on and on and on

Oy to the vey. Life has been a bit of a manic dervish lately, what with me getting slammed with a tsunami of freelancing at the same time I’m planning my upcoming move. I feel like I’ve hardly had time to breathe.

Me taking a minute to freak the fuck out.

I’ve been feeling a bit angsty over the past few weeks, too. What it boils down to is that I feel like I’m fine with my life until I find out that former classmates/friends/acquaintances got married, spawned, got a master’s degree, etc. Times like that make me dislike my own life because there are no advances. Aside from buying the condo, I mean. My life is exactly the same now as it was five years ago. I’m in the same apartment, at the same job, in the same position. I’m still not dating anyone and still not doing anything different, new, or exciting. I’m exactly the same.

I dissected all of this with Missy, and since time is a bit tight right now, I think it’s easier to just copy parts of my emails to her here, rather than reinventing the wheel. Why share it? Well, why not? At least it will explain to folks why I haven’t been very communicative lately.

When stuff like that happens, I always go into a tizzy of questioning my life and wondering what’s missing. It’s odd because I never felt the need to keep up with the Joneses, and yet here I am, wondering if I should follow their lead and get my ass down the aisle and into the maternity ward, even if it’s not something I particularly want. At times like these I start to feel like an autistic person who is one step out of beat from the rest of society. It’s somewhat fitting that I’m hopelessly incapable of following sequences of steps (like with dancing and aerobics), because emotionally, that’s exactly how I feel sometimes: like I’m one or two steps behind everyone else, and no matter how carefully I try to do so, I’m unable to keep time with them. Not that I necessarily want to keep time with them...but having the ability to do so would be nice every once in a while.

***

Part of me wants to do something to shake off this stasis and another part of me is happy with things the way they are. After all, I’m not an ambitious person and therefore don’t want to climb any corporate ladders. And I tend to be a creature of habit—someone who takes great comfort in routines—so I actually like that life is pretty safe and predictable. Plus I have no desire to date anyone and I really do love my job. Honestly, the only thing sorely missing from my life is traveling, but it’s not like inertia or my lack of ambition is what’s keeping that from my life. I’m not traveling simply because I don’t have money to travel, but once I save up some money, I’ll begin traveling again. So...I don’t know. The part of me that wants to shake off this stasis really doesn’t make much sense, because I can’t imagine that living my life differently would really make me happy. I mean, dating wouldn’t make me happy and switching jobs wouldn’t make me happy. Maybe I just need to take a class or pick up a hobby—something that will prove to myself that I’m evolving, even if only in tiny increments.

***

I think part of the problem—part of what drives the angst I feel in these situations—is that I haven’t yet found a raison d’être. Not just a dream, but an actual reason for existing. Everybody needs something that fills them with joy. It’s that thing which is the luminous little spark inside of you. Something that eclipses everything else in its orbit. Something which gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning (aside from obligation, chores, and that onward grinding push for survival). Something which will enable you to continue going onward after everything else has been taken from you. For some it’s a spouse and kids, for others it’s art, singing, creating, gardening, whatever. And I haven’t really found my “thing.” It used to be writing, but now...eh, not so much. So I look at so-and-so and I’m like, “Well, see, clearly he found his raison d’être, because now he’s a happy-looking family man, and meanwhile I’m still here standing here tracing my toe in the dirt, biding my time, just kind of...existing.” And it’s a stupid mentality, really, because you shouldn’t let one relationship or talent or hobby define who you are. You shouldn’t let one single thing be the pivot on which you spin. Besides, nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors. It’s easy to say that so-and-so must now be blissfully happy and feel utterly fulfilled because she found her so-called soulmate, and it’s easy to say that my Scranton classmates have found their raison d’être because they’re now all successful lawyers and corporate crusaders with spouses and two kids, but in reality, I don’t know what bodies might be beneath their floorboards. There could be marital tension or a feeling of emptiness from working at a soulless job. They could be feeling just as lost as I sometimes feel. Who knows.

