neurotica_redux

Life is Full of Shitty Conflicts

In an effort to burn off my triple Americano post-shift awakeness, I’m resorting to brainstorming at one a.m. I tried a Big Daddy IPA but it didn’t do the trick. So I was thinking today about my tendencies and downfalls as a writer. One of the biggest ones is that I tend to avoid writing about conflict. External conflict, that is. There is plenty of the internal kind going on and that can be just as dramatic, but it takes a helluva a lot more work/talent/skill.  External conflict, however, is the building block of dramatic tension. It’s every storyteller’s bread and butter, and if it’s not, nine times out of ten it should be. At least in one form or another, ranging from subtle to magnificent. It’s really fascinating, actually, that I tend to avoid conflict as much in my fiction as I do in my life. I am pretty notorious for being non-confrontational and most of the time I just let things slide, bitch about it to a third party, then call it a day. And when I think about it, that’s what my characters do too. Problem is, this can be a snoozefest for the readers if you’re not careful. And by leaving out this key element I’m making a lot more work for myself. But, I had a funny thought tonight driving home from work, mulling over this whole conflict issue. When it dawned on me, a quote from one of my favorite movies of all time, “Life is full of shitty conflicts, okay?” and the simplicity and truth of it was like a lightening bolt. (Even what he meant is not precisely the same thing as what I mean) Life is FULL of shitty conflicts. Everything from your roommate leaving dishes in the sink for the third day in a row to a run in with the meter maid to a mugging in an alley way. And the crazy thing is that I never really insert the most mundane conflicts, I avoid them at ALL costs. My professor called me on it once, he was like, “When your characters leave the scene everyone’s still cool. They’re all still friends. That can’t ALWAYS happen.” And while I don’t really subscribe to across the board dictates regarding writing, because hello if you’re good enough, you can do ANYTHING. But, maybe until you’re not good enough, you have to use the building blocks to make up for what you lack.

 

The point is – I need more conflict. So, I’m making a list. Now, to define the parameters. I’m not going to get really detailed here, just sticking to basic conflict. I don’t want to broadcast too many gems on the internets, after all. In this case conflict will be defined loosely as basic misaligned want. When two people each want something that interferes with what the other person wants. Real simple-like. But, I’m going to try for real conflict, not just petty grievances that go unspoken. I could easily put a multitude of those down but those are the kinds of things that I DO put in my fiction, but they don’t necessarily move things forward. On the other hand, it doesn’t have to be hand to hand combat or anything, just a simple clash of desires. Also, you might notice that some of these are from OH say, the last week of my life. Because I’m not THAT creative at one a.m. (Guess which ones! Okay, maybe don’t.)

 

1. The clerk/cashier claims you gave him a ten, when you actually gave him a twenty.
2. Your stylist cuts off five inches of your hair when you ask her to cut off two.
3. Your pseudo-boyfriend finds a used condom in your bed. Not his.
4. The girl you hate at work asks you to drive her home.
5. Your best friend asks you what you really think of his girlfriend.
6. Someone pushes you on the sidewalk as they pass by.
7. A shopkeeper is following you around the store like you’re going to steal something.
8. You run into your ex-best friend on the subway.
9. A meter maid tries to ticket you one minute after the meter expires. You catch her and try to argue.
10. A waiter spills wine on you in a restaurant.
11. Someone asks you if you’re pregnant. You’re not.
12. Your roommate asks you to clean the toilet. You feel like you ALWAYS clean the toilet.
13. You get an estimate. Someone does work for you. It’s twice the estimate amount.
14. The cops catch you smoking weed.
15. Your mother catches you smoking weed.
16. Pretty much anyone catches you smoking meth.
17. An old man rear-ends you, claims you backed up.
18. Your boss catches you with a bag full of stolen office supplies.
19. You overhear your co-workers talking about you. It’s not nice.
20. You wander onto someone’s property. They fire warning shots.
21. You catch the winning homerun ball. Someone steals it out of your hands.
22. You come out of the bathroom and a leggy blonde is hitting on your date.
23. Your little brother gets your dog high. You have to take him to the emergency room. (The dog.)
24. Someone takes out a gun in Comp class.
25. Your student tells you she’s pregnant and she’s going to tell the administration it’s yours.
26. Someone asks for a favor you don’t want to give.
27. You either have to give up your family, or go to prison.
28. Someone is on life support. No one can agree what to do.
29. A baby is missing from the nursery. Two nurses were on duty and each blames the other.
30.  Your ex is coming to town and wants to have dinner. You ask your significant other if that’s okay.
31. You have water and a salad. Your friend has cocktails and the lobster. She wants to split the check.
32. You are trying to cross the border. The border patrol stops your vehicle.
33. Your ex calls to tell you he’s engaged.
34. Your co-worker consistently shorts you on tip-out. You finally say something.

