A Brush With Death

I turn 28 tomorrow, which, technically, is only an hour away.  I don't really know what that means, being 28.  Hell, I'm not sure I ever really figured out what it meant to be 27, but I guess I better hurry up and settle the matter before I have to start over again with a new number.  I can't quantify the last year of my life into something meaningful; something I'm transitioning away from and moving on toward something else new and separate and different.  I keep bouncing back and forth between being glad that I got so much done with 27 and and being sad that I'm 28 and feeling a need to somehow improve upon all of that.  How does one go about topping a personal best?  What does it look like?  Where does the motivation come from?

It reminds me of the day I turned seven and got a new Pee Wee Herman t-shirt.  I went to school and wore it with pride and announced to the cafeteria monitor during lunch, very loudly, (and with a high degree of confidence) that it was my birthday and I had gotten a new Pee Wee Herman t-shirt.  She stared at me, bewildered at my interruption, and cautioned me to attend to the Cheetos dust I carelessly gotten on my new shirt.  I'm not entirely sure what that has to do with being 28, except to say that it was anti-climactic and a concrete reminder that having a birthday is like taking a poop: everybody does it and nobody takes much interest in it unless it's their own.

I guess, if birthdays are good for any one thing, it's a time of reflection to consider what you've invested in over the last year and what you intend to invest in over the next one.  If birthdays are good for two things, it's that and making up an excuse to buy stuff for yourself.  I've done a little of both and ended up getting a book on Banksy.  It's an interesting read (although there isn't much text) and I really like his artwork.  It's got me thinking about things, of which I'll share a few with you.

You didn't know it, but I almost quit 'blogging for good this week.  I was gonna use the excuse of taking the week off to work on a job application to turn into taking an extended break, promising to return after I got a new job and then "get super-busy" (as I assume I probably will) once I did.  One of the purposes of this 'blog is to showcase my writing ability, which I feel like I've done to a satisfactory degree, and I felt like I was running out of steam.  Don't take it personal, but I just didn't have anything I wanted to say to you anymore.  I had started wallowing around in my self-pity too much and, honestly, who wants to read that?

But yesterday's 'blog got me thinking.  First of all, the idea of being consistent and disciplined at something (anything, really) appeals to me and this is one of the few areas of my life where I feel like it's at least somewhat attainable.  Second, I really needed to write about that experience to organize my thoughts on it.  I haven't really thought much about Real Estate Lady today because I was able to resolve a lot of my ideas and emotions last night.  All of this to say, it's good for me to keep doing this.

But the big reason I decided to pick up where I left off came from this new book I got.  I can't really explain it to you if you don't understand the correlation, I can only share the thing that got me thinking.  Here you go.  Hope it does as much for you as it did for me.

I'm going to speak my mind, so this

won't take very long.
 

Despite what they say graffiti is not the

lowest form of art.  Although you might

have to creep about at night and lie to

your mum it's actually one of the more

honest art forms available.  There is no

elitism or hype, it exhibits on the best

walls a town has to offer and nobody

is put off by the price of admission.

A wall has always been the best

place to publish your work.

The people who run our cities don't

understand graffiti because they think

nothing has the right to exist unless it

makes a profit, which makes their

opinion worthless.

They say graffiti frightens people and

is symbolic of the decline in society,

but graffiti is only dangerous in the

mind of three types of people;

politicians, advertising executives

and graffiti writers.

The people who truly deface our

neighbourhoods are the companies

that scrawl giant slogans across

buildings and buses trying to make us

feel inadequate unless we buy their

stuff.  They expect to be able to shout

their message in your face from every

available surface but you're never

allowed to answer back.  Well, they

started the fight and the wall is the 

weapon of choice to hit them back.

Some people become cops because

they want to make the world a better

place.  Some people become vandals

because they want to make the world

a better looking place.

- Banksy -

What Do You Want?

I know I said I was gonna take the week off and work on my application, but I haven't really done much on the second part, so I feel like it should be okay for me to go back on the first part, too.  I think I'm gonna just try to keep it brief and get back to work on some other really important stuff, like folding this stack of shirts that's been sitting on my bed for a week.

And yes, to answer your question, I've been sleeping next to a stack of perfectly clean shirts for a week.

I don't know if I've talked about it in detail much (and I'm too tired to look at the back-'blogs and see) but I'm taking a class at my church called "Financial Peace" with my friends Bryan and Claire.  As you might guess, it's a class on personal finances that teaches you how to do a written budget and make a game-plan for your life in terms of money.  It's centered around material put together by a guy named Dave Ramsey who's been doing financial counseling for decades and is probably a bazillionaire by now.

Sunday was the third week and I think it's the first time that most everybody in the class spoke up and contributed to the discussion at the end after the video portion was over.  The material was pretty intense this week in terms of budgeting mechanics, so it kinda made for an intense discussion.  What interested me most about it was how panicked everybody sounded.  Nothing was on fire and none of us were in trouble with the law or anything, but everybody had these nervous ticks like Dave Ramsey was gonna walk into the room and demand to see all of our bank statements and ask us why we haven't been buying shampoo and conditioner in bulk and on sale to save money.  Whenever somebody spoke up, they would get all shifty in their chairs and not make eye-contact with anybody else and use a lot of jittery hand motions. 

One lady in particular talked about her real estate business as though her baby were dying of cancer.  I'm not trying to be cruel or funny... she really seemed that sad about her business.  She basically said she didn't think it would be possible for her to do a budget and make any progress with it because she hadn't sold a house in months and wasn't sure if she was going to make it in such a bad market.  The guy leading the class tried to be optimistic and talk about his own successes in making a budget, but then some other guy with an irregular income spoke up about how he was scared to do anything with money until he could save up an emergency fund and everybody in the room just got really gloomy.  The real estate lady started talking again and she sounded even more drained and discouraged than before.  It was like every terrible thing in life had happened on a Tuesday morning and we were asking her to throw us all a party on Wednesday afternoon.

It surprised me, really.  I listen to Dave Ramsey's radio show whenever I can catch it and he gets people like this calling in all the time.  They always wanna explain to him why their situation is different and how they can't do this or that because they're too broke or owe too much money or whatever.  He never really lets people finish their thoughts when they start talking like this and I always used to think it was kinda rude of him.  But listening to this woman talk, I started seeing a lot of sense in cutting her off.  I didn't do it, but it made sense to me why Dave Ramsey would have.  The more this lady talked, the more she believed what she was saying, because the less anybody had anything to say in response to her.  It was as if our inability to react was a positive confirmation that, yes, her situation is so totally messed up that all we could do was sit there with our mouths open and gawk at her.

I've been thinking about that lady a lot this week and what Dave Ramsey might say to her.  I mean, other than interrupting her with "Oh, bull!"  I've been thinking about how I don't really know anything about real estate (and that's mostly why I didn't say anything) and how I don't really have any kind of time-tested advice or heart-warming encouragement to give her.  The only thing I could think of was this: What would it take for you to make a sale?  I mean, I understand that you need a buyer and the buyer has to have money and the economy's bad and so on and so forth... but I can't believe it's totally impossible to sell a house right now.  It would be hard, I'm sure, and I'm not going to beat this lady up or call her a liar, but I imagine it could be done with a lot of hard work and sacrifice.  So, my main question for her at this point is this: how hard are you willing to work for a sale, even if it's a small one, and what would you be willing to sacrifice?

And this is where it comes back to me and why I've been thinking about Real Estate Lady all week.  I'm not a realtor and I don't sell houses, nor do I particularly want to be.  But what do I want to do?  Do I want to coast through life and make just enough money to get by on my bills and be more or less sedentary from now until the day I die?  Do I want to keep working in a place where my treatment at the hands of the management is subject to whatever (usually terrible) mood they happen to be in that day?  Do I want pornography to be my source of sexual satisfaction?

The obvious answer to all of these questions is "no," but if I were to sit in a room with a bunch of other people around me, I'd probably start getting all squeaky-voiced and hand-gesturey as I explained to everybody why there's really nothing I can do about all of that.  I'd talk about the economy and my irregular income and how A + B = I can't make a plan and live by it.  But I get the feeling that if I were on Dave Ramsey's radio show, he'd interrupt me and list off three things I could do right now, today, to move toward a better place.

