You Can End Up Where I Am Before You Ever Knew What Hit You

SO many helpful, pro-active ideas in the replies. I am working with them now, writing. I can only tell you all that it's helping get my clarity back. I tend to think and write in metaphor (something mettamomma HATED about my stuff on EP).......but that's how I'm wired. I am the captain of a ship that is sitting out in the harbor. I am rushing around throwing up sails, taking them down again, dropping and weighing anchor, climbing and jumping around in the rigging like a maniac, shouting orders to.....to whom?....and where I am, the winds are gale force. Lightning is striking all around me. The waves are enormous and I'm not sure I have the skill to keep MY ship -- which I was born to, by the way -- from foundering. You know what the people on the shore see? A fool sitting in calm and windless water, flying around his ship like a madman for no discernible reason. And that is EXACTLY the way it is.