 

 

Okay, 34 is a good round number to end with. Conflict is both easy and difficult to drum up. It’s weird, I felt like I could keep going, but it’s not as simple as it sounds to try and manufacture some sort of contention. I have problems putting conflict in a story for conflicts sake. Generally speaking if it doesn’t come naturally, I don’t try and force the issue. HOWEVS. Pretty much everything right now feels stilted and unnatural so maybe some potboiler conflict will be like training wheels. I’m writing, I just feel really rusty and unconfident. But, one thing is for sure, I know I just have to keep going with it, no matter how much I think it sucks and it pains me to keep going. It’s a special form of torture sometimes, basically like running waist high through water, or sewage. Slow and painful, without any assurances that there is another side to the river, or a shore just out of sight. You just have to keep going, because what other choice do you have?

What Happens When You Get a Fulbright and a Girlfriend

Via Skype

Me: Ugh. I’m hungover today. Again.

Aaron: (laughs) I can’t remember the last time I had more than like one beer. I’m just don't drink anymore. There’s so much else to do.

Me: (Long Pause. Crackle in the internet ether.) Aaron, if you don’t stop being so well-adjusted, we’re not going to be able to be friends anymore.

everyone is a socialist at twenty-three

Tonight as we were counting our money, my fellow server R and I were discussing the food runner. I was telling him about a conversation wherein the food runner was giving me shit about how servers are “spoiled” and make all the money when everyone else works just as hard. This was somewhat cliché and hard to swallow coming from a white hipster but whatever. So I kind of shrugged it off, then I tried to defend myself, then finally I was just like, “That’s just the way it is, man.”

Later, R said, “There’s a fucking hierarchy, first I was a busser making busser wages, then I was a runner making runner wages, and now I’m a server making server wages. Deal with it. There’s a name for what he is...what is it....? Socialist! He’s a fucking socialist.”

“Him? Of course he’s a socialist. He’s twenty-fucking-three, everyone’s a socialist at twenty-three,” I said.

“He’s twenty-three? Well that explains it.”

Then we both felt old.

 

 

 

Puppycam Redux

    I’m not going to talk about my incredibly stupid hangover today because I talk about hangovers far too much in general. Let’s just say that they are no longer cute and tragic. In one year I will be thirty and they will start to become sad and probably alarming. Maybe they already are. Who knows. All I know is that last night was rough at work. The chef tends to fly off the handle quite regularly and last night is the first night that it really got to me. Probably because he basically called us incompetent after a night of working our asses off. He’s in the kitchen the entire night so he really has no idea what he’s talking about. I resent baseless charges in general, but this one really chapped my ass. Plus, you can’t reason with him so you just have to sit there and take it on the chin. The money is too good and too vital to get into a pissing contest at this point, but I can tell I’ll only be able to deal with it for so long.

     Yesterday was great other than that. I found myself with the “day off” and wrote in the morning, and read in the afternoon before going to a quick meeting at the ad agency I’m contracting with. If I had something more stable, that’s what I would lose. I really need those days to write and read. But it’s tough, sometimes I think I should just bite the bullet and get a 9-5. I went to this agency’s office for the first time and I have to admit it was a more than a little intoxicating. About 25 people work there and everyone is young and impossibly hip. Graphic designers lined up at their huge Macs, people on headsets with graphic tees and skateboards propped up against their desks. It’s also a pretty intense environment, everyone needs everything like yesterday and time is at a premium. People stay every night until seven or eight. You’d feel like an ass if you didn’t. The “corporate” culture in offices like that is fascinating because it’s so subverted, yet so present. The ethos, the lingo, the expectations are all there to basically take everything SUPER seriously and always be on board with jettisoning personal time in favor of the needs of the client. I was in the meeting, totally enraptured with how important and serious everything was, but then I thought about it for a minute and had to remind myself what exactly it is we’re doing here. We’re writing/creating/constructing a brand identity for a new commercial product. We’re not curing cancer. But, in order to do that work, that’s exactly what you have to think, you have to believe that the products you’re helping to launch are making a difference in people’s lives. Otherwise how could you spend so much time doing it? There was a joke made about me wanting a full time job there, being the in-house copywriter of sorts, which I don’t think will happen but nonetheless I am thinking about what that would mean. The fact is that I don’t want that right now, and I do, simultaneously. On the one hand I wouldn’t have to put up with the aforementioned waitressing bullshit, and also the insecurity of freelancing. But, what would I lose? A lot I think.