I guess, at the end of the day, I'm left with a couple thoughts.  The first is that I need to answer the question, once and for all, whether I really think it's possible to achieve the things I want to achieve in life.  Is it possible for me to get a job I'm happy with?  Is it possible for me to be financially responsible and start winning with money?  Is it possible for me to be in a successful relationship?  Is it possible for me to be healthy and have a body I'm not ashamed of?  Is it possible for me to live a life free of addiction in any of its forms?  Yes, I think it is.  In fact, I think it has to be.  If it's not possible for me to have or do those things, then I won't have or do them.  If it's not possible, I can't.  But I think it is.  And even if it's not, I'll still die a failure, just like I would have anyway, but it won't be for lack of trying.  

So, then, if it's possible, what am I willing to do to get there?  What's the sacrifice that has to be made?  Will I have to get rid of everything I own?  Will I have to give up everything forever?  What if I never get to eat at Chipotle again or only get five hours of sleep every night?  I get overwhelmed when I think about these things in an Always v. Never kind of way, but what if I narrowed that window down to just where I'm at right now?  What if getting a job I love means not playing World of Warcraft until I get it?  What if trimming down the last few pounds of fat I have means not eating cookies and exercising more often until I get to the weight/body shape I'm after?  What if finishing a job application means staying up a little later and being tired tomorrow?  Are these difficult things to ask of myself?  Certainly.  Are they impossible?  Not at all.  And, frankly, I'm tired of waiting around for the stuff I want to fall out of the sky and into my lap.  I've wasted enough time with that already.  Let's get to work, people...

On Work

So... yeah.  Didn't get up and 'blog first thing this morning.  One of the reasons I left off of yesterday's post was that I've kind been a little content-dry lately.  The bathroom incident made for good 'blog fodder, but that was kinda just a random thing.  I dunno if I can count on that kind of stuff to happen often enough to provide a consistent flow of content.

However, I mentioned a couple weeks ago the idea that I might work in some light days every now and again to kinda give myself a break.  With only one exception, I've yet to actually do this.  One of the voices in my head (and there are many) keeps screaming that it's a sign of weakness; that I have to keep working, lest I be forced to concede that I'm a phony and I don't have what it takes to continue.  "I don't want to let anybody down," I tell myself.  "I don't want to be a disappointment."

But who am I letting down?  Who's to be disappointed?  You?  Me?  The invisible writing fairies who are supposed to reward me for all my hard work and diligence by giving me a $40k/year job?

I won't be writing tomorrow or Saturday because I'm going to Dallas for the weekend to see my family.  Unless something happens over the weekend, I don't think I'm going to write when I get back, either.  The deadline for the Chicago application is Thursday of next week and I've done virtually nothing to prepare for it.  I'm going to take next week off to put together and send off my application for the job and to celebrate my birthday.  I'll be back again soon, though.  In the meantime, here's a poem I'll be thinking about:

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons,
and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.

But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.

You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.

And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart,
even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection,
even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,
even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead
are standing about you and watching.

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, "He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet."
But I say, not in sleep but in the overwakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

The "M-Word"

I've been in kind of a 'blog-slump lately and I think I know why.  One reason is something I've mentioned before and I don't know if talking about it made it better or worse.  I didn't set out to make this a popularity contest, but I guess this is kinda what it feels like to publish a book that doesn't sell a lot of copies.  It's buried the expectation that I would get to quit my job tomorrow and start being a millionaire because I'm such a phenomenal writer and everybody likes me (not to mention, I totally deserve it).

Another reason is that I've gotten less disciplined about writing intentionally and doing it as close to the start of my day as I can.  There's a poem by Kahlil Gibran that says "if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger."  I think the irony of it is that it probably feeds even less of the bread-baker's hunger.  I really do love writing and I hope to find a job that incorporates my ability to do it well, but it's hard to love something you just squeeze in at the last minute before you go to bed.

The big one, though, (and I just realized this today) is that, as a result of the previous two reasons, I've been trying to ignore the cathartic aspect of doing this in favor of something quicker and more appealing to a wider audience.  While I don't want to turn this into a repetitive emotional-baggage-dump, I'm not the kind of person who hides his feelings well.  Everybody around me seems to know if/when something is bothering me and there's a degree to which I think that my writing is no different.  Similar to turning up the radio so that you can't hear the clicking sound your car keeps making, I've tried to write off-topic and just ignore it until things get better, but that's not really how things work. 

The truth is that I'm a Mess.  And I really wish I wasn't and I don't want to be anymore, but when I think about what it would take to move from "Mess" to something better, something inside me just craters because my mistakes are too big and too numerous for me to even know where to start.  Besides, the idea of telling the truth and being exposed in that way is just scary.  I've worked really hard to craft a self-image that I think other people will like and admire and I don't want to jeopardize that.  I mean honestly, who would you rather be friends with: Pairsh the Art Major who used to work at a church or Pairsh the alcoholic who's addicted to pornography?

Taking Out the Trash

I have a fairly serious problem when it comes to personal standards of cleanliness.  This is not to say I have none; far from it.  It's just a matter of ratios: my desires for tidiness and order are outweighed by my abilities to procrastinate and compromise.  For instance, I can't remember how long this cup has been sitting here, but it's empty... why bother with it?  It's not at risk for spilling and it's not gonna start growing funky stuff in it.  So who cares?  It's not like I have moldy food everywhere.  I'm not gross, I'm just disorganized.

But there's a couple of problems with this that arise almost immediately.  One is that it's just about impossible to find anything in this mess whenever I need it.  Second, it's implausible that I actually need any of it.  Cleaning is such a daunting task because there's just SO much of this crap to be dealt with... it's like I'd need a week of vacation and a snow-shovel to get rid of some of this stuff.

Take my computer, for instance.  No, not this computer.  That one.  The one that's been sitting in my living room for the better part of four months.  It doesn't work.  It hasn't since before I bought this one.  I pretty much blew my tax returns buying a new computer because I got tired of reformatting it every three weeks.  I probably could've gotten by on it for a few more months if I'd really put my mind to it, but I got tired and frustrated and used the excuse to buy a faster computer that would play newer games without lagging.  So there it sits.  Bored and lonely.  Heck, it doesn't even have a hard drive in it anymore since Bryan took it apart.  Why is it still sitting there?

I'll tell you exactly why: because it's heavy and I live on the third floor and I don't feel like taking it to the dumpster.  The same goes for the mildewy pillow that got ruined when I left my window opened and it rained.  And the bag full of shredded mail.  It's not gonna attract mice or anything, but it's certainly not keeping things clean either.

And that's just the stuff that needs to be taken to the trash, not to mention the pickle jar full of paper clips (of which I can recall using only one in the last three years) and the box full of three-foot RF cables and the stack of printer paper that's too dense for my printer.  I mean, yes, it's possible that I could one day find a use for all this stuff, but how many more times am I gonna lug it up and down three flights of stairs until I do?

Ugh... I gotta get this stuff picked up...

Maybe I'll do it tomorrow...

The Weirdest Thing That Has Ever Happened to Me (I Think)

Okay, so I'm headed to lunch today and decide to make a pit-stop before I clock out.  I had decided eat at Potbelly after a conversation with a friend reminded me that it's the only place in town to get Zapp's chips as a part of my meal, but it's on the other side of  the parking lot from where I work and I know I'm gonna have to go at some point between walking there and back.  I only mention this to show that there was a specific decision moment involved before this whole thing happened that, had I merely decided to go once I got to Potbelly or wait until I got back, could have stopped this entire 'blog from being an actual thing.  Like, I distinctly remember thinking "You know, I could just hold it... nah.  First things first!"

So I walk into the bathroom and I'm just minding my own business.  It's an hour after I was supposed to go to lunch (because I had to cover somebody else's and wait until they got back) and all I can think about is what kind of sandwich I'm gonna get from Potbelly, or if I even want a sandwich at all because they have salads there, too, that aren't bad.  I'm so wrapped up in the process of isolating the thought of what it is I'm really hungry for that I don't really register the guy standing at the urinal.  I mean, I realized that there was a guy at the urinal; it wasn't like he surprised me or anything, I just wasn't paying much attention to him.  Except... well, except that he was standing a good 18-24 inches back from the shortest urinal in there and started staring me down as soon as I walked into the bathroom.  

