Accuracy is important to me, and yet it feels as though at least 50 percent of what I say needs to be fact-checked and usually corrected. Every other conversation or show has me on Google doing research.
This would make me really smart if I remembered ANYTHING that I look up or absorb. Instead, I spew out half-remembered, half-digested tidbits from various sources, just trying to get through a conversation.
This is true especially at work. I was in a meeting recently with two people where we briefly digressed about the merits and drawbacks of Rotterdam. My colleague was complaining that the food wasn't very good there. I have never been to Rotterdam but took this as my opportunity to note that in a documentary I just watched about Michelin-starred restaurants (what movie? I can no longer recall), I was surprised to note that two of the restaurants were Dutch, including noma.
My colleagues nodded politely, clearly not giving a shit but indulging me anyway. The meeting went on. But while we talked about the details for a video shoot, I realized: Shit. Noma is not Dutch. It is Danish. Shit! Wow. How could I have messed that up within the space of one day? And everyone is just proceeding as if what I said were true.
What if later they find out it isn't, and then they say to themselves, "What? That dummy Christina told me Noma was in the Netherlands, and now here I am in Rotterdam psyched for the most unexpectedly awesome meal of my life, and it turns out to be a sham, all because of her IDIOCY."
I had to issue a correction, but there was no good point in the conversation. We got further and further into work items and restaurants were floating increasingly far behind in the conversation's trajectory. "Just let it go Christina. Who cares?" I told myself. But my compulsion for accuracy would not relent.
We were standing up, concluding the meeting, when I interjected, a propos of nothing, "By the way, Noma is not in Rotterdam. It's in Copenhagen." My colleagues both momentarily gave me a look that said, "What the hell is she talking about?" Then, polite as ever, they recovered. "Oh! Haha! Okay..."
God. Why do I manufacture these awkward moments?
Music: "What's the Use"
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Tuesday, August 06, 2013
Yoga Crimes.
In the dream, my yoga mat has disappeared and the studio has transformed into something that looks like a community rec center under renovation. I search the cubbies where mats are stored, but cannot find my name among the labels. Everything has been moved around. Finally, I spot it—but instead of my mat, I see a note written in fine red marker that directs me elsewhere, punctuated with "Sorry!"
In a general storage area underneath a staircase, I finally locate my mat. It is crumpled in a heap of others. When I pull it out, it is covered with fingerpaint and glitter: canvas for some kind of children's art project. Unacceptable!
I take the mat to the front desk, which happens to be at a wooden art table. "I'm sorry that happened," the desk attendant says after I show her the damage. The owner of the studio happens to be standing right there. "Creativity workshop," she stage whispers to the attendant, indicating that my compensation for the lost mat should be a free pass to an event that will surely involve the verb "journaling" and more of what is scattered all over my defaced yoga mat.
"No!" I rush to object. "No creativity workshop. I want a new mat." The dream ends before a resolution, but the feeling is that I will not get my way.
You are probably thinking, "Wow. I mean, really Christina? You're that bougie and neurotic that you're actually having an anxiety dream about yoga?"
Yes. Any other questions?
In real life, the Dupont Circle yoga studio that I frequent does have nice wooden cubbies with our names printed underneath them. The studio offers many small comforts (skylights, good teachers, Life Savers peppermints, nice smells, tea), but this particular one had gone unappreciated by me: When was the last time you had a cubby? A place with your name on it in a communal space that is safe enough to leave open, a place for your things, and your things only?
The last time for me was Seven Locks Elementary School. Mine was a double classroom that held three grades at once and was divided for organizational purposes into two colors: Blue and Green. Blue cubbies were on one side of the room, Green on the other. The cubbies smelled of laminated wood and books and pencil lead and erasers and sandwich bread and vinyl binders.
A cubby.
Lately the studio has gotten crowded, and the staff has resorted to using the very top of the two cubby units as storage space. So the people who joined late didn't get a cubby, they just got essentially a surface with their name under it. What will they do? I thought when I saw the storage issue. It is a small area, there is no room to add cubbies. My cubby space became more precious in my mind.
Then one day I come into the studio, retrieve my mat from my cubby, walk into class, unfurl it and... wait. It was a reversible mat, and it unfurled to the wrong side. Someone had used it. Someone had invaded the sanctity of my cubby.
I spent more of the next hour than I would like to admit poring over this situation in my mind. Who would do such a thing? When there are mats freely available to rent from the studio? Did they know they were doing something wrong, or did they somehow think it was OK? Weren't they worried that I would show up for the same class, find my mat missing, and catch them? Could the culprit be right there in class with me, on some other poor sap's mat?
But then, isn't the point of yoga to let stuff like this go? Inhale. I mean, who cares if someone used my mat? Exhale. Isn't the concept of owning a mat, having a cubby, just an illusion I cling to for security? Inhale. Because really, we don't own anything. Exhale. Everything is impermanent. Let it go.
What cooties did they deposit on my mat? How long has this been happening? Was it just once, or is it a repeat offender? Did they use just the other side, hoping I would not notice, or have both sides been used? WHY WOULD SOMEONE DO THIS?
Square your hips. Elongate your spine. Reach out through your fingertips. Twist deeper. Just fold.
Lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu. Om. Namaste.
At the front desk, the attendant is apologetic and hapless. "We are suggesting that everyone write their name on their mat. There is a marker hanging over there on the wall," he says. I thank him and trudge over to the marker hanging at the end of a string. The ink is appealingly silver and shiny, but I still don't want to use it. My initials gleam over the blue on the underside of the mat. I roll it just so, leaving the initials facing out of the cubby's edge.
It seems like my mat is usually untouched when I pick it up these days, but I have sort of let go of the idea that I am the only one using it. Om. Except that after labeling, I had the dream described above.
I know. I am ridiculous.
So I reveal this for your entertainment. But also to ask: What are your memories of cubbies?
Music: "Shanghai Drive" (no point really, just a sort of dreamy, disconnected-esque piece from Thomas Newman I like that seems to fit here)
In a general storage area underneath a staircase, I finally locate my mat. It is crumpled in a heap of others. When I pull it out, it is covered with fingerpaint and glitter: canvas for some kind of children's art project. Unacceptable!
I take the mat to the front desk, which happens to be at a wooden art table. "I'm sorry that happened," the desk attendant says after I show her the damage. The owner of the studio happens to be standing right there. "Creativity workshop," she stage whispers to the attendant, indicating that my compensation for the lost mat should be a free pass to an event that will surely involve the verb "journaling" and more of what is scattered all over my defaced yoga mat.
"No!" I rush to object. "No creativity workshop. I want a new mat." The dream ends before a resolution, but the feeling is that I will not get my way.
You are probably thinking, "Wow. I mean, really Christina? You're that bougie and neurotic that you're actually having an anxiety dream about yoga?"
Yes. Any other questions?
In real life, the Dupont Circle yoga studio that I frequent does have nice wooden cubbies with our names printed underneath them. The studio offers many small comforts (skylights, good teachers, Life Savers peppermints, nice smells, tea), but this particular one had gone unappreciated by me: When was the last time you had a cubby? A place with your name on it in a communal space that is safe enough to leave open, a place for your things, and your things only?
The last time for me was Seven Locks Elementary School. Mine was a double classroom that held three grades at once and was divided for organizational purposes into two colors: Blue and Green. Blue cubbies were on one side of the room, Green on the other. The cubbies smelled of laminated wood and books and pencil lead and erasers and sandwich bread and vinyl binders.
A cubby.
Lately the studio has gotten crowded, and the staff has resorted to using the very top of the two cubby units as storage space. So the people who joined late didn't get a cubby, they just got essentially a surface with their name under it. What will they do? I thought when I saw the storage issue. It is a small area, there is no room to add cubbies. My cubby space became more precious in my mind.
Then one day I come into the studio, retrieve my mat from my cubby, walk into class, unfurl it and... wait. It was a reversible mat, and it unfurled to the wrong side. Someone had used it. Someone had invaded the sanctity of my cubby.
I spent more of the next hour than I would like to admit poring over this situation in my mind. Who would do such a thing? When there are mats freely available to rent from the studio? Did they know they were doing something wrong, or did they somehow think it was OK? Weren't they worried that I would show up for the same class, find my mat missing, and catch them? Could the culprit be right there in class with me, on some other poor sap's mat?
But then, isn't the point of yoga to let stuff like this go? Inhale. I mean, who cares if someone used my mat? Exhale. Isn't the concept of owning a mat, having a cubby, just an illusion I cling to for security? Inhale. Because really, we don't own anything. Exhale. Everything is impermanent. Let it go.
What cooties did they deposit on my mat? How long has this been happening? Was it just once, or is it a repeat offender? Did they use just the other side, hoping I would not notice, or have both sides been used? WHY WOULD SOMEONE DO THIS?
Square your hips. Elongate your spine. Reach out through your fingertips. Twist deeper. Just fold.
What could the studio have done to prevent this? Nothing really that I can think of. I vaguely remembered seeing in one of the studio's e-newsletters something about a problem with people using others' mats and to make sure that your name was written on your mat. But that's dumb. I mean obviously it's my mat. It's sitting in my cubby. Somehow my affinity with revisiting elementary school ends at the point where I need to label my belongings.
Lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu. Om. Namaste.
At the front desk, the attendant is apologetic and hapless. "We are suggesting that everyone write their name on their mat. There is a marker hanging over there on the wall," he says. I thank him and trudge over to the marker hanging at the end of a string. The ink is appealingly silver and shiny, but I still don't want to use it. My initials gleam over the blue on the underside of the mat. I roll it just so, leaving the initials facing out of the cubby's edge.