     I feel farther and farther away from my time in Missoula,, every day. I spent two years building a life as a writer and it feels like that’s on the ebb. I read back over some of my posts from last year at this time and it makes my heart hurt. I miss that life a lot. I don’t miss all of it, and I’m not romanticizing what was a difficult last six months there – but I love the life of a writer, bottom line. It’s what I want, and writers are who I want to surround myself with professionally (and socially) and I feel a little lost right now without that. I don’t know how to get back to it. I had breakfast with Jen the other day and that helped. I think she’s feeling much the same way. We talked about going to public readings here in SF and not having a good time. Feeling excluded in some weird way. Probably because we were the nucleus of the writing community in Missoula, we were the writing center of it. And we were also validated by it in a way that we’re not here. Working in obscurity, however, is also part of the “writerly life”. Perhaps, it’s an even more authentic experience than the grad school one. Maybe the last two years were just a blip. Maybe the MFA was like some extended writer’s retreat that masquerades as real life? I think that may be closer to the truth. Because you can’t always live in the company of your fellow writers, and you can’t count on them for inspiration or validation every day of every week. Maybe you just have to take what you can get. A mini-workshop with a friend here, a reading there. I’m not sure.

     What I do know is that I miss it. I miss my time in Missoula and I miss my friends there. I love my friends here of course, but for two years LindsayKateJenCarrieAaronCarenAnneMarie were my family, and they also nurtured a part of me that I’m trying desperately to fatten up. After all, it’s been a lean summer.

     That being said, I’m trying to get myself back on track, in lieu of anyone else being around to pull me out of the stands. I started reading Underworld by Don DeLillo which sixty pages in is already blowing my hair back and reminding me how important it is to be unafraid when you write. I’ve started writing something that I’m hoping will go beyond those three page-drop-off-a-cliff stories that I’ve been hacking away at lately. I need to finish something. And I know I will, I just have to put the time in and have faith that it’s worth something, that it’s good, or will be good someday if I just keep at it. That’s been the trouble since the beginning, that faith. I think it was easier to manage in such a supportive environment. It’s funny I had drinks with a guy the other night who is in an MFA program here in the city. A large part-time program there isn’t much of a community socially, everyone is too disparate. But, this guy did mention that they often pat themselves on the back because the rumor is that smaller programs are too cutthroat, too competitive because of their insularity. I didn’t want to burst his bubble but I had to smile because you couldn’t get much more supportive than our little group. We were (are) almost smug about it, and we have reason to be. We got incredibly lucky with each other, something that becomes even more apparent to us all the farther we get away from it. Maybe this is a stupid analogy, but I feel like we were a bit like those puppies on puppycam. (I’m SORRY but they were SO cute... sue me) We were on our own in a big pile, tumbling, whining, playing, fluffing up, rapidly growing. We didn’t have a true mentor (although we had great professors) who took us in hand, so in turn we took care of each other that much more, huddled that much closer.  And that was what it was, wonderful and challenging and sometimes maddening, but always, always warmer in a big messy pile.

 

(Oh, don’t act all shocked. Since when has this blog not been overly sentimental. Pffft.)

wherein we realize the universe has a cruel sense of humor

This will be a twenty-minute post. I need to go to bed, long day tomorrow.