Seeing as most readers of my 'blog are women (at least, most of the responders/commenters are women) I should probably take a moment to explain a bit of men's bathroom etiquette.  First off, as you might have already known/guessed, there's a short urinal in most bathrooms for little kids and/or midgets to use.  It's a fully functioning urinal and handy in a pinch, but it sits a full ten to twelve inches lower than the others and leaves one feeling rather... *ahem* exposed, as it were.  Unless there's a line waiting, most dudes will bypass it for the regular-height unit.

Second, there's the issue of personal privacy.  Dividers are a help, but it's not like a stall or anything, so there's still a fair amount of visibility achievable in spite of them.  One need not lean so far in as to end up touching anything to anything, but it's a commonly understood principle that proper positioning is six to twelve inches away, depending on the amount of "poolage" on the floor, so as to keep private affairs private and reduce/avoid any potential back-splash.

Third, and most importantly, is the matter of eye-contact.  By which, of course, I mean there is none.  Ever.  At all.  Whatsoever.  I'm not sure where this one came from or why it holds true, but it totally does. Walk into any men's restroom in America and you know what you'll find?  A whole bunch of dudes not looking at each other.  There's this weird, head-down walk we do in and out of the bathroom, like we're really focused on something and can't be distracted by our surroundings.  We might glance up at someone we need to walk around to see which direction they're heading so that we don't run into each other, but it's always this sort of brief, eye-bounce like we just so happened to be looking up at that exact moment and were surprised to find somebody standing there.  It's kinda like what happens when you take a dog and try to make it look at itself in the mirror: we act like we just noticed something about our shoes or on the floor or in the tile pattern on the wall and have to stare at it to figure out what it is.  But whatever happens, NOBODY makes eye-contact.

Any one of these things is forgivable, but I basically walked into a three-strike rule in progress.  Like, there I was, just doing my normal thing, and then BAM!  I've got Weirdo McCreepster staring me down with a wide-angle shot of his "business."  I was already past the sinks when I realized all of this, so it was too late to just act like I came in to wash my hands.  It was really unnerving and I kinda got stage fright for a minute.

And then something REALLY weird happened.

The guy basically followed me with his eyes until I got to the big-boy urinal two doors down from him and then let out this really loud, exasperated sigh, like I had walked in and asked him, mid-stream, if he could spare a few minutes to talk about the Lord.  He immediately stopped peeing and walked to the stall on my right, grumbling as he wiped off the seat and sat down.  What followed was one of the most heinous, otherworldly noises I think I've EVER heard in my life.  It sounded like an alien giving birth to a baby elephant while pouring a bag of wet potting soil into a bucket of water.  In order to keep from laughing/vomiting on myself, I disengaged and left to wash my hands in the break room for fear of lingering too long in the fallout zone.

Now, working retail, I should clarify that I have seen and heard some downright abominations of nature in the restrooms.  I have literally seen the aftermath of an individual who "didn't make it."  It was like a crime scene where a person had been stabbed to death, if their veins had been full of diarrhea.  I won't say it's desensitized me to any sort of wretchedness one might see in a public bathroom, but there's certainly a degree of shock and awe that one gets over, having seen the contents of a human being's bowels spattered across a large portion of ceramic tile.  This, though, was different.  It wasn't disgusting as much as it was unnerving and, while I was definitely grossed out, I was left with a number of questions:

Who was this person and why was he staring at me?  Did he think he recognized me?  Was he expecting privacy in a public restroom?  Was there a "Keep Out" sign that I missed?  Why on earth was he using the short urinal?  Had there been two other people in there before me?  How long had he been standing there?  In fact, why was he standing at the urinal at all?  He obviously needed to use the stall...  How was alien-elephant-potting-soil-baby that much of a surprise to him?

I guess this is why guys never make eye-contact in the bathroom.  Bathrooms are such vulnerable places.  It's the one room of any building in which we're all the same; we're all connected by a single thread of humanity that none of us is immune to.  Even if we're not the guy making the walk of shame out of the stall, apologizing to everyone else with our body language and posture, we know that it could very well have been us and, had we not made a few wiser decisions for breakfast or lunch, it might've.  We'd all rather be at home, with the safety and security of our own toilet, where we know exactly whose curly, black hair that is and how long it's been there.  

At least, that's why I never make eye-contact in the bathroom...

Caffeine Will Be the Death of Me

...so I've been drinking coffee since about 9 PM.  I used about twice the amount of grounds and a third of the water I should've, but it turned out some good homemade frappe and I've really enjoyed it.  Only problem is I felt like my entire body was vibrating on the molecular level for about the first hour or so and now I just can't sleep.  Hopefully I can write some of this off and crash soon.

I found a couple things while trolling the web a few days ago that got me thinking and I wanna share it with you guys.  The first was an (obviously) edited, non-Watterson Calvin & Hobbes strip that kinda made me die a little inside.  I grew up reading Calvin & Hobbes and owe a fairly sizable debt to Bill Watterson for supplying me with a high-brow sense of humor and a fairly sizable vocabulary at a relatively young age.  When I was in grade school, my favorite part of the traveling book-fair (do they still have those anymore?) was checking out/begging my parents for the newest C&H collection book on the market.  There's a part of me that still draws a lot of joy from those memories, and that part of me gets very defensive about integrity preservation when I see those ridiculous knock-off stickers of Calvin peeing on a Ford symbol or some lame-ass webcomic making up some joke about "grown-up Calvin."  Calvin will never have a birthday and Miss Wormwood will always be his teacher.  Hobbes will continually be imaginary yet simultaneously (and paradoxically) real.  These are unchanging facts of the universe; as fixed as the laws of physics, and equally as reliable.

As I kept surfing, though, I ran across this article, and it forced me to contextualize the Calvin and Hobbes mythos.  I would have quit reading halfway through and dismissed the entire affair, had the author not taken such pains to carry the analogy throughout its entirety.  When you think about it, the comparison holds because, clinically, Calvin is a paranoid schizophrenic who projects aspects of his own personality onto a stuffed animal.  If he were a first-grader in 2010, he would be doped up on some kind of psychotropic drug to "balance him out" and help him focus on his school work.  It's a fascinating article and, if you read Calvin & Hobbes at all, it merits checking out.  In fact, it merits checking out if for no other reason than the fact that it's what I'm going to spend the rest of this 'blog talking about and I doubt I'll t make any sense to you if you don't.

The article made me want to go buy Fight Club and watch it again (haven't seen it in years), which I did, and I totally get it.  The movie is all about developing and changing social constructs for self-worth and identity, which is essentially what Calvin and Hobbes was always about, though with a more colorful, child-like frame of reference.  Fight Club is basically what happens when you run the clock forward 25 years to see all these people in their thirties and working through the daily grind of life.

But there's something the article gets wrong and, frankly, I think the movie got wrong, too.  In the article, it says that Tyler Durden resurfaces because "Hobbes" got repressed when it was time for Calvin to grow up.  It pins the figurative-murder of Hobbes on Calvin's father, since absent/passive fathers are referenced in the film as the inciting agent for change and/or growth, and regards the "other" of Tyler/Hobbes as a vehicle for retribution.  The end of the article essentially states that Fight Club is the cold, hard reality of a future that Calvin has to look forward to and makes it a sort of "Get used to life sucking, kids, because that's just the way it is" moral out of the thing.  Even the end of the film is kind of driving home the point that everything is collapsing and you just have to figure out how to survive it.  But whatever... I think those are wrong ideas, but that's not my main disagreement.

My main disagreement is the idea that the "real" character has to somehow conquer the imagined one.  Somehow, Calvin is supposed to sacrifice Hobbes at the altar of adulthood and the Narrator ends up shooting himself in the head to get rid of Tyler, thus making the statement that one cannot keep up with the real world and have these figments of their imaginations running wild.  The irony of this is that it fails to comprehend the very basis of the idea of an "other" in the first place: they're both just extensions of the main characters themselves. 

If Hobbes really is Calvin and Tyler Durden is just the Narrator, then there really is no "other" in the first place.  It's just one person trying to reconcile these difficult, sometimes impossible, thoughts and feelings into a worldview that doesn't accept or approve of them.  Calvin needs Hobbes as an extension of himself to process the reality of growing up around parents and school and responsibility and friends; to filter his experiences through a lens of his own self-dialogue.  The Narrator needs Tyler Durden to break away from his myopic way of living that thinks that materialism is the key to self-definition.  But it's really just Calvin and the Narrator all along.  They don't necessarily need to kill the other (well, except for Tyler... he was kinda crazy), they just need to assimilate him.

