Welcome to the pit of despair

At the end of War and Peace, Tolstoy is writing about the old Countess, and that because she has physical needs at various times of the day she cries and laughs and sleeps, and they think it is because of one thing or another, like that when she cries it is because she is thinking of her dead husband, but really it is just that her body needs to do that. I have some doubts about his theories, but after yesterday it almost feels probable.

I feel like in general, I have been becoming more patient, and better about bearing this entire situation, but yesterday was a “last straw” kind of day. It all started off wrong when I went to brush my teeth and found my toothbrush in the garbage.

Now, let me be fully clear, I understand that it was an accident. There had been an extra one in there, which may be what Julie had before she switched to the electric one, but no one really knows. Maria had been getting annoyed with it, because it made things confusing (though maybe not as much as the fact that our brushes looked very similar). Anyway, she thought she was throwing out the extra, and she threw out mine.

This is not to say that she was not thoughtless and reckless. Considering that she has woken me up to have me fasten a bracelet or do something that I had offered to do the night before and she brushed me off, I just feel like she could have come and shown me the brush before tossing it in the trash. Still, she was not malicious, and I know that, but it just didn’t help. I was having crying jags about not being able to brush my teeth. It sounds idiotic, and even at the time I felt that it was ridiculous, but still, I kept coming back to the fact that my mouth felt gross, and I did not deserve to have this happen.

It didn’t necessarily make me ineffective. I still mowed the lawn and hung the laundry and wrote a grocery list, but in between I was having crying jags and trying to drink or eat things that would make my mouth feel fresh. (It was also a really bad allergy day, which probably did not help.)

When Maria got home from work she brought me a new toothbrush, and it was a relief to use it, but I was still angry and frustrated, and I had worse things to come. I had to go clothes shopping. I had mentioned it a few times, but no one remembered, or realized it was something I had to leave for, so I stomped off for the bus stop, changing to my sunglasses because I was in the middle of an extra long jag, and was dismayed to find the developmentally disabled teenager who lives across the street there as well. I could not muster being social, so I muttered a response to one thing he said and then avoided looking at him until the bus came. So, yes, I was mean to a special needs kid, just to add to my reign of terror.

Now, when I think of my worst snappish, depressed periods, many of them centered around times I needed to try and find clothing, so maybe part of my emotional state was knowing that this was coming. I am more likely to come out of a clothing store suicidal than ecstatic, and I know it. And honestly, how can an unemployed person justify clothes shopping? Well, I needed to go because of a job.

I have not had any good job leads, but there was this one for eight hours of work at ten dollars an hour. I was just at the two-hour orientation tonight, and then I will have a six-hour shift tomorrow. This is helping with this train tour that Disney is doing to promote their new A Christmas Carol movie.

Disney is very strict about the appearance of their cast members, even if only for a day, so I needed khaki pants or a khaki skirt (fortunately, I already had a pair of white shoes). I know, this is a very basic clothing item, and most people already have something, but I don’t. In terms of that whole dockers and button-down shirt or polo, office casual vibe, with my body, glasses, and curly hair, it sends me into “Pat” territory. You remember her—she was a Julia Sweeney character on Saturday Night Live, and no one could tell whether Pat was male or female—that is how I would look.

So I avoid those things. I know I am not exactly a fashion plate in my black knit pants solid-colored knit shirts, but they are inexpensive, and I feel like they don’t make me look worse than I need to. (Aiming high just isn’t realistic with my budget and body type.)

Basically, there is only one place to go, given the size that I am. Catherine’s carries large sizes, and there is another plus-size store, the Avenue, just on the other side of Marshalls, so you have a back-up (though the selection and service at the Avenue seems to be a lot worse).

There was not a lot of khaki. Shorts and capris were okay according to the guidelines, but with my gross leg, I never wear shorts. I found a few pants, and tried one pair. They were too long by quite a bit, and I could have tried hemming, but the middle section looked bad too. I tried the skirt.