 

Today I learned a valuable lesson about the vagaries of freelancing. Never spend more energy and time on getting a project than you can stomach losing if that project goes sour. Or gets cut. I spent a lot of time getting a gig that I was pretty excited about. I put in a lot of free work on the front end proposal writing and whatnot, with the understanding that it would pay off in the near future. Well, today that project got postponed until early 2010, and I’m not entirely convinced it will pick up again at all. And that’s life. At first I was all irate about it, and taking it personally, but then I realized I’m expendable. I’m the temporary help. As a contract employee I can be cut loose at anytime, and anytime includes when they make the executive decision to postpone a project. And tough shit for me. That’s why it’s important to have multiple projects in the works or lined up, in case one falls through, in case one doesn’t pay up immediately. Whether it’s freelance journalism, freelance copy-writing, or freelance copy-editing. You can never count your chickens, even when they’re hatched. So am I okay with that? Yes and no. On the one hand it really blows that I can’t plan out my financial future. I made the mistake just yesterday of planning out when I could start saving for Europe, crunching numbers, etc. But, that’s all off the table right now. On the other hand, I could get thrown three new projects tomorrow by the other agency I’m working for, and net a shit ton of money before the new year. Or, they could cut me off after the current project. No fucking clue. The problem is that I’m not yet stable. I’m still biting my nails a bit. For the next two months I’m fine (more or less) but in the meantime I need to hustle to get more work. So basically, it’s feast or famine. You never know what’s coming your way, you just have to have faith that it will all work out, and even out, in the end.

 

That is completely contrary to my nature. I like to plan things out more than that. I want to KNOW that I can save XX dollars a month for X goal in X months. But, that’s simply not going to be possible. I have to sock away what I can when I have it, and be mindful of what I spend. But, I can’t count on not having to dip into it now and again if I don’t get a project for a few weeks. Waitressing is going to be the key to my survival, so I better not be playing any fucking contact sports. That will be enough for me to make my rent and cc bills and essentially still maintain my life here.

 

Ultimately, this is a good experiment for me. We’ll see if I’m REALLY ready to be a starving artist, flexible about income and just scraping by. Valuing time more than security. Because the upshot of the famine is the time you have to spare. If I can use that time wisely, and write, and not freak out about the lack of “work”, then I’m doing exactly what I set out to do. I didn’t set out to work 40 hours a week. I set out to work as much as I had to to maintain a livable lifestyle and put a little money away for traveling. But to use that other time, the time I wouldn’t be wasting commuting or paper-pushing for some asshole boss, to write. Now, that is all shot to hell if I’m too stressed out to write during my downtime. If I’m obsessively chasing the next project and unable to concentrate, the exercise is useless. I might as well get a 9-5 and save myself the stress that’s taking years off my life. But, if I’m able to take things in one to two month increments, and have faith that something else will come along, then I just might be able to make this writing/work balance thing fly.

 

It just fucking kills me though, how predictable the universe is. RIGHT when I was getting cocky/comfortable about things BAM my legs are out from underneath me. Likewise, when I’m just about to cash in my chips something mildly sustaining materializes. It’s really quite cruel. It should teach me a lesson though, to stop trying to predict the future and control everything. My persistent, genetic worry-warting is definitely a sort of angle at gaining control in uncontrollable situations. There’s only so much you can do, and once you’ve done that all there is left is worrying. Even though it’s not, worrying seems like an active endeavor. At least if you’re worrying or thinking about a situation, trying to figure it out, at least you’re DOING something. Sitting around and acknowledging a lack of control is just not in my DNA. But, I think I need to re-train my brain. At least to a certain degree. You can’t fundamentally change your nature, but you can accept it and try to work around it.

 

So anyway, this was a boring post. Sorry. Today was ridiculous, and I don’t expect tomorrow to be any less ridiculous. So, I guess at least that part isn’t boring.

The Way I Like It

I could talk about my birthday, but no one wants to hear me spew on about happy stuff right? Well, maybe a little bit. The thing is that now I’m 29. And it’s okay. I didn’t really freak out about it quite the way I anticipated. My freak-outs regarding my age manifest themselves more surreptitiously than that. This time around it was some ridiculous anxiety the day before about a multitude of stupid shit. Not super exciting, but amusing to the sane people in my life I’m sure. By the time the actual day came around it was no big deal. Just another day, really. So, I’m 29. The thing is that it doesn’t really matter (obviously) and what I love about San Francisco is that it REALLY doesn’t matter here. It’s nice to be in a place that reminds me that expectations are mutable, ephemeral, and all about your perspective. So yesterday, I laughed at the eighteen year-olds in their outrageous get-ups at the concert, shook my head at their fresh faces, and was glad to be old enough to know better. About a lot of things. Tonight I had a beautiful, yummy dinner with Meghan, Makenna and Luisa. And had a moment of weakness for San Francisco as I drove up the 17^th street hill and looked at the glittery lights in my rearview mirror. So life is good. It’s beautiful, and anxious, and capricious, and tragic, and joyful, and eternally raw.