***

I do feel like I need to inject something new into my life—something I’ll genuinely enjoy, like taking some kind of art class—as a means of trying to figure out what my raison d’être is. But I should also try to stop feeling like I need to fix other areas in my life that may not even be broken.

***

I’m not sure how, or if, I want my life to change. The only thing I’ve striven toward over the past two years was buying a house. Now that I have the condo, I wonder if it’s going to be terribly anticlimactic and I’ll be sitting in there thinking, “Now what?”

***

I never thought I’d stay in this area this long (it’ll be 10 years next month), and I’m not really happy with this area, yet I don’t feel compelled to go elsewhere, because the older I get, the more comfortable I get. I’m sure I’d love living in the Pacific Northwest, and 10 years ago I would’ve had the balls to do it if a job would’ve been available to me there, but I don’t think I have the balls anymore. I don’t even think I’d have the balls to move to London if the opportunity arose. I’m just so safe and comfortable where I am, and nowhere else in the US (aside from the Pacific Northwest and maybe Maine) appeal to me.

***

I’d be all for taking a class for fun, but doing a full stint in grad school? Never. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t know what to study. Nothing beyond my major ever appealed to me and my major itself didn’t exactly rock my world.

***

And I don’t want kids, but I also think about what will happen when I’m old and alone, with only nursing home companions to keep me company. (Why does that even matter? I love being alone!) And I think about what will happen before that point, when my family starts dying and I have nowhere to go for the holidays except to friends’ houses, where I’ll feel like I’m intruding in their lives. I always have to remind myself that having kids doesn’t guarantee that I won’t be alone when I’m old. My kids could disown me or die before me or just be such hateful shits, I wouldn’t want them around. Or they could turn out like [Ms. X]. That’s the big thing that scares me about having kids: the idea that I could do everything right and still end up with [Ms. X] or a serial killer or a rapist as my child.

***

I do spend a lot of time wondering what the point of everything is. Not in the same way I did before I was medicated, though. I’m just thinking of the big picture—why we sweat and toil and pay bills and wash dishes and do all this stuff that never leads anywhere, day after day until we die. Just thinking about it is exhausting. Like life is one big boulder and humans are Sisyphus permanently pushing it up that hill. It’s not that life necessarily seems bad—just futile. And yeah, I agree that most people will say that Christ is the point of life, and we’re here to do good works in his name and just savor the fact that we’ve been given the “gift of life,” etc, but that just doesn’t cut it for me. Sometimes being faithless makes life really freaking difficult.

So anyway, that’s how I’ve been feeling lately. After I move and get my condo set up, I just need to focus more attention on finding my raison d’être. The only things that even remotely appeal to me are traveling and photography, which means I should make more of a concerted effort to fit photo safaris into my life and save money for future trips. Actually, I’ve already begun the latter.

Ever since I got back from Iceland, I’ve plotted how I can get back there and see the entire country (as compared to my three days in Reykjavik and the Golden Circle). I figured the ideal scenario would be to rent a car with my dad and drive the entire perimeter of the country on its ring road. I thought it would be nice to spend some one-on-one time with him, and since he’s a massive hiking/nature enthusiast who doesn’t like being around people very much, I figured getting him to Iceland—with its sublime natural scenery and startling dearth of people—would be a slam-dunk case. But it turns out he’d prefer to go back to the western US and do more marathon hikes out there, which is totally understandable.

So I found myself back at square one. Going alone really wasn’t an option, because although I have no qualms with traveling alone to many places abroad, spending 2-2½ weeks alone in the empty wilds of Iceland ain’t one of them. I’d want to split driving duties with someone, and I also wouldn’t want to be alone if something went wrong, like if I got desperately lost or ended up with a flat tire or got into an accident.

That’s when I decided to ask Missy to join me. I knew she always wanted to see Iceland and the northern lights, and, like me, she’s been feeling a bit adrift lately, so the solution seemed simple. And it was. She eagerly accepted my invitation and now we’ve begun the long, arduous process of saving for it. Our tentative plan is to go in September 2009, if we manage to save enough money by then. Two years and counting...



song heard most recently before posting:
Sister Fatima—Don McLean

something from the "you learn something new each day" files

Just as I was 25 before I learned the official name for my lack of smelling ability, I was 33 before I learned the official name for my favorite sitting position.

