bad news first

I thought I was going to let this blog die. It was getting too boring trying to maintain people's privacy and then a whole bunch of things happened that I desperately needed to write about. Instead I wrote many emails, addressed to people, rather than just posting things blindly to people who don't follow me anymore because I don't post consistently enough. Then I realized I'm not really writing for anyone but me. Even if I haven't posted in months, I do occasionally go back to try and remember a feeling, a time, an event, for reference. I like this blog. It's mine, and I don't want it to die until I consciously want it to, not because I just couldn't figure out how to make it work.

I have to say that this year started off on a very shitty note, and that it got better, amazingly better. I have gotten better at staying out of trouble, but sometimes bad things just happen and I'm glad that I had the know-how of how to feel better. I got a haircut. I spent time with my family. And Marido kicked me back to yoga. All of these things helped. But also, this blog helped, even though I wasn't writing in it. I looked back at a time--actually it was also New Year's, a new year that got off to a shitty start, and it gave me strength. I have been through bad things before.

Some good things have happened though, too, and they were so welcome after the bad. I guess it is better to get the bad news first. One of my short stories got an honorable mention in a fiction journal. And things with Marido, after being very hard, became better than ever. My writing has been going really well. I am slowly getting the hang of balancing the things in my life that are important to me--it's a work 32 years in the making.

This is a shitty post, but it is better than nothing. When I look back on this time, I want to remember that I was trying, not that I wasn't doing anything at all. Above all, it's not that I've been too busy to write. Writing is what I do. Sometimes I'm bad at it, but I do it anyway. That's what we all do.

And risotto. Yum.

the end of the world

Sometimes I feel like the only thing that can light a fire under my ass--ever since I quit acts of risk and desperation--is the idea of certain doom. I get the most motivated to write and create when I think of my mortality and how I would like to leave something behind for my not-yet-conceived children to perhaps learn from should I unexpectedly die and leave them motherless.

In some ways, 2011 was an exercise in minimal survival, and in other ways a feast of excess. On one end, my pay stubs from the fiscal year amounted to $200, an amount that I could have smoked away in two weeks, had I not quit smoking. And on the other end, Marido and I spent the entire last month of the year wandering around in Asia, feeling like the most overprivileged people on the planet. In between that last January paycheck and a New Year rung in on the sofa, recovering from colds and jet lag, there has been lots of failure, lots of struggle, lots of change, but also a lot of love, all of which I am extremely grateful for.

The thought that always lingers in my mind when visiting any developing nation is how incredibly hard people work to make ends meet. The sight of people in uncomfortable positions engaged in manual, repetitive, or dangerous labor--particularly the elderly--always provokes my guilt reflex, and I can only imagine what kind of doughy, incidentally lucky person they see when they cross paths with me. In Asia, the feeling is even stranger, because I always imagine there to be some kind of shock at the thought that one of them--once removed--could very well be me. I smile a lot and tip generously, probably just adding to the idea that I'm completely alien and oblivious. I treated my battered body midway through the trip to a $5/hour massage, pounded and kneaded by two Vietnamese girls around my age. "Where are you from?" One asked me. "You look like me."

Returning to my life in San Francisco is equally jarring, with no work to return to, but a certain role that I have settled into, a role of loving and being loved, and working to no avail. I have to play this mind game with myself that involves ricocheting between poles of best- and worst-case scenarios: that I will publish, and that I will die.

Happy New Year.

and that was april.

April was the month that I hardly wrote anything at all. The one blog post I seriously considered was negged by Marido as an over-share (sorry!) and the fact that I am counting a blog post as writing at all just goes to prove my theory that April Is The Most Unproductive Month. Period.

More than once, I sat down to clear my head by writing and what poured out of me was hauntingly dull and familiar, bitchings about my lack of employment, the feeling that my life is getting away from me, watching everyone around me couple off, get serious, make plans that increasingly don't involve me. I didn't even have to think about what I was writing, because it's a script that has played out what seems like every other year. But I don't stop and think about these things as much anymore because they're boring, and I know they will pass. This week I received one baby shower and three wedding invitations in the mail, and last week two of my good friends got engaged. I wonder what goes through your head when actually sit down and commit yourself to something, to someone, and then I realize that it's not one moment, it's a series of moments, the way I commit myself to writing a novel, as crappy as it might turn out. It's not like one day you say, "I'm going to write a novel." It's a decision you make every day, and some days are better than others.

Today Marido and I are celebrating 11 months to the day we met. 11 months! That's not even a year, pssh. It is so unbelievable to me that I just have to think about it all the time. It's wonderful to be in such a great relationship with a man who encourages me and believes in me and who doesn't doubt that we can do anything together. Anything.

It's funny to feel like I have things in working order in a relationship, where we can talk through things and feel, in the end, that we are in it for the long haul. I suppose that is what marriage feels like, and instead of thinking every time we have a fight "This is it, he's done with me," or, conversely, "This is it, I can't take it anymore," you just say to yourself, "Let's get through this." I think we are playing more of the latter than the former lately, and it feels good. We still fight and get our feelings hurt just because we are such different people, but after all this time we are still trying, and that's how we got here. I am really amazed by it all. If we are writing a story together, it has been pretty interesting thus far. I like the character development and suspense: what will they do next? Lately we are thinking of starting a photography business together.