It seems like my mat is usually untouched when I pick it up these days, but I have sort of let go of the idea that I am the only one using it. Om. Except that after labeling, I had the dream described above.
I know. I am ridiculous.
So I reveal this for your entertainment. But also to ask: What are your memories of cubbies?
Music: "Shanghai Drive" (no point really, just a sort of dreamy, disconnected-esque piece from Thomas Newman I like that seems to fit here)
Sunday, July 07, 2013
Music in Hudson Valley Episode of 'No Reservations'
You happen to be watching an old episode from 2010 of No Reservations. It's the one where Tony and company tour New York's Hudson Valley. At one point during the episode, he and Michael Ruhlman visit a creepy old hotel called the Mohonk Mountain House. The producers insist on using a creepy classical composition throughout the visit. It has low horns punctuated by bell chimes: a reckoning.
You've heard that music before. Damnit, where was it? Was it The Shining, a vibe they are obviously trying to simulate? Is it some creepy music from Eyes Wide Shut? No. No. You Google it. You look at IMDB. You look at the credits. You look at the show website. Maddeningly, you cannot find the theme, even as its tolling horn blasts taunt you. It was in a movie you saw... somewhere...
Finally it dawns on you. Julia Roberts looking scared. An empty house. YES! It was in Sleeping With the Enemy.
In case you were wondering.
Music: "Symphonie Fantastique, Fifth Movement," Berlioz
You've heard that music before. Damnit, where was it? Was it The Shining, a vibe they are obviously trying to simulate? Is it some creepy music from Eyes Wide Shut? No. No. You Google it. You look at IMDB. You look at the credits. You look at the show website. Maddeningly, you cannot find the theme, even as its tolling horn blasts taunt you. It was in a movie you saw... somewhere...
Finally it dawns on you. Julia Roberts looking scared. An empty house. YES! It was in Sleeping With the Enemy.
In case you were wondering.
Music: "Symphonie Fantastique, Fifth Movement," Berlioz
Sunday, June 30, 2013
The Cabbie's Lament.
7:00 pm, New York City on the last Friday night in June. Step out of the train, join the slow-moving herd of travelers and luggage inching through the hot bath of platform air and up a narrow stairway, navigate past at least four deeply disturbing spectacles in the human pinball machine that is Penn Station's main floor, and stand on the grimy escalator until it spits out into a new level of pinball game, the corner of Eighth Avenue and 33rd St.
Thanks to the car service Uber, the torturous line for taxis is one trial for which I no longer need to brace myself in a trip to New York. But Uber can bring its own surprises. Let's begin the journey.
I peer at my phone to see where Uber thinks I am. Nope. Some location that might be mythical. Wait a minute. The map updates. Yes, there I am, a blue dot outside Penn Station, lumbering slowly to the curb of 33rd. And a mere 1-minute wait for a black car! Yes!
Uber informs me that Ramon is on the way. I look for his license plate number and blink, not seeing it on the screen for a moment. Oh! NOSTRESS. That's his license plate. I like Ramon already. "No stress" is my mantra, even though it rarely works for me.
I see that Ramon is already parked right across from me on 33rd. What a treat! I hop across to where he is waiting and wave to the driver, a middle-aged man with a mustache. "Christina?" he says. "Look how fast we did that!" I smiled and said, "I like your license plate." Mutual triumph.
"Ha, yeah," Ramon said. "Let me just write this down and we'll be on our way." Ramon logs the trip quickly, turns on the air conditioner, and eases out into traffic.
The interior of the black SUV is calming: cool air and clean black leather. Ramon says he wants to cut over on one of the lower streets to my Upper East Side destination and "avoid that mess," waving toward Times Square. Ramon and I are of the same mind on preferred route. I settle in, grateful for a No Stress beginning to my NYC visit.
Ramon asks me some small-talk questions about where I am coming from, how my day is going, etc., but I keep the answers brief, not feeling like a chat. Ramon, however, is nothing if not a dedicated conversationalist, with "conversation" defined as an unending litany of woe.
"Friday, everybody fighting!" Ramon said. "Everybody in a hurry, getting mad, everybody has to get to their destination right away. Friday is the worst!" He informs me.
"That just sounds like New York every day, to me," I said. Ramon ignored me and went on. Everyone is fighting, making each other crazy, he continued. "For nothing! For no reason!"
It was clear now that Ramon's "no stress" motto was not working for him either. He was the most stressed guy in New York, and he was determined to let me know all about it.
"This Chinese lady. She wants to go all the way cross town in 15 minutes. 15 minutes! Ok, I tell her we go 31st because that's the fastest way. But then she arguing with me saying no, no, take 34th. I tell her no, 31st is traffic...."
Can you guess the outcome of this tale? That's right. Poor Ramon was right, they took 34th and it was horrible. I sat there murmuring and giving short answers, but after awhile it no longer mattered whether I was into the conversation. This guy clearly needed to vent.
Somewhere around East Midtown, I realized that this was not going to let up, so I decided to go with it. I asked Ramon whether most of his offending riders were New Yorkers, or out-of-towners, and hit the record button on my iPhone. This was his reply.
In case you couldn't catch it, at the point where I chuckle (0:37) he is saying, "You need helicopter, my friend." He winds up with "Jesus Christ," pronounced "Jesus Cry," an interjection he frequently used to emphasize the absurdity of his clients' desires.
Multiply this two minutes by 10, sprinkle with a couple of interludes of chilling, forced laughter, and you pretty much have my NOSTRESS ride, which culminated in an epic story about a standoff between this "white guy" (tip for disparaging all of humanity: always qualify with the race; it is more damning, no matter which race you are describing) who was kicking Ramon's car ("This is a new car! Come on.") because of where he was parked and the clock, which ticked away as Ramon waited for a hapless fare who could not locate him, despite his impeccable description of where he was waiting, and ultimately canceled the trip.
I tried to mollify him by saying what a great service Uber is. "It's a great service!" he agreed. But this got him on the topic of Uber's rating system. "Some people, they give you one star. Some people, they give you five star." (For the record, I gave him three.) He let me know of his low regard for the population of fares who did not want to have any conversation, a population to which I secretly belonged.
I bade Ramon a speedy farewell at the door, while he urged me in a somewhat martyred tone to enjoy the rest of my day. Was there any day left to enjoy? It didn't feel like there was.
Perhaps it is not fair, but since Ramon used me as his unwilling confessional, he is now my unwitting material on this blog. If you ever see this, Ramon, do not be offended. Simply use it as a story for your next fare. Start the story with: "This white lady, she think she's being funny..."
Music: "Leavin'," Jesse McCartney (2:25... "no stress no stress no stressss")
Thanks to the car service Uber, the torturous line for taxis is one trial for which I no longer need to brace myself in a trip to New York. But Uber can bring its own surprises. Let's begin the journey.
I peer at my phone to see where Uber thinks I am. Nope. Some location that might be mythical. Wait a minute. The map updates. Yes, there I am, a blue dot outside Penn Station, lumbering slowly to the curb of 33rd. And a mere 1-minute wait for a black car! Yes!
Uber informs me that Ramon is on the way. I look for his license plate number and blink, not seeing it on the screen for a moment. Oh! NOSTRESS. That's his license plate. I like Ramon already. "No stress" is my mantra, even though it rarely works for me.
I see that Ramon is already parked right across from me on 33rd. What a treat! I hop across to where he is waiting and wave to the driver, a middle-aged man with a mustache. "Christina?" he says. "Look how fast we did that!" I smiled and said, "I like your license plate." Mutual triumph.
"Ha, yeah," Ramon said. "Let me just write this down and we'll be on our way." Ramon logs the trip quickly, turns on the air conditioner, and eases out into traffic.
The interior of the black SUV is calming: cool air and clean black leather. Ramon says he wants to cut over on one of the lower streets to my Upper East Side destination and "avoid that mess," waving toward Times Square. Ramon and I are of the same mind on preferred route. I settle in, grateful for a No Stress beginning to my NYC visit.
Ramon asks me some small-talk questions about where I am coming from, how my day is going, etc., but I keep the answers brief, not feeling like a chat. Ramon, however, is nothing if not a dedicated conversationalist, with "conversation" defined as an unending litany of woe.
"Friday, everybody fighting!" Ramon said. "Everybody in a hurry, getting mad, everybody has to get to their destination right away. Friday is the worst!" He informs me.
"That just sounds like New York every day, to me," I said. Ramon ignored me and went on. Everyone is fighting, making each other crazy, he continued. "For nothing! For no reason!"
It was clear now that Ramon's "no stress" motto was not working for him either. He was the most stressed guy in New York, and he was determined to let me know all about it.
"This Chinese lady. She wants to go all the way cross town in 15 minutes. 15 minutes! Ok, I tell her we go 31st because that's the fastest way. But then she arguing with me saying no, no, take 34th. I tell her no, 31st is traffic...."
Can you guess the outcome of this tale? That's right. Poor Ramon was right, they took 34th and it was horrible. I sat there murmuring and giving short answers, but after awhile it no longer mattered whether I was into the conversation. This guy clearly needed to vent.
Somewhere around East Midtown, I realized that this was not going to let up, so I decided to go with it. I asked Ramon whether most of his offending riders were New Yorkers, or out-of-towners, and hit the record button on my iPhone. This was his reply.
In case you couldn't catch it, at the point where I chuckle (0:37) he is saying, "You need helicopter, my friend." He winds up with "Jesus Christ," pronounced "Jesus Cry," an interjection he frequently used to emphasize the absurdity of his clients' desires.
