Hiatus

Hi Folks. So, as you might have gathered from the title, and from the hit-and-miss nature of my last few blogs, I’ve decided to take a two-week hiatus.

However, if you'd still like your fix of a daily blog, please take a wander over to my friend Carmen's blog, the one that inspired me to begin this one back in November. 

As always, thank you for reading.

Love,m. 

I do it everyday, except on the days I don’t

Please accept this potentially abbreviated blog due to my irritating need for 8 hours of sleep coupled with evening reading past 10pm.

I’ve realized that I’m reading acres more prose than poetry, now that I’m not in the poetry program. Mostly because poetry is slower to read. You/I have to digest it in a different way than I typically dive-bomb through my reading. They ask more, in some ways – it’s just different. A different medium. Like a painting will ask more of your attention than a billboard. I was reading in Jeanette Winterson’s ART OBJECTS: Essays on ecstasy and effrontery how she was enchanted and bewitched by one painting that she sat in front of it for an hour almost daily. That this was the way the painting necessitated your attention.

So, as it’s time for me to leave, I’ll leave you with two poems from two of my favorite authors I was introduced to while in school. (My thanks to Truong Tran.) Granted, these poems are part of a larger collection/book of poems, and therefore don’t have the full sweep, like listening to track 7 off an album clearly meant to be experience from 1 – 12, but, here goes. (and I hope I don’t get pinged for copyright infringement – luckily, I don’t think my blog is that consequential.)

Sesshu Foster’s City Terrace Field Manual

I WAS the lion or you were the lion. Your hand bled and

mind held the blade or mine dripped, I stamped and

cursed, and you laughed. We stood on the grass after all

or we stood in the shade while our children played. And

our shadows either lengthened across the green or faded

from it, shadows covering us over. I knew or I did not

know that one of us was gonna make it. One of us, and

we held beer cans in our hands and watched the kids

play and talked about what it took to get this far, and

either we said enough or we did not say enough. Now

either the kids play up and down the street and across

the lawns or the lawns are empty of them, and that tree,

the one in front of your old house, it’s full of lemons.

**

I meant to include a 2^nd poem, by Roxanne Beth Johnson, from Jubilee, but I ran out of time. Enjoy your day, and the poem. It’s one of my favorites ever. M. 

For those of you playing along at home. . .

For those of you playing along at home, below are a few updates on things I have here written about:

• The caffeine-reduction experiment has been a near-fail since beginning the temp job, but continues to remind me to feel guilty.

• I realized this morning that the free bus I sometimes catch to BART can take me all the way to the city, instead of transferring to BART (thank you to my school’s student bus pass, making bus transit in the East Bay free).

• I put back up the series of my paintings that I’d taken down during Calling in the One, at which time I’d realized that women not looking at their lovers was something I wanted to move away from. I put them back up when the okJew was potentially going to come over, and I didn’t want a blank expanse of wall over my bed. I'm not sure if I'll take it back down. 

• I have not yet finished, but I have begun, the art project for my friend’s wedding. It sits on my desk, accusing me.

• I bought cat food.

• I graduated with a Master’s degree a month ago. And I was offered a weekend job at said pet food store. Generously offered (not the compensation), but no thank you. Not yet, at least.

• I have art that I need to make for the September art show my friend invited me to join. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but it’s been backstroking through my psyche for a month or so.

• I must follow-up with the boss at where I'm temping to ask her precisely what she meant when she said she would be happy to give me "a recommendation" for auction houses here and in the city (um, I meant NY city – I guess that habit still dies hard).

• My dad will be closing on the sale of my childhood NJ home in the next month or so, and is planning to move with his fiancé to their new Florida home toward the fall.

• I am eagerly awaiting June 20^th, when the results of the daily sweepstakes I’ve been entering for a trip for two to Italy will be announced. You may be the lucky winner.

• My writing style is influenced by who I’m reading currently.

• At the moment, I just finished Nora Ephron’s new book, and began a collection of essays by David Foster Wallace, whom I’ve never read, but seen the author’s name so many times on my BART rides that I thought to give him a whirl. I’m not sure I will continue.

• I will be art modeling this Sunday for the artist who I first worked for, and two of her friends. I’m not sure I will continue.

• I have 9 new voicemails I haven’t checked.

• I went on the walk I’d planned to take on Tuesday evening yesterday evening, and it was glorious. I ate what must have been a small, cherry-sized peach, unless it was of course, a cherry, from a nearby tree which I jumped to pluck from the low hanging branch. I’m not dead, so it was not poisonous.

• As soon as I get paid this cycle, I’m going to register for the summer acting classes at A.C.T., and I can’t f’ing wait. I looked up all manner of electronics yesterday that I could hypothetically use my more regular income of the next 6 weeks to purchase, and yet, I realized that what I really want are those lessons. And new shoes.

• I’m now working one-on-one with a woman who’s found recovery around negative patterns of behavior with sex and men, and I’m infinitely looking forward to freedom around some of this.

• I’m continuing to work with a woman one-on-one around financial recovery stuff, and am looking forward to being “placed in a position of neutrality” around money.

• I love Patsy.

• I haven’t yet played my bass with my friend with the drums up in Berkeley, and it too stares at me, not gently weeping, but with silent mewling.

• I realized that most of the writers I’m reading right now have written as freelance writers, and it occurs to me, that I might be able to do that, if I look into it.

• I haven’t applied to any jobs since last week.

• I used my 3 lb weights yesterday after my walk for about 3 minutes. And began to dread the 3 hour posing/drawing session on Sunday.

• Dr. Palm Reader’s office wrote to ask after me, and so I looked up my soon-to-end chiropractic benefits “in network,” so that I can get back to that kind of thing, without breaking my bank, or participating in a somewhat murky flirtatiousness.

• This is the end of my list. 

People are Not Projects.

Damnit. There goes my favorite hobby. What will I do with my afternoons, now?

I’ve heard the phrase before, and it recurred to me this morning. My mom sent me an email back on Monday, qualifying why she’d replied so “vehemently” on Friday that she wanted me under NO circumstances to tell her whether I had the genome for Alzheimer’s, if I were to get the genetic mapping thing I said I was maybe possibly going to do someday.

Even before she emailed me on Monday, I got the chance to work through some of my anger at her refusal for clarity, her refusal to do things the way I’d do them, or the way I’d want her to do them.

I even got to see that there is perhaps a part of me that is in fear that she will have it. Watching what she went through with her mom, I can't imagine it. Though I know I'd have the resources internal and external to do the best I could, if she does.