See, all my life, I’ve had a very particular way of sitting on the floor with my legs splayed—a way that always elicits exclamations of “How can you bear to sit like that?!”—and I only just learned that it has an actual name: W-sitting. Who knew!

Me W-sitting as a toddler.

The reason I looked it up online last week and found out the name is because recently I’ve noticed that Olivia does it a lot when she’s playing on the floor. Neither of her parents ever sat this way, and no one in either of their families (aside from me) sat this way.

Olivia W-sitting during Christmas 2006.

And again in October 2007.

Also, a few years ago, I noticed Heather’s daughter Elizabeth sitting this way, and when I commented on it, Heather told me that her brother Justin and sister Whitney have always preferred sitting that way, too, and when their mom spoke to their doctor about it, she was told that some specialists believe it’s a sign of creativity, artistic temperament, and giftedness. Well, Elizabeth, Justin, and Whitney are, in fact, all very creative, artistic, and gifted. So I thought, “Oh wow, if that’s true, that’s really cool, because that’s my favorite way of sitting.” And when I saw Olivia doing it over and over, I thought it was a good thing. But all the research I’m finding is actually saying it’s a bad thing! It supposedly causes pigeon-toeing, hip dysplasia, and a host of other orthopedic difficulties. None of them affect Justin, Whitney, Elizabeth, or me. (But some doctors also say that W-sitting can eventually lead to loose kneecaps or early hip arthritis, so it’s possible that its toll on us has yet to be seen.)

Apparently W-sitting isn’t overly uncommon among toddlers,** but most outgrow it by age five. I never outgrew it, though, and I don’t think Justin, Whitney, and Elizabeth did, either.

Sadly, I haven’t found a single shred of evidence hinting toward a correlation between W-sitting and giftedness, but of course I’ll keep pathetically looking!

**I have learned that two friends of mine (Angela and Skevy) also used to W-sit as children. However, their teachers/dance instructors scared them into stopping it by filling their heads with horror stories about what would happen to their legs if they didn’t learn to sit properly.

song heard most recently before posting:
Let’s Dance—M. Ward

we're not all killers!

*groans*

Here we go again: yet another school shooting (this time in Cleveland). Astoundingly, there were no fatalities in this latest round, apart from the shooter himself, but a few people were injured.

My intense annoyance with this trend is twofold. First of all, when they interviewed some of the shooter’s classmates on the news, one of the first things out of each mouth was, “He was a loner.” Then they started talking about how he wore a lot of black, was considered a goth, liked Marilyn Manson, yadda yadda yadda, and only then did they get to the “Oh yeah, and he recently got suspended, and he had a history of getting into trouble and showing psychological distress, and he’s been making threats” bit. The most important, relevant information got buried beneath the screeching, distracting headline in everyone’s head: HE WAS A LONER. As if that alone explains why he went on a shooting spree. As if loner is a synonym for killer.

I expounded on this topic twice already on this blog, including this bit:

I know I’m being hyper-sensitive here, but I loathe when the media fixate on killers being loners. It just adds fuel to this society’s already rampant suspicion of anyone who likes being alone. Not all loners are one gun away from becoming killers! And not all killers are loners! Let’s recall Ted Bundy and the BTK killer, shall we? As a lifelong loner, this whole attitude is so offensive to me.

I just worry there’s a real risk that anybody who is different, acts unconventionally, writes strange things, or listens to strange music will become suspicious in everyone’s eyes—labeled a potential killer. I’m not saying everyone should turn a blind eye when there’s a person displaying noticeably strange, erratic behavior. But there has to be some sort of middle ground between automatically assuming every weird, introverted person is a killer and automatically assuming s/he’s just shy and harmless.

