Robert Manners

The Wheels of the Bus

I don't know what it is, exactly, but I still feel really disconnected from things. It's like things don't mean anything anymore, they just happen, as if happening to someone else. Have I practiced, unto perfection, a sense of apathy (as a quick substitute for acceptance) and am now unable to give a shit? Or is it a vestige of depression lingering (or malingering, as the case may be) after its Autumnal Equinox due-by date? Or is it something else?



Actually, now that I'm thinking of it, it's not that I don't feel things when they happen... it's just that I find , once the moment's done, the feelings have gone along with the moment, and I can't really access them again. And then I no longer feel connected to the thing or the moment. I guess, then, that it's perhaps a trick of memory, being unable to recall the emotion or feeling of past moments, only the details (and those are fuzzy, too).



But then, I'm also not feeling terribly connected to my writing, either. These posts all seem so dull, and they're shamefully infrequent, as well. I wonder if it's because I've been doing this blogging business for so long now that the novelty has worn off and blogging has become a ho-hum workaday time-killer... or worse, a tedious task. Or is it, I wonder, merely part of the same disconnectedness I feel towards events and moments?



Conversely, is it possible that the disconnectedness I feel about my actions is caused by the lack of novelty in my activities? That even the most entertaining and exciting moments are starting to seem sort of repetitious? When I was on stage the other night, triumphing (even if I do say so myself... and I only say so myself because a number of other people already said so to me, but they aren't here now to say so to you), it all seemed just a trifle passé.



The part that really stands out in my mind from that night was later, when I was going into one of my mounting tirades, expounding on the epidemic of flat-butted women who don't look behind them when they buy pants that are made for more-voluptuously-buttocked women and then end up walking around with pants that look very like Austrian shades in the back, and suddenly realized I was talking too loudly and everyone in the restaurant could hear the big drag queen in the orange gown ranting about flat-assed women.



By the way, I looked unspeakably fabulous Saturday night, as did Miss Linda Lear on the left and Royal Grand Duchess XII Angelique deVille on the right:

But, to return to what I was kvetching about, it seems that only embarrassment sticks clearly in my mind, not triumph. To be honest, though, I wasn't really that embarrassed. I was only concerned that I might develop a reputation as a loud-mouthed queen, or worse that I might be falling into the bad habits of a loud-mouthed queen.



Nevertheless, it was a negative rather than positive moment, and I feel it more acutely now than the positive. And actually, now that I think of it, when I got off the stage I was more concerned that my furs had become difficult than the fact that I had just nailed my number right into the floor... that exhilarated feeling I expect after getting a big round of applause was simply missing.



Or maybe it's just that I didn't get quite enough sleep last night, and everything seems sort of fuzzy. I just don't know. I wish I did. And while this will all be terribly fascinating to some future psychoanalyst (when I give up retail therapy in favor of psychotherapy), I don't want to bore you with it. But then I haven't got much of anything else to bore you with, so it will just have to do.



Speaking of boring, I have been engaged in backing up all the information on my computer, as I now have a new computer here at work... all four of the workstations are being replaced at once, something rather new for us. But as I noticed about a year ago, when I was planning to leave this snake-pit (and boy am I glad now that I didn't), I have a lot of crap stored on this computer. I am loath, however, to leave any of it behind and losing something useful or important.



So today I am compressing the files and loading them onto 100-mg Zip disks, then taking them home and decompressing them on my home computer, then burning the files onto CDs and bringing them back to the office so I can load them into the new computer (whenever it gets set up... we hit a snag trying to get the server onto the DSL line, and the whole project has been gummed up). For extra entertainment value, my CD burner tends to make disks that can only be read by other Gateway systems... so I have to shove the disks into the office laptop in order to get the CD to read, and then transfer the files to another CD. It's very wasteful and confusing and time-consuming.



And, of course, boring. I think maybe that's the feeling I'm having: I'm just a trifle bored. It makes matters worse that I am also busy... the only thing worse than being bored is being so busy with boring things that you can't even relish the relaxation of the ennui.



So the time has come to either challenge myself or start cutting down on my activities. Guess which one I'm more likely to do...