Monday, September 12, 2011

chapters

I finished a journal today, which is always a moment of reflection. One of my roommates in Buenos Aires gave me the journal, a tad water-damaged, salvaged from her office. It is yellow with white flowers on it, and the elastic holding it shut broke off months ago. I started writing in it a year ago. It's small; I didn't expect it to last me a year, but I guess my thoughts have been sort of repetitive and scattered, two things that don't lead to good journal-writing, or good writing at all.

The news from this front is that I came to a realization that I was torturing myself for no reason. I would spend hours every day, every week, looking for work that I didn't want, fretting when I didn't get it, and polishing the fragments of my self-esteem that I stumbled over every morning. I introduced myself to people as "unemployed." I felt sad. Sometimes I would get really into writing something, and then I would stop and feel bad, because I was wasting time pursuing a fantastical dream and not looking for real-life work. All around me, people were working.

I hit another milestone in my life journal, that of having been back in San Francisco for a year. Someone asked me, "What have you been doing all year?" I've been ironing out the fine points of a relationship. I've been looking for work. I've been baking cookies. I've been growing tomatoes. I gained a few pounds, then lost them. I'm battling with poison oak. I thought, "Man, if only I'd known that I was going to be here a whole year...I would have buckled down, written, not worried about finding a job at all. I'm not starving or anything; I'm lucky. I have savings and a boyfriend who supports me and by golly, I haven't done anything to either deserve it or take advantage of it." Instead, it was like a year of banging my head against a wall.

I took a breath and looked up; I stopped waiting for something to happen. I quit looking for work. I salaried myself out of my savings outright, for the rest of the year. I left the cycle of despair that is job-hunting, and I am writing. I am happy. For now, life is good.

2 comments:

bill said...

Well Serious, when you're homeless, that will be some interesting reading.

Right now, you're admitting that you're a complete fuck up. Still I think your best writing was from Buenos Aires.

You certainly aren't helped at all by all this conventional thinking. Why should you get a job? Jobs don't exist! Why don't you start talking somewhat honestly about that small fact?

Don't you feel the slightest bit betrayed that your mom doesn't have to work, but YOU do? Do you think that you should be this old and that you MUST WORK? Why the fuck should you work?

Either talk about something actually important, or go back to writing about cheap sex and blow in BA!

seriously said...

go to hell, bill.