The skirt did not fit quite right either, but it was better. Still, I balked at the price tag. It was $46.00. I couldn’t spend $46.00 to make $80.00! It was ludicrous. I started to feel like maybe I should just call in, and say I couldn’t do the job. I did check the Avenue, and seriously, there was nothing. I thought about calling in some more. Because there are four max trips also, all zones, meaning it is another $9.00 there, so once taxes and tithing come out, I am barely breaking even.

Also, the orientation conflicted with the memorial service for a friend’s mother, and I started having all of these other doubts, like what if I got there, and they didn’t have a t-shirt large enough for me, or they decided that I didn’t meet the criteria in some other way. I guess logic had gone out the window, but it just started feeling like nothing was right about this job.

Ultimately, those would have been good reasons not to take the job in the first place, but part of my thought was that it was getting me into the Volt database, and maybe I could get other jobs through that. Having said I would go, I had to go. So I bought the stupid skirt, and I guess it could be worse, but I also can’t really say that things are going well.

Things are just hard, and ultimately, when I was crying, it wasn’t just about the toothbrush, but also about being fat, and having a crummy wardrobe (which, maybe the best thing about Intel was that the wardrobe did not matter), and having been unemployed for nine months (with no end in sight, and being scared about that), and missing the times when I was the financially solvent one who helped others, and never having been in a real romantic relationship.

But the toothbrush did not help.

Dream Gina

No weight today. We thought it was the battery again, but we should have realized it was too soon for that. Nope, now the scale is broken. It might not be so bad, except we finally got the lawnmower replaced, only to have the dryer and vacuum break, and then Mom is going to require a lot of work on her car. Now we have been very blessed to have the dryer go out in the summer, when we can hang the laundry outside, and I know the scale is really very minor, but come on! Can we get a break here? Okay, rant over.

A friend of mine on Facebook just posted that she had a strange dream about me, where we were at the mall, and someone damaged my car so we were waiting around to confront them and the police came. The problems with this dream are that I don’t spend a lot of time at the mall, I don’t have a car, and I’m unlikely to get involved in a police incident, but she knew the dream was weird too.

This is actually less weird than some other dreams I have appeared in. Tricia once had one where I was teaching Sunday School, but I was smoking. People were a little freaked out, and I was snapping that I was trying to make a point, and they needed to give me a minute. That would be very uncharacteristic behavior.

More recently, Karen had a dream where I was naked. This one actually made perfect sense, which we both grasped right away. She is amazed by my openness, and sometimes worries about how vulnerable I am making myself, so that is a perfectly logical way for her to see me. If I dream myself naked, that means I am feeling vulnerable, but if you think about it, open and vulnerable go together so well they are practically synonyms, so it still works.

The interesting thing to me is that in the dreams of others I am doing things that I wouldn’t do, but when I dream about people they are usually being very much themselves, behaving in very typical ways. More than once I have relayed a dream to my sisters and had them ask “Are you sure that was a dream?” Not that they think I confused a dream event with a real event, but just that it all sounds so probable.

I have been pondering about dreams today because that difference is interesting to me. Now many people will tell you that in a dream, all of the other characters are really you. I’m not sure that’s really the case, though I think it holds with Karen’s dream. Yes, I truly am open, and she truly does care about me, but I think on another level she desires to be more open and is held back from it. That is why I did not bother asking her whether I looked good, even though I was a little curious.

So why doesn’t my family do anything wild and crazy? Maybe I know them too well for them to make good blank canvases. I’m not sure how much I have written about this, but about the time I was finishing up the document (you know, the one where I analyzed every aspect of my life for 200 pages) I had a dream that became the basis for my first screenplay. At the time, I thought it was just a sign that I was ready to move on, and really start my writing career because I had worked out all that stuff. That is probably true, but there may be more to it.