Second of all, I’m annoyed with the shooter himself, not only because, duh, he went on a shooting spree, but also because what he did was so clichéd. Shooting up your school is just such a tired cliché! I know how painful it can be to not fit in with your peers—to be maliciously or casually ostracized, to be ridiculed for being different. And I’m sure being openly bullied—physically and/or verbally—is equally painful and downright devastating. But shooting up your school is. not. the. answer.

The alienated kid deserves better than to become a walking cliché. It’s bad enough that half his classmates already can’t stand him because he’s “weird” or introverted or different. But now, on top of that, he has to be loathed by people nationwide forevermore because he thought the only way to strike back at his jackass classmates was with a gun. His name will be permanently entwined with mass murder or attempted mass murder. He deserves better than that.

Not to mention the fact that bullies aren’t the only people who die in school shootings; innocent people die, too. Kind people die. But not even the bullies and ostracizers themselves deserve to die. They may be malicious, borderline-sociopathic, little Neanderthal shits, but it doesn’t mean they deserve to be killed by their victims. Vigilante justice never dissolves evil at its root. It just hacks off a branch that may or may not grow back.

It’s said that the best revenge is living well, and I really do ascribe to this belief. The best thing any outcast or bullying victim can do is survive, flourish, look good, feel good. Sadly, we don’t live in a fairy tale society where mistreated orphans always become princesses and the wicked always get their just desserts. Sometimes, yes, sometimes the bullying brutes in high school come out on top. Sometimes they rise to the top of their field, armed with trophy wives, McMansions, and BMW SUVs, while their victims struggle to make ends meet and spend the rest of their lives alone. It happens. And it’s really fucking unfortunate, but it happens.

Still, even when this happens, it’s up to the outcasts, the mistreated, and the bullied to continue to live well. To be the best and most successful people they can be. To find happiness and purpose in their lives. To be good people. To not waste a minute thinking about the people who taunted, tortured, or ignored them, even if those people are currently living the sweet life with wealth and success. Those people who made your life so miserable really don’t deserve a minute of your time, your energy, your angst. They don’t deserve the time involved with planning a mass shooting spree. They don’t deserve to be canonized while you—the shooter—are reviled. What they deserve is to lose the power that comes from having victims. If their victims walk away with their heads held high, and go on to be as happy, fulfilled, and productive as possible…well, that’s truly the best revenge you can inflict upon them.

Some quotes on this matter from my collection:

If they’re not worth hanging out with, why are they worth killing? You wouldn’t help them in a time of need, but you’d go to jail or commit suicide to show them exactly how worthless you think they are? You don’t want them as friends, but you’ll accept them as victims? Why would you want any connection to them? –The Misanthropic Bitch, on the Columbine shootings

Black trench coats? Marilyn Manson? Nazi propaganda? Writing in all caps on a Web page? Using the personal quote: “It’s fun being schizophrenic?” Copying KMFDM lyrics? How obtuse can one be? Even in death, those kids were clichés. All black clothing. Pisspoor planning. Done-to-death one-liners. When the fuck is someone going to shoot up his school wearing a bunny costume and singing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”? –ditto


song heard most recently before posting:
Extra Ordinary Thing—Aqualung

inspection

Today marks five years since I’ve been at my job (which is the longest I’ve ever worked anywhere), and I kick-started the day by having my home inspection bright and early at 8:30am. It seemed to go well. My realtor was there and my brother in law joined us, too, which was nice. Everything looks good except for the central a/c unit, which, as I predicted, isn’t working. I really need to talk about this with my realtor in depth and find out the best way to either convince the home warranty people to replace the unit, rather than just fixing it, or convince the bank that owns the property to get this fixed/replaced before I move in. I didn’t think this was an “as-is” property (which would allow the bank can wipe their hands clean of fixing things), but who knows. Buying a house—even if it’s just a little condo—is so fucking complicated!

The condo has really been dominating my landscape, along with freelancing. Everything else (like getting my car to the mechanic for its 90,000-mile tune-up) is falling by the wayside. But I do need to carve out some time to hit the Corcoran Gallery soon, as they have an Annie Leibowitz exhibit and an Ansel Adams exhibit starting soon. This will definitely be the biggest downfall to living in Frederick: no longer being a hop, skip, and a jump from downtown DC. I’ve gotten so spoiled spending the last five years living so close to the city!