On Monday, she wrote me back and said, as I knew, that her mom was around the same age my mom is now when she began to show signs of it, and that she’s "very frightened." I was amazed that my mother could let herself admit that.

I wrote her back that, of course, I understand, and will respect her feelings and wishes around this. Obviously.

And so, I’m reminded that people are not projects. She is not on this earth, this lifetime, for me to fix her. As I’m also reminded often, people are not broken, and I don’t need to fix them. She isn’t broken. She is human, like me, like you. I have faults and assets, she has faults and assets. Mainly, those faults are just calcified fears and defense mechanisms. And it’s not up to me to fix them. They are not “problems.” They just are. They are part of the map that is my mom. They are part of the challenges and opportunities she has in this lifetime. And it is part of my own challenge this lifetime to leave her be.

This is new behavior. Not alien, but new. We, I, grew up enmeshed with her, her feelings were my own, and I tended to and acquiesced to and modified myself in order to attend to her feelings. It was my own defense mechanism. And, it was also in some ways what was needed. She was an undiagnosed manic depressive, self-medicating with prescription and non-prescription tranquilizers and uppers. Her feelings and mood swings were uncontainable, palpable, and able to wash a small child overboard the ship of normalcy. So, I learned how to stand by the rigging. I learned how to read the waves, to anticipate them, to ensure that things were precisely as they needed to be. I learned to ensure life was easier for her when she was in her clinical depression by not having or voicing or owning my needs. I learned to ensure that she not retreat into that state by allowing her manic times free reign, and stand tensely in the wings of her life, egging her on – because mania meant some more of her, but not really. It just meant she moved more quickly in her neuroses. And was hard to be around then.

That was probably harder. It was like a live wire. Every vibrantly theatrical gesture and every squeal of delight was like a hammer to my heart, knowing that it was inauthentic, fleeting, and often, embarrassing. More than the typical teen angsty, my parents are lame kind. More like, this person isn't aware of herself and how big she can be, and I'm sorry she's hijacked your conversation/this movie theather/...our vacation.

I went on a trip with her a few years ago to Sedona. I’d begun to heal some of my own self-destructive patterns, and this was one of the first times she and I were getting to spend any significant time together. It didn’t go well.

Diagnosed, and newly (doctor prescribed) medicated as she now was, she is/was still my mom. Even today, even though the swings have lessened, the grooves in the thought patterns and behaviors are still there, engrained over a lifetime, and I'll suddenly find myself talking to a weepy child where a minute before stood a fierce New Yorker. But, in Sedona, we decided to do one of those Pink Jeep tours, where they take you out in a jeep into the gorgeous red rock landscape.

My mom had to be the entertainment. There were maybe 6 of us in the back of the jeep, and as my mom continued to make herself more and more “heard” and “seen” by this group of strangers, as she put on her mask of entertainer – witty, loud, invasive – I began to feel myself shrinking in her wake. I began to notice that I was doing what I’d always done, and detach from the dramatic entrance of my mom’s persona. I didn’t like it.

I didn’t like that I was reacting that way, and so instead, I began to get sullen and angry. She picked up on the anger. And she couldn’t understand why – she’d been being who she’d always been, acting (double meaning intended) as she always had, why was I mad with her? I didn’t answer her. I didn’t know what was the “right” way to answer that in my new recovery language – I simply said that it had more to do with me than with her, and that was about it. She didn’t like this answer; I knew it was true, but I didn’t like it either. We’re a “processy” – or we had been – kind of pair. (She is a shrink, after all…) And I wasn’t going to or able to process this with her.

What is there to process? You’re not being the mom I want you to be? You’re behaving so falsely, and invading these folks’ space? THIS JEEP TOUR IS NOT ABOUT YOU?

No, I couldn’t say those things. There is and was the truth that it does have more to do with me than with her. How able I am to accept and love my mom as and who she is without trying to change her. Without needing to be right. And without pitying her.

There is the truth that people are not projects, and that she is not broken. There is also the magnanimous truth that my mother is also brilliant, witty, stylish, and bold. Yes, she is also desperately scared of everything, self-defeatest, and paralytically despairing. She is all of these things. (She’s also a Gemini, if that helps.)

My mother is a human, with places she falls short of the ideal, like me, like you; places where she excels, like me, like you. And, in the end, just wants to feel loved, and at peace. Like me. And like you. 

Breathing Room.

Sort of makes me wonder if there’s a room somewhere where all people do is breathe? Maybe that’s called a meditation center. Or a hospital.

In any case… yesterday, the interior design company I’ve been temping with these last few weeks (and on and off during the last year) asked me if I’d like to come on with them for a temp gig for a full, firm 6 weeks (possibly 2 months, but 6 weeks firm)?

Of course, I said yes. !

This gives me 6 weeks to really have the mental space to look for permanent work, while not freaking out about bills being paid or not. I know, now, that I not only will have July rent paid (HUZZAH!), but I will have August rent paid. I haven’t known if I’d have two months’ rent in a row in a long time. I can’t tell you what a relief this is.

I noticed how much more I was breathing after I was asked and after I accepted. I have a tendency to hold my breath, or breathe shallowly, when I’m stressed out. Most people do, I think. I realize it’s not only then though. Sometimes the muscles of my stomach are in contraction even when I’m sitting by myself at this computer writing this – or at my breakfast nook, writing my morning pages. Why on earth would I hold my breath, or be all tied up when there’s nothing to stress about? I dunno.

But, I recall what was said at a meditation I went to a few weeks ago, where the facilitator suggested we allow ourselves to have “abs of jello.” People snickered, because really, we all probably are holding (well, not maybe ALL) some sort of tension around with us.

The way that I walked into work yesterday, and the way I walked out of it were two vastly different ways of being. I was angry – as you might have learned from yesterday’s blog – and all bolted up in worry and fear. I did also leave the building at noon to head downtown to meet up with a group of folks for an hour, which was unbelievably helpful – and I began to notice, then, the whole tightness of my belly thing – the not properly breathing thing. I hadn’t been asked to stay on yet, but I began to notice that I didn’t have to hold my body in freak-out mode.

When I was asked to stay on, if you could visualize that metal bib they put on you at the dentist as a cape, and watch it fall to the floor with a thud, then you’d know how I felt. I felt acres lighter. It’s huge. It’s a big thing.