In the dream, I was walking down a street in Italy next to Barry, who is in a wheelchair. There was some sort of magic thing in a safe, and what would open the safe was a mask, and although he was supposed to be doing this as a job for someone else, his motivation was that the object he was after could help him to walk again. We were arguing because he wanted to just steal the mask, which I felt was wrong and impractical. (The supernatural elements did not end up being part of the screenplay, but the arguing did.)

I was concerned that I might have borrowed the thing with the mask from somewhere else, because it was such a strong image, so I asked if it sounded familiar to anyone on the IMBD message boards. One old friend there posted something interesting. He said the real question was what my mask was, and what treasure would come from uncovering it.

Well, a writing career would be a real treasure, but you could say that there has been more to it. For one thing, I thought finishing that document was it, and I was done, but then I found the need to revisit so many of the issues in the blog. I did need to be more open. I wouldn’t call myself a particularly dishonest person before, because I wasn’t in the habit of telling lies, but there was so little that I shared.

Now, it’s more like what have I not shared? And that may not be the answer for everyone, but it was necessary for me. I still don’t quite have my writing career, but I have a lot more courage and happiness, and I think I have helped some people, so there is treasure there.

Perhaps a more interesting question is “Why Barry?” We weren’t particularly close. Now, I suppose he may not have been acting like himself, because I don’t think he is a steal first, apologize later kind of guy. He was an interesting part of the process though, because later on I felt like I needed to tell him about the dream, and I did, but I realized I had not told him enough, so I needed to write him a note later. Becoming more open has been kind of a journey for me.

Maybe I should spend some more time paying attention to how others act in my dreams, to see if there are some keys there. If I know my family members too well for them to vary, maybe it will be different with non-family members. I do have a dream journal, though I am not consistent with it. Right now, I have just been having random image dreams, that fade away as soon as I wake up, so there has not been anything to write. That will change again.

I will say that if my dreams are special, and people are consistent with their true selves in them, especially if they are the same in each dream, then “Mitch”, you do love me. For crying out loud will you quit fighting it?

Lifelong fitness – 306.5

Yes, I am fluctuating again. It’s especially frustrating because I actually squeaked in under 300 (I should have posted on the day when I was 299.5), so I never wanted to go back up. Still, I have lost and kept off forty pounds this way, and I will slowly get the rest. This does make it a good time to write about exercise though, especially since I feel that is currently the most important area of focus.

For a lot of grade school I did really active things at recess, like jumping rope and playing basketball, and I played after school sports. When I was in sixth grade, we went roller-skating almost every week, and it was still something I did frequently in junior high. Also, I rode my bike everywhere. In reality, I was pretty active.

In my mind, I wasn’t. After all, I knew I could not run for long distances without feeling miserable, climb the rope, or do the flexed arm hang. Sometimes I would score, but I usually didn’t, so, I was not a star athlete. I was probably just average, but I think this is where that inferiority complex came in. I did not give myself credit on what I could do, but focused on my weak points. This is just as damaging as having an over-inflated belief in one’s abilities, and it is probably possible to do both. Anyway, I wasn’t balanced. I thought of myself as fat and clumsy, and slowly became so.

It didn’t happen all at once. A lot of the belief in my clumsiness happened in junior high. In one semester of PE, I got hit in the face with a softball, a soccer ball, and a basketball. The only unit where I didn’t get hit was weightlifting (and believe me, I know that I’m lucky that it was that unit). Plus, one field day I knocked over almost every single hurdle, and that was something I had always been able to do before. When I got back to my friends, Joel started singing “I’ll tumble for you” to me.

To some extent, the system was broken. Doing things requires training, and with field day we didn’t practice any of those events, but were just thrown into them. I don’t remember anyone explaining anything about gradually building up endurance, and pacing yourself, for running laps on Fridays—they just sent us out there. So, really, I have to feel that to a large extent, PE has been a poorly-planned torture ritual that kills the self-esteem of those who are not naturally gifted, when it should be an important step in learning the joy of physical exertion. It’s unfortunate.

