Day 30: Confetti! Fireworks! Rousing Big Band Music!

 "How are you doing all this posting?", asked Ernie? I DON'T KNOW, ERNIE. How did you manage to comment every day? Thank you fervently and gratefully and effusively, people who commented, although I know in my heart or hearts that even if you started out charmed by the daily missives, by the end you must have been muttering "oh great, another fucking Allison Post". 

What I SHOULD do, what I mean to do every November, is write mostly in the morning, write a few posts on days when I have more time and schedule them, and leave the evening for either polishing or commenting on other people's posts. What I ACTUALLY do is almost always leave it until the very last thing and then slouch to the computer with very bad grace to bang something out resentfully. And because I talk a lot about myself and my current mood here, this often just leads to a bunch of posts starting out with "UGGGGGHHHH, why did I think this was a good ideaaaaaa, *whale noises* (this is what Eve does when she has to do something she doesn't want to and I've adopted it, it's quite satisfying). 

Why do I keep doing it? Because sometimes even when I start out clunky and cranky, I end up writing something I like, something that I wouldn't otherwise have written, and if I didn't do things that made me cranky at the beginning I would never do ninety percent of everything I do (exercise, for one thing. And cooking. Almost everything except reading and eating, really). Sometimes I do it and it's hard and does NOT turn out that great, but that's okay, that's the way it goes sometimes. 

I worry about dying a lot. I tend to hypochondria, especially when I'm in a depressive episode. When I'm driving, especially long distance, I constantly have visions of crashing. When I settled into the routine of having a part-time job doing what I always wanted to do, with my kids at a really enjoyable stage, I worried that being happy would draw the evil eye, or that when I was finally learning that I could do stuff even while feeling half-crippled by my mental health it would be a really nice literary or cinematic device for something terrible to happen. 

This is dumb, not just because it's a waste of time to worry about what might or might not happen, but because I have been really embarrassingly lucky to have this life and this family and these friends, and really, why wouldn't I just be grateful for all of that instead of worrying about how much more there might or might not be. (This is not an epiphany. This is not a "from now on, I will..." statement. This is a screamingly obvious thing that I am required to learn over and over and over).

I am not a "positive vibes only" kind of person (try to conceal your shock). I don't think we should deny or shove down our feelings of pain or doubt or despair. But there's something to be said for not losing sight of what you have. 

Thank-you, Nicole and Steph and Ernie and Suzanne and Tudor and Pat (push-ups every day? Really? HUGE respect) and NGS and Kara and Swistle and Finola and Beach Mama and Sarah and Suz. I am going to end this with love and gratitude and try not to throw in any gratuitous references to butt plugs, which I trust will demonstrate the depth of my sincerity.