WerkHorrer

I have an innate suspicion of anyone who wears shoes that need to be shined.

Three weeks into my 34th job, it's found me again. The Daemon, the changeling, the unquiet ghost: Werk Horrer.

Werk (pronounced Vurk!) is what I do to pay my bills. "Work" is what I do to sustain my soul, such as writing, reading books, watching movies. Werk horrer is the blinding, soul-starving, tear-provoking response of my genuine self to the day-in-day-out-ness of a day job.

The conundrum of werk horrer for me is that my day job clutters up so much of my life that I find myself almost shunning inspiration for my writing. I used to escape into my writing, but over the years I've found having to emerge from it to confront another day of werk like subjecting myself to a breach birth morning after morning.

So, while driving around in my car, I find myself listening to talk radio. I hate talk radio, but I can't listen to music anymore. I love music. But I'm sick of walking around with spiritual blue balls because I cannot consummate the inspiration music rouses in me.

The other morning, I diagnosed myself as a dry-drunk in dry-dock, feet pedaling in the air. I'm sweating off the miserable withdrawals from Indoorsmanhood, yoked with a new schedule, news sounds and people around me; the pscyhic circuitboard in the office seems overloaded, and I'm the one browning out as a result.

You're lazy! the ungracious part of myself accuses me. You're afraid of work so you call it werk to facilitate your complaining. But what lazy person could portage the merciless landscape to completing a book? I've made the journey half a dozen times...

Fuck it, I'm delving into abstractions to mask the real reasons.

As my good friend, who has made it through nine steps of the AA twelve-step program, says about his own such feelings, It's all me. It's all me.