no time to lose

Feeling a bit down lately, although I don't have much of a reason for it. It could be rain and shortening days, it could be a side effect of having to change birth control formulations when I switched countries, it could be a stress response to a lot of change - that thing where since you don't have a routine, every stupid small choice is momentous and deliberated. Plus constant double binds of not having time to do much, so even though I'm getting a lot done, it's small compared to what I still need to do; it's hard to have any feeling of triumph and "look how far I've come," particularly since it's hard for me to be sure I'll have more time later. Was this amount of time it? Did I pick the right thing to not get done?

Any new and non-routine thing is difficult: it's something I haven't done before in a language I don't use well. Going to the hardware store is difficult. Figuring out which laundry detergent is the unscented one is difficult. Odds are good that I'm going to mess up a lot of the time. It's constant failure. So I have to think: do I want to leave the house and do very badly, or do I want to stay in the house where things aren't quite functioning perfectly and then feel sad that I was a coward? And of course I'm not some college student who only needs to look out for herself and who has a clear sense of how much money is available for mistakes and jaunts. I don't have external structure and an end date.

Another way of putting this is that I'm doing fairly well as a freelance writer lately; I keep pitching articles and people keep agreeing that I should write them for money. I have approximately two hours a day I can devote to this, assuming I decide not to try to do anything else. But then oh what a failure I am for not only not going out to practice Italian and integrate into my community, but for digging even harder into my English lexicon. Nor am I working on fiction, or getting a film project off the ground, or keeping up with my distant friends, etc etc. And I'm supposed to be knocking on museum doors trying to build some bridges between a Boston museum and the contemporary artists here.

I'm doing what I can to free up more of my day so I don't have such ridiculously high opportunity costs. But for now I feel just completely incompetent. At least I'm getting lots of core exercise without having to schedule it - the rope to raise and lower the shutters in the morning and at night works about like a Pilates reformer, plus I'm constantly putting up and taking down dishes from high shelves, which is literally weight lifting. My torso is looking very good.