Multiply this two minutes by 10, sprinkle with a couple of interludes of chilling, forced laughter, and you pretty much have my NOSTRESS ride, which culminated in an epic story about a standoff between this "white guy" (tip for disparaging all of humanity: always qualify with the race; it is more damning, no matter which race you are describing) who was kicking Ramon's car ("This is a new car! Come on.") because of where he was parked and the clock, which ticked away as Ramon waited for a hapless fare who could not locate him, despite his impeccable description of where he was waiting, and ultimately canceled the trip.
I tried to mollify him by saying what a great service Uber is. "It's a great service!" he agreed. But this got him on the topic of Uber's rating system. "Some people, they give you one star. Some people, they give you five star." (For the record, I gave him three.) He let me know of his low regard for the population of fares who did not want to have any conversation, a population to which I secretly belonged.
I bade Ramon a speedy farewell at the door, while he urged me in a somewhat martyred tone to enjoy the rest of my day. Was there any day left to enjoy? It didn't feel like there was.
Perhaps it is not fair, but since Ramon used me as his unwilling confessional, he is now my unwitting material on this blog. If you ever see this, Ramon, do not be offended. Simply use it as a story for your next fare. Start the story with: "This white lady, she think she's being funny..."
Music: "Leavin'," Jesse McCartney (2:25... "no stress no stress no stressss")
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
"What Is Hoarding?"
My mom asked this question rhetorically one weekend as I sorted through a box containing, among other things, nearly every single birthday card I had ever received. You know, just the kind of chit-chat that comes up when contemplating a box that happens to contain blank stationery from 1982.
Let me start by saying that no home in my immediate family has ever been touched by the type of hoarding that deeply affects lives and makes for sordid television shows. I have known people with real hoarders in their families — my ex and one of my best friends among them —and it's not a joking matter. (Well actually, they have joked about it, but I can't. So let's move on.)
Those shows, and those examples, can convince an average person who hangs on to things too long that there's really nothing to address. The home has clear pathways and is not sanitation hazard. The home may also be your parents' home, where you do not live but where you store a few "keepsakes." So what if there are a few full boxes in the closets, and possibly a Naf Naf shirt from 1986? Nothing to see here, people! Fully functional, that's me. Oh, and by the way, I can't stand clutter. In my place.
My mom and I have both been (jokingly, sort of) accused of hoarding by other family members. What this tells me is that the condition is possibly hereditary, and therefore I bear little to no responsibility for whatever tendencies I display. (Right Mom?)
I'll admit that I wondered what would happen when she retired. Controlled chaos hid behind closed doors for many years: kitchen cabinets were crammed with towers of Tupperware and unmatched lids, not to mention a bunch of expired food; basement closets harbored untold amounts of clothing.
One of the first things she did upon retiring was to clean that stuff out.
I'll admit that surprised me a little. If I had just retired, maybe I'd just alternate going to the gym with lying around a lot, and get to the stuff behind closed doors later (not unlike what I do as an unretired person on weekends). But she was ON IT. Like, within the first week.
She says now that she didn't realize how stressed she was when she was working, and how much it prevented her from dealing with stuff like Glad containers, tomatoes from 2006 and seven-year-old walnut oil (left there by her daughter, UncMo).
It was relatively easy to deal with the kitchen stuff. The clothes were another matter. "Clothes are my identity," she said. I could not judge, knowing that I had a stash of Esprit, Firenza, Guess and other labels (hello Naf Naf) meant to preserve my '80s identity. It's hard to throw away clothes of any kind, much less clothes that are in perfectly good condition, much less clothes that still fit, convincing you that if you could just donned the right outfit, you just might be teleported right back to your younger bod in the '80s, yet suffused with the wisdom and self-possession of your later years. Too much to ask?
But the key problem for me was, and always has been, paper. I grew up in an era that required it, and I saved it all: the birthday cards, the birthday newspapers, the letters, the resumes, the pamphlets, the brochures, notebooks, diaries, journals, the letters, the resumes, the Playbills, the stickers, bank statements, phone bills, credit card statements, pay stubs, my first bylined stories, more letters—you get the idea. (The class picture below, on top of the Penn graduation pamphlet and the candy cigarettes, is Sir UncMo's. I have extended, as a courtesy, hoarding privileges to his past as well.)
.JPG)
This all fits in a bedroom closet at my parents' house, far away from my actual (sort of) neat abode. It even fits with the records and books of mine that my dad, lacking any hoarding projects of his own to tackle upon retirement, took it upon himself to box up and stow away. It fits, but I know it's all there. Now, when I visit my parents on weekends, I often make it a point to wade through one of the many closeted piles of paper. (Sometimes I make some discoveries, and sometimes, as above, I end up bringing a select number of things in shoeboxes to my own closet, pretending that I've dealt with them.)
When I was a kid, I saved candy and gum wrappers. So, if you can picture it, I had a dresser full of clothes, and in the bottom drawer, I had maybe two small boxes (one of them was definitely a Barbie box) crammed with one representative wrapper of every bit of candy or gum I had ever consumed. Bazooka, Dubble Bubble, candy corn, Reese's, et cetera.
To me then, it was basically a way of cataloging my love for sweets. It was my Evernote Food, expressed via one ridiculous collage of waxed, colored paper. I still remember, as a kid, opening the bottom drawer of my dresser and seeing all those wrappers pressed behind the cellophane window that was meant to display a Barbie, and feeling a mixture of satisfaction and shame. The satisfaction was for what a good job I had done of cataloging my consumption. The shame was from knowing, vaguely, that it was not "normal."
That's right! I know what you're thinking: Today, that 11-year-old would have pharmaceutical assistance. Too late, friends!
Flash forward about 10 years. I'm done with college. My parents came to graduation, ready to help me pack up. "I knew you were depressed when I saw your room," my mom said later. It was a corner room on the ground floor of a group house in West Philadelphia, bars on the window, with a loft bed, where I read Sylvia Plath a little too closely (who's depressed?). It wasn't that I had accumulated very much. It was more that the room was a mess, and I had not bothered to pack a thing, even though I knew I was leaving. And my mom was right. I was abjectly depressed. You can't see these things in the moment. You have to look at them later and realize that you were a frog in boiling water.
This is where the question of "what is hoarding" gets interesting, to me. Are you holding on to a past you can no longer revisit? Are you just too tired to deal with the accumulation of stuff? Or is it a combination of both? What is your physical environment telling you about the mental?
Either way, my view now, in no small part because of that college insight from my mom, is that your physical environment reflects your current state of mind. Are you accumulating clutter and disorganized, or are you neat and up-to-date? Are you editing your life, regularly, in every way, or are you getting sloppy? Conversely, is your space so sparse or tightly controlled that there is no room for imperfection or spontaneity?
Now, like my mom, I resort to organizing my oversupply of beauty products and giving away clothing when things start feeling hectic. But I still possess, at the top corner of my closet, a shoebox with candy cigarettes in it (those things keep!). And I may or may not have rescued some perfectly fine McCormick Italian Seasoning of undetermined vintage from my mom's kitchen cabinet. I don't save too much paper these days, but I do hoard digital conversations, including chats with Sir UncMo. I know that we are meant to live in the present, but I may never let go of my need to preserve the past. Especially when it involves people who mean a lot to me.
All I ever wanted to do by saving things was to hold on to my life, the life that is slipping away every single minute of every day, inexorably, which I've known ever since the day in third grade that elementary school let out for summer and I was the only kid who wasn't happy it was over, because I realized, with devastating certainty, that I would never have another year quite like that one, never be a child again, and didn't even comprehend yet that the days were numbered where someone would put pen to paper, just for me, leaving an envelope to be opened.
Music: "Smoke"
Let me start by saying that no home in my immediate family has ever been touched by the type of hoarding that deeply affects lives and makes for sordid television shows. I have known people with real hoarders in their families — my ex and one of my best friends among them —and it's not a joking matter. (Well actually, they have joked about it, but I can't. So let's move on.)
Those shows, and those examples, can convince an average person who hangs on to things too long that there's really nothing to address. The home has clear pathways and is not sanitation hazard. The home may also be your parents' home, where you do not live but where you store a few "keepsakes." So what if there are a few full boxes in the closets, and possibly a Naf Naf shirt from 1986? Nothing to see here, people! Fully functional, that's me. Oh, and by the way, I can't stand clutter. In my place.
My mom and I have both been (jokingly, sort of) accused of hoarding by other family members. What this tells me is that the condition is possibly hereditary, and therefore I bear little to no responsibility for whatever tendencies I display. (Right Mom?)
I'll admit that I wondered what would happen when she retired. Controlled chaos hid behind closed doors for many years: kitchen cabinets were crammed with towers of Tupperware and unmatched lids, not to mention a bunch of expired food; basement closets harbored untold amounts of clothing.
One of the first things she did upon retiring was to clean that stuff out.
I'll admit that surprised me a little. If I had just retired, maybe I'd just alternate going to the gym with lying around a lot, and get to the stuff behind closed doors later (not unlike what I do as an unretired person on weekends). But she was ON IT. Like, within the first week.
She says now that she didn't realize how stressed she was when she was working, and how much it prevented her from dealing with stuff like Glad containers, tomatoes from 2006 and seven-year-old walnut oil (left there by her daughter, UncMo).
It was relatively easy to deal with the kitchen stuff. The clothes were another matter. "Clothes are my identity," she said. I could not judge, knowing that I had a stash of Esprit, Firenza, Guess and other labels (hello Naf Naf) meant to preserve my '80s identity. It's hard to throw away clothes of any kind, much less clothes that are in perfectly good condition, much less clothes that still fit, convincing you that if you could just donned the right outfit, you just might be teleported right back to your younger bod in the '80s, yet suffused with the wisdom and self-possession of your later years. Too much to ask?
