Red Cedar

I have been struggling with a bit of exhaustion and an almost perceptible depression the last few days and I’m not sure why. I suspect it might just a time of month/change of seasons thing as it has come on quite suddenly and not in relation to anything in particular. Though, when I do feel this way, I tend to get sunk into a bit of the blues around the green scare case, I think it being just a convenient foil for whatever negative stuff is coming up otherwise. In any event, Darren made his regular Sunday night call and did his damned best to cheer me up, which is the reversal of what usually happens. Bless him though, it almost worked, and at the very least it reminded me that I need him almost as much as he needs me – at least as far as this whole mess is concerned.

For my birthday I bought myself a new moleskine notebook and promised myself that this year of journal-writing would not be about the case, that I was ready to move on from masticating each moment into a fine and bitter powder. But so far, no go, as much as I write about other things (I do have a life), I still come back to it over and over. Sometimes it’s a settled contemplation and I am at peace with the outcomes, and others (like last night) I am seized by a regret and anxiety that has no definable rationale. I realized on Saturday when I found a flyer for an upcoming talk by Steven Best that I find myself very angry at the people going about promoting direct action as the one true way when they themselves are not involved in it or having to deal with the emotional shrapnel that comes from such explosive politics.

As I told David a few weeks ago, I am looking forward to a day when everything is not about this case and I hope the sentencing hearings in May will give me a natural point of emotional resolve.

I think I need this coming weekend to be about spending time with good friends, and to that end I’m going to do something at my place Saturday night that involves dinner and socializing. I’ll be emailing out about that shortly – but please let me know if you don’t receive an invite and you want to come over – cause it will just be an oversight on my part I’m sure.

I’ve been having a bit of trouble with focus this week, and although I’ve been *thinking* about writing a lot, I haven’t been up to much *doing* of it. My journal is fallow, my blog bereft. And there’s not a whole lot of good reason for it. It’s not even that I don’t have anything to say (I always have something to say) – but I just haven’t been able to put the finer points on anything in particular.

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Someone I know from online (the television director who I’m not actually dating for those of you keeping track) told me last night that he regards me as a self-actualized individual. While I strongly feel this sometimes, the last week has found me questioning myself intensively – particularly around the union and whether I should be so confident in my plans to run for this position or that. In part I fear that because things have been going so well lately in the work/union/social contexts I must be bound for some sort of crushing disappointment or failure. Typical fear of success stuff. And then I wonder why I even care? Why is it important to me to do well at work, or to be a union leader? None of my friends seem to be afflicted with this type of ambition and I wonder what part of me is damaged enough to find value in these civilizational aspirations.But then again, I’m not sure what else I’m supposed to be doing – cause my path in this regard has always felt like the most natural one even with the misgivings that come at regular intervals.

And so it’s not a complaint or a worry lingering over my pauses, but the same loneliness that puts one foot in front of the other to make a destination reveal itself. Wondering why and simultaneously realizing that no route would have been any easier for a person with a core like mine. I suppose if I just stopped trying to understand it, the questions wouldn’t nag at me so much.

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I wrote yesterday on tribe that I am planning to become a stronger kayaker this summer and put a call out there (and to another friend) for people who want to help embolden and encourage me in this. I am putting the same call out here as I have keen need to do this with other people. It’s not nearly as much fun to be challenged all by oneself as it is to do so in the presence of others. I have decided I need to get in shape and knowledgeable enough to kayak here next summer – Hakai Luxvbalis – on top of every other thing I’m doing. Yeah – I know. This just speaks to the above introspection.

Yes. My horoscope today actually says this:

Aquarius

After what you’ve been through, it’s a wonder that you are not being held in a high security detention centre. There are worse places, I suppose. Your situation is improving, though, and soon it will become better still.