My hope for Calvin is that he learned to accept the part of himself that Hobbes was born out of and be okay with it.  I hope he grew up and made friends and went to college and became an art major and never apologized for being weird.  I hope he retained his desire to be outside and explore and try new things and not be afraid of steering his sled into a ravine from time to time.  I hope he had confidence in his abilities and his creativity and never got suckered into a relationship because he was desperate and lonely.  I hope he never bought into the lie that he was somehow insufficient on his own or that he needed to change to fit in with everybody else.  And I hope all those things for Calvin, because I ultimately hope those things for me.

I look back on Calvin and Hobbes, and even Fight Club to a lesser degree, with fondness because they both represent processes I've had to go through.  I've had to process these idyllic, romanticized notions of what life should be and sometimes I've used my own stuffed tigers to do it.  I've had to stop and ask myself, "How did I get here and when did I start wanting to buy crap-furniture from Ikea in an effort to be more normal?"  I relate to these experiences, but I don't feel the need make an either/or choice between conforming to society's expectations and being some radical outsider who can't ever fit in anywhere.  I think there's a way to approach life holistically, where the two are unified into an entire man, where accepting reality but not being tied down by its rules all the time are simultaneous truths, not mutually exclusive decisions.

It's 5 AM now, and I'm actually kinda sleepy.  Sorry if this didn't/doesn't make much sense, but it felt good to think about it a bit and get it out there.  I should probably go to bed now, before *I* start imagining things...

A Number With No Name

Hey... do you have a minute?  I kinda need to talk to you.

Whew... okay.  

Man, this is gonna be harder than I thought... 

Boy... Okay.  

Okay.  

Okay.

So, you know how sometimes...?  

No, that's not right.  Hang on.

Just hang on.  Okay.  Come on.  No, Seriously.  I can do this.  Okay.

Look, I really like you.  Like, a lot.  I like you a lot.  Not "a lot" a lot, but I like you.  A lot.

Okay.

So, here's the thing: we've been doing whatever this is we've been doing for about a month or so.  I mean, I'm still not really sure what to call it, but it's been good, right?  I mean, like, we're both into it, you know?  It's good?  Yeah.  No, me too.  Totally.  I totally dig this.  It's totally cool.  It's good.  I like it.  And you.  Like, I'm happy with the way things are going and it's been totally awesome, you know?  It's really awesome.  Like, totally.

But I mean... like, you don't wanna keep things this way forever, right?  I mean, like... you want things to kinda move forward and stuff, right?  Like, you think about that kinda stuff...?  Yeah?  Like, I don't wanna be all weird or anything, and I mean, this is totally just batting ideas around, but like... what does serious look like for you?  I mean, I don't have a lot of experience with this kinda thing, so in a lot of ways I feel like I'm just shooting in the dark... 

Yeah.  Yeah.  No, I mean, like... I'm not trying to jerk you around or anything.  It's not like I'm just kinda hanging out until something better comes along.  Like I said before, I really like you.  It's just hard for me with stuff like this because, you know... like, I really like you and I want you to like me, too, so... I guess... I guess I just get insecure about it sometimes, you know?

I mean like, take a look at yesterday.  Yesterday was like, under 30 page views.  And I mean, I'm totally not just doing this just to see how many times you check it.  Like, I'm not trying to keep score or anything, but whenever you don't check it, I feel like you're just not paying attention to me, you know?  Like, it just makes me feel all unimportant and stuff, you know what I mean?

Well, I mean... yeah, I know you're busy and stuff.  And like, I totally don't want to distract you from all that stuff.  It's important, I get that.  I don't wanna be a distraction for you.  But like, last Thursday's post was over 80.  I mean, I dunno... maybe it was just a bad week for you or something.  I get that.  I just... I just wanna feel like I'm important to you, you know?  Like, I don't just wanna be a thing in your life that you feel like you can walk away from whenever you want, you know?  I wanna matter to you.  I want you to want to talk and stuff, you know?  I dunno... maybe I'm just being stupid and over-sensitive.  Maybe I'm way off.

Look, I'm sorry.  I'm sorry for being all stupid and weird and bringing all this up...  Go ahead and go back to checking your Facebook or whatever.  I'm sorry.  It's really not that important.  I just kinda freaked out for a minute.  Sorry.

I don't think you guys can see it, but there's a page titled "Stats" on here that shows all these little graphs and charts detailing how many people look at my 'blog every day.  It gives me numbers for the total page-views of my 'blog over time, numbers for the month, numbers for the day, etc.  It even tells me how many people are looking at my 'blog at this exact moment.  Boy, talk about the wrong kind of information for a neurotic to have...

I really don't wanna be like that, but the above part in italics is basically what happens in my brain every time I click the link for that page.  Sadder still is the fact that I've actually had conversations like the one above with people I've been in relationships with (I'll thank you not to comment on them [you know who you are]) and yes... I really do say "like," "I mean," "right?" and "you know?" that freaking much.  It's annoying.  I'm aware.

But I was talking with some friends last night about something that made me think of this.  We were discussing the controversy surrounding Terry Jones (this Terry Jones, not that Terry Jones) and somebody said something to the effect of "I just don't understand what would motivate a person to even want to be that divisive in the first place... is it just the attention?" and I thought about that a lot.  I mean, I'm sure the attention was a factor, but I saw a few things about the guy and he didn't seem like the type who just set out to get on TV.  At least, not with that moustache.  

As messed up as it was, I think he probably made the decision, originally, based out of some sort of genuine conviction.  I'm glad he got talked out of it, certainly, but I think that, before the whole thing blew up, he probably believed it was the right thing; that he really should do it.  But then, I think, it suddenly became this whole "cause" because it was such a fine line between freedom of expression and loving thy neighbor.  People got really riled up about it (and rightly so) and all of a sudden it was really important who said what and which side was right and I imagine he was forced into this decision moment where he had to rethink everything based on the fact that he wasn't just some random guy doing what seemed best by himself anymore.  He had a platform and a voice and people really cared about what he did with it all of a sudden.

And I thought, you know, it's a lot easier to seek validation in numbers and in persons rather than in the truth.  It was probably a lot easier to feel like it was a good idea to burn a Qur'an when he had forty or fifty people around who all agreed with him.  Out of everyone he knew, or maybe out of his whole congregation, I imagine that was a lot of people.  And it was probably a lot easier for him to decide not to go through with it when a president and an army general asked him not to instead of just, oh, say, hundreds of thousands of faceless Christians across the country.  

It's easier because "us" verses "them" always is. When I can count the "yeas" and "nays," it's easy to decide who wins.  I don't have to think about convictions and principles and question whether or not my own personal motives or agendas are getting in the way (or are just plain wrong).  I don't have to say "You know, I had this really stupid moment where I came up with this really horrible idea that would've offended millions of people and contradicted everything about what I say I believe.  I let the attention go to my head and acted like a jerk.  I'm really sorry."

And I feel like this relates to my 'blog in a way because, as much as I don't want to be Terry Jones, I think I'm just as susceptible to pandering for attention as he is.  I like my 'blog and I want it to be a success.  But how do I define "success?"  I mean, I don't necessarily want EVERYONE to read and enjoy it, but I want my friends to keep up with it and, if I'm honest, there's a part of me that's disappointed and discouraged when I find out that a lot of them don't.  I don't want it to become this sort of merit badge thing where I can feel like it went well (or didn't) based on how many people looked at it today.  I want to be able to look back over time and see ways that my writing has improved and that the jokes got funnier and tighter and I got better and better at cutting out all the stupid, extraneous information that made it feel long-winded and boring.  I don't just want to keep clicking the "Stats" button and hoping you cared about me today.  I mean, a lot of people like Dane Cook, but he's not funny.  I don't wanna be Dane Cook.

I probably will keep checking the stats, though, because I'm a stupid person and I do stupid things.  I also like to see, over time, which posts people enjoy and keep coming back to.  So far, the one about foods I don't like is the most popular one.  Maybe I should go back to that.  Maybe I'm like "Weird Al" Yankovic: I can have a successful career in twenty-or-so years, but for now I gotta pay my dues and put out a food album.  Now there's a comedian for ya...  "Weird Al" is funny.  I'm okay with being "Weird Al."

