Maybe I need to shoot zombies

Ah, how can one feel sad on such a beautiful day? How is it possible to feel so low when nature is so high on life? My mood ricochets so fast I go dizzy; my heart expands and then tightens; my soul soars and then plummets, in freefall.
Is this the price one pays for being a writer; for living in one’s mind, in the imagination, so much? Does it leave dissatisfaction with the mundane world of everyday, of dust and dinner, of routine and responsibility?

I am struggling right now. I’ve had the contract for a project sitting on my desk now for the last five days. Last night I made myself sign it and felt a chill breeze of despond flutter the pages. What is the matter with me? Why does it feel such a big deal? It’s just a book. It’s just a job. It won’t even bear my name; nobody will know. Since when did I become so precious? It’s not even as though I have any great literature in me yearning to push itself into the world. Ah, maybe that is it. Maybe it’s the futility of it all. The nonsense of ego that craves attention. The foolishness of middle age. The sense that time is hurtling by and I’m being swept along with it.

Maybe, as I said yesterday, the sticking plaster over this festering sore is to get out the mind and into the body. Yesterday I punished myself with an hour of kettlebell class. It was tough; my muscles whimpered but it felt good. I slept for once. But still I couldn’t dream.

This morning it was yoga. Out in the air, on the grass, the sun beating down. I opened my eyes and gazed at the sky, so clear, so blue. Felt the earth under my body. Felt so strange, an insect Velcroed to the planet by gravity, a speck on a speck spinning in space. As we fell into pranayama, I fell into the sky, dropped away. Normally it feels good; normally the universe feels like a comforting place. Today it felt like I was spinning into a void.

‘Are you alright, Mum?’ said James later as I stood at the sink, washing up in a daze.
‘Of course I am, love,’ I replied.
‘You don’t seem it,’ he countered.
Oh hell. I try to keep my mood dips away from him, I really do. I guess I don’t always succeed.
‘When I feel low, I lose myself in a game,’ he said, patting my back as if I were the child, he the parent. ‘Black Ops is pretty good for that.’

Ah so. Maybe we all do it in different ways. Some with television or games; some with food and alcohol; some with pulp fiction; some with sport and exercise, with adrenalin or endorphins.

Maybe I just need to shoot me some zombies.