Come Pick Me Up
Sunshine morning and my right hand still smarts where that E-string snapped back and grazed me last night. I wait for the caffeine to better take over my brain cells. I’m still groggy, wondering if I’ll make it out to buy new guitar strings before work today. I wonder if the guitar strings will fix all the problems the Seagull has been giving me these days. I hope, I hope, I hope, but I fear.
Despite a propensity for buying too many books and too much music, I am not big on possessions. I shouldn’t buy all the books I do, for example, and I’m constantly looking at the stacks on my shelves, piled in front of the shelves themselves, wondering what I can donate, and planning the order in which I’ll read the books in order to more efficiently pass them out among friends or local book sales.
Occasionally, however, one of my possessions reveals itself as far too important, more important than I care to either feel or admit. The last time this happened, it was unfortunately my iPod. I still feel somewhat ashamed at how important that veritable toy seemed to me when it broke. I immediately went out and bought a new one, albeit the less-expensive Nano. I like to think that if that had happened this year, instead of last, that I would have just left it. I don’t really need an mp3 player, though I enjoy it.
Right now, my greatest sadness is that my Seagull, my beautiful, long-time friend, my acoustic guitar, is having some serious-seeming problems. The G-string buzzes; the high-E string, before it snapped completely, was slipping and stretching constantly, going flat within minutes. And frankly, I snapped the thing because I was tuning it to its proper tension to sound like a high E. I don’t know why my guitar is having such problems. I have one teensy little theory about string gauge, and if that doesn’t work, I will have to relinquish my friend to a technician. Thankfully, being a musician in a family of the musically inclined there is a friend or two of the family who can help me for less money than the people at the local guitar chain store.
Unlike the iPod, my guitar is an appendage. Without it, I feel a bit like an amputee, albeit a spiritual one. If I have to relinquish my guitar for a while, I will be incredibly sad. I’ve been having bursts of creativity on that thing for a while now. I just wrote a new song on Tuesday, and I feel others brewing and brimming, ready to burst forth.
Of course, I have been feeling somewhat cranky as of late anyway. It’s not about the guitar, strictly. I’m not really sure what the problem is, specifically. I am discontent, I guess. A huge part of that is not knowing where my life is going next, if it is going anywhere at all. I’m about to turn 29, and there is so much that I haven’t done.
I feel like I’ve become incredibly whiny, and I don’t even really like to be around myself. I’ve been reading like a fiend to block out the voices in my head. It’s nice to replace the self-doubt with words that are not my own. Of course the prose writing suffers a bit for that, but I’m still seeking. I feel like reading a lot is unquestionably helpful to the aspiring writer. Of course, that is also extreme rationalization.
I think that I’m tired of my job right now, or perhaps not my job, but my place of employment. Not even my corporation, though, but the actual store in which I work. We’re all upset, discontent, twitchy. No one is happy.
And I feel, sometimes, as though I am bursting at the seams, ready to scream violently, to yell, to shake something, or someone. There is all this crazy emotion brimming up inside of me, and it diminishes all else.
For weeks I thought that all I wanted was someone to share my life with, but I think that I am back to being the solitary long-haired heroine of a couple of months ago. I am suddenly back to being not the wild man of the woods, but the wild woman.
What brings this on? What knowledge lies just beyond my grasp? What am I seeking?
I will say that lately I’ve been shown that it is folly to grow too attached to anyone or anything. I’m sure that that is affecting my mood as much as anything else. How damned frustrating.
I can’t really talk about it on here, either. It’s one of those amorphous things that if I put it in print, someone will get in trouble.
I don’t know. This is a rather lame and whining entry. I’ve got to get moving if I want to buy those guitar strings before work.
At least it’s sunny out.
