by Don Hall

I'm having a hard time getting motivated.

Sure, I need to give myself a break—I'm in that specific yet incredibly common place in life when the life I was living turned out to be a fiction and, you know, it takes time to recover. The Japanese proverb (Proverb? Saying? Adage?) that tells me to "Fall down seven times, get up eight" is good and all but I'm finding it difficult to get up.

I listen to podcasts but find that after the conversation I'm hearing ends, I can't recall much of what was said. Abruptly spending far more of my time alone has brought out a few strange behaviors. I turn the television news on and just leave it on so that they sound of voices is just present in the apartment. I talk to myself and tend to refer to the one person in the room as 'we.' As in "We need to get some control on the random snacking," or "Today, we're going to pump out 5,000 words." It isn't really the royal 'we' but more like the 'we' of Charleston Heston in Omega Man or the Wilson of Castaway. Just a few clicks away from the guy standing on the corner jabbering about the mind control coming from the traffic lights and drawing made-up hieroglyphs with his shit on the sidewalk.

Roughly six years ago, I stopped smoking cigarettes and started smoking a pipe. This was less a choice and more a response to the hectoring from the stranger I married but I can't say I regretted it. I like the pipes. I like the reaction I get smoking an old school pipe. It smells like nostalgia. "You smell like my grandpa." As soon as the fiction I had been living was exposed, waking up from a seven year coma like a 2022 version of Rip Van Winkle, I went out and bought a pack of smokes. I suppose in part because I could now smoke in the house as an act of defiance, in part as a "Fuck you" to her. A few months later, I'm still smoking cigarettes. I tell myself "We're smoking to reclaim who we were before all this happened. Sense memory experimentation." As if the act of pulling out a stinky square can bring back the self assurance and confidence I used to wear like a cape.

I'm distracted by the news. Sitting down to write, I find myself writing a sentence, staring at it, then jumping in to check my email which almost always spam, taking a beat to clean out the spam, spending five minutes playing the free Blackjack game in my iPad, then checking the many feeds for any new news. Back to the sentence. I delete it and write another, slightly reworded. Then I check out the Indeed job board for gigs either remote or specific to Denver or Wichita. I get some coffee. I think a moment about the food I'll eat later and how many calories it will attach to my expanding gut. "OK. We maybe need to just crank out 3,000 words today. We'll make up the balance tomorrow."

I check my dwindling bank balance. I do some cursory math to see how long I can manage to keep my bills paid until someone knocks on the door to ask me to join my feces hieroglyphicist on the corner. Back to the sentence. I look up at the iPad and realize that Meghan Daum has been talking for the last hour on her new podcast and I haven't listened to a single word and I debate whether or not to restart it or whether it was important enough to listen to again.

The night before last, I went to bed at a reasonable, adult time, but brought the iPad in with me. I decided to browse Netflix and found Snowflake Mountain. A reality series (I love reality tv) with two hosts who are former military, survivalist types who bring ten Gen Z stereotypes of lazy, sensitive, entitled idiots and teach them through challenges and instruction to be adults. It's funny and salty, lots of fat and sugar, and I binge the entire show until 5am. Thus, my sleep cycle is fucked but I'm flooded with the exact lessons I'm desperately in need of in this period—Responsibility, Self Respect, Motivation. Get up offa your ass and get the routine back in focus.

I take walks most days despite the feeling that Nevada in summer is like living in a giant toaster oven. I've noticed a trend. The first half of the walk has my inner monologue obsessing on the failed marriage, the red flags I ignored, the feeling that she has moved past the divorce so quickly and cleanly, with little to no consequence, that I am nothing more than disposable like a used Starbucks lid or a cached out lighter. The second half becomes a Great Santini speech in my head, barking at me to quit being such a pussy, get the fuck over it, get back into the gym, Gimme fifty pushups NOW!

I always feel better after the second half of the walk but then there's the sentence that isn't gonna write itself, motherfucker!

When I thought I'd perhaps stay in Vegas, I submitted volunteer applications to several causes here. It takes longer than I thought it would because everyone wants a background check before letting you show up and help with abandoned dogs or help in a Food bank. Odd that I could buy a rifle in less time than I can volunteer for a homeless shelter here but these are odd times. I'm less interested in volunteering because I'm leaving. No desire to create new relationships when I'm up and outta here in less than two months.

Yeah, I know I told myself that this whole divorce was something I would just compartmentalize and move on. I’m the sort of person that others see as impenetrable, tough-minded, and, as David called me “a pitbull.” Given my track record, this is objectively true most of the time. I always tend to land on my feet but, gang, this is hard. It may be harder than my previous divorces because of the outrageous circumstances, it may be hard because I was completely convinced we would work. It might be that I’m just getting older and the energy required to just get over it is dwindling. Whatever the case, it’s fucking hard.

No. This is not some cry for help. David also makes a convincing case that getting this sort of stuff off my chest and into the world is a net-positive. I’m not looking for sympathy, empathy, or even a freaking hug. This is simply the inner monologue (which is driving me nuts).

I get the sense I'm simply filling the time. To get through the next few weeks in order to get busy packing. To get as far away from her as possible. I'm biding my time. I don't know if I ever bided time before. Waiting for time to spin itself out so I can start moving forward again. I get the sense that I can't move forward until I'm no longer living 25-feet from her. That's probably sensible.

"We should go to the pool today." "We need to generate 1,000 words today." "We should do some intermittent fasting today." "Jesus—NPR has become insufferable!" "We should read some fiction."

But first, we're going to stare at this sentence some more.

I'm having a hard time getting motivated.

NOTE: Apparently just writing this has me finding the motivation. Go figure.