And… it means even more that I have to show up for this position for what I’m being paid to do. It means getting to work on time, basically, and not hanging out online that much. That’s cool. I mean, I set my alarm for 6am yesterday in an attempt to get to work earlier (aka “on time”), but didn’t make that. I snoozed til 6:30. So, this morning, I tried again. And up at 6am as I was this morning, I might have to wake up earlier still to ensure that I have the…breathing room… to do everything that I do in the morning with more ease and less stress – a constant look at the clock – even in my meditation feeling crushed by my awareness that it’s ten minutes I “don’t have.”

Although I cringe at the thought of anything earlier than 6am, it’s really not that big a deal. I’ll gripe about it some – but the benefits will be way worth it. I won’t hold my gut in as I write this in the morning, or as I’m cooking my ubiquitous eggs.

It’s hard to not imagine that some of the work that I’m doing around money isn’t related to this sudden “windfall.” I’ve been in a limbo of not knowing whether I have work from week to week and day to day for the last few months. And now, “suddenly,” I’m asked to stay on for 6 weeks – 6 STABLE weeks? I sent out those letters last week to former employers (see: Bollocks) letting them know that I was a lousy employee and that I was trying to do better. And in the intervening week, I have been trying to do better – and think I’m progressing along those lines.

Also, it’s hard to imagine that my work of freeing myself from “wrong” sources of power and validation (see: yesterday, and the entire history of my life…) aren’t in some way influencing the curvature of this road.

Sure, it could all be “coincidence.” Nothing to do with anything, but I don’t believe that, personally. But. Nor do I believe that I am “rewarded” for “good” behavior (and thusly, punished for bad). I rather believe that as I let go of behaviors which aren’t serving me, I’m more available for the good things the world has to offer. Usually those things were available all along, but I’ve been too busy peering down the dry well, begging it to be water, that I miss the river.

Whatever the cause and effect, or lack thereof, I’m grateful. Hugely. I bought a (cute, but) cheapy new notebook for my morning pages yesterday. I intend to take another look at how I planned to distribute my funds this month. Because the truth is, even though I hadn’t planned or had money in the item lines of entertainment, or notebooks, or toiletries – the reality is that I spent money in them anyway.

Last night, I found a note from February when I was meeting with some money folk, and there’s a huge note-to-self that says to be honest about my needs, so that I don’t overspend.

This month, instead of having been honest about what I really need, I wrote up a meager, scarce, and skeletal spending plan, and of course I haven’t stuck to it. Be honest about my needs. They’re not overwhelming, they’re not indulgent, they just are what they are.

And I can allow myself to own and take care of them, while I breathe into my abs of jello. 

Rage Against the Whatever's Handy.

Last summer, before I started getting help around money, I was in a bad way. I answered an ad for a company/house looking for dominatrixes (dominatri?). I was desperate for money, and was almost willing to do anything to make it.

So, I answered the ad, spoke with a woman on the phone, looked at their website, and scheduled an interview.

Then, I emailed a friend of mine who’d been a dominatrix once upon a time, and I asked her what her thoughts were around it. She replied with an interesting thought. She said that it was a very low and base level of energetic exchange.

Even though it sounds “woo-woo,” I knew what she meant. She didn’t tell me yes or no, she just said, basically, that it felt icky. And that she was heavily using drugs at the time.

A few days later, and before my interview, I called to let them know I wouldn’t be coming in for my interview, that I’d like to cancel. And that was the end of that.

However. I’m reminded of this now, about a “low” source of energy, or power, because I’ve been experiencing the most wonderful (<-- sarcasm) feeling of free floating anger lately.

For those of you who know me, “angry” is likely the last thing you’d associate with me – quirky, awkward, loving are most likely the top layers, and indeed, the most core layers. But, in the middle of those is everything that I’ve tried to put in between me and you. That includes sex, and that includes anger.

Now that I’m in the process of extricating myself from any sexual entanglements, grey areas, … dating sites…, I’m noticing that anger has arisen where “sex” used to be.

When I was in junior high, and I came into school that one Monday with contact lenses and makeup and suddenly I was visible, I rode that high, and my anger that “you” only now noticed me, I rode that well into my twenties.

I fed off of that energetic exchange. The power that a woman (or man) holds via sexuality is more than palpable, it’s addictive. It’s enlivening. It becomes what I’d come to believe was my only source of strength.

This was a “low” form of strength, and a false form. But oh the many heads of it. I feel powerful (or visible, or valid) when you pay attention to me. When you’re giving me what I think I need, when you’re eying me, or flirting with me, or seeing what I know (or think I know) you’re seeing when you see me.

So, now, I’m removing this source – I’m calling this well toxic, and trying to walk away from it. Sex isn’t bad – but it can be a natural outcropping of feelings rather than hormones.

I said yesterday to a friend that I feel like someone has pulled my covers. That my defense mechanisms are being shorn away one by one, and so, now, here I am with anger.

I am very aware that anger is just the other side of vulnerability. I don’t want you to see how vulnerable I am, so I will put on my angry armor and tell you to fuck off.

But, being aware of it doesn’t cancel it out.

I was reflecting this morning about the power of anger. I realized that before there was the Power of Sex, there was the Power of Anger in my life. It was modeled to me that if you were angry, you were powerful. If you were angry, you were paid attention to (and left alone). I learned that anger was an appropriate way to feel visible.

This, is a poor lesson. As frightened as I was when I was younger, I began to learn to fight fire with fire. I learned this young too. I was not really a pleasant kid, behind my shy exterior. The shy came after. After I learned how to be angry, to yell back, to provoke, to antagonize, and to defy. I learned that not everyone, especially in school, was going to put up with that, and it sank inward, enclosed by the layer of “demure” and “shy.” I’ll just disappear then. If I can’t have power via anger, then I apparently don’t have any at all.

When I found sexuality, I found a “more acceptable” pathway to visibility. And now, again, as that one’s being taken away from me – the abuse of that power, rather – now, I’m falling backwards through my timeline into anger.

Rage, really. I learned a lot about rage growing up – surely, not as much as some, but more than Mr. Rogers would have wanted in his neighborhood.

So, here I am at rage. One of my last defenses. I am sorry to be here at it. And I also know that freedom from it will bring untold gifts. But… I like it. And that’s the problem. The problem is that these sources of power are still salivating. I still feed off them. I still feel powerful from them, even “knowing” that they’re false.

I made someone angry yesterday, and I liked it. I felt validated. If I’m able to make you mad, then that means that I’m alive, around, meaningful. If I’m able to cause a reaction in you (previously, a sexual one; now an angry one), then I have a purpose.

