MARCH 24, 2008

Feel like I've accomplished nothing. It's been a brain fart of a week, but I have done one thing and that's contemplate the upstairs neighbors from hell.

Specifically, I've been thinking that it'll be interesting to see what effect moving to a new apartment will have on my writer's block and our sanity in general. I already know that getting away from the neighbors will have a positive impact on our lives, but I think having to listen to them scream non-stop has had more of a negative impact on us than we realize so it'll be interesting, an experiment of sorts, to see how life improves once we don't have to endure them anymore.

This isn't to say we've found a new place yet, but the thought of moving and escaping this auditory hell has been on our minds even more than usual since the noise from above has increased lately and it's literally driving us insane. I'm not sure why the amount of screaming and swearing has ratcheted up, but my guess is that it has to do with the fact that the younger kid is going through the terrible twos and neither parent can cope with an obnoxious four year old and erratic two year old, thus it sounds like Armageddon is taking place above us.

What got me thinking about this is that the neighbors were gone for a few days, during the same time Ross was in Montana, and the sweet sound of solitude reigned supreme and it was startling how much happier and more productive I was during that time.

I even started working on a redesign of my site and the creativity/productivity I thought had long since died actually crawled out from under a rock to pay me a visit and I had many creations to show Ross when he got back. And the last time I was able to be creative and produce work I actually like? I can't even remember the last time that happened and now I'm even more driven to move someplace where I'm not lobotomized daily by screaming asshole neighbors.

Because one thing that starkly stood out to me while the neighbors were gone? My heart didn't hurt. And once the neighbors, and their screaming and fighting, returned? I was back to feeling depressed, tense, irritable, and sick to my stomach. Suffice to say that having to listen to people venomously scream and treat each other like crap on a daily basis can have a negative impact on you, but I didn't realize just how much it was affecting me until I had a reprieve.

But now that I've had a reprieve, I want more, more, more because, as it turns out, my brain has not rotted out of my head, like my inability to write had led me to believe, it's just that my sanity gets hijacked on a daily basis by the noise monster upstairs and it's hard to get much of anything done without your brain.

So it's onward, ever onward, in the search for a new apartment and hopefully we'll find someplace before I go postal and do a double Van Gogh with my ears.

Keeping fingers - and ears - crossed for luck...

listening: some experiments . reading: ---

walk: 30 minutes . weight lost: 14 pounds

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