Yeah, you think you're stronger than you are.  You put up with what you feel you can put up with, but it is not neat, it is not clean.  There is the fog, minor variant of the fog of war.  There is collateral damage.  There is the unpredictability.  And when you're killing yourself just so you can have health insurance, too clouded by the battle even to know any better, one week blending into another, two days off slept through, more or less, well, maybe you should do something about it.

A good soldier, you put up with it.  Your boss tells  you, it's not that bad, it's all more or less fair.  But life ticks by.


Shame is the motivator.  That's what you have been getting to the bottom of, in therapy, mentally, physically.  You've done your job in other people's adventures, and now it's time to start, anyway, to move on.  And you begin by protecting yourself, realizing the burden you can carry, healthily.


Maybe lots of writers are driven by shame.  It's something that they must overcome, and this is the subliminal story, the finding of grace, for that odd being who knew he or she had to write.  To overcome that particular shame of being that sort of village/family idiot, the person who cannot fit in, who must express themselves, venturing into strange places the more successful would strenuously avoid and consider it the worst kind of defeat to even be part of.   Those are areas which I have been to, the odd spaces you never in your lifetime thought you'd end up being a part of.


Give the guy some credit for studying primate behavior up close.  That in the long lens will be how my work will be seen.  Not unlike a Jane Godall.  That was the point of the work.  The point was not to drive myself into the ground

Animal Reunions on PBS.

 Do we face shame out of the strength of our mother's love...  Primitive, archaic, of a psychological depth, of a biological depth that can not rationally be understand, fully.


Sickness is healing.  Purifying.  Clarifying.  A break from.