Diary of a Low Budget Superhero

You would think, having quit local rock, that I'd have scads of extra time now, right? I somehow don't...or, I do but I'm squandering precious time on stupid shit. For example, I probably need to lay off the Facebook thing for awhile. I'm going to reach the end of my life and have to explain to my maker that I never did write the Great American Novel because I was too busy clicking "Hide" on all my friends' efforts to find out who they are...

Follow up:

as in which Goonie, Harry Potter character, 80s song, and mental condition. What does your sleeping position say about you. What does your birthday say about you. Are you a bitch. Are you annoying. You know what? If you have to ask...

The other thing is, I get more done at night, creatively speaking, and I've been working a later shift, which means I just sit around all morning drinking coffee, watching CNN and checking Facebook. If I had that same chunk of time at night, I would be writing, practicing guitar or drawing...something fulfilling to the soul. I do really need to switch my work hours back around so that my work day ends a lot sooner. It's tough though. Yesterday I went in earlier, but once again, LEFT even later than usual. I didn't leave work until 9:15, which sucked, because Joe had gone out and I had the place to myself.

Having the place to myself is a thing, a big thing, with me, and it has not been happening enough lately. When I don't get enough "me" time I get cranky, feel smothered and intellectually dulled, softened around the edges like a piece of sea glass pounded relentlessly by sand. I just need "me" time to rejuvenate, and when I don't get it, it's not good.

I'm trying to head off a potential problem here. With Joe out of work since October, he is here when I leave for work and he's here when I come home, and he's alone in between so when I come home he's all energized and ready to have "us" time precisely when I most need "me" time.

Hub, my ex, can attest to the fact that this situation is problematic. We lived together for ten years, all of our 20s. When Hub was in graduate school and always, always home, well, I have to say, I near about wanted to kill him. His father commented at the time that he'd read about that kind of thing, told us it's called "caving." As in, the one who's been out of the house all day working, dealing with hassles, putting out fires, just wants to come home and peacefully "cave" awhile, as in "hole up in a private cave," which is at odds with the social desires of the one who's been home alone all day with their own thoughts.

It's not the first bout of "cave issues" I've had with Joe. When I moved in I'd turned the little back room off the bedroom into my own studio. It's not much bigger than a handicapped bathroom, but it's big enough for a desk and comfy chair and work table. This was at the height of Low Budget Superhero as a PR entity, so I was very busy writing band bio's and one-sheets and so forth, and writing my own essays too.

Well, Joe would pop in about ten times with things he just had to tell me.

"The guy in the WB Mason commercial was the same guy in the Comcast commercial!"

"Manny hit a home run!"

"Is this a mosquito bite?"

"I just wanted to say hi and I love you."

I know, I know, he's adorable. He loves me, and I love him, and he cooks and he tells me I'm beautiful and that I'm his everything, and he's MY everything. I love him like crazy. But every time he'd pop in, I would be yanked out of my zone. It's the intellectual equal to getting a cup of ice water straight in the face. Sometimes I wouldn't even get back into the zone before he was back again.

At that time, since the little studio has a doorway, I strung up a photo of Jack Nicholson. Jack hung on a cord that spanned the doorway like a velvet rope. I explained gently to Joe that almost anything he had to tell me while I was trying to write could definitely wait. I don't want any phone calls. I don't want to know about the baseball game. I definitely don't need updates about the commercials. I pretty much said not to bother me in there unless something was on fire. I showed him Jack, and reminded Joe of that scene in The Shining. You know the one where Wendy keeps popping in while Jack is writing.

It mostly worked.

Well, when I got my laptop in November 2007, in a new fever of "Hey, I could work anywhere!" I didn't use the studio as much, realized it was sitting empty quite often, and when you consider how important "space" is in a one-bedroom Boston apartment...well, I turned my studio into a storage room. It stayed that way for a year. Right up until two weeks ago.

Two weeks ago I called 1-800-JUNK and had them come and haul away all that crap I was "storing." The apartment is just too small to support a whole little room just for storage! In a fit of "I need more space" I realized I was hanging on to useless junk. An 8-foot purple alligator. Piles of mismatched towels. A ton of fabrics and metal bits and odd pieces of things I kept telling myself I would make into art some day. A bread machine I haven't used in 7 years. Three antique PCs. A life-size rooster. What?

The room is just about clear, but I haven't decided what to do with the space yet. If Joe doesn't find some activities to get him out of the apartment at least a couple nights a week, laptop or no laptop, it's going to have to revert to "me" space again.

I admit I've been cranky all week about this, which has made Joe cranky in turn, so yesterday we had to have a talk. He says I need to tell him when I want to be alone and he'll go out for a walk or something, not just stew over it and get cranky until he has to ask me what's wrong.

Fair enough. I can do that. Hopefully it works. I don't know though, because to me, it's not just the occasional taking a walk. It's this new household culture where I need to contrive in advance a block of alone time. To schedule inspiration. I love living with Joe, but without any break in the daily routine I just don't have a chance to "miss" him. Nine times out of ten I'm fine listening to his story or his latest mix, but then comes a time when I'm coaxing inspiration to wrestle thoughts out of my head into some pleasing prose, yet I can't because I've got someone hovering, looking at what's on my laptop, asking whatcha doing, needing a backrub, wanting to show me this video or play me that song.

I don't know when I'm about to seize upon inspiration, how can I tell him?

The irony is, before we moved in together, he thought HE would have this problem. Having lived alone for so long he was certain I would encroach upon his creativity.

Those of you with kids are laughing your asses off right now. I know. This is why, when asked why we don't have kids, I always say "We live selfish lives." We really do.

We'll work it out. Maybe with this writing I've just convinced myself about what to do with that back room.

It will have to be a strictly no-Facebook zone though.