But the key problem for me was, and always has been, paper. I grew up in an era that required it, and I saved it all: the birthday cards, the birthday newspapers, the letters, the resumes, the pamphlets, the brochures, notebooks, diaries, journals, the letters, the resumes, the Playbills, the stickers, bank statements, phone bills, credit card statements, pay stubs, my first bylined stories, more letters—you get the idea. (The class picture below, on top of the Penn graduation pamphlet and the candy cigarettes, is Sir UncMo's. I have extended, as a courtesy, hoarding privileges to his past as well.)
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This all fits in a bedroom closet at my parents' house, far away from my actual (sort of) neat abode. It even fits with the records and books of mine that my dad, lacking any hoarding projects of his own to tackle upon retirement, took it upon himself to box up and stow away. It fits, but I know it's all there. Now, when I visit my parents on weekends, I often make it a point to wade through one of the many closeted piles of paper. (Sometimes I make some discoveries, and sometimes, as above, I end up bringing a select number of things in shoeboxes to my own closet, pretending that I've dealt with them.)
When I was a kid, I saved candy and gum wrappers. So, if you can picture it, I had a dresser full of clothes, and in the bottom drawer, I had maybe two small boxes (one of them was definitely a Barbie box) crammed with one representative wrapper of every bit of candy or gum I had ever consumed. Bazooka, Dubble Bubble, candy corn, Reese's, et cetera.
To me then, it was basically a way of cataloging my love for sweets. It was my Evernote Food, expressed via one ridiculous collage of waxed, colored paper. I still remember, as a kid, opening the bottom drawer of my dresser and seeing all those wrappers pressed behind the cellophane window that was meant to display a Barbie, and feeling a mixture of satisfaction and shame. The satisfaction was for what a good job I had done of cataloging my consumption. The shame was from knowing, vaguely, that it was not "normal."
That's right! I know what you're thinking: Today, that 11-year-old would have pharmaceutical assistance. Too late, friends!
Flash forward about 10 years. I'm done with college. My parents came to graduation, ready to help me pack up. "I knew you were depressed when I saw your room," my mom said later. It was a corner room on the ground floor of a group house in West Philadelphia, bars on the window, with a loft bed, where I read Sylvia Plath a little too closely (who's depressed?). It wasn't that I had accumulated very much. It was more that the room was a mess, and I had not bothered to pack a thing, even though I knew I was leaving. And my mom was right. I was abjectly depressed. You can't see these things in the moment. You have to look at them later and realize that you were a frog in boiling water.
This is where the question of "what is hoarding" gets interesting, to me. Are you holding on to a past you can no longer revisit? Are you just too tired to deal with the accumulation of stuff? Or is it a combination of both? What is your physical environment telling you about the mental?
Either way, my view now, in no small part because of that college insight from my mom, is that your physical environment reflects your current state of mind. Are you accumulating clutter and disorganized, or are you neat and up-to-date? Are you editing your life, regularly, in every way, or are you getting sloppy? Conversely, is your space so sparse or tightly controlled that there is no room for imperfection or spontaneity?
Now, like my mom, I resort to organizing my oversupply of beauty products and giving away clothing when things start feeling hectic. But I still possess, at the top corner of my closet, a shoebox with candy cigarettes in it (those things keep!). And I may or may not have rescued some perfectly fine McCormick Italian Seasoning of undetermined vintage from my mom's kitchen cabinet. I don't save too much paper these days, but I do hoard digital conversations, including chats with Sir UncMo. I know that we are meant to live in the present, but I may never let go of my need to preserve the past. Especially when it involves people who mean a lot to me.
All I ever wanted to do by saving things was to hold on to my life, the life that is slipping away every single minute of every day, inexorably, which I've known ever since the day in third grade that elementary school let out for summer and I was the only kid who wasn't happy it was over, because I realized, with devastating certainty, that I would never have another year quite like that one, never be a child again, and didn't even comprehend yet that the days were numbered where someone would put pen to paper, just for me, leaving an envelope to be opened.
Music: "Smoke"
Sunday, April 14, 2013
The Hour Is Striking.
Recently I came across some old copies of my high school's literary magazine.
My thought was the same as yours: poetry by teens. How embarrassing.
I knew I had a poem in there somewhere. It was terrible. Here's the first reason why: It was a "found poem." That's where you don't actually write anything yourself. You just string together things that other people wrote and call it your own. Here's the second reason: I found mine in Elle magazine. That's right. I took selections of the silly copy that filled a women's fashion magazine and strung it together to make a tapestry of bad puns and excessive alliteration.
Here's what I remember about high school creative writing class: I struggled to get a poem or story of any kind accepted for publication in Erehwon (you know, that's nowhere backwards); my teacher was one of the "cool" teachers who liked to wear a purple bandanna as a scarf and was either dating or worshiping the DC poet, teacher and publisher Richard Peabody, I can't remember which; we read a lot of Raymond Carver and once listened as a class to Jimi Hendrix's "Crosstown Traffic" to learn about metaphor; I was a good student and praised writer who somehow was not doing very well at writing creatively, at least in that milieu. I wanted to be doing better.
I had mixed feelings when that one poem got accepted into Erehwon because I knew it was by far my dumbest one, and that I had written other poems, real poems, and yet those were not good enough. You can witness the terribleness below:
As I paged through the old copies, the names came flooding back of the students who always won the "awards" that a panel of adults would give to what they deemed the best pieces in the magazine. Those entries in the table of contents got an asterisk next to them. And you know, a lot of the writing wasn't bad for a bunch of precocious teenagers. Many of the bylines in that magazine belonged to people who later became magazine editors, published authors, independent writers.
I continued to study poetry, and to write poems, most of them appalling, but it was an outlet. It takes a supreme amount of talent and self-confidence to be a poet. Basically, you are assuming that you have such a masterful command of language that you will be able to paint the same picture that others paint with a far larger number of words, and do so without being melodramatic, obtuse, or ridiculous.
I have only ever met one ordinary person who wrote poetry and was actually a stunning poet. We worked together. He was a kind of rumpled, often funny copy editor. One day he came up to my desk while we were working a weekend news shift and said, "Want to hear a poem?"
"Sure," I said.
He proceeded to reel off, by heart, a poem he had written. I was prepared for a joke at best, a supremely awkward moment at worst. I was not prepared for the poem to take my breath away. It was not a poem for me, nor was it a particularly romantic one. It was just an exceedingly good piece of work.
"That was really good," I said, my mouth open.
"Thanks," he said, and ambled back to his desk. I subsequently developed a crush and dating interlude that was annoying and inconsequential, except that this person introduced me to Haruki Murakami and Frank O'Hara, which is very consequential.
Poetry can make you into a sucker.
In my thirties I tried to keep my love of poetry alive, but volumes sat like museum pieces, unread. I would cut out the odd New Yorker poem, but stopped trying to learn about the authors. Today I regularly focus long enough to get through an article in that magazine (no small task), but even skimming the poems feels like a chore. It seems, now, harder to spend extra time on just a few lines of text, when there are so many other short phrases to wade through on Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the Internets that yield their meanings so easily and cheaply.
I never found my found poem in those three unearthed copies of Erehwon (Deborah later did, above). After staring at them for awhile, I put them into the recycling.
Then the next day I came across a poem in Yoga International of all places, a magazine I happened to buy at a Houston newsstand while killing time on business trip.
The Hour Is Striking
The hour is striking so close above me,
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now; there's a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world.
I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
Maybe it is not time, after all, to put away poetry for good.
Audio: "Having a Coke With You"
* Erehwon PTSA Award winner
My thought was the same as yours: poetry by teens. How embarrassing.
I knew I had a poem in there somewhere. It was terrible. Here's the first reason why: It was a "found poem." That's where you don't actually write anything yourself. You just string together things that other people wrote and call it your own. Here's the second reason: I found mine in Elle magazine. That's right. I took selections of the silly copy that filled a women's fashion magazine and strung it together to make a tapestry of bad puns and excessive alliteration.
Here's what I remember about high school creative writing class: I struggled to get a poem or story of any kind accepted for publication in Erehwon (you know, that's nowhere backwards); my teacher was one of the "cool" teachers who liked to wear a purple bandanna as a scarf and was either dating or worshiping the DC poet, teacher and publisher Richard Peabody, I can't remember which; we read a lot of Raymond Carver and once listened as a class to Jimi Hendrix's "Crosstown Traffic" to learn about metaphor; I was a good student and praised writer who somehow was not doing very well at writing creatively, at least in that milieu. I wanted to be doing better.
I had mixed feelings when that one poem got accepted into Erehwon because I knew it was by far my dumbest one, and that I had written other poems, real poems, and yet those were not good enough. You can witness the terribleness below:
 |
| Photo courtesy Deborah Wassertzug* |
As I paged through the old copies, the names came flooding back of the students who always won the "awards" that a panel of adults would give to what they deemed the best pieces in the magazine. Those entries in the table of contents got an asterisk next to them. And you know, a lot of the writing wasn't bad for a bunch of precocious teenagers. Many of the bylines in that magazine belonged to people who later became magazine editors, published authors, independent writers.
I continued to study poetry, and to write poems, most of them appalling, but it was an outlet. It takes a supreme amount of talent and self-confidence to be a poet. Basically, you are assuming that you have such a masterful command of language that you will be able to paint the same picture that others paint with a far larger number of words, and do so without being melodramatic, obtuse, or ridiculous.
I have only ever met one ordinary person who wrote poetry and was actually a stunning poet. We worked together. He was a kind of rumpled, often funny copy editor. One day he came up to my desk while we were working a weekend news shift and said, "Want to hear a poem?"