Yes, I “get” that these are totally fucked up thoughts. I get that this has to be “gotten through” or it will continue to cause me pain. And isolation.

But I felt that “low source of energy” when I was the recipient of that anger yesterday. It’s like a “HA! See, you do care."

It’s so Psych 101, it’s stupid – better negative attention than no attention. But, it’s recorded in textbooks for a reason. It must be prevalent enough and common enough to fall asleep to at your freshman college desk.

So, that’s my thoughts for the day. Thoughts on feeling vulnerable, and what I do to hide that. Thoughts on my reluctance to let go of sex and rage as sources of “power” and validation. My thoughts on compassion for myself, as I know this is hard. And a modicum of hope and self-validation for choosing to move through this anyway. 

In Other News

Nothing yet on the job front, but an interesting connection was made this week. So I work for this interior design company now, or rather, I temp with them, and currently, I’m organizing their massive book library. Friday, I was cataloguing their catalogs ;) and at around the same time, I was looking at job listings at NYFA, an artsy job board. An auction house’s very furniture catalog lay on the table in front of me as I sat looking at a their job listing on the board.

That evening, I emailed the owner/boss of the interior design firm, who knows that I’m looking for full-time work, and asked her what her thoughts were around that particular company with whom she obviously is familiar, and if I could use her name if I did apply to them.

She emailed me back and said of course I could use her name, and that if I were interested in furniture, she could give me a reference to three other auction houses, here and in New York.

…

I wrote her back just now, stating that I’m more interested (and slightly more educated) in the visual art side of these companies (“although furniture would be a welcome entrée”), and that I’m fully open to her suggestions on how to proceed. Because I’m not entirely sure what "a recommendation" meant – is that one for me to give to them, or to give to them of me? Not sure. But… YES.

This would be a great Yes. Sure, it’s admin work – or it might be – but it’s a potentially stable position in a creative field, which would be lucrative enough to enable me to pay my bills, my soon-to-come-due student loan payments, and the acting classes that I now have my sights set on. That sounds like a Yes to me! 

We’ll see. We’ll always see. I still dislike that – I still want to know upon which door to knock, which one has the best chances, but unfortunately that information has been set aside for more divine deities, and I just have to go around knocking on doors.

In fact, about a month ago, I went into the city, and papered this one building of galleries with my resume. Most of them looked at me like, Hey lady, we’re just barely hanging on to our own jobs here. A few were friendly, but mostly, it was the cold shoulder. That said, I did go and embarrassing as it was, hand people my resume with my most winning, you-really-want-to-hire-me smile. No dice, but good experience.

Did you know there’s a degree now in arts administration. That those folks who sit at the computers in galleries all day have a degree for that? It seems to be that that’s something new – that it used to just be an Art History degree and background could get you in, but apparently, there’s more.

And I’m glad for it. There’s a lot that goes into the business of being an artist, and the business of being in the art world. But, it’s just another piece of paper I don’t have.

The more I apply to teaching jobs, the less I want to do it! But, that’s also NOMB – none of my business – and I’ll continue to apply to stuff until I get work. Even after all that chatter I had about not wanting to sit all day, now I’m back to applying to jobs where I’ll sit all day. But, a) my back has gotten used to sedentary (even if my gut has preceded its enthusiasm), and b) well, I guess until I teach again, I really have nothing to say on it one way or another really. Is it something I want to do? I have no idea. I have a ton of preconceived notions about a ton of things, and one by one, those ideas get picked off. So, we’re back to “who knows,” and “we’ll see.”

Next Sunday I’ll have an art modeling gig with my friend/artist. I’m a little trepidatious about the muscular disintegration that is my body at the moment, but, it’ll be what it’ll be. I’ll be with the temp company through this week for sure, and likely through next week.

In other news, I got to dance last night. At my friend’s wedding. It was a marvelous affair – gorgeous, and funny, and touching. And fun. Or at least I had fun. I spun a few little kids around the dance floor, coaxed my begrudging friend to come dance with me, and they had to drag me off the dance floor when it was time to go home.

For the first wedding I’ve ever attended, the food was great. No, just kidding (I mean it was). But, more importantly, it was epic for these two people to get hitched, even though they’ve been together for 7 years. It’s epic that two people make that commitment to each other, and it’s just buoying and heart-flutter-making to be there to witness it. 

Congrats to Freather. May all your years together be [insert uncheesey, totally puck rock sentiment here.] With Love, M. 

Sex Type Thing: Poems.

Can you fix me from inside the slickness?

Will callouses and scabs be rent off by our friction?

Will the explosion of your cum inside me tremble into the core of every cell

and paint them newly red?

No?

Then get the fuck off me.

* * *

my foot cramps in the closed position monkeys

must still be able to make but i can’t

my hip bone pops in its socket and i’m

unsure whether that’s into or out of it

the lightest swing of my body against the mattress

mimics an old playset and i’m suspended

* * *

everything switches off, except your breath

against my hip bone

* * *

everyone i know has an o.c.d. mom

and an absent father

will this fix it?

does it need to be fixed?

how the fuck do you do that?

* * *

i want her to stop claiming “broken,”

as if it’s a setting on the dishwasher

and when its turned all culpability and

engagement in the world is paused

indefinitely

* * *

the tiniest fibers of hair

freshly shaved this morning

no matter how new the razor

they vibrate like frankenstein’s

monster and map
everything:

my skin against yours

us in this town

the triangles of string that

connect where i’ve been

connect other lovers

not comparing, enhancing this one

touch

how his tongue felt against the densely

moisture

tentative

or

sloppy

the lightest grazing and

sickly sudden entrance

of manicured or not

fingertips

strapping my attention

chaining it to the bed.

* * *

how does this alchemy work?

it hasn’t so far.

lead returns to lead as

i bolt the door behind you

the moment gimped

by an awkward exchange of

see yous

what tangle the sheets are in,

still warm,

i climb back into them as if

i could coax them into being

you

and you were something else

* * *

i only ever imagine the weight of you

when i’m alone with myself at night

i can find folds that you can’t

and pace myself as you won’t

but alone, i can never press myself into the

evaporating softness

            or grip the muscles of your back

as if you were my life preserver

6.9.12.

Day Jobs.

Yikes. Unintendedly, I apparently freaked my mom out. I guess "What goes around comes around" is a less than spiritual comment here.