One semester of PE was required in high school, which was pretty much more of the same, and that was it for me. I played on some church teams, but as I was getting more out of shape I ended up on a basketball team where no one could shoot, on any of the teams, and apparently no one could rebound for their own team, so we just kept running up and down the court after each short possession. Basketball had suddenly become less fun.

I also started riding my bike less as traffic became more dangerous and as it became less convenient. Growing up I kept my bike by the side of the house, unchained, and could always hop on at a moment’s notice. Then people started stealing bikes, and I had none, and now that I finally have one again it is hanging upside down in the back storage room, and getting it up and down is not easy. A lot of the streets have added bike lanes now, so there is less of a safety issue, but I’m out of the habit.

Back when I was thinking that maybe becoming a team manager was a mistake, I tried thinking about what other paths I could have taken. Could I have actually joined a team and been an athlete myself? Because it amazes me sometimes, when I get a chance to kick a soccer ball around, or dribble a basketball, how good it feels. I used to play those things; could I have kept it up?

Sadly, I don’t think so. First of all, I do think there would have been real issues with time and transportation and financial commitments. Also, you have to try out, and there are limited spaces, and although I may not have been as horrible as I perceived myself to be, I am still pretty confident that I was not good. Could I have started a biking team, or maybe a touring bike club? Probably not. And maybe it was best not to have joined a team. Sports movies always make me cringe because at one point the coach has to break them down, and be mean, and I would have hated that.

Maybe the best thing would have been merely to have some accurate self-awareness—to know that being able to bike ten miles was something, even if I could not clear a hurdle, and that when I found some activities to be hard I could practice them more, and build up strength and cardiovascular fitness.

So here I am. I have no upper body strength, and not much cardiovascular fitness. I have at times been in the habit of regular aerobic activity, at one time stationary bike at the gym, and more recently with aerobic dance tapes, but I am out of those habits now. I can walk for a long time on flat ground, but I am bad at hills. I am no longer graceful on roller skates (I was never graceful on ice skates). For some stretches and moves, my body gets in the way. I do not have great knees. Also, it is important to note that when I was exercising regularly, it did not budge the scale. I felt better, and that is important, but I probably need to add a strength-training component to really see any improvement.

I feel like my best bet is to start with walking. I feel good doing it and it doesn’t require any special equipment. I can start keeping a food journal again, and I really probably should. The other area where I really feel that I need to improve is the fresh fruits and vegetables thing. And that is the paradox for so many of us. There are lots of times when I enjoy exercise. Certain types, no, but there are plenty of forms of exercise that I do like. There are also plenty of fruits and vegetables that I like. Yet somehow, incorporating them feels like work and I don’t do it enough. Well, I guess I am going to have to anyway.

Drama Queen – 302

It seems ironic that I left drama behind when I have so much interest in working in the dramatic arts now. Sure, I want to be on the writing and production end of things, but given the right circumstances I could act, and it would certainly not hurt to know actors. I mean, I still like a good play now and then.

I mentioned that I had not been satisfied with drama in ninth grade, but I still took a class as an elective my sophomore year. A lot of my friends were in the same class as well, and we had some fun with it. Ms. Coburn did some really good exercises, and told some good stories, and I guess it was reasonable to give it one more shot after I had been doing it for so long.

I think the real problem was that I would not play to my strengths. I was good at comedy, and I could get good results with comedy, but every time I had a chance I would do something serious, and it would just be too serious. I helped other people write their sketches and we made them funny and they were great, and then I would play a troubled youth or do something really sappy and really something that I was not ready to relate to. I guess one issue was that I always wanted there to be romance.

Anyway, I feel like I was not really being true to myself. Sure, acting is about being someone else, but I think you need to be comfortable with yourself first, and I never really got there. Acting may be the path for some people, but it wasn’t working that way for me.