 

And that’s the way I like it.

Wandering Children

Just got back from a litquake event and am waiting for my roommates to get ready before we go out for a beer. Good time for bandit blogging. Then I’ll be back with the second portion that will most likely be a little more forthcoming. Ha. The lecture/panel I went to tonight was about consciousness, culture, and neuroscience. Super interesting, if a little dry. I’ve done a lot of reading on the topic, science journals, literature, etc. so it wasn’t that hard to tune in. What I did notice was how hard it was to stay tuned in. Not so long ago I could sit through an horrendously boring three hour conversation on post-structuralism and still be engaged enough to participate. Tonight I found my thoughts wandering away, less like children in a department store, more like children darting into traffic. They were almost aggressively hard to keep focused on the conversation at hand. I blame social media slash the internet. Obviously. I mean, clearly I was no less ridiculous about being plugged in while I was in Missoula, but at least it was counteracted by intense periods of concentration. Now, I’m on the computer all day, doing various things, and I don’t really need to focus that hard. Writing ad copy is not cognitive neuroscience. Yes, it requires bouts of concentration but those can just as easily be twenty to thirty minute increments. Then I can dart

 

 

Back from roommate drinks. Now I’m tired and don’t really want to finish a coherent blog post but I’m trying to get back into the swing of this.

 

This morning was nice. I woke up at eight and it was positively black outside. The torrential rain in the alley outside my bedroom makes a nice sound. I hope it rains again tomorrow. It made me want to stay in bed and read and tomorrow morning that’s exactly what I will do. I’ve worked it so I can write/read in the morning and work all afternoon and still get everything done I need to. I’m not making a ton of money – definitely not enough to save like I want to (yet) but enough to pay the bills and not be stressed out all the time. And I get mornings here and there, afternoons too. And that is worth all the shit that came before. If given the choice between time or money, I’ll take time, no question. I am a bit worried about what all this writing for pay is going to do to my creative writing. I spent all afternoon trying to think of a funny caption for this picture Mara put on her facebook page. How dumb is that? But I’m seriously still stumped. I feel a little constipated in that sense. Like I’m spending all this time trying to perfectly fit the words into the places that they’re supposed to go into according to XYZ people and ZYS goals. I had a thought the other day that this might not be possible. I might not be able to write for money and write for me at the same time. That would put me in an exceedingly tight spot because then what the hell else am I going to do? Waitress until I hit the bestseller list? Slash, until I need a hip replacement. Not sure my sanity can take that. So what’s the other alternative? I’m thinking six months on, six months off? Six months buys me six months? Maybe. I’m scared though. I’m scared to go whole-hog with the money making business because what if I lose it? It. It’s fragile enough as it is, what if after two years of loving cultivation I fucking lose it? Or worse, forget how important it is? Or lose faith that it is still there even if it is? At this point I don’t want to get to far away from it. Which may entail a certain amount of gnashing of teeth. Tomorrow will probably be like that. Or maybe I’ll just lie in bed and listen to the rain?

Never Say Never

Just got home from work.

I’m waitressing these days at an unorthodox kitchen, for a chef who was a friend first, and an employer later. It always takes a bit to unwind after a shift before I can actually go to sleep, even though tonight was incredibly mello. I had literally four tables tonight so it was a lot of hovering, shuffling, and trying to look busy. It’s funny, sometimes I’m sort of embarrassed to still be waitressing – at 28 (god, almost 29) I feel like I should be beyond this. In fact when I quit my last waitressing gig three years ago I said I would never go back. Never. The thought of it in Montana while I was looking for jobs was enough to make me go into convulsions. Just goes to show you that you can’t count anything out for good. For one, you never know how desperate you’ll get. For two, you never know how your perspective or circumstances can change for the better. Sometimes both.