"Sure," I said.
He proceeded to reel off, by heart, a poem he had written. I was prepared for a joke at best, a supremely awkward moment at worst. I was not prepared for the poem to take my breath away. It was not a poem for me, nor was it a particularly romantic one. It was just an exceedingly good piece of work.
"That was really good," I said, my mouth open.
"Thanks," he said, and ambled back to his desk. I subsequently developed a crush and dating interlude that was annoying and inconsequential, except that this person introduced me to Haruki Murakami and Frank O'Hara, which is very consequential.
Poetry can make you into a sucker.
In my thirties I tried to keep my love of poetry alive, but volumes sat like museum pieces, unread. I would cut out the odd New Yorker poem, but stopped trying to learn about the authors. Today I regularly focus long enough to get through an article in that magazine (no small task), but even skimming the poems feels like a chore. It seems, now, harder to spend extra time on just a few lines of text, when there are so many other short phrases to wade through on Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the Internets that yield their meanings so easily and cheaply.
I never found my found poem in those three unearthed copies of Erehwon (Deborah later did, above). After staring at them for awhile, I put them into the recycling.
Then the next day I came across a poem in Yoga International of all places, a magazine I happened to buy at a Houston newsstand while killing time on business trip.
The Hour Is Striking
The hour is striking so close above me,
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now; there's a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world.
I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
Maybe it is not time, after all, to put away poetry for good.
Audio: "Having a Coke With You"
Thursday, November 15, 2012
How's It Going?
Lately I am feeling especially chatty, and yet I do not want to alienate people on Facebook, so I turn to you, my friendly and ever-patient blog audience of, I don't know, three? Anyway, let's get started.
Honking
Is it just me or are people honking more lately in D.C.? Is it because it's the holidays? Is it because of the end of daylight savings? Is it Republicans? I was walking by an intersection and some town car driver had spaced on a green light and the guy behind him, who was in some fancy-looking silver car, was really peeved about it. He leaned on the horn a good five seconds to let this guy know, "Hey, you are a real jerk for not immediately putting your foot on the gas pedal for this green light, and I am not going to stand for it one more second. I am personally OFFENDED by your lack of urgency, and I am lodging a protest right here." The best part was that, when the town car finally got moving, both cars turned right into another red light (this was at that weird Flatiron-building-like spot in DC by the bank converted into a Starbucks where Connecticut meets N and 18th Streets), and the honker had to slam on his brakes when he realized that for all of his effort he had moved a mere six feet only to wait at a new red light, which the town car would presumably extend once again for an agonizing three seconds.
I always like to try to get a good look at people who behave this way (and I try to remember that as a former car commuter, I almost certainly have behaved this way more than once). The yoga-practicing and Buddhism-dabbling side of me knows that I should be sending this person good vibes and really hoping that they can breathe out some of their Suffering and maybe like if I dedicate my Open Flow practice to them or some bs like that, they will find it within themselves not to honk the horn so obnoxiously tomorrow. But really I am just curious to see what people look like when they go buck wild for a really small reason. Some people are visibly upset and cursing silently behind their windows. Some are yelling audibly, usually with an arm/hand gesture to match. But some -- like this guy today -- are just blank-faced masks. They could be listening to NPR or they could be contemplating a sunrise, or they could be unleashing the full fury of their car horn on a hapless fellow driver. You would never know from their expressions. These last people, I'm convinced, are psychopathic.
As much as I do not like exposure to blaring horns, there is a level on which witnessing another person's rage eases my own. There were probably at least six things I was angry about when tonight's honker interrupted my reverie, giving me a break. Thank you, rageful honker.
My coworker was apologizing to me yesterday for constantly talking to herself because she is upset about our other coworker's noise. But I had been so rageful about our other coworker's noise that I hadn't even noticed her talking. Now that she told me she mutters to herself about it, I spend (just slightly) more time noticing that and being amused about it than I do being enraged by our speakerphone-dialing, outburst-producing, loud-conversation-having cohort. Thank you, partner in rage!
Winter Uniform
In the Whole Foods tonight there were so many white chicks with straight hair, puffy jackets and black workout leggings that I was glad Sir UncMo wasn't there because he could have left with the wrong woman by accident. It is a little weird to realize that you are wearing a uniform/personifying a stereotype and yet are too old and complacent to really care or do anything about it.
Coco
I'll just say it: I like Coco Austin (and yes, I looked up her last name) of Ice Loves Coco. Judge. Judge away! Have you watched the show? If not, leave me be. If so, tell me you are not in her corner. I realize I am now talking to zero people. But what I like about her is that, like Dolly Parton, she is all facade but no pretense. She looks fake but comes across real. She married a black man and is friends with black people, and yet she never once sounds like anything but a white girl, even though she lives in a world filled with white people who try to sound like black people because they apparently think it makes them cool. She unabashedly admits that she does not want kids at 33 (I have a soft spot for that) and unabashedly admits that she IS 33 and unabashedly admits that she always wanted to be a meteorologist but she doesn't "know the words." What's not to like? (Side note: I once interviewed Ice T in his hotel room and he started off the interview but asking me -- I think I am remembering this right -- what I thought of two women together., or something along those lines. I would like to hate him for trying to rattle me like that, but I took it in stride at the time and he was perfectly agreeable after that, and this was before he was with Coco, so I don't really bear him any ill will.)
Black Friday
Are you a Black Friday person? Were you ever a Black Friday person? Like, before it was Black Friday? I used to get a perverse pleasure out of heading to Montgomery Mall, my home mall, on the day after Thanksgiving. Everyone already knew at that point (in the '90s) that it was just plain stupid to head out shopping on that day. But it didn't have a name yet. For me, it wasn't about deals. It was about wading in, about opening the floodgates, allowing oneself to be smacked in the face (in a good way) by the holidays. Back then, it wasn't a marketing event called Black Friday. It was just good old-fashioned masochism. I miss that.
This is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. To recap: experiencing someone else's anger often eases mine. Thank you Facebook and Deborah Wassertzug.
Music: "Don't Judge Me"
Honking
Is it just me or are people honking more lately in D.C.? Is it because it's the holidays? Is it because of the end of daylight savings? Is it Republicans? I was walking by an intersection and some town car driver had spaced on a green light and the guy behind him, who was in some fancy-looking silver car, was really peeved about it. He leaned on the horn a good five seconds to let this guy know, "Hey, you are a real jerk for not immediately putting your foot on the gas pedal for this green light, and I am not going to stand for it one more second. I am personally OFFENDED by your lack of urgency, and I am lodging a protest right here." The best part was that, when the town car finally got moving, both cars turned right into another red light (this was at that weird Flatiron-building-like spot in DC by the bank converted into a Starbucks where Connecticut meets N and 18th Streets), and the honker had to slam on his brakes when he realized that for all of his effort he had moved a mere six feet only to wait at a new red light, which the town car would presumably extend once again for an agonizing three seconds.
I always like to try to get a good look at people who behave this way (and I try to remember that as a former car commuter, I almost certainly have behaved this way more than once). The yoga-practicing and Buddhism-dabbling side of me knows that I should be sending this person good vibes and really hoping that they can breathe out some of their Suffering and maybe like if I dedicate my Open Flow practice to them or some bs like that, they will find it within themselves not to honk the horn so obnoxiously tomorrow. But really I am just curious to see what people look like when they go buck wild for a really small reason. Some people are visibly upset and cursing silently behind their windows. Some are yelling audibly, usually with an arm/hand gesture to match. But some -- like this guy today -- are just blank-faced masks. They could be listening to NPR or they could be contemplating a sunrise, or they could be unleashing the full fury of their car horn on a hapless fellow driver. You would never know from their expressions. These last people, I'm convinced, are psychopathic.
As much as I do not like exposure to blaring horns, there is a level on which witnessing another person's rage eases my own. There were probably at least six things I was angry about when tonight's honker interrupted my reverie, giving me a break. Thank you, rageful honker.
My coworker was apologizing to me yesterday for constantly talking to herself because she is upset about our other coworker's noise. But I had been so rageful about our other coworker's noise that I hadn't even noticed her talking. Now that she told me she mutters to herself about it, I spend (just slightly) more time noticing that and being amused about it than I do being enraged by our speakerphone-dialing, outburst-producing, loud-conversation-having cohort. Thank you, partner in rage!
Winter Uniform
In the Whole Foods tonight there were so many white chicks with straight hair, puffy jackets and black workout leggings that I was glad Sir UncMo wasn't there because he could have left with the wrong woman by accident. It is a little weird to realize that you are wearing a uniform/personifying a stereotype and yet are too old and complacent to really care or do anything about it.
Coco
I'll just say it: I like Coco Austin (and yes, I looked up her last name) of Ice Loves Coco. Judge. Judge away! Have you watched the show? If not, leave me be. If so, tell me you are not in her corner. I realize I am now talking to zero people. But what I like about her is that, like Dolly Parton, she is all facade but no pretense. She looks fake but comes across real. She married a black man and is friends with black people, and yet she never once sounds like anything but a white girl, even though she lives in a world filled with white people who try to sound like black people because they apparently think it makes them cool. She unabashedly admits that she does not want kids at 33 (I have a soft spot for that) and unabashedly admits that she IS 33 and unabashedly admits that she always wanted to be a meteorologist but she doesn't "know the words." What's not to like? (Side note: I once interviewed Ice T in his hotel room and he started off the interview but asking me -- I think I am remembering this right -- what I thought of two women together., or something along those lines. I would like to hate him for trying to rattle me like that, but I took it in stride at the time and he was perfectly agreeable after that, and this was before he was with Coco, so I don't really bear him any ill will.)