That is not to say that speech team and sports management got me in touch with my true self either. Really, that just took time, and an extended period of clinical depression, followed by a lot of in-depth writing and then blogging.

For social reasons, I am glad that I left drama behind. I still had a lot of friends in the department, and I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, that department was the most corrupt and had the worst snobs of any group in school. No, they were not all snobs, and they were not all corrupt, but there was enough. The stories I heard later were horrible, containing depravity I could not even have imagined then. With all that I did not know, even then I saw people being used sexually, and damaging mind games, and lots of underage drinking.

I’m not saying that these things never happened outside of drama—I’m sure they did, but based on their prevalence among the people I cared for, if I had been a part of that group, I would have been facing them all the time. I don’t think I would have given in to temptation and participated myself, but I just think I would have been sad all the time, and I was sad often enough without that. I’m just grateful the almost everyone emerged okay, but they had some pretty rough paths getting there.

The Music in Me – 300.5

Last time I mentioned taking beginning guitar because I was the guitarist in my band, so learning to play seemed like a good idea. That should give you a pretty good idea of the band right there. Honestly, I am not sure how we even assigned parts, but it would have made no difference.

We were all very into music back then. This was the mid-eighties. Music was danceable, you could see videos on two channels, and girls just want to have fun, right?

There were three of us. Danielle was on keyboards, and did get her parents to buy her a Casio SK-1. Does that sound familiar to anyone? Lise was the drummer. I did buy her a pair of drumsticks, which was only a small start, but after all, you can drum on anything.
I was the lead singer and guitarist. Nowadays, I can’t even conceive of forming a band without a bassist, and I no longer think it’s practical to have the same lead on vocals and guitar, but we were young and naïve.

Yes, since I had taken piano lessons I might have been a better fit on keyboards, but I think I was the only one who felt capable of learning guitar. Also, my uncle’s old guitar was still in the house, plus at that time Lance’s electric guitar might still have been around, so I certainly had better access, and I had the free slot in my schedule. Still, I wildly overestimated my abilities.

Yes, I did slowly pick up the ability to pick out Ode to Joy on the guitar, but I was not progressing much beyond that, and in trying to figure out if I should start taping my fingers, or just power through the pain until the calluses formed, well, I’m just not sure that I had the commitment. The biggest problem, though, was my ear.

I could not tune a guitar. I could hear that it was not in tune yet, and I could fiddle with the knobs and try and get it right, but I never actually reached the point where I could get it tuned. The other students were all very nice, and so after I tried a little, eventually either Jennifer or Scooter or Max would do it for me, but clearly I was not on my way to becoming much of an axe-man.

I don’t think Danielle or Lise ever made more progress, so what, you may wonder, did No Socks ever do? (Yes, our name was No Socks. One day Danielle and I were looking at the Duran Duran poster on her ceiling, and on of the guys was wearing loafers with no socks, and that’s where it came from.) We never played any sets. I was at one early point optimistic that we could play in a school talent show, but with our skill levels the only thing we could have possibly done would have been the one rap number, London Talk.

That is what we did right there, actually, is that we did write a lot of music. Okay, I wrote most of it. Lise showed up with lyrics for two songs, but I created the tunes for them. Even after we gave up on the band, I still wrote music throughout high school, and at various other times when inspiration comes. The last song I wrote was during the winter before last.

Unfortunately, write is kind of a strong word, because that ear is still a problem. I would try picking out on a piano what I heard in my head, but it was never quite right. So, I would write down the lyrics and just need to remember the tune. In my French class one year, doing the assignments would only get you a B. For an A, you needed to do some extra project to stretch you, four hours worth of work. I wrote two French songs, but to turn them in I had to record them because I could never have represented the proper notes. (And I could still sing either one of them for you at a moment’s notice.)

