Ordinary

I'm back to my ordinary life where I just go to work and come home and do ordinary people things.  I'm of two minds about it.  Part of me is enjoying it.  I can watch Netflix!  I can make dinner!  I can call people up and meet their brand new adorable babies!

And the other part of me is biding its time.  It's back there seething with impatience at being sidelined.  It's looking for a way out.  It's going to make me sing too loud in the shower, and write really poor poetry, and get into inappropriate conversations with the next person who crosses my path that asks the right wrong question.  It's going to flare out at awkward times and most likely embarrass the hell out of me, because I like to think of myself as very measured and calm but only part of me is, and the longer this other part has to wait its turn, the stronger it is going to get.

In the meantime, I am doing a pretty effective impersonation of an ordinary person.  I'm sad to think perhaps I really am simply an ordinary person who just wishes she were not, hence all the struggle.  If I would just give up this idea that I want something different and extraordinary, I might go gentle into that good night.  I could buy larger pants and let myself really go and look for a job as a secretary again.

I know people who seem to have given up working on their talent in favor of being absolutely ordinary.  They seem to like it.  I don't mean to make the word "ordinary" seem pejorative.  I like making dinner and reading books and working for my community.  I just have this thing that drive me to tells stories and in my very secret, private moments I think of it as talent, but it might just be proclivity.  Some days I square up to the idea that if it isn't talent, I'd do the world a favor to stop trying so hard.  I could just make money and pay lots of tax and be a citizen like an ordinary person.  I could do the world a favor by just becoming a consumer.

Part of me really believes what I just said.  And the other part thinks it is nonsense.

I guess we'll see which part gives up first.