Black Friday
Are you a Black Friday person? Were you ever a Black Friday person? Like, before it was Black Friday? I used to get a perverse pleasure out of heading to Montgomery Mall, my home mall, on the day after Thanksgiving. Everyone already knew at that point (in the '90s) that it was just plain stupid to head out shopping on that day. But it didn't have a name yet. For me, it wasn't about deals. It was about wading in, about opening the floodgates, allowing oneself to be smacked in the face (in a good way) by the holidays. Back then, it wasn't a marketing event called Black Friday. It was just good old-fashioned masochism. I miss that.
This is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. To recap: experiencing someone else's anger often eases mine. Thank you Facebook and Deborah Wassertzug.
Music: "Don't Judge Me"
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Moments.
Just because I've been completely MIA doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about posting here for quite some time.
The fact is, I'm as lost and neurotic as ever. It's just that, as I get older, I get more isolated about it.
But enough about that. Here's a selection of photos from the past few months.
This photo was taken during SXSW in Austin, Texas, this year. Some people who have not been to SXSW will say, "Wow, you went to SXSW? Cool, how was it?" These people do not understand a few things: a) I was there for the interactive conference, which is WAY less cool than the music conference; b) it rained the entire time, relentlessly; c) it was so overcrowded that people were waiting in line for half a day (no exaggeration) to pick up their badges so that they could go listen to people hype themselves in onstage events with names like "Gamify and Socialize: Beyond the Buzzwords"; d) it was so overcrowded that many of us had to stay in amazing airbnb situations (mine involved colored lightbulbs, black towels and unfortunate carpeting). Many people (such as myself) cope with this situation by consuming unhealthy amounts of barbecued meats, TexMex and alcohol. So much so that a street sign offering "health food" attracts my interest and confusion, until I see that "health food" in Austin means "chile rellenos, chalupas and chilaquiles."
Chilaquiles was my last dish upon leaving Austin. Boarding the plane, I gripped a shopping bag full of almonds, apples and other wholesome snacks from Whole Foods. The bag was given to me by a vegetarian acquaintance who felt she needed to intervene.
This picture is of an Angry Little Girls tote at a Japanese store in DC. I like that it is angry and cute and expresses an emotional reality.
If you ever go to San Francisco, it is imperative that you go to Japantown. The above image, from one location of the Maido stationery store (visit both, located in the mall) is one reason why. There, you will find amazing karaoke, superlative stickers and notebooks (see lower image), and BANAO, the elite banana. We know how you feel.
This is a porno carrot. It is all natural. No enhancements.
In 2011, a mama duck took up residence at National Geographic with her ducklings. It was a dismal spring overall, and the duck family brightened my spirits immensely. As winter transitioned to spring this year, I waited for the mama duck to return. She did, but just hours after this shot she escaped to the White House lawn. I was so sad when the family left. The staff at Nat Geo had even made a ramp to the water for the ducklings, as you can see.
This is a terrible piece of "art" in a window in Austin. It grabs your attention first my startling you with its ugliness, then intriguing you with the real-life photo next to it. Keep Austin Weird? Hm.
Tragically, Sheila was near the window during Hurricane Sandy and developed frightening growths of mold, so she had to be retired the day before Halloween. Sheila, you brightened our lives for the short time that you were here.
Music: "Bloodstream"
Monday, September 10, 2012
Bang.
Gilbert Indoor Range sits at the end of a cul de sac in Rockville, Md., about a half hour from Washington, D.C., and a short detour off Rockville Pike, a traffic-clogged, obscenely ugly strip of big-box stores and car dealerships. The low, concrete building sits on a side street that is very quiet except for the persistent, startling "pop" sounds that become audible once you get to the parking lot.
Did you know that shooting a gun is so commonplace and accessible in America that there are Groupons for it? I didn't, until my sister gave Sir UncMo one as a gift for his birthday: a shooting range experience for two, value $123, for just $45. My sister, who lives in Gaithersburg, married a gun lover over a decade ago and has since become certified as a gun range marshal (can't remember whether it's at Gilbert's or another range). I don't really know what this means, other than I probably shouldn't ever anger my sister.
Sir UncMo's interest in shooting is just one of the many ways he has endeared himself to members of my family, and my sister's gift was a thoughtful one. So despite my antipathy toward gun ownership, and my complete lack of interest in firing anything unless it is a gas stove or an aromatherapy candle, we were bound for Gilbert's. I put off booking our appointment for so long that the Groupon had expired by the time I called, but Gilbert's was so overwhelmed with response to the Groupon that it extended the expiration date to accommodate everyone.
In case you haven't guessed as much by now, I was kind of dreading this whole thing. I pictured going into a gross industrial building (accurate), sitting through some training that would be painfully boring (partially accurate), making some kind of horrible or embarrassing mistake or, worse, beng the victim of one (not accurate), hanging around a bunch of pasty, pants-hitching, middle-aged males (partially accurate), witnessing something or someone really creepy (accurate) and/or generally losing my shit in response to some previously unknown deep emotional response to firing a deadly weapon (not accurate). I was hiding these thoughts from Sir UncMo and staying mostly upbeat because it was his birthday present and he was looking forward to it. My inauthenticity made it that much more stressful.
We walked in and approached the front desk. Picture the last time you went bowling, ice-skating or mini-golfing, and you've got the sign-in at Gilbert's: crummy, expansive front desk with cubbies, stain-proof industrial carpeting, affable staff dudes who have seen a million jokers just like you come through the door, death-and-injury waivers that you don't read, rental equipment that you hope has been thoroughly sanitized but probably hasn't.
So far, pretty unremarkable. The relentless gunfire sounds receded into the background as we focused on signing in. After the paperwork, we were directed to room where we would watch a safety video, take a quiz on said video, and receive some training. On the way to the room, we saw this:
.JPG)
Those squares under the animal heads are photos of Mr. Gilbert, I presume, with the original kill. All of the photos looked like they were from the 80s. The man in the photos held the freshly killed animal intimately, as if it were a lover.
Here was the element of "gun culture" that I anticipated and feared. I am completely ignorant about gun culture. But when I allow my ignorance to overtake my perception of how gun enthusiasts must think, I picture either something like this or something like Columbine. Something like a higher regard for destruction and artificial glory than for living things.
The class consisted of one teddy-bear-like black guy, two giggling black women in scrubs, a quiet Asian couple, Sir UncMo and me (Asian and white). I break all this down because I will admit to being mildly surprised that there were not more white dudes.
Goggles and protective headphones were distributed. We were all handed wipe-off markers and a multiple-choice quiz in laminated plastic. The vestigial part of me that did well in school wanted to go ahead and answer all the questions before watching the video, sure that I was smart enough to guess at these questions without watching the video. I mean, how hard could it be? Sir UncMo had the same impulse, knowing a ton about guns. But as we watched the poor-quality video being projected from a laptop on Windows Media Player, we realized we had some wrong guesses. We couldn't figure out the proper order among the multiple choice answers for unloading a handgun on our own, and they had some other tricky questions in there about the rules. The quiz wasn't "hard," but enough to make you pay attention if you're tempted to be an arrogant jerk like I was.
After the video, a jocular guy came in (I think someone else said it was Mr. Gilbert, who I think was also the one in the photos with the animals, but there was no way of connecting for sure the '80s safari guy in the photos with the smallish, older man in black who talked to us), went over the quiz answers (no one checked to see whether we had gotten any wrong), and shared enough anecdotes about people waving their guns around and holding their guns improperly that we all laughed knowingly and internally vowed not to be the one who shoots oneself in the face or injures a thumb because of an improper grip.
We were informed that we would be shooting .22 caliber handguns. "Don't worry," Sir UncMo reassured me. "A .22 is like a BB gun. It's nothing." He smiled with confidence. I stared blankly, not reassured. Couldn't a .22 still kill someone if misused?
At one point the instructor asked whether we knew which eye was dominant, and then told us how to judge: set your sight on one thing in the distance, cup your hands around that thing like you're making a viewfinder, and then close each eye to see which one got it right. I got put on the spot and was totally flustered, raising my right hand instead of my left, covering the wrong eye, etc. It was not looking good for me. If I couldn't even tell my right from my left, how could I be entrusted with a dangerous weapon?
The instructor seemed not at all concerned about our mental acuity. He made jokes and seemed utterly relaxed as he left us rubes to handle handguns for the very first time.
Finally, it was time to shoot. As instructed, we filed into the range with guns pointed down and fingers off the trigger. We filed into gray plastic blinds like you file into when you take a computerized driving test. At each station, a paper bullseye target was taped over the silhouette of a man, his crotch visible beneath the black rings. Sir UncMo handed me some bullets. I had learned in class how to fill a magazine, which was like a Pez dispenser, as the instructor said, and yet was the hardest part of the whole process because it was not easy for me to keep the lever pressed down with my thumb while I filed in the bullets with the other hand.
I pushed the magazine into the gun and cocked it. I allowed myself to imagine being in an action movie while doing this. I was careful to keep my thumbs on one side of the gun, as instructed, to avoid getting my thumb sliced by the action as it retracted. Slowly, breathlessly, I put my finger on the trigger, and squeezed it.
I braced hard for a recoil, but with my lightweight pistol, there really wasn't much of one. I squinted ahead, but it was impossible to tell whether I'd even hit the target -- or anything. It was disconcertingly anticlimactic. I reeled in the target: Most of my first shots fell outside the target range, but a few of them did hit the paper. Sir UncMo told me to be sure to line up the front sight with the marker at the back of the gun -- with that, I was landing a slew of shots near the bullseye (below).
