“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
One Friday every month, I have a nexus of mental wellness appointments, where I see my therapist, my psychiatrist, an hour in-between where I treat myself to a Korean lunch, followed by bikram yoga. It's like take care of Seriously day. Korean lunch is awesome, because they give you like an assortment of six different pickled delicious treats, and I sit there and pick at them with my chopsticks and think about how fucken sober I am and then when you think the meal is over, they give you this bowl of cold, cinnamon-flavored liquid that goes down like "ah."
I'm gradumucating in about six weeks and I now spend at least two hours every day thinking about what I'm going to do be doing following this massive, life-changing event. It fills me with unspeakable anxiety. For the past two years, I have been on a Mom-and-Pop-endowed vacation, with my rent and living habits generously supported, no questions asked, because they believe in higher education, and are largely unaware that this degree is preparing me to actually make less money than I was making before as a graphic designer.
Ha!
Jobseeking is the most demoralizing activity, even more so than smoking crack, cleaning up cum in peepshow booths, online dating, and going through detoxification. It asks you to trade your life and time for the illusion of security and self-preservation at one low, devalued price. While you're doing it, you always feel this strange mix of nausea and excitement, kind of like a fourteen-year-old girl giving her first blowjob. It's very dirty. You're thinking, "This feels inherently disgusting, but everyone does it...and maybe if I do it right, someone will give me a bonus." And this is just the first step into one of many of choking down something that just doesn't seem right, thinking that this is the way the world works, and you better goddamn get used to it and do it better than everyone else.
But today I am ready to say fuck it! I had a very supportive conversation with Keetens last night. I don't much like to talk about how terrified I am about The Future, mainly because I know what I have to do, I just don't like the idea of hard work and poverty. It sucks. I've been poor before, and it sucks. But I've also worked a job that I've hated before, and I think it largely contributed to the rapid escalation of my alcohol consumption. What good, really, is a decently-paying job, if you just use the extra funding to numb the gag reflex? I'm older now. And sober...so maybe I don't need all that extra money anyway. I don't want to have to numb the gag reflex. I'm sick of choking down life. I only want to add things to my life that I like. If that's too much to ask, well, then, I'm asking it anyway. I just don't want to add more meaningless shit to the world. If I can start with just me, with only adding things that mean something to me, then that's where I'm going to start.
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