Day 102

102 days ago I moved back in with my parents.
At age 35.
It would have been better had I started this on Day One, unfortunately, I had just arrived from Amsterdam (where I spent the last 5 years) and was not only totally jet-lagged but also too busy saying hello to my old life, dealing with my cat who turned out to be terminally ill, and generally feeling positive about My Decision To Move Back Home.
And, let's be honest, I didn't think of it at the time.
However, I've thought of it now.
And Day 102 seems like an ok title, right?
(Day102.blogger.com was already taken, so I'm afraid you'll have to spell it out.)
So. Here I go, a little too (but not surprisingly) self-consciously starting what is likely to become a tragically average - or, very likely, unfinished (if a blog even finishes) - blog.
And now it's time to go to bed. So I *will* stop worrying about how dumb this all sounds and share a short daydream I had today.
I was driving home from Ottawa, listening to a CBC interview with an author.
I don't remember anything much about the interview except that it inspired me to imagine being interviewed by the CBC. The interview was, naturally, about my new bestseller.
The host was very impressed with the book and was especially impressed with the fact that I'd never written anything before.
Me: I'm pretty damn proud of it myself, actually. Because I'm really not smart enough to write a book, much less one that gets me an interview with the CBC. For the record, this isn't just false modesty - I'm not stupid - but I have so many friends who are much, much smarter than I am and they're not writing books, so I'm pretty sure that I'm definitely not smart enough to write a book.
Interviewer: (Laughs) Well, clearly you are. Did you struggle with that belief when you were writing the book?
Me: Uh, ya. Ya, I did. But I didn't try to convince myself otherwise - I'm truly not smart enough to write a book. I just told myself it didn't matter. And that it would be ok to write a bad book. That writing at all was Pretty Impressive. And that it would be Good For Me (you know, with capital letters, like in a title).
Interviewer: Your main character struggles with similar beliefs about herself. Is this book actually a bit of an autobiography?
Me: (Laughs) Oh ya, it's totally me. I'm not creative or clever enough to come up with a whole story myself. So it's pretty much me and my thoughts in my world. I just mixed and matched a few people in my life to create new characters so nobody would be offended. But it's all very real. I wish I was clever enough to write proper fiction. Or even to sit down and focus on and research creative non-fiction. No, this is just a sort of autobiography with enough lies chucked in that I couldn't call it that.
~
And that was about the end of it. I think I replayed that fantasy about 12 times, re-writing bits in my head to make myself sound cooler or funnier or whatever. This version may or may not have been the best one, I don't remember now.
In any case, it inspired me to start writing this blog.
I'm (clearly not) secretly hoping that I'll get enough decent-ish (at least not totally cringe-worthy) stuff here that I can (convince somebody to help me?) string together into something publishable (by somebody else, not just using one of those online publishing services; that's cheating).
But if it turns out to be crap, well, at least it's kept my brain a bit busy.
Should I even admit this stuff up front?
God, this is brutal.
Fingers crossed that tomorrow will be better.