Now, as a teenage girl, with immature ideas, most of what I wrote was very pop, and would probably have limited worth. However, what I had not realized at the time was that you have to spend a lot of time writing badly before you write well. I could feel the inadequacy of my music more that I could of my prose, so I stuck with the prose. I can go back now and look at old writings and just wince, but it was part of the process.

My sisters and I often have theoretical conversations about what we would do with children if we had them, and one thing we have decided is that we started piano too late, when we had too many other distractions. We decided four or five is the right age, and then your odds of success go way down. I know I could have practiced more than I did, and I was aware of it at the time, but I didn’t, my choice.

Now I wish I had stuck with it. First of all, it can be very handy to play piano, but also I know that I have more to do with music. There are ideas for songs within me that will need to come out, and if I had stayed consistent with music all along, that would be easier.

I also wish I had written more consistently all along. Ages ago I was at a presentation by Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch. When they opened it up for Q and A, a young boy asked Wynton about how much to practice. He was trying very hard to get an answer about how long he should spend on his music each day, but Wynton kept dodging that to focus on playing every day. Did you practice for one hour? Two hours? Sometimes, and I played every day.

I have had days when I felt like I could not write anything, and I didn’t write anything, but there have been other days when I ignored that feeling and made myself write something, and I actually was able to do it. A lot of it really is showing up. This is why now I have to write something new every time I want to get onto Facebook. I’m not getting on as much as I did, but I am writing more. I was probably getting on too much anyway.

When I was young, probably even as young as three or four, I was always making up stories inside my head. The first time I remember writing a song I was six or seven (it was a short song about cats, but it still counts). The creativity has always been there, but it changes and improves as you harness it and get it out, so that’s a big part of my life now.

The girl I have been – 303

I’m still trying to get around to that second round of regrets. Well, I guess I did get somewhere with the saving money thing. The way I thought it would go down is that after exploring the question of whether or not I was a nerd, I would go back to that long ago post where maybe becoming a sports manager was not such a good idea.

I did think about it after writing that, like what I should have done differently. That’s not to say that I wish I had never been a manager. It’s not the only thing that I did, and there were some good times, but when I think about different paths, and their deficiencies, then maybe it will give me clues for things I should do in the present. I explore the past because the past created the present. Maybe I could correct things in the present without looking at the past, but I like understanding things fully.

So, what was my arc? Well, when I started grade school, I was mainly doing imagination games at recess. We would play Star Wars or Buck Rogers, and other movie-based things. In third or fourth grade I created Graveyard Airlines. I know it was then, because Jennie was my co-pilot, and she did not move out here until third grade. I was the captain, of course, and Joshua and Jonathan were our crew. Actually, we were pretty liberated now that I think about it. There never seemed to be any gender conflicts. Other people would join us sometimes as passengers, but we were the basic four. We played on the tire trees, and due to the unwise choices of the wacky pilot (me), we would end up in scary situations like meteor showers or landing on lava fields. It was fun while it lasted, but after a while we had done everything, and needed to move on.

When Jennie and I were outside of school, we would play Dungeons and Dragons. There were no dice or maps—we just had characters and they did things. Jennie’s sister Sarah played too.

I know I went through a jump-roping phase, but as I got older, I started playing basketball almost every recess. We had one class (meaning year) play another. So it was sixth graders playing fifth graders, or what have you. To lessen the advantage of being older, we were wildly outnumbered. So maybe you would have four sixth-graders and ten fifth-graders. Usually it was just Billy, Jason, Sean, and I, but sometimes David or Derek would come in. I was the only girl (I had been for Star Wars and Buck Rogers too). If sometimes the extra guys made the teams too equal in number, they would send me over to the younger kids. I suppose in some ways this was a compliment, but it still felt kind of bad, and then I would get irritated and try and score a lot.

