time today doing that, quite fruitfully I think as I have read things that are engaging, illuminating and/or funny. Day-dreaming about possible writing projects is another but this is potentially dodgy unless the daydreaming is focussed – in which case why not just get notebook or keyboard and begin writing.

But rag-doll days are not for “doing.” They are for going softly, pad pad, through the day in your red and white pyjamas, telling yourself that there are and will be days like this (outside my window is as grey as it is possible for a day to be) and all you need to do is to move through them. And fill in the bloody form.