ambivalence

I haven't done much here -- ok, nothing at all -- for a while. R says I should be excited about the opportunities presented by leaving this job (at which I am currently goofing off rather). I am not NOT excited but R seems to be more excited than I. I got my first "real" job in 6th grade cleaning the school I went to and have worked more or less ever since. I never quit a job without knowing exactly what was next. I have a friend who guaranteed me a min of 20 hours a week contract - I thought the minimum was to ensure I got "$x" a week but he seems to think it means I will work at least "x" hours. Friday I leave here, with mixed feelings -- actually without much feeling at all -- and Monday he wants me there at 9:30. Maybe I picked the wrong thing. My boss announced I was leaving to become a "housewife" as I do not have an actual job to go to; R says I am not unemployed but I am becoming self employed, and the truth of the matter is -- if it could work financially and it wasn't unfair to R I would just stay home and do nothing but work to finish the house repairs and to read, write, photograph, garden, paint, contemplate... it's just not realistic with M off to Tulane in a month... probably it never will be realistic either.
I wanted time ... to watch stupid movies (aren't they all stupid, really?), to clean out and make a space for me at the house, to drive around (that seems to be how I write anymore), to write, to do photos, to read. But instead I am going to work at 9:30 on Monday. If I am expected to show up every day I may have to reconsider but this is a good friend after all -- so I can't just dump him in the grease either.
I wanted to put the house back in some order, to quit living out of boxes, to paint the new sheetrock, to do the finish work on the new floors, to get some bookcases put in since we had to rip out the built-in storage which was flooded and to get to the wood floors underneath that were ruined by Ike. I wanted to unpack the multitude of boxes ... I actually bought books Monday at a resale shop -- some of which I have copies of -- because mine are in one or more of the many boxes stacked in neat piles throughout the house. My reading choices otherwise are some James Alison ("On Being Liked" is proving very dense or I am too dense for this one), one WB ("The Memory of Old Jack"), a book on Islam, and an assortment of magazines and papers I haven't caught up with. M wanted a book of poetry the other day -- a real book, not a download from Gutenberg -- but no such luck. They don't seem to carry a lot of poetry in stores selling used books.
I have been writing a lot but in the car - not a smart or safe practice but for some time driving has been the easiest way to write, it just comes. I keep a notebook for those occasions but it is full and so I resort to the backs of old maps and scraps of paper. And I haven't really decided how I feel about moving things from those scraps or notebooks to here -- it is spontaneous as written but if I move it, it's just copying, not writing -- it doesn't feel the same as writing (it's not, after all, it is copying). So there is nothing to put here bc I am mired in ambivalence and having not written anything other than while driving for the longest time ... the default position is to do nothing.
Doing nothing accomplishes nothing, it helps me figure out exactly nothing, and it's a lazy way for a scared person to go about things, things we don't even know about.
Maybe I will post on the other site the things R selected for the poetry fest ... he is the only one who ever read as many as he did or who ever suggested I should be more public by submitting them for anything ...
I don't expect anything to come of it but it was nice to have that encouragement and feedback.