I also did after-school sports all the time, and loved it. I was not one of the better athletes, and I was usually chosen towards the end, but not usually dead last, and I don’t think it was as much anguish as some people seem to remember. Maybe we were not the meanest kids. I also rode my bike everywhere. I did not consider myself athletic, because some people were so much better, and because I could not run distance or do the flexed-arm hang. I was above average on all of the other presidential fitness tests, but I only really thought about those two. I had no perspective.

When we did a full-on musical, Fiddler on the Roof, I did that too. I tried out for Hodel, but ended up as a villager. I did have a solo line in “Anatevka”. Actually, it was the opening line. I was not impressed enough with myself. I was the one who sang “A little bit of this.”

I never joined a sports club, not only because I did not think of myself as a good athlete, but also because it would have taken money. Also, through TAG I was always getting notices about Saturday Academy classes and Olympics of the Mind and things like that, but I never did those either.

So, once I got to junior high, the natural fit was drama. It did not cost any additional money, or require any athletic ability, and for reasons that I am not sure I understand, most of the smart kids did drama. There was no longer after-school sports, or recess. There was still gym, but every Friday was running laps, and it just kept getting less and less fun. (I was still riding my bike a lot though). Anyway, I took drama class and I did drama club after school.

I did sort of have this thing going on where I wanted to try and learn and know everything. One nice thing about the electives open to seventh graders was that there were two exploration ones. The Fine Arts exploration had one quarter each of foreign language, language arts, drama, and music, I think. In Applied Arts exploration, there was one quarter each of home economics, art and drafting, plastics and leather shop, and wood and metal shop. I was really horrible with wood, plastics, metal, and leather, but I still got to try a lot of different things. Junior high was where I started getting into foreign language, and it should have consolidated my drama aspirations, but it didn’t.

Recent events have caused me to feel somewhat better about the incident, and I may write about that later. For now, I think I did not realize how much it affected me. Tracing my weight gain, I think it started there. Initially I thought that was puberty, but technically I started that two years earlier. My sense of humor changed then, where I first remember cracking mean jokes at that age. Maybe when I got fed up with drama, that was a factor.

I do know the terms of my getting fed up, and that was something along the lines of “realizing” that I was never going to get any good parts, because they were always musicals and I couldn’t sing, and I wasn’t pretty and that was going to hurt me too.

This was not completely fair. Yes, there was always one big musical, but they did smaller non-musical things too, and lots of different people got interesting roles. Also, you can do a lot with small roles, and giving the whole thing up because you can’t be the star is really obnoxious and immature. I just know that I was dissatisfied with my life and wanted change. So I quit drama class and started beginning guitar, and quit drama club and joined yearbook staff.

Yearbook staff was fun, and I did learn some new things, like how to develop film. For beginning guitar, I was the guitarist in the band, so I figured I should learn.

Anyway, this is the background for the person that I was when I started high school, and picked my path through there. I did try a drama class again, and that is worth exploring. There is also more exploration to do in terms of athletics, academics, and music, and yes we will probably get into dating again. Obviously what’s important is what I do now, but I know the seeds of what I should do can be found in then.

A new iteration of fear – 306.5

I attended a networking group Wednesday. No one knew of any job openings, so in that regard it was a wash, but some of the information was good. It has led to a new concern.

I was talking to someone else who does training and development. We were discussing working out my key selling points and one thing she suggested was that I write out my ideal job description. Working out exactly what I want most should help me to focus my job hunt better, and also apply for jobs better, because that passion comes through in tangible and intangible ways.

It’s sound advice. The problem is, I don’t truly want most of the jobs I am applying for. Really, what I want most is to concentrate on my writing, and to get paid for that. I apply for customer service jobs because I have experience there, and training and development jobs because I can do them and would like them better, and low-end jobs because I think maybe I can actually get them, but none of it is really about wanting. Is that why nothing has come through?

I do want to have money again, and be able to help my family. I don’t want to be part of the grind again, but I am willing to accept that. Can’t that be enough?

