The Mailbox is Full

I am eking out time for myself this morning. Yesterday, I actually dedicated an afternoon to playing and looking for inspiration.

I have been uninspired. Forgive me Father for I have sinned, it has been a year since my last inspiration. I can't seem to cram any happy time into my life. By happy time I mean guilt-free time, time when I shouldn't really be doing something else for someone else. Even right now I feel rushed to write this so I can do some unpaid work for someone else.

But it isn't just my creative life that has been suffering. In particular people have been up in arms about the state of my voice mailbox. Always full.

I attribute my lack of inspiration to a lack of play, I attribute my lack of play to a deep sadness, I attribute my deep sadness to a lot of things, the most overwhelming three:

1. The death of my father, which made me realize the death of my mother and sister are eminent.
2. Losing two jobs and multiple friendships after coming out as genderqueer and starting to present as masculine. Not to mention countless comments from strangers.
3. Moving to NYC where I feel utterly alone in a sea of people. To understand how profoundly alone I feel, imagine you are at a party where you feel disconnected from everyone, although they all seem to be having a good time. Now multiply the number of other people at the party by a million, and you are the one that isn't getting it on.

I attribute the number of messages in my mailbox to my sadness. And to fear: What if they die tomorrow, and I have no recordings of them just being themselves, stammering to start talking after the beep on my voicemail, telling a joke, being very very serious.

I have been saving messages from the people who are the most important to me. As you have probably garnered, I am an incredible introvert, there are six people I care about. I
have one message from each of them and several from my partner.

Courtney's: Singing happy birthday.
Julia's Message: Describing the items she has to buy for her Betty Draper Halloween Outfit
Celeste's Message: Describing being attacked by a swarm of bees in the forest
Niko's Message: "Billy where are you?"
DeeJay's Message: "Hey. I'm at work. I'll call you back."
Jovan's Messages: All basically from a different state, saying "I miss you," and "I want to come home."

Would have more. There are some I really would have liked to have saved forever. Like one from my uncle who has a breathy sort of voice and a pre-WWII North Eastern accent. Hey talks just like my grandfather did. I just remember it started, "Hey, hey, Biffer . . . "

But I can only store 12 messages on my phone, and I don't have a digital forwarding thing where I can send it to my own email. So, I don't know, if you call me, and you can't leave a message about a bill I owe you, or a meeting we need to have, or a message to call you back, I don't really feel bad so about that.

I wouldn't have listened to that message until the end anyways.