When I was camping this weekend, one of the women said she’d used this 23andme site that did genetic mapping and testing. She said she found it to accurately confirm things she knew she had and “labeled” her cousin as her own on the site, so she felt it was reliable when it came to the things she wanted clarity on or might not know. So, on a whim, I looked it up yesterday. Part of it is my own rampant curiosity about my dad’s father’s side of the family, about whom we know nothing (very hush hush, gramma got pregnant at 15 in an Irish Catholic family under-the-rug), so I’d like to know about that fourth of who I am.

Secondly, and importantly for me, my mom’s mother died from Alzheimer’s and I want to know if I have the gene or not. You can get it without the gene, and you can not get it with the gene. But, I’m curious. And a little excited. If I don’t have the gene, I can (and would) worry less; and if I do have the gene, they’re coming up with all kinds of new things people can do these days to stave it off or minimize the effects – and I’d look for more information on stuff like that.

So, in an effort to “share the good news,” I emailed my mom and brother yesterday to let them know about it (though women are more likely than men to get Alz). I got an email back this morning from my mom saying that no matter what to never [BOLD FACE] EVER tell her the results of it.

Yikes. Granted, my mom is a class-A worrier, anxiety-disordered woman on medication, but… yeesh. That obviously wasn’t my intention, to freak her out – I guess I imagined she’d react as I did – “Cool, what can I learn, so that information can be useful in how I lead my life?” … Best laid plans, I suppose.

It’s Friday, so it’s a little rough to go into what I remember of my mom’s parents’ deaths, and what I consider to be and have been “wrong” ways of grieving. And so I won’t do that today. It’s NOMB – None Of My Business.

So, I’ll undeftly switch topics, as I’m uncomfortable. ;)

Yesterday, in reading Tina Fey’s book, I had a sort of realization about “day jobs.” Fey worked at a YMCA for $5/hr in Chicago when she left undergrad. She wanted to take improv classes, so she angled for a job “upstairs” in the office of the YMCA. When she was asked on the interview why she wanted the job, she replied unabashedly, So I can afford improv classes. She got the job, took improv classes, and quit the job less than a year later when she got work with the improv group.

I had my informational interview with my former acting teacher last Friday, and she said nice things like I have “great instincts,” and that "it’s obvious [I] really enjoy it.” She didn’t really give me the “constructive criticism” I was looking to get – areas that I could improve in, and as I was recounting this to my friend last weekend, she said it sounded like I wanted to hear places I could just do X, Y, and Z, so that I could “fix” it, and suddenly everything would fall into place. Yes, give me a set of movable problems, let me fix them, and then let me be free of problems forever. That sounds about right.

So, I didn’t get that. I got what felt like nearly reluctant suggestions. Again, I guess I had expectations. But, I heard that acting classes would be a good idea to continue with. So, yesterday, I looked up the classes at A.C.T. Studio, and their summer program. It’s not very expensive, but surely more than I have now.

And I remembered what Tina Fey had said: she took a job so she could afford to do what she really wanted to do. For SO long I’ve been agonizing over what is my “ideal” job, or what will feed me spiritually, intellectually, and creatively – what one thing would fit all my needs. I don’t feel this way about people, why would I feel this way about work? I don’t expect one person to fulfill all my needs – that’s ridiculous, unfair, and leads to disappointment. So, why should I feel that a job would or ought to do the same.

There’s something in this. It takes a shit ton of the pressure out of whatever job comes to me next. That it is a means to an end. And further, I’m honing in more closely on what I’d want those “ends” to be – what I want my job to afford me to be able to do. Lessons, classes, (acting & music, for now). I’m not sure what this realization will bring me – except that I already feel less internal pressure about “What I’m going to do next.” Chances are (G-d willing!!!!!!) that the job that I get next can afford me the disposable income to take classes like that. Or, rather, the chances don’t have to be there, I can just start angling the satellite dish of my focus in a slightly different direction, picking up on things that I’d dismissed, as they wouldn't “fill me spiritually.”

Like a person, it’s not a job’s … job to fill me spiritually. That’s up to me. That’s up to me to take the kinds of actions that will allow me the freedom from financial worry to do things that do feed me spiritually and creatively. I have a phone call date with another acting friend next week, having been inspired by the new angle of my satellite to be able to continue having these conversations with people.

What comes of it? Who knows. But I feel more open to things, and I’ve noticed that makes a world of difference.

(Sorry, Mom – didn’t mean to freak you out. LU, m.)

Literati

Yesterday was a day off from work, as they needed the room I’ve been stationed in, the library, so I got to experience a lot of loll and gag. Less gag, more loll.

I still did spend time in a library, peeling myself from my couch to go sit in the local library and email and submit applications for higher education jobs. Here, Southern California, New York City … Northern Florida. Throwing out the seeds and seeing what sprouts.

I also got another book out of the library, and began to notice a trend of mine over the last few months. The latest books I’ve read have been:

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

I’ll Never Be French (No Matter What I Do) by Mark Greenside

Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine by Eric Weiner

Seriously, I’m Kidding... by Ellen Degeneres

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

and now

Bossypants by Tina Fey

As I was checking Tina Fey’s book out, I was able to connect a few dots through the above list. Firstly, there are the books that are about redemption – about people searching, seeking, going insane, going sane. Mark Greenside’s book is more of a bridge to the other category, not being a redemption, but certainly a “coming of age” (at 40) kind of an adventure. The other category, of course, being the comedienne’s books.

Something about this strikes the right balance with me. That, yes, I want to read about your harrowing walks through dark nights of the soul and wilderness and Vegas (see : Man Seeks God), but I also want to read the levity, candor, and strength of women in showbiz who are being pioneers in a different way.

I’d never been one for non-fiction, and all the above are. They’re all “memoirs.” I was raised picking up the library copies of my mom’s Stephen King novels, and for most of my junior high and high school years, I’d sit on the couch in the downstairs living room, engrossed in the psychological and physical mystery of King’s characters and plot. Everyone would eventually go up to bed, but I was too page-turned, and soon, it was late. And I was by myself, reading Stephen King in the middle of the night.

This, was not an altogether pleasant experience, so I’d read further, because if I closed the book, I’d have to turn off all the downstairs lights, and walk upstairs in the dark with visions of deranged clowns lurking in my peripheries. So, I read on, and then it’d be 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning, and my eyes scratchy from being open so long, and I’d finally give up, too exhausted to care if there were a rabid dog perched somewhere in the stairwell. I’d climb up to bed, and fall in, too tired to be awake enough to contemplate the darkness.

There were the years when I didn’t read anything at all, really. I call these college.

No, (!) just kidding. But after college, I read nothing much at all, or nothing that stands out. And I don’t really remember what I picked up next, but it wasn’t that many years ago.