To distract myself from the gnawing anxiety of home buyership, I filled out one of those random questionnaires circulating on MySpace:

1. What is your salad dressing of choice?
Honey mustard, I guess, but I rarely eat salad, so it’s hard to say!

2. What is your favorite fast food restaurant?
A tie between Subway (I love their Veggie Delite subs) and Burger King (because they offer veggie burgers and onion rings). But if I feel the need to eat fast food while abroad I always go to McDonald’s, since they still sell the phenomenal old-school apple pies there that McDonald’s in the US ditched a million years ago.

3. What is your favorite sit-down restaurant?
I don’t really have one—I’ve been to loads of amazing restaurants over the years.

4. On average, what size tip do you leave at a restaurant?
20% unless the service was awful.

5. What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of?
Breakfast cereal and Cedarlane vegetarian ham and cheese pockets.

6. What do you like to put on your toast?
Butter, maybe with a little jam.

7. What is your wallpaper on your computer?
At home: a picture of Plath and Freyja cuddling. At work: a picture of Olivia in one of her Disney Princesses dresses.

8. How many televisions are in your house?
Two. And I live alone!

9. Are you right-handed or left-handed?
Right.

10. Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
You mean aside from my ability to hope and dream, which was yanked out by life? I don’t think so. I’ve had four major surgeries but nothing was removed during them. Well…actually…I think a bit of bone from my skull may’ve been removed during one or two of the surgeries.

11. When was the last time you had a cavity?
Two or three years ago.

12. What is the last heavy item you lifted?
The weight of the world, currently residing on my shoulders.

13. Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
Just by anesthesia!

14. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
I don’t think so. Knowing me, I’d just fixate on it and ruminate constantly about that date. It would consume my every waking thought.

15. If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
Something not shared by 12 zillion other Gen Xers—something like Freyja or Finley (two names I love).

16. What color do you think looks best on you?
I’ve been told garnet red looks good on me, and I guess light blue, too, since it matches my eyes.

17. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item by mistake?
Probably just gum, fragments of gnawed pen caps, and harmless nonsense like that.

18. Have you ever saved someone’s life?
Not that I’m aware of. But who knows…maybe I inadvertently saved someone’s life in a Sliding Doors kind of way by, like, leaving for work late one morning.

19. Has someone ever saved yours?
See above answer.

20. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100?
Sure.

21. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000?
No, because I’m really freaked out by deformities like that. But if I were offered $2 million…maybe. I’d just hire a therapist to get me over my deformity issues!

22. Would you never blog again for $50,000?
Hell yeah!

23. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000?
I’d try it, but I honestly don’t think I could make it all the way through without vomiting.

24. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000?
Ditto Seabold’s answer: It depends on the target.

25. What is in your left pocket?
There are no pockets on the dress I’m wearing.

26. Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie?
It’s okay. It had its cute and funny moments but I don’t quite understand why it became such a huge pop culture phenomenon.

27. Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house?
Carpet now, but once I’m in my condo it’ll be hardwood (laminate) all the way, baby!

28. Do you sit or stand in the shower?
Stand. My shower is tiny, and who regularly sits in the shower, anyway? (OMG, I just typed that as “shits in the shower.”) But when I’m really sick yet still have to shower, I’ll sometimes sit just because I’m afraid I’ll pass out if I stand.

29. Could you live with roommates?
Nope! Maybe a significant other someday, but other than that? No way!

30. How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
Just one; they were given to me by my sister and I wear them if I’m barefoot and need to run outside and it’s wet.

31. Last time you had a run-in with the cops?
When I got my last speeding ticket, which was maybe a year or so ago.

32. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Retired. And not being forced to live on dog food because of it.

33. Who is number 1 on your top 8
On MySpace? Uh...Shawn, I think? Because he was the first person to accept my friend invitation.