.JPG)
Sir UncMo, of course, was tearing up the paper. He had experience and it showed. As I stepped over to see how he was doing, I noticed that the shells from his gun were flying off onto the floor where my flip-flop-bearing feet had been in the next stall. Had they just missed me before, or had I not even felt them?
I became absorbed in becoming a better shot, lining up my sights on the gun and then reeling in the target, pleased to see I was getting better and better. Part of me felt empowered and imagined fending off intruders, bad guys... while the other part of me remained fully aware that in all likelihood, in a real-life situation, I would lose all composure and this newfound know-how along with it.
For me, the sound of gunshots ripping through the air never completely lost unpleasantness, but otherwise, it felt recreational and safe. After we had shot our box of ammo, we both were ready to go.As we checked out, Sir UncMo noted that I had shot much better than one of the guys from our class. I tried not to mentally pursue the scenarios in which our single male cohort might actually fire a gun and whether his being a poor shot was reassuring or scary.
I had steeled myself for how intense and alien it would be to shoot a gun, to be armed with a deadly weapon. As it turned out, it was all too easy.
Music: "Bang"
Did you know that shooting a gun is so commonplace and accessible in America that there are Groupons for it? I didn't, until my sister gave Sir UncMo one as a gift for his birthday: a shooting range experience for two, value $123, for just $45. My sister, who lives in Gaithersburg, married a gun lover over a decade ago and has since become certified as a gun range marshal (can't remember whether it's at Gilbert's or another range). I don't really know what this means, other than I probably shouldn't ever anger my sister.
Sir UncMo's interest in shooting is just one of the many ways he has endeared himself to members of my family, and my sister's gift was a thoughtful one. So despite my antipathy toward gun ownership, and my complete lack of interest in firing anything unless it is a gas stove or an aromatherapy candle, we were bound for Gilbert's. I put off booking our appointment for so long that the Groupon had expired by the time I called, but Gilbert's was so overwhelmed with response to the Groupon that it extended the expiration date to accommodate everyone.
In case you haven't guessed as much by now, I was kind of dreading this whole thing. I pictured going into a gross industrial building (accurate), sitting through some training that would be painfully boring (partially accurate), making some kind of horrible or embarrassing mistake or, worse, beng the victim of one (not accurate), hanging around a bunch of pasty, pants-hitching, middle-aged males (partially accurate), witnessing something or someone really creepy (accurate) and/or generally losing my shit in response to some previously unknown deep emotional response to firing a deadly weapon (not accurate). I was hiding these thoughts from Sir UncMo and staying mostly upbeat because it was his birthday present and he was looking forward to it. My inauthenticity made it that much more stressful.
We walked in and approached the front desk. Picture the last time you went bowling, ice-skating or mini-golfing, and you've got the sign-in at Gilbert's: crummy, expansive front desk with cubbies, stain-proof industrial carpeting, affable staff dudes who have seen a million jokers just like you come through the door, death-and-injury waivers that you don't read, rental equipment that you hope has been thoroughly sanitized but probably hasn't.
So far, pretty unremarkable. The relentless gunfire sounds receded into the background as we focused on signing in. After the paperwork, we were directed to room where we would watch a safety video, take a quiz on said video, and receive some training. On the way to the room, we saw this:
.JPG)
Those squares under the animal heads are photos of Mr. Gilbert, I presume, with the original kill. All of the photos looked like they were from the 80s. The man in the photos held the freshly killed animal intimately, as if it were a lover.
Here was the element of "gun culture" that I anticipated and feared. I am completely ignorant about gun culture. But when I allow my ignorance to overtake my perception of how gun enthusiasts must think, I picture either something like this or something like Columbine. Something like a higher regard for destruction and artificial glory than for living things.
The class consisted of one teddy-bear-like black guy, two giggling black women in scrubs, a quiet Asian couple, Sir UncMo and me (Asian and white). I break all this down because I will admit to being mildly surprised that there were not more white dudes.
Goggles and protective headphones were distributed. We were all handed wipe-off markers and a multiple-choice quiz in laminated plastic. The vestigial part of me that did well in school wanted to go ahead and answer all the questions before watching the video, sure that I was smart enough to guess at these questions without watching the video. I mean, how hard could it be? Sir UncMo had the same impulse, knowing a ton about guns. But as we watched the poor-quality video being projected from a laptop on Windows Media Player, we realized we had some wrong guesses. We couldn't figure out the proper order among the multiple choice answers for unloading a handgun on our own, and they had some other tricky questions in there about the rules. The quiz wasn't "hard," but enough to make you pay attention if you're tempted to be an arrogant jerk like I was.
After the video, a jocular guy came in (I think someone else said it was Mr. Gilbert, who I think was also the one in the photos with the animals, but there was no way of connecting for sure the '80s safari guy in the photos with the smallish, older man in black who talked to us), went over the quiz answers (no one checked to see whether we had gotten any wrong), and shared enough anecdotes about people waving their guns around and holding their guns improperly that we all laughed knowingly and internally vowed not to be the one who shoots oneself in the face or injures a thumb because of an improper grip.
We were informed that we would be shooting .22 caliber handguns. "Don't worry," Sir UncMo reassured me. "A .22 is like a BB gun. It's nothing." He smiled with confidence. I stared blankly, not reassured. Couldn't a .22 still kill someone if misused?
At one point the instructor asked whether we knew which eye was dominant, and then told us how to judge: set your sight on one thing in the distance, cup your hands around that thing like you're making a viewfinder, and then close each eye to see which one got it right. I got put on the spot and was totally flustered, raising my right hand instead of my left, covering the wrong eye, etc. It was not looking good for me. If I couldn't even tell my right from my left, how could I be entrusted with a dangerous weapon?
The instructor seemed not at all concerned about our mental acuity. He made jokes and seemed utterly relaxed as he left us rubes to handle handguns for the very first time.
Finally, it was time to shoot. As instructed, we filed into the range with guns pointed down and fingers off the trigger. We filed into gray plastic blinds like you file into when you take a computerized driving test. At each station, a paper bullseye target was taped over the silhouette of a man, his crotch visible beneath the black rings. Sir UncMo handed me some bullets. I had learned in class how to fill a magazine, which was like a Pez dispenser, as the instructor said, and yet was the hardest part of the whole process because it was not easy for me to keep the lever pressed down with my thumb while I filed in the bullets with the other hand.
I pushed the magazine into the gun and cocked it. I allowed myself to imagine being in an action movie while doing this. I was careful to keep my thumbs on one side of the gun, as instructed, to avoid getting my thumb sliced by the action as it retracted. Slowly, breathlessly, I put my finger on the trigger, and squeezed it.
I braced hard for a recoil, but with my lightweight pistol, there really wasn't much of one. I squinted ahead, but it was impossible to tell whether I'd even hit the target -- or anything. It was disconcertingly anticlimactic. I reeled in the target: Most of my first shots fell outside the target range, but a few of them did hit the paper. Sir UncMo told me to be sure to line up the front sight with the marker at the back of the gun -- with that, I was landing a slew of shots near the bullseye (below).
.JPG)
Sir UncMo, of course, was tearing up the paper. He had experience and it showed. As I stepped over to see how he was doing, I noticed that the shells from his gun were flying off onto the floor where my flip-flop-bearing feet had been in the next stall. Had they just missed me before, or had I not even felt them?
I became absorbed in becoming a better shot, lining up my sights on the gun and then reeling in the target, pleased to see I was getting better and better. Part of me felt empowered and imagined fending off intruders, bad guys... while the other part of me remained fully aware that in all likelihood, in a real-life situation, I would lose all composure and this newfound know-how along with it.
For me, the sound of gunshots ripping through the air never completely lost unpleasantness, but otherwise, it felt recreational and safe. After we had shot our box of ammo, we both were ready to go.As we checked out, Sir UncMo noted that I had shot much better than one of the guys from our class. I tried not to mentally pursue the scenarios in which our single male cohort might actually fire a gun and whether his being a poor shot was reassuring or scary.
I had steeled myself for how intense and alien it would be to shoot a gun, to be armed with a deadly weapon. As it turned out, it was all too easy.
Music: "Bang"
Friday, June 15, 2012
The Struggle.
Editor's note: This post is inspired by the one here at TechCrunch.
"If I don't do nothin' I'mma ball
I'm countin' all day like the clock on a wall
Now go and get your money little duffle bag boy
Said go and get your money little duffle bag boy, get money"
—Lil' Wayne, "Duffle Bag Boy"
Every person starts life with a clear vision for success. You will be a fabulous human being and only work with amazing people. You will fulfill the promise of your expensive education and build a stellar career working for a cool company. You will delight others with hilarious things you say and jokes you post on the refrigerator in the break room. You will have an interoffice affair through which you either discover your lifelong mate or develop lifelong sexual apathy toward all coworkers. You will eventually write a bestselling book inspired by your storied life. Maybe make a YouTube video that goes viral. It's going to be absolutely awesome.
Then, after working all day and all… well, all day, which is frankly quite enough thanks, because you have other shit to do and reality shows to watch, you wake up to find that things did not go as planned. Your life did not unfold like those of the brilliant authors you worshipped in college, or even like Ally McBeal. Your fulfilling career is just a job at a startup that pays enough to keep you around and demands enough to keep you from doing anything productive for yourself, yet still does not allow you to pay off your student debt, go on real vacations or say things like, "I'm just taking a sabbatical and working on my book." Your officemates are all dim, annoying and/or unattractive. Your boss is kind of a dick. You are running low on cash and your parents tell you it will be difficult to raise money given the impending European catastrophe.