An Open Letter to Dave Ramsey

For those unfamiliar, Dave Ramsey is a financial author, radio host, TV personality, and motivational speaker (thank you Wikipedia).  His approach to finance (and life in general) is rooted in fairly straightforward, practical advice that isn't complicated and doesn't require an advanced degree to understand.  The basic tenets of his material are two-fold: 1. Stick to a budget and 2. Don't spend more than you make.  He lays out plans for how to save money and invest, how to get rid of debt and never borrow again, etc. but if you can make a budget and live within your means, you've pretty much got the jist of what he's saying.

One thing that Dave mentions frequently, throughout all of his various media, is that he hates tuna fish.  When he was broke and recovering, he ate a lot of tuna fish and he says that when he smells tuna fish, he thinks about the times in his life when he was at his lowest and it makes him feel broke.  I'm trying to work my way out of debt and I listen to his show frequently, but every time he says he hates tuna fish, it kinda makes me die a little inside.  I know it's cheap and kinda gross and super-white-trashy, but I really like tuna fish and it got me thinking.  So I sent Dave an e-mail about it:

Dear Dave -

     I'm 27 years old and I've been listening to your show for a while now, trying to work the baby steps and get my life in order.  I'm currently working my debt snowball and living on beans and rice and a whoooole lot of tuna.  I know you hate tuna fish, but I actually kinda like it and I wanted to share something with you about it.  

     When I was a kid, my family would have tuna fish sandwiches for lunch on Sunday afternoons and it was pretty much my favorite part of the week.  I'm not really sure why I liked it so much; I guess it's just one of those things about childhood that sticks out in your memory.  When my parents filed for divorce a little over a year ago, I started looking back on those times as one of the (few) instances of unity that we experienced as a family.  Everybody was at the table and eating and talking together.  The TV wasn't on and we weren't all rushing out to go somewhere or do something individually.  We were a family and we loved each other.

     I won't say that money was the only thing that drove my parents apart, but it certainly wasn't an area of unity for them, either.  They kept separate checking accounts the entire 31 years they were married and constantly beat each other over the heads with "Who pays the bills around here" toward the end when my dad was out of work.  I love my parents to death, but they're both very broken people (aren't we all?) and they passed a lot of scars on to me that I'm now stuck to deal with.  Money is definitely one of them.

     Whenever I eat tuna fish, I'm reminded of the family I used to have and the pain associated with watching it all fall apart.  I think about how blessed I was with those moments of togetherness and how much I want that for myself and my own future wife and kids; how desperately I want to avoid the unbelievable kind of selfishness and heartbreak that divorce carries with it.  I know that tuna fish is cheap and not the tastiest thing in the world, but I also know that by making a plan and staying committed to it, I'm gonna change my family tree and not force-feed my own struggles to my kids.  

     In the course of trying to make your principles for money into my principles for money, I have finished college and quit drinking.  I know you're not in the business of education advice or addiction recovery, but learning to make a budget and living within my means and, yes, eating tuna fish have all definitely been a big part of enabling those changes.  I want to thank you for the encouragement you offer to millions of people, myself included, and for pointing me toward hope and a future without divorce, addiction, or debt.  Keep up the good work, brother.

Sincerely,

Pairsh Wiggins

Five Year Plan

Keeping in step with my post from Monday (or trying to, anyway), I sat down last night to work on a five-year plan.  If you've spent more than five minutes around me, you understand why this is preposterous from the outset: I don't do well planning the next five minutes of my life, let alone the next five years.  But I said I was gonna, and my lack of drive brought me to waste almost the entire day yesterday, so I felt like I should at least take a crack at it.

It's hard to talk about a future you only hope to have.  It seems so ridiculous.  Who's to say where I'll be in five years?  It's a long time and a lot can happen.  I barely feel confident making plans for next week because you never really know what the weekend will be like, and I could suddenly need to make a huge correction or try to squeeze in some previously-unforeseen event, or I might get sick or die or have diarrhea or something.  You never know, man.  It could happen.

But on the other hand, I do it all the time.  Future planning, I mean.  Not have diarrhea.  I talk about things I hope to have or do all the time, and if I don't talk about them, I'm at least usually thinking about them.  I may disguise my hopes as "wants" just so that it doesn't sound like I'm gonna be disappointed if I'm denied certain things, but it doesn't change the fact that they're still hopes.  I hope I get a new job and I don't want to live in an apartment forever.  I hope to be married someday and have kids.  I want to be healthy and happy and not have all these addictions in my life, hanging around my neck like rotten fish heads.  And even though I don't attach a specific, five-year timetable to any of it, I still cast those things into my future with words like "someday" and "soon."

So what's the big deal about sticking a number on it?  If five years really is so far away, why am I so reluctant to hope to have accomplished so many big things in that time?  I think it's largely because if I start making plans to actually get or do these things, they stop being noble aspirations and start becoming tangible realities that I have to work toward.  It's the difference between saying "Boy, it'd sure nice to be a millionaire by the time I'm 40" and saying "If I can generate/put away an average of $7,000 a month for the next twelve years, I'll have a million dollars in the bank."  The first scenario allows a lot of room for "Golly-gee" wishful thinking.  The second is an actual plan that requires you to do something.

So, in five years, where do I want to be?  Well, I would like to be married in five years.  I'll be 32, almost 33, and I don't think it's unreasonable to say that.  And I want it to be a great marriage.  I want it to be free from the chains of addiction and debt.  I don't want to drag any boat anchors into my family and expect my wife to have to deal with it.  I won't be able to say I never screwed up or that I don't have struggles, but I want to be able to say that I'm recovering and invite her along as a help-mate instead of stumbling along, waiting for her to save me.  I won't say I'll necessarily want kids by then, but I want to be in a place where I'd be able to have them without wondering how I'm going to support them or keep them from turning out just like their deadbeat father.  I'd like to own a house.  At least, I'd like to be on track to own a house.  Whether I'm working a Dave Ramsey-style plan to save up for a 100% cash purchase or building up a sizable down-payment, I want to be in process with that.  I want to be self-employed, too.  Well, maybe not totally, but at least working on getting there.  I want to do something I love and have the freedom to set my own schedule and be productive on my own time without being at the mercy of someone else.  If I'm working a part-time gig somewhere to keep affordable insurance for me and my family, I think I'd be alright with that.  But I definitely want to have achieved some solid career goals by that point and be working toward other, larger ones.  

Most of all, I want to have key ways in which I'm using all of this to serve other people.  I don't just want to build a nice little pile of awesome so that I can keep it all to myself.  I want to have a home so that I can invite other people into it.  I want to have a great job with a flexible schedule so that I can give time and money to people who need it.  I want a great marriage that models love and patience and servanthood to anybody who knows me and my wife and sees the way we interact.  I want to be able to say that God has blessed me with all of this in order that he might bless others through it.

But maybe he won't.  Maybe I do get sick or die tomorrow.  Maybe it is foolish to lay out a plan for something you can't touch or see.  But I'll tell you what I know to be true--I know for a fact what it's like to live without one.  I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the quickest way to a pointless life is to keep doing whatever you've been doing and don't ever make plans to change.  Go out, have a few drinks, buy some crap you don't need with money you don't have and find someone you can tolerate to settle in with, and that's exactly what you'll be doing: settling.  You'll end up old, fat, tired, and bored and you'll hate yourself for it.

I don't wanna go out like that.  I want to go on big adventures where some crazy stuff goes down with people that my life is better for having in it and, when it's all behind me, I wanna be able to look back on everything that went on and see all the ways that God showed up in the middle of the mess as the most awesome thing that ever happened to me.  And even if this were the last 'blog I ever wrote and you all had to bury me tomorrow, I could show you some really cool ways that it's already taken place.  

Maybe this doesn't make much sense to you.  Maybe I should spend some time writing about those instances in my life where God showed up and did something incredible.  But the bigger question for me in all of this is, what's wrong with planning for that?  What's wrong with saying that you want that to continue?  Maybe it's not so much planning out a detailed road-map of where you're going and how you're going to get there.  Maybe it's more about opening yourself up to the possibility of a future and handing over the keys.  Maybe I'm not making some crazy-obsessive list of everything I want for myself and instead inviting God to change me and bless me in ways that I never thought were possible.

