When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
When I was young, I only wrote when I was sad. I wrote a lot. Now, I mostly like to write out of anger and revenge and competition. Some people don’t think that’s healthy. I have no use for them. Writing is not: therapeutic, healing, consoling or cathartic. Writing is not a hobby. I recently asked if I would give a “journaling” workshop. NO. It isn’t even a word. Okay, here’s my journaling course: buy a notebook and write mean things in it. Every day.
Are you moody?
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Betsy Lerner 
I applaud your honesty!! Truly–it doesn’t matter what triggers your writing…what needs to be exorcised will be…with practice.
Kick ass. Make the best [probably] awkward peace you can with this incarnation.
Moody? Me? Fuck no, how dare you even ask. I wrote NOTHING today. NOTHING! Fuck you. Fuck everyone. No. Fucking’s too good for the lot of you. Tomorrow, I will fucking WRITE ABOUT YOU instead.
Sounds like writing sort of saved your life a when you were a kid, which is pretty brilliant.
Writing—it’s my personal jesus.
Im moody. Especially when my kids are jerks to each other. Or when people make fun of me, which is what my brothers are still for. I can be mean but i find no satisfaction in it. I feel other people’s feelings plus all my own—it’s kind of a problem. Not even bragging.
Sorry. Not so much.
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Not sure, but sometimes my cat hisses at me when I walk by (he sleeps on my chest other times.) Not too long ago, is 8 years not too long ago?, I tried to volunteer at this Write Around Town, or something like that, workshop where people get together and write about their lives. It’s supposed to be therapeutic. I was doing it more for my wife who refused to go. When the guy was interviewing me I think I blurted out a quick laugh. I couldn’t pull it off. Not for me. Anger, revenge, competition. That I understand. Thanks, Betsy. A pleasure as always.
If I was feeling moody, that vanished with your evaluation of journaling. On the other hand, hasn’t facebook (unfortunately) taken over that role for too many folks?
Absolutely. It’s why I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. People sharing so much I want or else don’t want to know…
That sums up my motivations exactly. I thought I was alone in this, not merely propelled by love of story and craft and the process but also by rage and competitiveness, both with myself and others, be they successful writers or failures. For me the dark emotions are so strong that I have to write them in a little journal lest I find myself discussing my inner world aloud.
It’s good to know I’m not alone. You touch upon this in FOREST, but this more brazenly lays it out on the table.
Thank you. And don’t even get me started on mindfulness.
Preach!
I am moody when I’m ‘hangry’. Seeing as I have gained back 15 of the 100 I lost I haven’t been ‘hangry’ enough over the last year.
Just ate a Kit Kat. Not moody, I’m good.
I can be. Or maybe it’s irritable. Like when I’m trying to write and spend hours only to realize what I just wrote creates a huge problem for something earlier.
I’d suck at writing in a journal. I did it when I was younger, attempted it when I was older, and now, the only writing I do is towards The Project.
“Are you moody?”
Fuck yeah. What’s it to you? Oh, hi, Betsy, I didn’t recognize you at first.
“I recently asked if I would give a “journaling” workshop. NO. It isn’t even a word. Okay, here’s my journaling course: buy a notebook and write mean things in it. Every day.”
That’s how I started. It works. But it wasn’t “journaling.” That’s not even a word. It was writing. That’s a word.
“Writing is not a hobby.”
Tru dat, but — when I interviewed for the job I currently still have (either a miracle or a curse, who’s to say), one of the partners asked me what my hobbies were. Hmm, trick ques, how to ans — may as well have been a cat trying to converse with a pumpkin — hobbies? people up here have hobbies? well mebbe they do, i’m a stranger in this strange land — so I told him, “I read and I write.”
“Writing is not: therapeutic, healing, consoling or cathartic.”
Can be. As draining the pus from the wound can be. So there.
I once went out with an academic young man who was reading resumes for a job opening in his department. He was stunned that someone – applying for an academic position, mind – listed “reading” as a hobby. To him reading was like eating. That’s how I feel about writing – and reading, too, come to think of it. They’re like two chopsticks. You can’t really live with just one.
Moody? Oh yeah. Last Wednesday the leg that I use to pump up my ego balloon was worn right out. It was cramping and I was deflated, defeated, sad, angry. So I went to bed at 7:30, listened to some music in the dark, had a good sleep and then got up the next day and continued on. I used the other leg to pump the balloon.
Have a good day everyone. Write. Read. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.
My moodiness goes into my poetry; my ideals go into my fiction.
Moody? Hell, yeah.
My writing, and my whole life, is one giant introspective mood piece. I hide it well, though, same as my moody introversion.
Some think I’m a people person, which is such horse shit. Go away. Leave me alone, is the moody mantra rattling around my brain all day long. Still, I am fun.
Goddamn right I’m moody.
Writing is salvation. Here’s how to plant and nourish an epiphany: Compose a poem without words.
It’s a fight against suppression, a rejection of oppression and a dire coyote cry rejecting submission.
Moody? Yeah. Mostly angry and a little afraid.
Froggy went a’ courting
Uh huh
Froggy went a’ courting
Uh huh
With a sword and a pistol by his side
Away on a pony he did ride
Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh.
(The frog marries a mouse and they get eaten up by a snake and a big bird in the end).
Is this the line for the guillotine?
Yes. No cuts, Averil!
Anyone who says they’re not moody is probably lying–or else has managed to live some kind of Pollyanna life.
I’m the glass-is-mostly-full-because-I-keep-refilling-it kind of person. Maybe never fully content, but I just always push on. Seems a better alternative than wearing blinders or simply giving up…
Maybe I should report back here later, when I’m in a really shitty mood.
Anger, etc. is ENERGIZING!
hahhahaha
Me? Moody? I don’t know.
Axe my exes.
Ummm… Ask… ASK my exes.
I can step over two out of the three dogs we have, while they’re laying in the hallway, and they don’t twitch a muscle. And, yes, they’re still alive and un-drugged. I’m assuming that counts for something. Were I moody, they’d be the first to make the path clear, coz I’d simply not be so trusted. I’m sure that they’re on the other side of my office’s closed door with a drinking glass up to the door to hear how much I’m cussing at my computer when it doesn’t help me to be the person I want to be.
I do write mean and evil thoughts from time to time. I take them out to the dark Web and bury them, only to be brought up at the proper times of the year.
Other than all this, I’m a happy-go-lucky sorta person.