Luisa and I were talking a couple weeks ago about moving to Europe – just going. Her, Adam and I. It would be fun but it’s probably just one of those things you talk about. Either way, it got us thinking about our marketable skills. We laughed when we realized the most transferable are barista-ing and/or serving. After all we’ve done, degrees, jobs, etc., it’s what we started out with that could still pay the bills if only we wanted a simpler life. In any event it’s come to my rescue again.  When things were dire about a month ago I hopped on this opportunity to serve two nights a week. It’s actually the best gig I’ve ever had of that vein. The food is amazing. So amazing that it seems to lull the masses into a sort of awe-inspired state. I’ve only had to deal with one asshole and I’ve been there over a month – that’s impressive. For the most part it’s a really fun, social experience. It gets me out of the house and away from the computer, and the people who are in the know about this place are really cool and interesting in their own right. Not to mention that no matter how slow it is I still walk every night with $150 in my pocket. After the shift is over we have generous free drinks and to-die for food. The chef is a maniac about local, organic goodness. Everything is top-notch.  So basically every Thursday and Friday night I get a free world-class meal. The space is amazing, the music is always good, and everyone is chill. So far so good. I looked around tonight as we sat their counting our bounty and sipping wine and I thought, not so bad. So what if it doesn’t look good on paper, it is good in reality. Whenever I get down on myself for the way things have turned out, what I have at this stage in my life, I have to remind myself of whose expectations those are. Society’s? My younger self? My classmates’? When I get stuck in where I thought I’d be, what I thought I’d be doing, or what I could be doing, I get bogged down. But when I focus on what’s happening in the moment, what I think is important, I shake myself out of the idiocy and realize how lucky I am, how I’m getting closer and closer to the life I want to have. How I wouldn’t trade it for something more stable, and normalized.

I wrote this morning. Not a lot, but enough. I think that made everything okay. (as you can tell from the uncharacteristic positivity) The fact that I had to go to work doing something that’s not my priority seemed okay since I made time for my real priority first. I’m fine doing jobs I don’t really care about as long as they pay me well and allow me to write. At least for now. Maybe some day I’ll give up on the pipe dream of living off my writing and settle into something more permanent, but today is not that day.

I started the new job today as well – got thrown an impromptu assignment and did what I think was a pretty fine job for a helluva a lot more money than I was making tutoring. It’s a relief that this just might work out.

 

The goal for the next eight months in San Francisco is to suck the marrow out of California, enjoy every second of this city, and secure myself financially for the next adventure. I think it’s okay to have the future in mind as long as you’re paying attention to the present, and fully experiencing it.

 

Saturday I’ll go watch the B.C. game in the morning with Meg and Ericka, then Sunday I’m going to do a monster solo hike in the Marin Headlands before I have to tutor in the evening. Suddenly I feel a lot lighter. Seeing a light at the end of the tunnel with job attrition and freeing up an extra ten hours I can devote to writing has done wonders. Stress is such a killer.

 

The worst part is that you don’t know how bad it is until you’re out from under it.

This Peeled Back Skin of Late

Well, that was extreme. It’s been almost four months since I’ve written - by far the longest stretch in my almost four year stint with this blog. I can’t quite explain why I’ve fallen away from it, I’m not sure I know. Needless to say, it’s been quite a transition from grad school to reality. Life has been crazy, I haven’t been writing much. I don’t like it.  But, I can’t go there – not yet.  As always when I get overwhelmed, I have to start small.

 

Right now, I’m sitting in my living room in the inner sunset. The fog rolled in this afternoon at about 2pm. This basically killed any previous ambition I had to go for a run.  Instead I sat for a good forty-five minutes reading the travel blog of someone who has spent the last two years traveling around the world, roaming, working, meeting new people, vagabonding, and eventually building a new life. Even though I’ve been doing a limited approximation of that within the U.S. in the last three, I still felt an intense sense of longing. I don’t know what pulls me inexorably toward the next adventure, the next uprooting, the next manifestation of myself – but it’s relentless. I just got to San Francisco, and already it feels temporary. It’s something for a therapist to untangle I suppose – I can’t be bothered. In the meantime I’m not happy unless I’m planning. In San Francisco, it was Montreal. In Montreal it was San Francisco. In San Francisco it was Montana. In Montana it was Argentina. In Argentina it was San Francisco. In San Francisco it is now Spain and beyond.  Interesting how SF has become my staging point of sorts. I do love this city – it’s not a surprise. 