Regardless, would I rather waste away on potential unrealized or go down in flames swinging for the fences?

Four Things I Vaguely Remember

1. I am five or six years old.  I have spent the entire day with my grandmother (as I have most days) and we are now at her ceramic painting club/class.  The room smells of turpentine and old ladies, despite the fact that my grandmother is not quite fifty.  I wish we were at her house where there is a color television with a VCR and I can watch Muppet movies.  There are four or five other ladies in the room and each has her own carrying-case full of God only knows what.  I'm told they only have paints in them, but they're big and make strange clinking sounds such that I want to dig through them to find out what's in them.  One lady has a carpet bag, another has a leather briefcase, and my own grandmother has a large wicker picnic basket.  I sit as still as my fidgety body will allow, answering as many of the ladies' questions as I can while trying to take in all the smells and colors of the room.  I try not to ask when we'll be going home too much and am rewarded for my reasonably-good behavior by being allowed to paint a dinosaur on a ceramic tile.  I think my mother still has it somewhere.

2. I am in my early teens.  I am taken to a Monet exhibit in Ft. Worth with my grandmother and some of her friends.  One of them is the wife of my grandfather's friend whose ranch we go hunting at.  She seems more interested in what I think about everything than the exhibit itself.  I am astonished by a painting that is largely unfinished, in which the underside of a bridge is only suggested by a single zig-zagged mark, leaving large, blank canvas patches exposed.  I was under the impression that this was supposed to be a masterpiece collection and hope one day to be skilled/important/famous enough for my unfinished work to still be treated as fine art.

3.I am eight or nine years old.  I have been signed up for art lessons from a woman who might be the local ag teacher and I wonder if we'll get to help her feed the cattle.  Her entire house smells like a horse blanket and I am deathly allergic to everything within it, given that it is all covered in a fine layer of animal dander.  I am fortunate that the "lessons" are in a tool shed away from the house, but it is hot and makes me not want to be here anymore.  One of the other children has found a cattle prod and is hitting people with it.  Then he figures out how to use it.  Now I definitely don't want to be here anymore.  One of the children is crying.  Profusely.  I think it might be me.  We are taught to make pottery and I want to make a coffee mug like I saw somebody do on the local PBS station one time.  I am politely informed that there is no pottery wheel available, but I am welcome to make anything I like with my insufficient lump of clay.  Unperturbed, I shoot for the coffee mug anyway.  The handle falls off and it leaks.  I believe it was used as a pen holder, but I haven't seen it in years so I can't remember.

4. It is the first day of kindergarten.  I go to church with half the children in this room and am, therefore, nonplussed at being left here by my mother.  We are arranged at tables and classified into groups designated by an animal that has been die-cut from construction paper and has our names on them.  Each table/group has six children at it, except for the turtle group, which consists of myself and another child named Teddy.  Teddy is part of the half I don't go to church with and is distressed at the perception of his parents' abandonment.  Whereas I am still riding the wave of owning a new Superman backpack and dinosaur Converse sneakers (with fancy Muppet bow biters), he cries non-stop for the entirety of the day, a trend he will continue for the remainder of the week and the first fifteen minutes of each day subsequent to that.  After a month or so of this, I am punished by missing recess for shoving Teddy and telling him to stop crying.  Only later would I think about it long enough to regret this decision, as I am certain he has most likely gone on to be one of the most dangerous serial killers on the face of the planet.

My Life in Lists

As I type this sentence, I have not slept since sometime earlier Sunday afternoon.  I bought some fat free french vanilla Coffee Mate creamer at the grocery store on my way home from Cliff Fritschle's house and decided to give it a try.  At 10 o'clock at night.  On a full pot of coffee.  Brewed at double strength.

I'm a genius.

The stupidest thing about all of this is that I ended up buying the creamer, which I totally didn't need, and forgot the orange juice that I originally went to H-E-B for in the first place.  In fact, I forgot to buy a couple of things (red plum jelly, for instance) because I went in without a list.  I've mentioned my struggle with grocery stores in a previous post and, ultimately, it boils down to this: I have to have a grocery list.  I need a tangible reminder to keep me focused on what it is I'm after, otherwise I get a bunch of crap I don't need and forget a bunch of crap I do.

I think maybe this isn't just a grocery store thing, though.  I think maybe it's a life thing.  I just don't stay on task very well.  I fall for every cheap advertising hustle in the book and get distracted by whatever's at hand.  I'm like a raccoon: dangle something shiny in front of me and I'll completely forget what I was doing.  I don't remember why I came here or what I'm after, I just know that I'm hungry and I want cookies.  And by the time I realize my mistake, I'm already home and have a tummy ache from my 100% simple-sugar diet and lack of general nutrition.

How many times have I gone in to the kitchen to do the dishes, only to end up making lunch and putting the dishes off 'til later instead?  How many times have I tried to clean my room  but then sat down to read part of a book that I forgot I had because it was buried under a stack of laundry?  How many hours have I wasted online because "I just need to check my e-mail right quick?"

I know from experience that I have to set goals in order to change.  I can't just bumble my way through life and expect to come out on top.  But even more than goal-setting, I also have to make a plan that helps me figure out how to go about working toward them because I know I'll just end up getting side-tracked by something stupid and not snap out of it until a week later when I look back at all the time I've wasted and kick myself for being so easily derailed.

So that's my goal for this week: set some goals.  It's gonna suck, 'cause then I'm actually gonna have to do something with them, but it's better than sitting around all jacked up on caffeine until 6 o'clock in the morning...

Ugh... I'm gonna see if I can't go throw up or hit myself in the head until I pass out or something... 

Laters, all.

Editing Day

I spent some time messing with the format/look of the 'blog today and I don't really feel like spending more time writing.  I probably should, but I'm an adult who can make his own decisions, so whatever.  I don't care.

Let me know what you think about the layout stuff.  I dunno if I'm crazy about it, but it's something different, so I'll try it out for a bit.  I'll probably be messing with it again soon.

Looking at the numbers, I might stop posting on Saturdays altogether.  Other than Sunday (when I already don't 'blog) it's statistically the lowest viewed day of the week.  I haven't decided for sure yet, but don't be surprised if nothing turns up next week.

The Town That Billy Sunday Couldn't Shut Down

I mentioned a while back that I found an opening for a writing job based out of Chicago and then didn't really bring it up again.  I wasn't really even very specific about it, except to mention a few lines from the application description and to self-flagellate my writing abilities re: "succinctness."  Last night I mentioned my tendency for non-disclosure and related it to the idea that I do it because I just don't want anybody to know the whole truth about me.  But there's more to it than that.

First, I only like talking about things I have all figured out.  Whenever I feel like I've broken down and and understood and resolved all conceivable aspects of something going on with me, then I'll feel like talking about it.  I don't want to leave myself unjustified and exposed to a question I don't know how to answer.  It's one of those ideas that sound stupid when you say it out loud, but I want people to think I'm really well-put-together and I'm afraid if I tell them I'm struggling through stuff I don't know how to figure out, they won't admire me as much anymore.  I like being told that I'm self-aware and insightful and if I can speak intelligently to the areas of my life that I'm "over," it sounds like I've really learned a lot and matured through some rough circumstances.

Second, I don't want to held accountable for stuff.  If everybody knows what's going on with me, they're gonna ask how I'm doing and if I've made any progress with the thing and I'm gonna have to tell them, no, I didn't really do anything all morning long except play computer games and screw around on the internet.  I want to be able to set my own schedule and get around to doing things whenever I feel like it and not have the hassle of everybody being "all up in my biz."

But the jist of the last post was kinda to describe this as a negative characteristic that needs to change.  And I said I was gonna utilize today's post to try and shift in that direction.  So, whatever... I guess this is it.

The job in Chicago is for a company called "Groupon."  They're a web-based company that puts together free coupons that get sent out daily via e-mail, discounting products and services for local businesses that are specific to their subscribers' zip code.  If you aren't familiar with the company, they're worth checking out if for no other reason than the fact that they have insane deals for a variety of businesses, from food to clothing to helicopter rides/lessons.  They  have open staff writer positions, which means there's no deadline for my application, but also that I'd probably end up having to move there if I were to actually get the job.  Which is fine, I'm not averse to moving for employment, it's just that... well...

