Today I overslept, even by my standards, because I forgot to set my alarm last night. Despite the fact that I woke up “on my own,” I still had plenty of time to eat breakfast and get ready to go to my one hour of work this week. I guess there’s an advantage to having a dad who screams when he’s on the phone and a mom who tries to quiet him down by saying, “RON! BE QUIET–MARCUS IS SLEEPING!” I mean, who needs an alarm clock when you live with people who are losing their hearing?

This afternoon I met with the group of ladies I’ve been teaching lately. For about two months, they’ve been practicing a routine to perform at a talent show/fundraiser, and the event is next week. Today was our next-to-last rehearsal, and I think everyone was scared shitless. I guess this is how it should be. In my experience with dance performances and event planning, it doesn’t matter how early you start–everything comes together at the last minute. More often than not, things go better than planned. Thankfully, even when they don’t, life goes on.

Ob-la-di.

After dance I sat on the porch with Bonnie and Todd and convinced myself that drinking two beers was the equivalent of eating of a light, healthy dinner. Well, right about the time I was counting calories, Bonnie brought out Todd’s bananas, and I mean that literally because Todd has a banana tree in his backyard. Anyway, this was the first bunch Todd’s ever picked or plucked or whatever you do with bananas, so when Bonnie gave me a bite to sample, I kind of felt like a celebrity judge on one of those cooking shows. Taking care to cleanse my palate first with alcohol, I raised my pinky finger, placed the banana in my mouth, and tasted away. Well, we all agreed the bananas were still a little green, at least on the inside. Maybe that had something to do with Arkansas and bananas, but it could have just been that we ate them too soon.

When I left Todd and Bonnie’s, I went to the library, which is turning out once again to be a great place for high-speed internet and watching videos. Plus, it’s quiet and people leave you the hell alone. I did get a little nervous in the bathroom today, however, just after I’d used the urinal. Intent on washing my hands, I got distracted by the mirror and started dancing to the music in my headphones. Well, I heard a toilet flush, so I stopped. I’ve been caught again, I thought. But then I realized the flush came from the urinal I’d just used, since everything is automatic and on a slight delay these days.

Phew.

So I got to the library two hours before they closed and started watching a two-and-a-half hour video about personal transformation. Considering I have a hangup with completion, this thirty-minute time difference turned out to be a real problem. Well, since Starbucks is open late, I just went there to finish watching the video. This worked out beautifully, since I could really spread out, drink hot tea, and basically pretend I had a regular job–or just a job, period.

I guess I give myself a lot of shit about the fact that I’m not working and really earning a dollar lately. I mean, I pick up stuff now and then, but I spend most my time going for walks, reading books, and blogging, none of which currently pay the bills. Whenever I talk to my therapist about this, she says it would be difficult to not feel pressure about not working because I’m a man who lives in America, and pretty much everyone over here believes men should work for money and money is equal to self-value. But she also says I don’t have to play by everyone else’s rules, that what I’m doing now is an investment, and she thinks that investment will pay off. In her words, “It’s just the way the universe works.”

Some days it’s easier to believe this than others.

When I first started blogging, I was checking my site stats every day to see how many people were visiting the site and how many pages they were clicking on. Well, this is an exhausting thing to do. No matter what the number is, you always wish it were higher. If one person comments or gives you a thumbs up, you want it to be two. All that being said, I just looked at my site stats, and they seem lower than normal. Of course, part of me gets why this could happen, and another part of me thinks, Fuck blogging–I could be watching Will and Grace.

It’s moments like these that I have to remind myself why I started this blog in the first place, and it wasn’t to get a certain number of page views each day. That’s nice if it happens, of course, but I started this blog to develop a discipline of consistent writing and to further my self-growth with daily honesty, vulnerability, and introspection. With those things as standards, this blog has been nothing but a success. When I really think about what this blog has done for me personally, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I guess sometimes I get so focused on some future performance that I forget to enjoy rehearsing, which is, of course, where the real work takes place. It’s like I’m trying to eat a banana while it’s still green, forcing something to grow before its time. With this in mind, I simply return to the keyboard, trusting that all things become ripe when they’re ready, things usually go better than planned anyway, and ob-la-di and no matter what, life goes on.

[Here’s a link to that song by The Beatles.]