 

So, what else about today. I had my last tutoring session with one of my favorite students, a smart, motivated girl who most nights when I see her is so exhausted she can barely sit up straight. I have to wonder about how our culture runs teenagers into the ground with school and extra-curriculars. Not to mention tutoring for an arbitrary test to get them into an arbitrary school. Sleep deprivations is a trend I’ve noticed across the board. It’s like these kids never go to bed. Overall, I’ve enjoyed the kids. The subject matter? Well, I hate standardized tests so you figure it out – but the kids are really great.  The driving around sucks, the pay – not so hot. Cost benefit analysis? Not worth it. All this driving around in the suburbs in the last month was driving me to drink so I’m glad it’s over. There seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel in regard to income and stability so I’m grateful. It’s been really tough, I got myself into a real bind financially that I’ll be paying off for awhile, but that’s life I suppose. Right now I’m waitressing and consulting and as of this week, writing again. Thank god. That, after all, was the point of all this. 

 

October started off with a bang. My sister is now a married woman. At the ripe old age of 25. Insanity. I can’t really even talk about the wedding. It was amazing, and personally revelatory for a lot of reasons that are too numerous to go into. But, the major takeaway I suppose is ultimately unsurprising. I love my family so much it hurts. I guess it’s something about those moments where everything culminates and is laid bare – it just takes the skin right off you. That’s what I felt like for five days, like I was walking around without my skin – everything was more deeply felt – the good, the bad, and the ugly. But the sum total was beautiful. Moments, hours, days where you feel things at a 10 are the days when you can really mark your living. In the last four months there have been a lot 10’s, both joyful and difficult. If I’m honest, mostly difficult. And when there is a preponderance of difficult, it’s hard to remember the silver lining that is the rawness of being alive. So, I think ultimately that’s what this past weekend pointed out to me – that my thin skin, my peeled back layers of late – they are good for something. They are good for feeling the highest of the highs unexpectedly. When I walked in on my sister and Eric dancing, practicing their moves the night before the wedding, I felt exultation and happiness and longing, I felt a wash of life, that maybe I wouldn’t have experienced quite so deeply if my hide hadn’t been skinned these last four months. But it has, and I was there. And I am here, for the good and the bad. And that’s something.

 

So that’s it for now. I hope it’s enough to begin. To keep me in line. I’m going to try and write every couple of days from now on to get back in the spirit of things. I’m also going public with the blog which is a little scary, but now that I’m not teaching anymore it doesn’t really matter that much. It’s funny, when I was reading that travel blog earlier today I got the urge to start another blog. A more general-appeal sort of thing, something I could “keep clean” and send to my grandmother or something. But, the thing is my great adventures aren’t really external, and that isn’t really me anyway. What’s going on inside my crazy skull is what interests me, even if it doesn’t interest you. Yes, things happen, I do things, but it’s how I feel about them that concerns me. I’m more interested in writing about how I felt after that near death experience in an avalanche, and what I make of it on a macro level, than the nitty gritty of what happened and who was there. Places, things, people. They’re all great, but unless you have something interesting to parse out, something meaningful to exit with, well, meh. And for some people I guess navel-gazing is futile and self-indulgent but they’re not my kind of people. And they won’t read this blog anyway. I suppose the difficulty is how personal that is – how vulnerable. But, again – as one of my former readers once said, how can you expect to be a good writer unless you’re willing to lay it all bare eventually? No time like the present.    

 

   

 

 

 

Sentimental Fool

Today I took the 21 downtown to SFMOMA, walked through yerba buena with wheezy and went to a Robert Frank exhibit.  Afterwards, I went to the Royal Exchange for a couple of drinks with Meghan.  First I met her in the NARAL office.  To get there I walked by Specialty Cookies where Makenna and I would gorge ourselves every afternoon for a year, Peet’s coffee where we would gawk at the cute bike messengers, and the Beale Street bar where I would go with the soccer girls when we got sick of Harrington’s.  I could see Lieff Cabraser while walking down Battery street and actually walked by Lieff’s legal secretary on her cell phone, fighting with someone who is probably her boyfriend or husband.   On Sunday I spent the night at Makenna’s and she made smoothies in the morning when we woke up.  Last night I hung out at wheezy’s while she hit her 10pm sugar high and started dancing like a maniac.  Tonight we fell asleep watching the office after I made a Trader Joe’s goat cheese pizza for myself.  All of these things feel normal and familiar in a way that is almost uncomfortable. 

