The Hyperlocal CATCH-22

I know I need a pick-me-up when I start randomly Googling for quotes and inspiration.

When I typed in "stress" and "quotes," the following words were most inspiring:

"In times of great stress or adversity, it's always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive."
- Lee Iacocca

We are in times of great stress and adversity.

Since April of 2009 I've been plowing my anger and energy into this weekly e-newsletter.

Of all the things that I'm doing, the newsletter is the one that I love to put my energy into week after week, though I'm coming to terms with the fact I do not have the personality of a Publisher-Businesswoman, nor do I want to have to think about selling all of the time. Sure I can do it, and I've been doing it, but at the expense of watching my health slide, my skin break out from stress, and literally everything in between.

I'm not a trust fund kid/adult. Been working since age 15 and climbed out of debt a few years back. I don't believe in buying things I can't afford, or doing things that are a waste of time and energy. There's no boyfriend or roommate to help me with expenses, and I'm working all of the time. At the end of the day I need to begin seeing return on investment of all this plowing. I used to think I could measure ROI in all the positive reader testimonials and the "Keep up the good work!" emails, but now I see those are just peripheral support, ego strokes, and if I don't find core support I'm a fool for keeping on.

Right now this Fool needs to keep on moving, walking, watching, and seeing. If that's all my life is, then I guess so be it. I don't know where else to be or what to do that feels more real than what I've been doing. I'm just really f88cking sick of selling it. I guess that's the CATCH-22: If you love what you do and you're the one who created it, you have to find a way to sustain it. It's like love itself, and why it's so much easier to create love than to nurture and sustain it.

False starts, how many of them can a person take before she breaks?

I guess it's up to me to answer that, and to create an answer that I can live with, because at the end of the day I must find a way to curb the stress and keep plowing. There's only a light at the end of the tunnel if you believe it to be there. And tunnels are often just figments of the imagination.