Mojo

      Last night, I told my roomie about the problems I've been having finishing Murder by the Acre. He listened for a while and then said, "You've lost your mojo." And he was exactly right.
      If you ever watched Stargate: SG1, you will remember the episode in which the warrior Tealc lost his mojo, as Jack put it. Tealc had to nearly lose his life in a labor camp before he recovered it.
      What is mojo?
      Faith.
      Faith in one's self and abilities. The belief that you are capable, talented, strong, and so on.
      I've lost faith.
      It started in January of this year. I was sick for all those weeks, and MBTA started slipping away from me. So did this blog. I can't say why for sure. Maybe it was all those miserable hours staring at the ceiling. I have a regrettable tendency to replay my failures -- of which I've accumulated a pile over the years -- when I can't sleep or am ill.
      Maybe the battle with diabetes did it. I had so many setbacks, so many missteps, that I mostly stopped trying. I give lip service to it, but that is all. I know I got tired of all the endless carb counting and the finger sticks and the medications that I couldn't afford. And my efforts seemed to do nothing. I lost a few pounds, then couldn't lose any more. My blood sugar seemed arbitrary, up one day, down the next, even though the days were as identical as I could manage.
      The day-to-day stress and strain my job places on me has to figure in there somewhere. Many days I dread going to work. I sometimes flinch when the phone rings and I see certain customers are calling. I live for the weekends, and that's not a good way to live.
      Then EndlesS just about did me in. I was stupidly unprepared for its terrible sales. While I didn't expect it to be the success that Murder by Dewey Decimal was, I also didn't expect to sell fewer than 15 copies. I was hoping for about 50 or 60, but EndlesS was soundly ignored by almost all my friends and family alike. I desperately needed the ego boost, the reassurance I had something to say that other people wanted to hear, particularly since I was wrestling so hard with MBTA.
      Family illnesses, my sister's battle with cancer, the death of my uncle, the sorrow still felt by the loss of my mother and father, losses that accumulate. I'm not sure I deal with anything; I just learn how to ignore the sorrow, how to drown it out with work and writing, but it sits in the corner, waiting for those unwary moments.
      Maybe I'm just getting older.
      Tomorrow morning, I will have a birthday. I've always made a big deal about birthdays. You know how people regard January 1st as the time to turn over their lives and make big changes. My birthday has always been that time for me.
      But tomorrow, my brother-in-law has surgery. Tomorrow, my younger sister will continue to suffer from the aftereffects of her surgery. Tomorrow, my niece -- my oldest sister's daughter -- will still be in another hospital. (Yeah, that happened yesterday, my niece being put in the hospital. This morning they moved her to ICU. I did talk to her this afternoon, but so far, they’ve not been able to get her symptoms under control -- not that I'm surprised because the hospital she's in has to be one of the worst hospitals in the United States.) Anyway, family members are suffering, and that, my friends, is the hardest thing of all. I can't help them, can't fix them, can't do anything other than pray and frankly that doesn't feel like enough.
      But tomorrow I will have a birthday. I will be at work for most of the day. My roomie and other friends will give me some funny cards. I'll probably have lunch with a friend or two. I'll wait to hear from my family. I'll pray for good reports from the various doctors. That will be my birthday.
      Except for one more thing.
      Tomorrow morning, I will get up, and despite personal failures, diabetes, family tragedies and illness, mojolessness, stinky job, rotten health, global warming, war in Iraq, the sun burning out in five million or so years, I'll still be right here.
      Praying, hoping, believing against all intelligent thoughts otherwise, striving, writing, dreaming unreasonable unlikely things, losing, winning, loving for all the wrong reasons...
      Living.
      Still here.
      I'll still be here.

Eleanor: We're jungle creatures, Henry, and the dark is all around us. See them ... in the corners? You can see their eyes.
Henry: And they can see ours. I'm a match for anything. Aren't you?

From The Lion In Winter by James Goldman