Of course you didn’t notice that I haven’t blogged or sent out an ezine for the past two weeks.  Why would you?

When people post on social media: “I’m sorry I haven’t been here in awhile” I wonder how anyone could ever notice and why would you need to apologize??  We’re all bombarded by messages, no? How could you notice one voice less?

Yet every time that happens – when I lapse into non-communication – I’m convinced it’s the beginning of the end.

What ‘end’ I don’t know, but this seems like the beginning of it.  Feels like massive sloth – like when I used to panic over writing thank you letters to my great-aunts after my birthday and just NEVER did it, causing those aunts to eventually wither and die.

But back to my demise.  In this particular ‘end’ I’m sprawled on the kitchen floor wearing my grandmother’s old print work-dress – the one she wore when I was 3, a half-empty gin bottle in my hand (I don’t drink gin, but I trust the universe that a half-drunk bottle of cheap gin will materialize), my hair matted, my apron filthy and a 5-day growth of beard …

… ooops, wait, that beard is from a different fantasy where I’m in the gutter, having spontaneously metamorphosed into an old man.  But that fantasy’s unavailable now as there IS no gutter – all gutters being covered by 5-foot mounds of snow.

Which has made room for this new kitchen fantasy.

The kitchen one’s better, anyway, because, eventually – sprawled on the kitchen floor, the cats, not having been fed for days, eye me with a new interest.

Ahhhh … it feels GREAT to share that!

It feels great because I have these fantasies all the time.  And I’ve felt I couldn’t share them because – well, coaches tell you never to share these kinds of things – certainly not when they’re happening.

Maybe later after you’ve worked through it.

But I’m not sure I want to work through it!  What’s not FUN about these fantasies except my thinking that I shouldn’t have them??

And I DO have them.

I’m pretty sure the cats have them, too.  I’ve seen the way they look at me when they swarm the bed at night.

But the point is: There’s nothing taboo about delusions of decrepitude – so long as you can enjoy them as delusions.

Ha! I sound like this is something I ‘know’ or have figured out – and I haven’t.  Unlike every blog from every life-coach I’ve read, I haven’t remotely figured this out.

I just know that it’s as easy to beat myself up with images of my own power-and-glory as with ‘negative’ images and I think that the salient detail (as my friend Matt Witten and I used to say) … the salient detail isn’t the image – but whether you’re having fun with it or not.

(There, now I sound like a life-coach.  Which I’m not.)

When I buy the line that I have to hide these fantasies it’s no fun.  It’s like they are a Something that’s wrong with me.  Something I have to hide.

And when I feel free to splash them around instead of looking for an ‘uplifting’ image … I feel strangely uplifted.

In a sprawling-on-the-kitchen floor about to become cat-food sort of way.

I once had a boyfriend – Al – who starting fantasizing about our getting married on our first date, and mentioned it to me casually.

I was shocked.

“Really?” he said. “You’re shocked?? But my imagination’s unlimited. I think that same thing about everyone I go out with.”  And he explained that he fantasized about everything from the get-go, from marriage to an apocalyptic double-suicide romance pact.

And you know what? So do I.  I just don’t admit it.

Except I just did.  And it feels great!

Ha! Wait ’til I tell the cats.

p.s. the image at the top is irrelevant. I just like it AND I made it myself.