What is My Daisy Buchanan?

I haven't written for the past couple of days, mainly because I felt uninspired, but also because I was busy doing other things and didn't make writing a priority.  I know this is a no-no.  Every writer who's going to call herself a writer needs structure and discipline.  I just seem to lack those two things.  I know what they are, and I know what I need to do to get them, but when it comes right down to doing what's necessary, I choose "other" from the drop-down menu.  I think about my goals and my lack of discipline quite a bit, so much in fact, that I've begun to think that if I put as much energy into my memoir and poetry as I do into thinking about what I lack, I'd be finished with my current projects, well on my way into other projects, and already forming ideas about projects looming on the horizon.  So, what is my problem?  Do I simply have too much time on my hands, as some would suggest?  Or am I one of those people, prone to procrastination and overwhelmed by her own meddlesome ADD?  Or may the culprit be something else altogether?

Earlier today, while my mind was performing its routine flips of analyzing/wandering/chastising/ justifying, I began to think about Jay Gatsby.  Now there was a man who knew discipline.  He could stick to a schedule better than a fly to flypaper.  Here is his boyhood schedule:

Rise from bed - 6:00 AM
Dumbbell exercise and wall scaling- 6:15- 6:30 AM
Study electricity, etc. - 7:15- 8:15 AM
Work - 8:30- 4:30 PM
Basketball and sports- 4:30 -5:00 PM
Practice elocution, poise and how to obtain it- 5:00- 6:00 PM
Study needed inventions- 7:00- 9:00 PM

That's quite a full day.  When I look at this schedule, I shake my head, first, not because it's ridiculous to think that I would study electricity, but because there simply is not enough time here for showering, blow-drying my hair, and applying my make-up.  Also to think one could prepare dinner, eat it, and clean up the mess in only an hour is preposterous.  And only 30 minutes to exercise in the afternoon with no shower afterwards?  Just who did this Gatsby think he was?  The answer to this question is very important.  Gatsby believed he would make something of himself, but that it would take a lot of self-discipline to get there.  Actually, even though this particular schedule would not be my own, if I were to sit down and write one, it's not the activities or the allotment of time that would cause me the most turmoil.  It's the sheer idea of having to stick to a schedule that nobody is holding me to but myself that propels me into rebellion.  This is a recipe for failure.  For disaster.  For self-loathing and binge-eating and bulimia and bad hygiene and social withdrawal and...Well, you see where I'm going with this.  As soon as I tell myself what I am going to do, and there's no wiggle room, and nobody cares whether I do it but me, I'm done.  This is the strangest thing.  I am a workaholic--when I have a job.  I am a perfectionist--when I'm creating something (dinner excluded--that's a hit-or-miss, and I've come to accept it).  So what is my problem?

Clearly, Gatsby had his youth when he made his schedule.  That's one strike against me.  I've already met some of my really important goals, like becoming an All-American basketball player.  And getting my master's degrees. And traveling to Africa and Europe and French Polynesia and New York City.  And getting remarried.  But life is hardly over.  So, for a woman like me who's not planning on having children, what's left?  Sure there are all those little things I'd like to do, like learn how to play the guitar, or learn how to use a sewing machine, or learn how to paint.  Or whatever.  But those things are not my Daisy Buchanan.  Those things do not keep me up at night; they did not cause me to navigate the waters of my life differently than I would have did they not exist. 

My Daisy Buchanan is my writing--my memoir. 

I have spent a good part of my life working towards her.  I lived the childhood that created in me the desire to write about it.  I became educated in poetry and literature, which ultimately led me to her front door.  And after all these years, here I stand, a nervous, awkward suitor, who does not know quite what will happen when she answers my knock. 

 The thought of finishing my memoir brings happiness, accomplishment, satisfaction.  When those pages have been perfected and I hold the completed manuscript in my hands, I will sigh in relief and gratitude.  However, the thought of finishing my memoir terrifies me.  It's as if I know that once I'm finished, "my mind will never romp again like the mind of God," just as Gatsby discovered when he first kissed Daisy.  From that moment on, he chased the dream of her, and even though Daisy Buchanan was an honest-to-God real life person, the Daisy he knew and fell in love with just five years earlier was not the Daisy he had spent his life pursuing.  Everything he did, he did for her.  His life became a facade, and the man merely a shell encasing a very fragile, romantically hopeless soul. 

When I finish my manuscript, whether I publish it or not, my dream will be complete.  I will no longer have this love to keep me going.  And I fear that the memories of my childhood, my biological mother, my brother--everything that made me who I am--will slowly slip away from me like a mermaid back to her watery home.  The more I put off finishing the book, the longer I keep the past open, own the possibilities of its transformation, and live in its world of magic.  You see, I've been pursuing this dream for longer than I've pursued anything, and while it's truly time to let the dream go, just as Gatsby learned that fatal day in his swimming pool that Daisy would never truly be his, coming to terms with this reality is something I am not fully prepared to do.  I know I have to be strong.  There is no vengeance-crazed George Wilson lurking in the bushes who's about to make things easier on me.  And I would not wish this to be so.  But sometimes, I wish I could see him, flashing his mighty weapon in the glistening end-of-summer sun as a reminder, holding me accountable for this great work that I've begun.  I wish that, even if for just one moment, I could hear a voice that was not my own.  It would breathe through the warm air and echo something about how "[I] beat on, [a boat] against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."