1.  I've never lived outside of Texas and the thought of moving across the country to a place that actually gets snow in the winter kind of freaks me out.  I don't see myself as some country bumpkin who wouldn't be able to function in a "big city" environment, but Chicago is huge and I don't know the first thing about the city and I don't know anybody up there, so there's a lot of fear attached to the idea.

2.  Practically speaking, I have no idea what it takes to live in Chicago.  I don't know what housing costs, I don't know commuting is like, I don't know what's the "good" part of town... it's just a gigantic question mark for me in terms of whether or not I could actually pull off the basics of day-to-day living.

3.  Spiritually, I've made a lot of progress over the last three years and built up a large support system for myself in Austin.  Even going back to Dallas would be an upheaval for that, nevermind Chicago.  I'd be exposed to the temptations of laziness and isolation, plus have to rebuild meaningful relationships with a whole new set of people.  There wouldn't be much in the way of security-blankets to take with me.  I'd be pretty much alone in a humongous, unfamiliar city.

4.  I really like the prospect of being a writer in Chicago.  Like, really.  I get excited thinking about it.  It makes me want to go.  I know it would be hard and I'd have to adjust to a completely new and different life in a completely new and different place, but the thought of a challenge that big gets my blood pumping and feeling like I could actually do this and I don't want to get all excited about it and then not be called back or, worse, just get rejected.  I don't want to mentally allow myself to let go of everything I have in Austin only to get hung out to dry and be despondent when I have to figure something else out.

I don't know if any of this makes sense to anybody other than myself and I'm still kinda shaky about putting all this out there.  I still might go ahead and delete this whole thing before I get to the end of the paragraph.  But I really do feel like it's a good opportunity that I should take advantage of because there are so many others in life I've just let go because I was afraid or didn't think I could handle the change.  In spite of the risks, there are a lot of ways in which this could serve as a great first step toward the rest of my life and I think it would be stupid to back down from it.  I need to do a little more leg-work on the financial logistics of living there, but I'm gonna try for it anyway.  I'll keep you guys updated on how it goes.

Well, well... look at that.  I didn't delete it.  Crazy.

Full Disclosure

I know I said I was gonna post a list soon, but I can only think of two things to put on it and I don't want to end up with ten Batarang money clips and four Chuck Close books.  The crappy thing is that I can think of lots of things I'd like to get for my birthday, but it's all art supplies and bike-related items and I'm kinda particular about what kind of paints I use and I don't want to put people through the hassle of trying to find specific stuff.  Plus, Lycra shorts are a little too close to underwear and I'd rather just buy on my own, thanks.  Besides, making a list of everything I like and/or want feels really self-indulgent and childish.  It comes across like I expect to get these things; like I deserve all this awesome stuff because of what a great friend/relative of yours I am.

God, birthdays are such a pain in the ass.

I've been thinking about this whole honesty thing for a while now and I'm kinda sick of it.  It's kinda like waking up one morning after years-worth of swiping credit cards for everything and actually looking at your bill for once.  It's astonishing how much I've kept hidden over the years and how long some of it's been in the dark.  In a lot of ways, I wouldn't even know where to begin or who to tell or whether or not it's even worth remembering or talking about at this point.  I think maybe that's why punishing myself with alcohol was so much easier: I could just drink 'til I felt physically as messed up as I did mentally, throw up, and pass out.

One of the weirder side effects of dishonesty, though, is that you never seem to remember who knows what about you.  It's different from the whole "I can't remember who I told what lie" because I'm not really trying to keep up with an alibi so much as control a floodgate.  I never really give anybody the whole story, so I'm never even totally clear, myself, what the whole story is.  There's this manipulation thing that happens where I tell one person about one thing and then I tell another person about something different and whatever muscle it is that gets all tense can relax because it feels like I've been totally honest, even though I really haven't.  It creates this sort of disjointedness between what I experience and how I feel, as though they were separate entities that have no bearing on each other.  I treat the truth like it's just some gland that needs expressing from time to time; like a dog dragging his ass on the carpet, satisfying some need, but not really understanding why.

I guess maybe that's something else I could use my 'blog for: to fill in some of the gaps and let people in on what's going on with me.  At least, I think maybe that should be part of it.  The interwebs are great to connect remotely with other people and I should probably leverage that.  So, yeah.  Let's give that a whirl and see what happens...

...tomorrow.  I technically missed my deadline for today, which throws my sense of timing/scheduling off.  Plus, I'm just tired.  I'll hop on tomorrow morning after I've slept in and eaten and let you guys know what's going on.  Sorry if you thought I would land this with something profound though, if my previous 'blogs have set any kind of precedent, I seriously doubt it. 

G'night, everybody...

Foods I Don't Understand

You would think that for someone with as many strident opinions as I have, I'd be a more picky eater.  I'm not.  I'm like a garbage disposal: I'll eat just about anything, if cut in small enough pieces.  Also, I tend to clog if you jam a fork in me.  But don't be fooled... there are certain things I wouldn't touch with your mouth.  Here is a list of those foods:

1. Mayonnaise - I can't believe that this disgusting abomination is actually a thing.  Who on earth do you know that really likes mayonnaise?  I can't remember the last time somebody said "Man, I love mayonnaise."  Don't get me wrong, I know plenty of people who don't mind mayonnaise and will still eat it, but how many dyed-in-the-wool mayonnaise fans still exist?  In fact, how many not-really-dyed-in-the-wool-but-it's-okay-I-guess mayonnaise eaters are there?  I think the only people I know who actively buy and use it anymore are my grandparents' age and older.  Actually, that's a lie.  The only people I know who actively buy and use mayonnaise are my grandparents.  We should make a pact, as a society, to send them all the remaining mayonnaise left on earth so that they have enough to last until they die, but the rest of us are just gonna stop using it.

2. Bleu Cheese - I kinda have a philosophical problem with cheese in general because I kinda have a philosophical problem with milk.  Think about it: at some point in history, some guy (because no woman would be that stupid) was thirsty enough to drink whatever came out of the dangly part of a cow.  Now, I don't know about you but I'm not sure I can trust that kind of desperation.  How did he know it was safe?  How many other animals did he try before settling on "cow?"  Do you really wanna drink after the dude whose house is filled with mason jars labeled "Bat," "Orangutan," and "Sea Snake?"  Cheese just takes that same desperation one step further: apparently, he didn't get around to one of those jars quick enough so he decided to eat whatever was in it.  Even if you can philosophically resolve all of that enough to continue eating cheese, bleu cheese just vaults into the realm of third-degree-awful because now we have to reconcile the fact that solidified dangly cow juice has turned blue.  Cheese ought not to be blue.  If you see cheese and it's blue, that cheese is the wrong color.  Anybody who picked up a hot-pink orange or a red banana at the grocery store would put it right back where they found it and never shop at that store again.  Not to mention that, as if having an incorrect color-scheme weren't bad enough, bleu cheese just tastes like it shouldn't be in your mouth, anyway.  The flavor is one that might be associated with athlete's foot or a mildewy washcloth.  Which, I guess, if you like the taste of mildewy washcloths, makes it perfect.  I, however, am on a pretty strict non-mildewy-washcloth diet.

3. Avocados - I realize that I'm in the minority on this one, but I really wish there would be some kind of sudden epidemic that wipes out the avocado industry.  In fact, I'm not entirely sure why anybody ever thought to cultivate avocados for the purpose of human consumption in the first place.  I mean, just look at an avocado and tell me it doesn't look like a dirty booger or a giant lump of bird poop.  They're all squishy and gross and they have all those wrinkles on them, like a dark-green old person.  Oh, and then you cut it open and what's that underneath?  That's right... more booger.  No thank you, entire-rest-of-the-world.  You can keep your nasty snot-fruit allllll to yourself.

That's really about it.  There are certain other things that I don't particularly care for (I'll keep those under my hat just in case you ever invite me over for dinner and I have to lie and tell you it's delicious) but these are basically my taste buds' equivalent of the FBI's Most Wanted.  I know that everybody is entitled to their own opinions and I catch flak from almost everyone else on Earth for hating avocados, I find it interesting that what tastes like sunshine and happiness to one person should taste like hammered horse testicles to another (even in saying that, I'm sure there's somebody out there who likes a well-cooked horse testicle from time to time).  But, man... my brain just can't even form a concept map for any wavelength of existence in which eating an avocado doesn't immediately trigger my gag reflex.  How do you not get that?  Is that just an enjoyable sensation for you?  Does avocado taste like chocolate to everyone else but me?