I remember when I first got sober, within the first year, I went to see a movie at an indie theater in San Francisco. I had befriended a group of people who were wonderful and hilarious and lovely, but none of whom wanted to see anything like what I was seeing that day. I enjoyed the movie immensely, and when I walked out, I began to panic.

I’ll never have the kind of friends who’ll want to see anything like this with me. No one has the kind of taste I have. I’ll be destined to watch things and do things that interest me alone forever.

Fatalism is not just a river in Egypt. Melodrama, the same.

I began to cry. Honestly.

I called the one woman I trusted, and sobbed to her on the phone how alone I was, and that no one “got” me, and that I was too weird to have friends.

She told me to come over to her house right then. I sobbed even more that I didn’t know the San Francisco bus system, and I’d be stuck in Polk Gulch forever.

So, she told me how to catch the Geary or the California bus, and picked me up at a mutual spot, and fed me tea and calmed me down.

A few months later, I was outside my car with a group of people. One of them I’d just met, and she looked into my backseat and saw a book I had there (I honestly can't remember what it was). She exclaimed with delight – she had been meaning to read that book! How did I like it, what did I think? And I told her she could borrow it when I was done.

It felt like a revelation, even though it was such a “small” thing. I leant her the book. She leant me one. I began to form friendships with people who had similar tastes and interests, and who would undoubtedly today come with me to an indie movie theater.

It took time. It took a lot of time. I have a friend now who is going through similar transitions and longing for those kinds of connections, having been immersed in a relationship involvement so that it’s been hard to make the kind of friends she wants. So, I told her that story of the movie theater breakdown and the book-in-the-car new friend.

At some point, I turned from the sci-fi, novel genre (though The Illustrated Man sits on my shelf – moment of silence for Ray Bradbury, and his children’s room/lion story that has never left my consciousness). Today, the books I read are not paths into the mystery of the mind and the world, but out of them. (Though, someone once gave me a copy of The Power of Now, and each time I tried to read it, I a) threw up a little in my mouth, and b) twice --TWICE-- simply threw the damn thing sputtering across the room – this last time, just a few months ago. I’ve since given it away. Self-righteousness in a “spiritual” teacher is an ugly characteristic.)

It’s just interesting to me to notice what I’ve been attracted to lately. That it points to a change in course. I yoked a friend of mine to driving up to Jeanette’s reading when she was in town a few months ago, and that friend now has my copy – a friend of mine, wants to read something I’m interested in too. A friend of mine is interested in the things I am too. And she's not the only one. I’m no longer bereft and alone on a street corner drowning in the electric whine of MUNI wires and the stench of human misery.

Thank you, Brandie, for asking me about that book in my car. 

Bollocks.

Through a series of work I’m doing right now, I sent out a stack of three letters to former employers yesterday, each with a variation on the theme – I was an unprofessional employee, I am sorry for how I behaved, and I aim to be more responsible in my jobs now and going forward.

The messed up, fucked up, I-don’t-want-to-do-this part of all that is… that now I have to stick to my word – the word about being a better employee going forward. This means, fewer endless hours on facebook while at work (if any at all); it means taking my breaks so I’m refreshed to actually do work instead of sit and stare at whatever I’m doing; it means being efficient in my work. I means, basically, doing what I’m paid to be doing.

I don’t like that. And, yet, I know how completely necessary it is. I’ve been talking here about responsibility lately, how I don’t want it, but that I do want the things that come to people who are responsible – in their work, extracurricular, and home lives. So, if I want what they have, then I must do what they do.

I don’t have to. Sure, I can say one thing and do another, but in truth, that feels, obviously, worse. Better to not say anything at all, and continue to slide along on half-steam, than to say that I’m making changes so that I don’t slide along on half-steam and then not do it.

Most recently, having the (rated G) dalliance with the married man, I got to see very acutely where I was either going to stick to the letter of my word or not. I’ve had to make many an amends to women whose boyfriends, and, once, a fiancé, with whom I’ve dallied. I told them each, specifically, that I was making changes in my life so that I don’t act like that anymore – that I was sorry for how I behaved, and that I wouldn’t do it again.

So, when I began talking in the flirtatious way with this man about a month ago, I knew – I felt – how off this was. How against everything that I’d set up over the last few years this was. How, basically, I was breaking my promise to each of them, and indeed to myself – having promised myself that I wouldn’t behave in ways around men that would make me feel bad about myself, or guilty, or ashamed.

And so, I stopped the dalliance with the man, and am now newly engaged in a body of work to help extricate and sever and lay to rest the last of the beliefs and behaviors that influence me to believe that this is all that is available to me, or what I deserve.

So, here I am, now, about work. About telling these folks that I fucked up in the past, and I’m trying to do better. That, specifically, I will be more responsible and work with more integrity. And, I know, now, that I’ll have to stick to it. I know how it feels from that recent experience to come right up against something I said I wouldn’t do – I know how icky it feels, and against my morals. And so, now, I must take that same self-line into the professional world.

And I hate it.

I know it’s good for me. I know it’ll open doors for me, and duh, it’s the right thing to do. But, Oh! My Beautiful Wickedness!, I don’t “want” to. Luckily, it doesn’t quite matter whether I want to or not. Pain will always push me in the direction forward. I don’t want to feel the pain of being a hypocrite, so I will work better. I don’t want to feel ashamed that I’m not living to my word, so I’ll stop accepting jobs that I know I’ll work half-steam at.

I don’t like it. It feels like an entirely new level of adulthood to go toward this direction of integrity. But it’s necessary, and it’s time.

I have no doubt that the opening up of this line of vision will amount to something more in my professional life. I have no doubt that by working to a better standard of duty that I’ll feel better about myself and less like a fraud. I know that this will take me somewhere different internally and externally. But, still, it sucks.

It’s like this is what teenagers experience when they get into their 20s maybe. Or, these days, 20somethings into their 30s. I’d love to learn this now. It’s late, but it is certainly a better late than never.

I also wrote an email last night to a recent former employer to apologize for how I ended my employment there, and to ask for clarity around some money they gave me to pay off the last of my braces when I had them a few years ago. He said that they had dental, so it was covered, and no liability to me. He said that he did think I “handled the separation badly.” And he said that if I ever needed a reference that he has “[my] back.” I’m glad to know that the money is clear. I agree that I could have handled things differently. And for fuck’s sake, I promise that I will handle them differently in the future.

Change sucks. Especially when it’s good for me. 

Going to the Chapel.

