Darkish night of the soul

Having one of those nights where I find myself wide awake at 4am, wondering if I know what the hell I'm doing (which of course means I don't). Am I doing everything wrong? Am I following a principle, Doing the Work, or just running from self-realization and accountability? How long can I keep on running this way? Distraction, denial, lack of control... working hard for no money... spending what money I get at a feverish rate... being very generous with others with my time and effort almost as an apology for coming in so far below what my own standards for myself should be (if I had any)... putting a ton of time and energy into stuff that might ultimately not matter very much, that amounts to entertainment... neglecting things that do matter to fill my life with things that maybe don't... stuff I could do better... places in my life where I could have more control... choices I continue to make, that make no sense, because I feel like I'm stubbornly following some sort of thread, while other aspects of my life flail out of control...

And weirdly, tonight, Lemmy keeps coming up, as my case in point for how I don't really know what the hell I'm doing. How, the first time I spoke with him, I was terrified, but asked really kind of important and brave questions and came up with a hell of an interview, but how the second time, backstage at the Vogue, in person, I kind of blew it, kinda ran from the challenge. Questions I coulda shoulda woulda asked. How I shoulda gotten him to sign more records, rather than signing copies of a page of a rock mag with an article I'd done, to give to my friends... I coulda had my whole Motorhead collection signed.... he was game... I only kept one thing he signed for me. I think even he was a bit disappointed, after our pretty-great first interview, that I couldn't (or didn't) bring it, the second time... but you sit in a room three feet from Lemmy and make your brain work... the real anomaly is that the first time had gone so well... I lived up to my potential by accident, almost, that time... not control... I got lucky... I played past the fear, instead of letting it push me along...

Usually in the past, on dark nights of the soul, it's more important stuff that comes to mind. I pore over things I could have done better or differently with my parents, friends, finances, etc; times I lost control, didn't do what I should have, did or said things I still regret, or made choices that in retrospect seem grubby or embarrassing... second-guessing the last couple weeks of my Mom's life, for example, how if I'd done X, Y, and Z differently she might have made it out of the hospital... like, if the minute they revealed she had had a heart episode, I'd involved a cardiologist, we might have discovered that her bypass grafts were failing... I think each subsequent episode was a graft blowing... but by the time three of them had failed, it was too late... that's what I think was happening, anyhow. There were ways the hospital fucked us over, too, which played a role in it, stuff I couldn't have known, stuff that went on without them telling me... a lesser man would have sued or something... but so might a better man... but I hadn't made all the right choices either, so how to hold them accountable...? It would just have been displacing the blame I felt for myself... and/or trying to cash in...

Or, like, there was an inheritance that we got where we coulda bought a house, but instead we just used the money on life... I could have a house now... that's a favourite regret for darkish nights like this... shoulda coulda woulda...

Somehow tonight, it's Lemmy that I'm poring over. Like that matters. And why even think about dead people at all, you know, when there are living ones I could be doing better with?

Or, like, with my writing... my Youtube channel... I could be monetizing things... could find a way to set and meet a higher standard... do something as a source of income... I don't like the idea of ads. I don't like the idea of Patreon or so forth. 20 years of blogging for free... most of my writing is done for free... But I do, in fact, want and need money in my life... I should figure out how to do X so I can do Y and end up at Z, rather than muddling along, doing it wrong... seize the things I'm doing right... I don't slouch on housework, there's that... I keep myself entertained... I'm pretty good at my dayjob (sometimes)... uh...

Erika's up with a bad gut. Me I've got a bad brain. Will splooging this onto my blog help me put it to sleep?

I guess I should feed the cat first. Anyhow...