I cried intermittently for two hours on the plane from Spokane to Oakland.  I think the man beside me thought I was afraid of flying or something.  I did it silently and hopefully unobtrusively and he never said anything, thankfully.  Then I got off the plane and Makenna was there and it was like someone snapped their fingers and the frame changed.  The screen shifted from one movie to the next - only I remained a fixed point.  How bizarre that you can get on a plane for two hours and make a life disappear? If not disappear, you can make it hide – like minimizing a window.  Maybe that’s a bad analogy, I don’t know.  All I know is that the life I had for two years is gone, and I am all torn up about it but at the same time I am here and it’s time to get on with things, and I am surrounded by familiarity.  Comfortable things, comfortable people who know me well, who I can sit with and talk to and it’s as if no time had passed in between.  And it’s fucking with me a little, that seemingly invisible disconnect.  It just seems like there should be more dissonance between my old life and this new one – instead they seem like they exist in parallel worlds.  Like there is another me still living that life back in Missoula, ironic dining with Carrie and Lindsay and biking at dusk through concrete boneyards with Aaron.

I know it’s to be expected, this strangeness I feel here, but it still threatens me, unnerves me. 

I haven’t been sleeping well.  Also to be expected.  Five different beds in five nights.  But, I’m exhausted.  Still, I toss and turn.  Tonight Wheezy and I watched several episodes of the office and at one point I fell dead asleep sitting up with my head leaned back.  How is it that sometimes you’re able to fall asleep in a brutally uncomfortable position at a non-designated bedtime, but when it’s actually bedtime and you’re nestled in a comfy position you toss and turn and crank the shit out of your neck? Does that seem odd to anyone else? I feel like it’s some strange psychology.  It’s as if you know you’re not “really” going to sleep, you’re just closing your eyes for a bit, no pressure to make it count, really dive into that REM – you’ll do that later.  But, when you lay down at night with every intention of getting (needing) a full eight hours…forget it.  Is that why I was ecstatic to be here in January? Feeling full of optimism for a new life, feeling comforted by that familiarity instead of spooked by it? Is it because now I’m here, I’m tucked into bed, and it’s time to live it? 

But, it’s day two and I am going to cut myself some slack.  I have to.  Each time I have started out in San Francisco (this will be take three) I’ve known I need to be here to get to the next “part” but I’ve ALWAYS felt uneasy about it at the beginning, felt spooked, or unsteady.  This is nothing new.  Again, even THAT freaks me out.  Would it have been better to start totally fresh in New York? I don’t know.  What I do know is when I’m freaked out about changed and the future I tend to second guess myself, go immediately to grass-is-greener scenarios.  The truth is that I would be freaked out no matter where I chose to be after Missoula.  The truth is that I am sad that my life there is over.  It was harder than I expected.  Much harder.  The depth and fullness of my time there, and my relationships there, wasn’t revealed to me until I actually stepped on that plane.  I think I sent Lindsay a text message right as I was boarding, something along the lines of, “I’m having a hard time keeping it together right now,” and she wrote, “Love you. You got this!”  and I read it and had to stifle a lump in my throat after I read the second sentence because it was the exact right thing to say.  It’s a double-edged sword, all of this moving and shaking and finding amazing friends, because you always have to leave.  There’s always an end to whatever epoch you found each other in.  And it’s heartbreaking because of how lucky you are, and how different things do become when you’re not in each other’s lives everyday.  It’s not like it’s an ending, it’s just the end of the beginning.  So there’s that to think of, and I do.  The trouble with me is that I’m a sentimental fool, I see the passage of time as something to be thoughtful about, to dive into the core of and flop around in, and I have a hard time letting it go along its natural course.  You would think after years of this saying goodbye stuff I would be better at it, but there I was at the Spokane airport leaking like a faucet.  So much for that.  But, I think it’s probably because I have a more acute appreciation of just how lucky I have been, how complex and strange close friendships are, and how much they are to be valued and cared for.  All of that becomes more difficult with distance.  But, that being said the old adage still applies, if it’s easy it’s probably not worth doing.  Moving to Montana was not easy, but look what it yielded.  Moving away from Montana is not going to be easy – so I guess I just have to have a little faith in predictability.

Someone once said that if you don't risk sentimentality in your writing, you'll never write anything true. That doesn't mean you won't fail along the way and slop it up real good, but risk you must. I wonder if the same is true about life.