If You Were A Chair

I'm having one of those weeks wherein I over-think everything and it starts to make me batty.  Something like this:

Tomorrow is the first of October.  Which means I am only three months away from the beginning of grad school.  Which means the nightmares may begin.  You know, it's halfway through the semester and you're up to your ears in student loans, and "they" ("the inimitable, collective them") call you into their office (and naturally you are late because you can't find your left shoelace and you are hopelessly lost due to the school being built inside a maze - nevermind that it's an online MFA program and this would all be happening over email), and say, "You can't write!  How did you get into this  program anyway?"

(And thus ended Lauren Holgate's pipe dream, may it rest in peace.)

This train of thought quickly spirals out of control (and reality): I will fail grad school because I cannot write; my debts will pile sky-high because no one will hire me; Isaac will find a new mommy at the park who doesn't make him take the rock collection out of his pants before putting them in the washer (seven rocks!  SEVEN!); Tim will die (no idea, he's perfectly healthy); and I'll be stuck in this country forever with no way to get home.

... So I tell myself not to think about it and I refocus all my creative energy into finishing the illustrations for the children's book (another pipe dream).

Only to discover, after hours upon endless hours of sketching, erasing, shading, and painting, that I hate it.  (Let's just be honest, I'm one of those artists.)  The problem is two-fold: First off, I did it.  If anyone else had done it, I'd love it.  Second-off, it's not at all like the thing in my head.  Stupid thing in my head.  What did I ever do to deserve such a horribly perfect imagination?  It'll be the death of me.

... At which point I'm really in a funk frame of mind, so I clean my house and go running and take a hot shower and make coffee and then vent in a blog post.  Which you then have to read (my apologies).

... When the truth of the matter is that, most likely, I am just over-thinking everything.  Also I did not have enough coffee.

The unrelated good news, though, is that Isaac is finally using the adult toilet all by himself (I had to clarify, what with the Fisher Price Frog Potty -  a.k.a. The Glorified Plastic Bowl).  What we should be working on is public restrooms.  Which is really more my problem than his - I hate them and I don't want my kid near them.

I can think of no better way to end this post than with a Marc Johns illustration:

{Borrowed from here}