The Knot, Part Two

Feeling about ten times better about my life and my writing these days.  I'm adding a very simple and very   difficult lesson to every session with my ex, the Internet, and it seems to be working.  Here's the process:

• Don't avoid the Internet, but don't court it, either.  Which means I am spending a LOT less time with it
• When I do meet with Internet, I just listen.  All good therapy starts with listening.  I don't talk back much
• When I do meet with Internet, I listen without experiencing everything as a personal insult or a reason for me to change.  I just listen, without changing my stripes every fourteen feet and without getting defensive
• Internet just IS

And then we've got what I do instead:

• I took a radical new approach with my resume, and got an interview
• I am just throwing myself into dates with Novel, who seems far less judgmental than Internet
• I don't spend every waking minute with Novel, so that when Novel and I part ways we can say it was a good experience
• I read books SO.  MUCH.  BETTER.  I just sit there and relish them, swim in them, until my fingers get all pruney with someone else's poetry and stories
• I have reduced my complaining by half.  I'll never eliminate it--I catch myself complaining in my head, and then realize how much I sound like Andy Rooney after a while, and it's not my intention to sound like him

Yes, the kids (blogs) may suffer at first from my amicable break-up with Internet, and friends may forget me, but God, did you see that turn of phrase in the second-to-last sentence of my third chapter of Novel?  Did you catch that cool breeze this morning in the Park?  Did you hear the Blue Angels rock the Casbah on Thursday while you chewed on a coffee-soaked mint leaf from a little place by the ballpark?

I did.  God, it was fun.  And Internet seems to be healing just fine after our divorce.

Write on.