Even more than that, though, I'm astonished by how quickly we feel the need to defend our personal tastes to everyone else.  Somehow it's impossible for us to accept the idea that my favorite thing on the planet may not necessarily be yours.  I don't think I've ever met anybody who assumed a posture of casual indifference toward my stating that I don't like one of the above-mentioned foods.  It's always "What's wrong with you?" and "You'd like it if you tried it the way I make it," or  "Why don't you just stop complaining about your birthday present and eat it?"  But I'm just as guilty of this as anybody.  When people tell me they don't like my favorite things, I personalize it and act like they've insulted me.  Maybe I'm insecure and don't want to be wrong.  Maybe I'm just that passionate about sashimi and mushrooms.  But, whatever... just stop telling me I need to try your guacamole-and-bleu-cheese sandwich with mayonnaise and we'll keep being friends.

Honesty is the Last Policy

I am not the most forthcoming person on the planet.  Which I suppose, if we extrapolate, makes me dishonest.  Which, if we extrapolate again, makes me a liar.  It's not a nice word and I don't like using it self-reflexively, but it's true, so I guess I have to.

I've been thinking about this idea a lot lately, that withholding information constitutes a lie, and I hate it.  I  hate that I do it and I really wish I had someone to blame for it.  I wish that someone had taught me how so that I could hold them responsible, or that there was someone who was supposed to tell me not to do it to so that I could be mad at them for falling down on the job.  I kinda want to be mad at my family, and to some degree I am, but I don't think I can actually hold them accountable for decisions I made on my own.  It certainly wouldn't hold up in a court of law, anyway.  All I can really say is that I grew up with the idea that the best way to protect yourself from getting in trouble is to hold out from telling the truth as long as you can, and there are a lot of ways in which I can see myself still operating under that assumption.

I used to go deer hunting with my grandfather when I was a kid.  On one trip, when I was about thirteen, it had been misting all morning long and when we got back to the cabin, my grandfather asked me to oil the rifles to prevent them from rusting.  I was excited to be trusted with everybody's guns and, in my excitement, managed to drop the one that my grandfather and I used.  (Thankfully, I was at least smart enough to unload them all first.)  I froze.  I did the thing where I said, "Oh shit," and then clapped my hand over my mouth because I was thirteen and not allowed to say those words.  "What do I do?  What if it's broken?  What if my grandfather writes me out of the will?  What if he just kills me and buries me out here?  How am I gonna fix this?  How could I have been so careless?"  The thoughts ran through my mind with such rapid succession, I'm surprised my brain didn't overheat and shut down.  I checked the gun itself for any nicks and scratches and then the scope to make sure I hadn't cracked the lens or anything.  I saw a couple small scuffs that were barely noticeable and might have already been there (except that my grandfather took immaculate care of his guns, so there's no way, in hindsight, that they were) and convinced myself that the gun was okay and nothing bad had happened.  I simply finished oiling it and put it delicately back in its case.

The problem, though, is that high-powered rifles with high-powered scopes are fairly delicate things.  The reason they make big, durable cases with soft, foamy liners for them is because the slightest jarring can discombobulate the scope's accuracy, thus making the entire contraption, essentially, useless.  And I hadn't just dinged it a little.  I full-on dropped it.  On concrete.  I mean, it clattered and everything, like I was a Nazi soldier being taken captive as a prisoner of war.  Like I said, I inspected it and made sure it wasn't damaged, but I knew there was no way it would shoot right after that.  

But I didn't say anything about it, either.  

Nobody saw me do it.  Nobody heard it drop.  I put it back in its case and walked away clean and resolved to never breathe a word about it to anybody.

Until.

It was the end of the hunting season and we only had one more trip before putting everything in storage until next year when my grandfather, as he always did, would take the guns to a professional and have the scopes calibrated, thus washing my sins away.  I had sweated it out through two previous trips and prayed desperately that God would make all the deer invisible or something so that we wouldn't have a reason to shoot the gun and find out it was defective.  We were right down to the last outing of the last night and it was almost too dark to see and I guess I must have stopped praying for a minute or something, because we drove past the biggest deer I think I've ever seen.  It looked like a moose.  Terror struck my when my grandfather stopped the truck and told me to get the gun.  If he had asked if I wanted to take a shot, that would've been different.  I could've said "no" and given a bunch of excuses because it was late and if it ran, we'd have to find it, and then we'd have to clean it and it would be a mess, etc.  Being told to get the gun was different.  This was a trophy animal and, as a hunter, I was expected to want to kill it.  I would have gotten the award for biggest deer killed this season and people would talk about this kill for seasons to come.  There was no option to this.  I had to shoot the gun.

I fidgeted around, mostly from wrecked nerves more than excitement, and aimed slowly, hoping the deer might suddenly spook and bolt off into the distance for no apparent reason.  I closed my eyes and put my finger on the trigger, praying that God would either miraculously guide the bullet into a kill-shot or make the deer run so far away that I wouldn't have to take a second shot and I could just blame my lousy shooting and move on.

KABOOM!!!

Nothing happened.  I mean, literally nothing.  The deer looked up from whatever brush he was nibbling on and stared in our direction like we had just asked for directions to the nearest gas station.  "Reload!  Reload!"  My grandfather was poking me in the shoulder.  I ejected the empty cartridge and loaded another round.

KABOOM!!!

Still nothing.  I was more angry at the stupid deer for not running away at the sound of the gunshot than I was at myself for using a gun I knew was messed up.  There were six rounds in the gun and I used them all.  Each time, the deer would just raise his head and look around sleepily, like a drunk person looking for the bathroom, and then go back to eating.  After the last shot, he trotted off, probably to taunt some other poor thirteen year-old with a broken gun.

The whole ride back to the cabin, I got to answer the half-a-million questions my grandfather had.  Was I aiming in the right place?  Did I remember to breathe out, aim, and then shoot?  Did I jerk the trigger or just press lightly, increasing pressure until it gave?  Yes, Poopa. Yes, Poopa.  No, Poopa...  Every question was salt in the wound.  I felt like those guys you see in movies, handcuffed to the chair they're sitting in, one lonely light bulb swinging just overhead, some hard-nosed cop sitting on the table in front of them, flinging down files and demanding the truth.  "I just can't imagine what went wrong, then... Something must be wrong with that gun."

I couldn't take it anymore.  I cracked.  I cried as I told him what had happened, when it happened, how ashamed I was, how I didn't want him to be disappointed or think that I had been careless or unsafe with the guns... I don't remember exactly what I said, really.  I just remember feeling the truth welling up inside me, like a balloon inside my chest, needing to be popped, begging to be let out.

I also don't remember how he responded or what he said about it.  I wish I did, because I feel like it was probably something important; something significant that I could carry with me for the rest of my life.  All I remember him saying is that he loved me and that we wouldn't have to talk about it with anybody else: I had told him the truth and that was all that mattered.

It's funny, I haven't really thought in-depth about this in years, maybe even since it happened.  That thing about not remembering what he said, though... I think it's because I felt so guilty.  I was so wrapped up in my own pain and fear and so concerned for my own well-being that I wasn't really paying attention to anything else.  Looking back, it's a feeling I had a lot as a kid, and probably one of the reasons I don't have a very clear memory of my childhood; of people and places and things that got said.

I wish this were an isolated incident in my life.  I wish a rifle scope were the only thing I'd broken.  I wish I had learned a lesson that night to always tell the truth and live with a clean conscience and trust other people to love me and forgive me and not beat me up or think less of me.  But it's not and it wasn't and I didn't.  I have predicated my life on the idea that to be honest is to be vulnerable, and the last thing anybody should ever want to be is vulnerable.

But I'm learning, too, that lying leaves you broken, and I don't want that either.  There are a lot of ways in which I can see this anecdote as a metaphor for my life as a whole; a lot of ways in which the things I want to turn a blind eye toward keep coming back up in my life to show themselves defective.  But what am I supposed to do now?  Who do I tell?  Whose gun is it?