In an effort to hold myself accountable, I’ll here announce that I have an art project to complete by this Saturday, for my friend’s wedding. And… in an effort to be honest, I mean start and complete by Saturday. It’s all good – I’ve already sketched it out, but theory and practice are disastrously different things.

This will be the first wedding I’ve ever attended. Somehow, it’s just never happened that I’ve been around people who get married, or been in the same state or country to attend. I did work with a catering company at a few weddings last summer, but that’s not the same. Although, it did give me some great perspective and insight into the whole rigamarole.

The first wedding I did was between two women, which was pretty cool. But, I got to learn that you shouldn’t have speeches during serving time at dinner, as people are really confused as to whether they should eat or listen, and then the courses get backed up, and you’re removing plates while people are speaking, which is hella awkward and earns more than a few pointed glances.

I learned that if you’re having a sunset wedding in the Sonoma hills that bugs will flock to and then drown in your water, champagne, and wine glasses. I learned that before you blink, the whole thing is over. This is not meant to be a diatribe on marriage or weddings, it’s just observations – and a reminder to really be present for things like this – they really are fleeting.

I decided that, personally, a set of anonymous towels was not what I wanted to give this couple. I met the bride within the first year, I think, of being in San Francisco. We met out front of a building where folks like us gather for an hour, and I asked her for a light or a cigarette, or we just both happened to be smoking out front, me feeling socially awkward as hell.

We talked. And somehow, stars aligned, and we knew that we’d become really good friends. Nothing momentous was said. No raw secrets were shared, or raucous joke exchanged. We were just ourselves, nervous, anxious companions in the semi-dark on the concrete steps to a massive warehouse-like building by the San Francisco Marina.

When I left, we exchanged a hug. We reflected later that neither of us were a huggy bunch. We were, or at least I was, still much too guarded then, and hugging was restricted for the very few people I now was beginning to consider friends. But, hug we did. And it was almost that spontaneous act of mutual affection, an act neither of us typically allowed ourselves, that sealed that something different was here. A friendship had been formed in the 5 minutes it takes from lighting to filter.

More than 5 years ago now.

She’s part of the reason I went back to school. I watched her quit her lucrative job as a store manager in a touristy spot in San Francisco, and go back to school full time in an unusual major – or at least completely unrelated to anything she’d been doing previously. I watched her walk, even painfully, through the process, and in the middle of winter in 2010, I sat on her couch – maybe it was our Christmas or New Years, or something gathering. She cooked, we talked. I asked her why this major, how come, out of everything in the world, she chose this?

She told me that it was a thread throughout her life. All through her life, she noticed that she’d gravitated toward information around this subject, she sort of watched herself nurture and feed this interest. That phrase, a thread through my life, stuck with me.

It was hard to imagine that someone with a lucrative and stable job (with all the attendant mishigas of a lucrative and stable job) would quit all that to go to school, and start nearly at the beginning of a career. But she did. I admired her dearly for it.

And so, when, two months later, I found myself at a crossroads in my own job world, I asked myself, What is my thread? It was writing. I have poems that date to 2^nd grade. It was her conviction that she was insisting something to herself almost unconsciously through her choices of hobby and interest and book perusal that underlined that this was her arena. And so, I followed my own thread.

Because of the nature of life and distance, and full-time schooling for us both, we don’t get to see one another often at all. It is her I blame, full disclosure, for having hooked me on the horrifyingly ridiculous and addictive Twilight book series – that very night, actually back in 2010. Walking out toward the end of the night, I glanced at her bookshelf – and there it is, the entire series. I guffawed. I was stunned – attractive, intelligent, funny, generous, achingly cool, and reads Twilight?? This couldn’t be right.

She asked me if I’d read it – I looked at her as if she’d asked me if I enjoyed stepping in dog shit. No, I had not read them. Scoff, scoff. (!) Then she gave me the first volume, and told me to try it.

And so I did. And damn her, if she hasn’t turned me into one whom others scoff at. And I thank her for it. Cheesey, and melodramatic, and angsty, she helped me to learn to not take myself too seriously, and to let myself have uninhibited, puffy fun.

I am honored to be attending her wedding this weekend. I have watched her and shared with her over the course of years, and the deep affection that was tapped on that lonely concrete outcropping has murmured like a brook under the surface of my life every day since. 

Chop Wood, Carry Water.

Two weeks ago, I wrote this in the Grownupness blog:

"I grasp at things I think I want, but I’m not willing to firm the foundation to get there – to mix the mortar, lay the bricks. Chop wood, carry sticks. That’s where I need to be at. Very simply, I need to lay hold of qualities and actions that I have tried to avoid."

And so, this weekend, I carried sticks.

The simplicity of camping, even in the complexity of “car camping” the bastardized cousin of “real” camping, was so easy. It’s so easy for me. What needs to be done next? Well, we’re heading out down the river for the afternoon while others go river rafting (a luxury expense I couldn’t afford), so what did I need to bring? Sunscreen, towel, book I didn’t crack, hat, water. That’s it.

It’s turning darker, what do we need to do? Get more firewood, build a fire, refill the water, not at the mercury-laden river’s edge.

There are things that I know how to do, and this weekend, I got to see that very clearly. I know how to build a fire, I know you need something like paper or brush to catch under the kindling to catch under the wood blocks that were neatly chopped for us in a bundle wrapped with plastic. I know that I need to slather sunscreen on myself and wear a hat because I’m paranoid of skin cancer since my encounter with the Australian sun – the sun won.

I know how to make coffee, and put up a tent and roll my sleeping bag and to remember to bring earplugs and tarot cards ;)

I know how to camp. At least, I know how to car camp.

When I unfurled my sleeping bag, in it was a long-sleeved shirt I hadn’t seen in two years, since I was in that tent, with someone else.

I played Ghosts of Camping Trips Past this weekend. Remembering acutely who I’d been with and when. Each and every one of the even mildly significant and more significant relationships I’ve been in over the last six years, I’ve been camping with that person. I haven’t slept in that tent alone in a long time.

This particular camp grounds, I’d been to maybe 3 or 4 years ago, when I’d been newly dating someone. It’s a beautiful spot on the American River, up past Sacramento, and almost to Tahoe. It’s amenitied out the yin-yang, but that’s alright. I remember the photo of me and that person in that very landscape, I remember the release I feel when I’m out there. Not with the person, but out there, knowing and feeling confident that I know even that little bit.