It's been almost three years since I've had a salary now. I am used to the dejection now, and am just seeing that yes, it really is harder to get a job the longer you've been unemployed--and the older you get. Most agencies don't really see "writer" as a job at all, and so it is becoming even more important that I succeed as one. I think novelists have to nurture a kind of tenacity that is cyclical and long-term. Last year, in April, I was having my typical Most Unproductive Month, so I went to Singapore to watch my grandmother die and then spent a week in Chicago meditating on the fact that I would not allow myself to be a failure. When I returned to Buenos Aires in May, I tumbled into the most explosive month: I finished my novel, sold my first "big" story in months, and then a few weeks later I met Marido.

Well, now it's May again, and I am so primed for amazing things to happen. I am writing again, my tomato plants are growing growing growing before my eyes, and in a few weeks Marido and I are going to bliss out on the beaches of Baja. Get ready! I'm ready.

circling

My tolerance for stress seems to have dropped dramatically. Yesterday I had to send in three cameras for repair: my camera, my back-up camera, and the camera I had borrowed while both of the other ones weren't working. And now all three of them are gone, and it made me feel sort of depressed. The silly thing is, I know you can't really get "depressed" over three cameras being in the shop; that's a gross misuse and exaggeration of the term. So either my life must be really good or I've forgotten what it means like to be depressed. Either way, it's clear that my threshold for pain has sunk incredibly low.

The other day I was the recipient of second-hand stress and it led to a weekend of smoking. I've since gotten back on the wagon, but I think that the little retreat back into nicotine-land hit deeper than I expected. For one thing, I sat down to write this post about writing and how I have been struggling to find an agent and instead I have ended up writing about smoking and all the excuses I have for smoking. Like massive equipment fails and being unable to live up to expectations, your own or those of commercially-minded literary agents.

Like the people I most admire in my life, I secretly believe that I can achieve most anything I put my mind to. The biggest setback for me is that I get quickly disenchanted with many things I want, and decide they are not worth my efforts--like making lots of money, running a marathon, and holding any kind of public office. I was a little worried that this growing disenchantment with an increasing number of things was more of a sign of failure and defensiveness than actual cynicism and maturation of tastes. I thought I would become all down-and-out about the publishing industry, but instead I am just becoming more determined to figure out how to do this. It is both discouraging and encouraging at the same time.

bruising and schmoozing

I had a crappy day. I am shooting/writing up fashion week and spent all day at the expo center, shooting and interviewing but mostly just standing in fucking line because I applied for a press credential too late. Live and learn. I have decided that I never want to shoot a big, corporate fashion event ever again. It was a lot of super pretentious people parading around, and instead of doing my usual "well aren't we special," I was ingratiating myself to them and taking their photos.

I was really excited about it at first, but today was so rough. I like pretty things as much as the next girl (and then some, even) but I don't think I want to put fashion on a pedestal. Expensive clothes should be a guilty pleasure, and not really advertised, particularly if you live in a city where people regularly knock on your day and ask you if have any old clothes to give them. Maybe that is just my neighborhood.

After that long day, I ran off to meet a guy who'd offered me a ride out to a fancy suburb of Buenos Aires to see this rock show. I posted on a message board to see if anyone wanted to go, and he said he did. I called him to set up a time and it turns out he is 65 years old. Why, why, why, as a 65-year-old man, would you think it is kosher to offer to take a 29-year-old woman to a PUNK ROCK SHOW? When I explained to him I didn't think he'd enjoy it, he was like, "No, it sounds fun. I'd really like to go." I didn't know how to say I didn't think that would be cool, so I just said...well, okay. If you're down, I'm down. I'm not ageist at all. My best friend here is 62. I don't go to punk rock shows with her, but hey, everyone is different. But I was also confused by it.

I thought maybe it would be cool. I showed up half an hour late because I don't have a watch and I assumed that fashion week was running on schedule, but it most certainly wasn't. We chatted pleasantly but a few moments into my return to non-bitter humanity with pizza and beer, I decided it was too late to go (it really was), and that I just wanted to go home instead. Also, I was really not entertained by the situation. I tried to be engaged, but he was just talking at me. I have noticed that Argentine men do that. They just talk, and talk, and talk, and you just sit there and smile. They like to talk about this country and the politics and such but they also do the Indian thing of talking about things they have no clue about with the utmost authority. For example, I saw these two guys jumping extremely high and doing tricks. They were wearing those jumpy-shoe things. It was pretty cool. I said, "Look at those guys jumping over there." And he said, with the utmost authority, "Ah, yes, they have a bungee board." What he meant was, a trampoline. I said, "No, they have special devices attached to them." And he tried to fucking argue with me! He couldn't even see them. I don't have patience for people like this. Particularly when they are more than twice my age. I then hated myself for not listening to my gut, because my gut tends to be ageist and racist and classist all those stereotypes that guts have. It is a lot of effort to be open-minded.