Your video has only 86 views on YouTube.
You lose your morale. You lose your drive. You lose (uh-oh!) your startup job. You eventually get another startup job that's exactly like the other one, only the benefits are worse. The walls start closing in. Where did you go wrong? As your dreams turn to nightmares, you find yourself in The Struggle.
About the Struggle
The Struggle is when you wonder why you started working for startups in the first place.
The Struggle is when people ask you why you don’t quit and you don’t know the answer. Or maybe you do know the answer: It involves your rent.
The struggle is when food loses its taste, but you shovel it in anyway.
The Struggle is when the CEO of your company should not be the CEO of your company, and you know that you have no power to replace him.
The Struggle is when you are having a conversation with someone and you can’t hear a word that they are saying because all you can hear is hipsters hand-grinding coffee and talking about going to see Band of Horses.
The Struggle is when you want the pain to stop, but you're not quite far gone enough to start drinking at work.
The Struggle is when you plan to go on vacation to feel better but feel worse upon realizing you can't afford it.
The Struggle is when you are surrounded by people, yet you are all alone, because they are all talking about venture rounds and you can't divine what a single one of them actually does for a living.
The Struggle is the land of broken promises and crushed dreams. The Struggle is a cold sweat. That cold sweat may also be your hangover.
The Struggle is not failure ¬— it is being dragged down by your company management's failure. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are weak.
Every great person, from your parents to the owner of the Chipotle franchise where you go to bury your sorrows, went through The Struggle, and struggle they did, so you are not alone. But that does not mean that you will make it. You may not make it. That is why it is The Struggle. If you aren't getting the idea after that series of thoughts, you are likely to struggle even more than others in life.
The Struggle is where fat comes from.
Some stuff that may or may not help
There is no answer to The Struggle, but here are some things that helped me:
Drinking.
Smoking weed.
Stealing petty items from the office.
Remembering that you are not a female employee at Kleiner Perkins.
Watching other people's viral videos on YouTube.
Don’t put it all on your shoulders – it is easy to think that the things that bother you don't upset your boss as much, especially when he asking you to restart the servers at 1 a.m. from his house in Cap Juluca. That’s not true. The things that bother you don't upset your boss at all. He has no idea what you even do.
Nobody feels it more than you, because no one is even in the office anymore. They have all gone to the beer garden.
This is not checkers; this is mutherfuckin’ chess – never mind that you have never played either game. The point is, there is always a move. How about quitting your job and just seeing how you can get by on freelancing in New York City? I made that move. I made it in 2001, and it was widely regarded as the worst time ever to try to stick it out in New York City. My creditors at Citibank think it's the best decision I ever made.
Focus on the road. A DUI is the last thing you need right now. If you focus on how you might fail, then you will have to take another sick day and you have already taken two this month.
Even if you only have one bullet left in the gun and you have to hit the target, focus on the target. Okay, put down the gun. You've gone too far and he's not worth it.
Play long enough and you might get lucky. If you survive long enough to see tomorrow, it will bring you coffee and your paycheck. It will also bring you the staff meeting, but try not to think about that now.
Don’t take it personally – the predicament that you are in is probably all your fault. You had the tequila. You made the decisions.
But you knew the job was lame when you took it. Everybody makes mistakes. Just ask the last person you hooked up with. Giving yourself an “F” doesn’t help. But harassing the intern might. Or maybe writing parodies of rich people's essays on TechCrunch.
Remember that this is what separates the women from the girls, or is it what separates the men from the boys? Unless you're in a sweatshop, in which case it's just all kids. Wait. What was I saying?
The end
When you are in The Struggle, nothing is easy and nothing feels right. You have dropped into the abyss and you may never get out. Who are we kidding: You will never get out. But work on your book proposal anyway. In my own experience, but for some unexpected luck and help, I would not have even found my pants today.
So to all of you in it, may you find strength and may you find peace. Because you probably won't find a bonus this year.
*Disclaimer: This is fictional. It is an amalgam of experiences, mine and others'. It remains true, for better or for worse, that I have never in my life smoked pot. Similarly, stealing petty office items is a weak fabrication that any startup employee would immediately sniff out, because most startups do not have anything in the office worth stealing.
"If I don't do nothin' I'mma ball
I'm countin' all day like the clock on a wall
Now go and get your money little duffle bag boy
Said go and get your money little duffle bag boy, get money"
—Lil' Wayne, "Duffle Bag Boy"
Every person starts life with a clear vision for success. You will be a fabulous human being and only work with amazing people. You will fulfill the promise of your expensive education and build a stellar career working for a cool company. You will delight others with hilarious things you say and jokes you post on the refrigerator in the break room. You will have an interoffice affair through which you either discover your lifelong mate or develop lifelong sexual apathy toward all coworkers. You will eventually write a bestselling book inspired by your storied life. Maybe make a YouTube video that goes viral. It's going to be absolutely awesome.
Then, after working all day and all… well, all day, which is frankly quite enough thanks, because you have other shit to do and reality shows to watch, you wake up to find that things did not go as planned. Your life did not unfold like those of the brilliant authors you worshipped in college, or even like Ally McBeal. Your fulfilling career is just a job at a startup that pays enough to keep you around and demands enough to keep you from doing anything productive for yourself, yet still does not allow you to pay off your student debt, go on real vacations or say things like, "I'm just taking a sabbatical and working on my book." Your officemates are all dim, annoying and/or unattractive. Your boss is kind of a dick. You are running low on cash and your parents tell you it will be difficult to raise money given the impending European catastrophe.
Your video has only 86 views on YouTube.
You lose your morale. You lose your drive. You lose (uh-oh!) your startup job. You eventually get another startup job that's exactly like the other one, only the benefits are worse. The walls start closing in. Where did you go wrong? As your dreams turn to nightmares, you find yourself in The Struggle.
About the Struggle
The Struggle is when you wonder why you started working for startups in the first place.
The Struggle is when people ask you why you don’t quit and you don’t know the answer. Or maybe you do know the answer: It involves your rent.
The struggle is when food loses its taste, but you shovel it in anyway.
The Struggle is when the CEO of your company should not be the CEO of your company, and you know that you have no power to replace him.
The Struggle is when you are having a conversation with someone and you can’t hear a word that they are saying because all you can hear is hipsters hand-grinding coffee and talking about going to see Band of Horses.
The Struggle is when you want the pain to stop, but you're not quite far gone enough to start drinking at work.
The Struggle is when you plan to go on vacation to feel better but feel worse upon realizing you can't afford it.
The Struggle is when you are surrounded by people, yet you are all alone, because they are all talking about venture rounds and you can't divine what a single one of them actually does for a living.
The Struggle is the land of broken promises and crushed dreams. The Struggle is a cold sweat. That cold sweat may also be your hangover.
The Struggle is not failure ¬— it is being dragged down by your company management's failure. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are weak.
Every great person, from your parents to the owner of the Chipotle franchise where you go to bury your sorrows, went through The Struggle, and struggle they did, so you are not alone. But that does not mean that you will make it. You may not make it. That is why it is The Struggle. If you aren't getting the idea after that series of thoughts, you are likely to struggle even more than others in life.
The Struggle is where fat comes from.
Some stuff that may or may not help
There is no answer to The Struggle, but here are some things that helped me:
Drinking.
Smoking weed.
Stealing petty items from the office.
Remembering that you are not a female employee at Kleiner Perkins.
Watching other people's viral videos on YouTube.
Don’t put it all on your shoulders – it is easy to think that the things that bother you don't upset your boss as much, especially when he asking you to restart the servers at 1 a.m. from his house in Cap Juluca. That’s not true. The things that bother you don't upset your boss at all. He has no idea what you even do.
Nobody feels it more than you, because no one is even in the office anymore. They have all gone to the beer garden.
This is not checkers; this is mutherfuckin’ chess – never mind that you have never played either game. The point is, there is always a move. How about quitting your job and just seeing how you can get by on freelancing in New York City? I made that move. I made it in 2001, and it was widely regarded as the worst time ever to try to stick it out in New York City. My creditors at Citibank think it's the best decision I ever made.
Focus on the road. A DUI is the last thing you need right now. If you focus on how you might fail, then you will have to take another sick day and you have already taken two this month.
Even if you only have one bullet left in the gun and you have to hit the target, focus on the target. Okay, put down the gun. You've gone too far and he's not worth it.
Play long enough and you might get lucky. If you survive long enough to see tomorrow, it will bring you coffee and your paycheck. It will also bring you the staff meeting, but try not to think about that now.
Don’t take it personally – the predicament that you are in is probably all your fault. You had the tequila. You made the decisions.
But you knew the job was lame when you took it. Everybody makes mistakes. Just ask the last person you hooked up with. Giving yourself an “F” doesn’t help. But harassing the intern might. Or maybe writing parodies of rich people's essays on TechCrunch.
Remember that this is what separates the women from the girls, or is it what separates the men from the boys? Unless you're in a sweatshop, in which case it's just all kids. Wait. What was I saying?
The end
When you are in The Struggle, nothing is easy and nothing feels right. You have dropped into the abyss and you may never get out. Who are we kidding: You will never get out. But work on your book proposal anyway. In my own experience, but for some unexpected luck and help, I would not have even found my pants today.
So to all of you in it, may you find strength and may you find peace. Because you probably won't find a bonus this year.
*Disclaimer: This is fictional. It is an amalgam of experiences, mine and others'. It remains true, for better or for worse, that I have never in my life smoked pot. Similarly, stealing petty office items is a weak fabrication that any startup employee would immediately sniff out, because most startups do not have anything in the office worth stealing.
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