I haven’t roughed it. I haven’t hiked out into the woods and set up camp since I was 19 and leading a camp group overnight with our packs into the Appalachian Mountains. And even then, it wasn’t roughing it – That’s alright. I know it’s something I still want to do.

I wondered why it was, as I went through my previous camping trips over the last few years, that each had included a man I’ve been involved with. Was this my test for them? For “us”? Was I only able to be there with someone else?

No. The reason, I realized, is because I love camping. And I happen to go and be invited, and then I happen to invite the guy I’m with. That’s all. Turns out, camping is a hobby, I suppose. It’s likely the only same thing that has occurred with each relationship I’ve had over the last few years. The only “adventure” or “event” or excursion that has happened in each involvement. It just points out to me that this is an important thing for me. Something I love.

A way that I don’t feel I need to be any different than I actually am.

I feel confident out there (yes, even with the general store and port-o-potties nearby). But I feel like myself. I usually look like a wreck, and I don’t care. My hair matted and loved by the sweat and dust and river mist. Caked in various layers of SPF lotions and supportive sneakers. I don’t look like Xena, I look like me. Like the me I am in private, with no one to impress or stun or mesmerize. Like the me I am when it’s just me. Whole, and unabashed, and unprotected. And capable. I usually feel like a leader, or at least like a competent person when I’m out there. Something those of you who read this blog with any consistency can attest is not my normal M.O. out in the “real world.”

I needed that. I needed to feel worthy and valuable simply for who I was/am. Not for how I looked. Or for how much money I had. Or for what kind of job I worked. Or what cell phone I carried. Or degree I had. I could be valuable for my contributions to the group, be it building a fire, or fetching the water, or going off to sit and do my Morning Pages out on a rock in the middle of the rushing river so that I could be more present and emptied of my junk when I returned to the group. I could be valuable by bringing Madlibs to do by the fire at night – which led to so much hilarity, and stupid good fun. I could be valuable by making coffee the first morning when everyone was still asleep or grumpy. I could be valuable by breaking out the guitar one of us brought for a little while, and later, sing along harmonies with her, and remember that I have a voice.

I felt purposeful. I didn’t question who I was or where I was going or what I was doing with my life. I didn’t have any profound judgments or insights. I simply “chopped wood, carried water” (no chopping this trip, but you know what I mean). If I can take that simplicity, and that confidence, and that sense of pleasure from being precisely who I was/am into the world, I think I’ll be alright.

If I can dress nicely and put on makeup, and remember that it’s just a lens through which to see the whole that I am.

If I can breathe in the fire smoke scent of my balled-up clothing and recall what it feels like when I’m just me, then I think I’ll be alright. 

Martyrdom is so Passe

I'm going camping. HA!

Applied for that job I want...

Had an info interview with my acting teacher that gave me some food for thought, but, for right now...

With my new copy of GQ with Michael *drool* Fassbender on the cover to keep me company by the lakeside...

I'M OUTTA HERE!

Fun: 1  Over-thinking: 0

See you on Monday, folks!

Oh, My Beautiful Wickedness!

This is one of the last lines delivered by the Wicked Witch of the West in Wizard of Oz as she’s melting from the bucket of water that Dorothy just doused her with.

It occurs to me this morning. The dying gasps. Really, I’m not sure what more I have to say on that.

Last night, I got to babysit for the one family I work with, up in the hills of Montclair – a quite posh neighborhood of Oakland, if you can still call it Oakland. I was picked up from work by the mom in downtown SF, and delivered straight to the ease and comfort of children.

There are two girls, one 7, one almost 3. The older one is mildly manipulative, so I like the little “teaching moments” I get to instill in her – like, it’s okay to be disappointed (when you land on a chute instead of a ladder, and are sent backward through the board); like, you can be honest with me (are you really hungry, or are you trying to stay up later). Some of these, I recognize are “corrective experiences,” as I once heard it put – places where we get to “go back” and make minor adjustments to experiences we might have had in the past, and put some new memories, positive memories there.

I heard this about places, mostly, - i.e. this awful thing happened at that park one time, now I can go to that park in the light of day with new eyes and a picnic, or something.

The woman I babysit for said yesterday that the French don’t picnic. She’d lived there and visited several times, and whenever they went to a lake or something, completely un-American-like, they didn’t pack a thing to eat or drink, whereas with us, it’s the first thing that we do.

I recognize this blog is a little discombobulated, but I’m feeling somewhat worn out from the week of highs and lows, and sleep deprivation. I was on the phone with a friend yesterday, and she said that if I wanted to get together to do something fun, she was available for that. I said, in essence, I’m not really available for fun right now.

What kind of a thing is that to say?! Or believe? With the money/job stuff, I am feeling depleted, but that’s almost more of a reason to refill the well. I’m reading this book on money stuff, and one of the signposts toward “not so hot” questions the guy asks is if we feel relief when the calendar switches to a new month, when the money quotient refills. Absolutely. And yet, with the calendar switch, for me now, also comes fear – okay, June is covered, What about July. I feel like I’m ticking the days off to refilling the pot, but also just crossing off the days through the year when there is so much more joy to be had.

I’m debating whether canceling camping was the “right” thing to do – but really, I think it is. A friend of mine is an expert at free and low-cost fun. It’s like her sixth sense – like her super power is finding a way to get to do the things she loves to do without paying – not like a handout, but like trade, volunteer, etc. For example, if there’s a musician she likes that’s coming into town, she’ll email them and ask if she can sell merch for them at the show. This is how I discovered Ari Hest when he came through San Francisco a few years ago – my friend was going to sell merch for him, and asked if I could assist. And so, we got into the show for free, and I fell in love with some new music. Love.

P.s., speaking of, I realized that the title of yesterday’s blog should have been “Love, and Other Drugs,” while I was on my way walking to work. D’ah well.

The fun thing is another way of saying I can’t have where I’m at or not good enough where I’m at – when you’re financially secure, you can have fun. When you know what you’re doing in your life, you can laugh. Til then, head down, grindstone needs nosing.

Meh – that’s faulty logic and backwards thinking, and just plain sucky. There’s too much fun to be had. It’s back to my “quitting hiding” thing that I’m trying to do. The isolating doesn’t feed me. There’s plenty to do if I ask for help. Sure, my friend has a sixth sense, but talent for that can develop. I’d like to learn.

I’d also like to sleep. ;) So, this weekend, with my non-camping self, in and amongst my job applicationing (there’s one job I’m actually really hoping for - cross your fingers), I can get out, and be fun, have fun. Do something FUN.

Fun is not for people who want it, it’s for people who do it.

Word.