34. Last friend you talked to?
On the phone it was Heather; over email it was Angela.

35. Last person who called you?
My sister.

36. Person you hugged?
My niece, this morning.

37. Current mood?
Meh. Worried. Pensive.

38. Listening to?
Nothing right now. I was listening to a Paul Potts CD as I drove to work earlier.

39. Watching?
Nothing right now; tonight I’ll watch House.

40. Worrying about?
Buying a condo. Money.

41. First place you went this morning?
My condo, for its home inspection.

42. What can you not wait to do?
Get completely settled into my home.

43. What’s the last movie you saw?
Vacancy.

44. Do you smile often?
No. And because of that, I don’t have to worry about smile lines!

45. Are you a friendly person?
Not really, but only because I’m shy and a bit asocial.


song heard most recently before posting:
Por Ti Seré—Paul Potts

home bittersweet home

In an astoundingly whirlwind turn of events, I just bought a condo in Frederick! I saw it for the first time last Saturday, submitted an offer immediately thereafter, and just found out yesterday that my offer was accepted (this wasn’t a slam-dunk case because someone else had submitted an offer as well, and the condo easily could’ve gone to him/her). It was in the back of my mind that the day I submitted the offer was the one-year anniversary of when I arrived from my lovely stint in London, and the day I officially “won” the condo was the one-year anniversary of when I returned. And yes, I also thought about how the five-year anniversary of when the DC sniper attacks began took place the day before I scored the condo. Because I’m morbid like that.

I never wanted to live in a condo or in Frederick (no offense, Frederick!), but single-family homes closer to DC are just too expensive. Those that are somewhat reasonably priced are either in a ghetto or need rehabbing. Condos, meanwhile, are either really tiny or have high condo fees. Or, because they were apartment conversions, they don’t even include washers and dryers. Screw that!

So, I’m pretty excited but also very, very nervous. Like, so nervous, I’m amazed I haven’t vomited yet. Settlement will be on November 5th and I’ll move in later that month. This, of course, will mean having to pay a mortgage and rent at the same time, and don’t ask me how I’m going to do that, but I need time to get wood (laminate) floors and plantation shutters installed and get the place painted. Plus I need to buy a fridge and washer/dryer (with the $2000 appliance allowance the seller is giving me) and a new sofa and armchair (since Plath ruined my current ones during his pre-Prozac urine-spraying days).

It looks like a good neighborhood (**knocks on imaginary wood**). Hopefully I won’t have the noise issues I’m facing in my current place. With a condo it’s always iffy, but on the plus side, this building was built as condos, not apartments, so maybe there’s a bit more soundproofing in place? One can only hope.

It’s cute and cozy and it’s a decent size (just over 1,000 square feet). It has a cute sunroom that faces west, so it gets a ton of light in the afternoon. The price is good for this area. It’s still going to be a financial struggle for me, but if I become frugal and watch my pennies, I think I’ll be okay. I hope.


song heard most recently before posting:
Disconnected—Veruca Salt

bathing in blood

Danielle and I had such an awesome time meeting Tim Gunn in Baltimore yesterday. The highlight: when he asked Danielle if she looks so young because she bathes in blood each night. She described the whole thing much better than I could on her blog, so if you have a free moment, I recommend checking it out!

The whole day was a hot adventure of a lifetime, mainly because she blew out a tire on 95 just as we left Baltimore, and blew it out to such a degree where part of it literally turned to dust. Since she drives a Jetta, her tire had an anti-theft device on it that required a special tool to unlock it, and the tool couldn’t be found, so we had to be towed from Baltimore to a VW dealer (it’s where she got the car) in Tyson’s Corner, VA. Our tow truck driver was a toothless gem named Jake who had verbal diarrhea for the entire trip, and the things he said were priceless. Once we got to the dealer, we immediately learned that...d’oh!...the special tool was in the trunk all along. It had gotten stuck in some side panel crevice, which is why we never found it. It kind of felt like a Lucy and Ethel moment. I had a blast all day long.

Here’s a shot of me with Tim Gunn! (Yes I look ghastly; the harsh shadows and bright light did me no favors!)





song heard most recently before posting:
O My God—The Police