Irrational acts Dec. 7, 1985

 

I took off from work last night, a deliberate act of rage that had no justification. I simply needed to prove a point and chanced losing my job.

I went in earlier to make sure the night manager had left my pay check. When he told me there were no checks to leave out, I left, telling him to get someone else to do the baking.

This is just one more thing to add to my list of grievances.

Despite the phone call I had with Rich last week, I’m still ticked about the lies and cowardice ongoing in the Willowbrook DD.

But I’ve always been a bit obsessed about money, stealing it, spending it, etc. More than once I’ve had a fit when my check wasn’t there when I arrived at work.

Bernard seems to admire me for this; he uses my rage to wiggle out own check when Phil plays games like this.

Maybe it was to keep Bernard from getting off too much on all this that I stormed out.

I’m working too much, which is part of the problem. I’m spending too much time trying to make money and not enough trying to make art.

Maybe I’m working to avoid the rejection I might get if I test my fiction against the market place.

Our zine is a kind of masturbation, a 60s idea of an alternative community that does not need to put up with the snobbery of The New Yorker or The New York Times.

If you can’t break into their world, you create a world of your own.

But the sacrifice is extreme, working jobs like this to support publishing costs, though the real price is in my health and fitness, anger and frustration. I’m not sure it’s all worth the price.

My clothing is in tatters, and I recently exploded on Michael for not being as manic about the zine as I am.

How can he?

He’s transitioned into his music and has his own battles to wage against the threat of failure.

One has to focus on something. Few geniuses can spread themselves thin.

I suppose I need to do something similar although I’m not genius the way Michael is.

I need more discipline. I need to build a base of income using my talents as a creative person. If I want to write, then I should be writing – and perhaps make the zine pay for itself.

I spend too many hours in common labor that drains my energy.

But making my living with my pen is a dream, too.

To get there takes a great leap of faith when there is no safety net or guarantee of a soft landing.

I’m not inhuman. I like to have nice things around me and a plush bank account. I want a home somewhere far away from the pollution and corruption. I want to travel and see the world books tell me exist and television teases me with images.

But again, all this comes down to obsession with money, a deep need in me to find life-satisfaction in cash.

I get this from my family, from five uncles and a grandfather, all of whom were obsessed in the same way, they having lived through the Great Depression, having known what it means to be really poor.

I need to break out of the mold they built. Determination will help. Developing order also. Yet, in the meantime, I need to survive, avoid irrational acts that will only make matters worse, get out from under the heavy foot of frustration.

 

 1985 Menu


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