Working makes me feel better after social mishaps like that, even though it was all fine but skeezy in other ways. When I came home, I set to work processing my shitty photos that I shot from a mile away, and as I was walking down the stairs to put some water on for tea, I fucking slipped and fell and fucked my shit up bad. I am a bumbling fool who has broken her ankle walking before, but I have never fallen down stairs. It was scary. I thought I had broken something. And you know what? All I could think was, "Great, now I have to go back to fucking Fashion Week tomorrow with two broken fingers and a goddamn broken tailbone."

Nothing is actually broken, but I do have to go back to Fashion Week tomorrow. I think this is someone's way of laughing at me. You want it bad--like, real bad? Here, have a broken leg. That's right. Bet you don't think Fashion Week is such a hardship now, do you?

jobseeking

“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

Gustave Flaubert

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.

t-minus 14 hours

I have to admit that when I say am "excited" for my trip to the desert, this excitement is more fear-based than happy-based. Detox doc and I have been talking about this innate desire I have to attack all my fears. He says that this may not be a good thing...like wanting to conquer your fear of public speaking is a good thing...but wanting to attack bears...not a good thing. It is hard for me to know the difference, though.

Taking away booze has made me want to be in control of everything, and in a desire to overcome this, I have not planned a damn thing. Like I have not planned anything beyond my plane ticket. This terrifies me. I know this sounds completely idiotic. Like, why would I scare the shit out of myself intentionally...but it's something I have to do, just to show myself that it's okay.

Why yes, being neurotic is very stressful. I keep on telling you this.

All I know is that when I get on the airplane, there is a 20 percent chance that I will feel very good about everything, a 20 percent chance that I will fall asleep, (I AM EXHAUSTED. I did not sleep last night, and I slept on Neighbor's sofa before getting up before dawn again to shoot photos before embarking on a most stressful day) a 50 percent chance that I will feel on the verge of a nervous breakdown and decide to take a handful of tranquilizers, and a 10 percent chance that I will sit next to a very cute boy who will take my mind off of all of my troubles. That's the way life is when you've sworn off of men for the month.

the lighting of the candles

I am so stressed that: (a) I went to the driving range to hit golf balls with my dad yesterday even though it was snowing, (b) my period is so late that I'm beginning to think I'm pregnant and (c) I searched "stress" and when this link came up, this photo to the left came up with a caption that said something along the lines of, "A severely stressed person will find many differences between these dolphins jumping out of the water when in fact they are identical," and it took me several moments of severe inner reflection before realizing that some people out there think it's funny to toy with people who are on the brink of losing their minds.

I have embarked on my 8 days of serious business. It is that time of year when I want to give up on things like (a) the five classes that compose $chool, (b) attempts at self-reformation, and (c) geniality. I become generally unpleasant. I don't know how I got through this last year...and last year I had quit smoking at this time. I have lost a lot of faith in myself I guess. When I looked at that cow and that dolphin and really doubted myself, I knew I was in trouble. It's funny when you go through big life changes and instead of feeling proud and strong, all you can think of is that you sure weren't as smart as you thought you were. It makes me wonder if I know anything at all.

I have been thinking a lot about Joe lately, but I can't call him or anything. Of course not. This is part of the lack of self-trust that's happening lately. In the absence of any high for my mind to latch onto, it seems to want to glom onto Joe really fucken badly. When I think about him, it kind of has the same effect on my brain as the fond recollection of a seventh beverage. I'm starting to really miss the love-inducing feeling of The Booze. Without it, I guess I get like this. All self-doubty and dolphin-and-cow-y. I'm getting all weird about everything now. Everything feels strange. Dolphin. Cow. Dolphin. Cow. Dolphincowdolphincowdolphincow.

I have decided not to go to Miami with ACLU lawyer. The dates turned out to be a weekend off kilter, and I want to try out being good to Joe now. I know I said that I thought I was going to marry the lawyer, but like I said, dolphincow.

Or, like this dude said to me on the plane last night, "I'm trying to be honest in my relationships now, and part of that is giving relationships an honest chance."

New Crush(ed)

FUCK THIS DAY. 

Hardly slept last night, cried to my detox counselor, totally stressed because of school and sobriety and the crushing crushing abyss of sobriety is TWEAKING me out lately. 

Yesterday New Crush made my day by coming to the weekly lecture and sitting next to me, and I got to steal glances at him for an hour and a half, and then we had a nice smoke break together. Then not five minutes ago I ran into him outside and we talked about hanging out in suburban Chicago--where his folks live, be still my heart!--over the winter vacation, and then he dropped the g-bomb:

Girlfriend.

That horrible noise in my head: is that my teeth grinding, my soul crumbling, my heart breaking, or some wrenching combination of all three, made all the more poignant and unbearable by FUCKING SOBRIETY?!!!!

Focus, focus, focus, on unsurmountable amount of work I have to accomplish, and the light feeling that I had up until five minutes ago, before the explosion of the g-bomb. Let's harken back to December 31, 2006, close encounters with spastic crush-turned-My New Best Friend, when I decided to embark upon 2007: Love without Fear or Expectation, and recapture that kind of gusto, that is more about FUCK THE ALTERNATIVE than embracing reality.

Thank you.