I know it sounds horrible, asking for permission to settle, but I think a lot of that is just life. My previous jobs were not ideal, but I was still able to do well at them, live off of them, and get at least some satisfaction from them. I’m willing to do that again.

There have been things that have been good about this time at home. I have been able to be helpful to Mom as her arthritis gets worse. It was especially good that I was here when Suzy was deteriorating. The seizures were happening more and more frequently, and getting worse, and I handled them well. I have become a better cook. I have lost some weight, and yes, I think being away from the cube farm was a key part of that. And I have been able to write a lot, which has been great.

However, I am not getting paid for that writing, and I don’t know if I will. That scares me. I’m tired of the collections calls (yes, they only started a little more than a week ago, but they call eleven times a day), and being afraid to plan anything, and of not having health insurance. I’m tired of having to ask others for help, and not being able to help when they ask. It would be nice if I could get a good job, but I know there aren’t that many anymore, and the demand is high. I will take a bad job and make it a good job. I don’t feel my soul dying a little when I write that at all.

Okay, so I need to be passionate. My ideal job will be in a casual environment, because I have no business clothes and will not be able to afford some for a while. It will be working with smart, competent people, who can be above stupid game playing because they are smart and competent. Hillsboro and downtown Portland are both great, as well as Beaverton.

I will be writing something, whether it is an instructional handbook or policies and procedures. If it is something that requires studying and analysis before it can be put together, great! I love that kind of mental challenge, and I ‘m good at it. My real strength in expository writing may come from my skill in storytelling. Even if it is not an actual story, with events, there is still a logical sequence, where the information is more comprehensible if you put it that way, and each section builds to the next. In other words, I take the web or network of information and make it linear. I like it.

I do have some of my usual fear of commitment, because what if I do take a job and I get trained and they are invested in me, and then something sells? I do worry about that, but I would work it out, even if it meant staying at a job for longer than I needed it because they needed me. I take responsibility really seriously.

Maybe my ideal job is temping. The one that hurt most lately was for TVF&R. It was a temporary technical writer position, helping to document this new software they are switching to. I wanted that one so badly, and I would have been great at it. They didn’t even call me in for an interview.

Well, all I can do is keep at it, meeting the problem head on. I am scared to only apply for training jobs, because I do not believe I can get them. I do not want to go back to customer service, but I am afraid they are the only ones who will take me (except when I am afraid that no one will take me at all). Actually, those are manageable fears.

I’d look for a job where courage was a requirement, but those are usually jobs with fitness requirements.

Broke as a joke – 306

I’ve reached a new low—I have collections calls coming in.

Despite not having regular income since September, between some savings, and a tax refund, and a lot of just moving money around, I was able to keep my payments up until May. (I don’t really recommend the moving funds around part, as all that does is increase the overall debt, but I didn’t see a lot of options.)

The point is, I could not make the May payments. Back in the old days it probably would have taken a full month to get calls on that, especially since I have been so regular up till now, but now it takes about two weeks.

It turns out that I am living true to my upbringing. When my father would open mail, he would say aloud, “Dear Deadbeat.” I always thought that he was joking. It never occurred to me that we could be behind. We weren’t making sacrifices or cutting back or anything. Turns out that he did not really put bills first, and that may be the story of how we were fairly early adopters of things like VHS, CDs, video games, and cable television (all of which are relatively quaint technology now, but this was the ‘80s).

I have sometimes written about things I should have done differently, and I will wrote more about things I could have done differently, and whether I should have or not, but there is one change that I definitely wish, which is that I had saved more.

Parenting guides suggest that have your children automatically save fifty percent (and give ten percent to charity), and I thought that was crazy, because the percentage is so high. The average working adult does not have the option of saving fifty percent. I realized that it makes sense because while they do not have expenses, that amount is probably high enough that when they do have regular expenses like rent and utilities, they will probably end up saving the right amount of disposable income.

I have looked at those statements from the Social Security Administration for what I made those first few years working, and I wish I had saved half. It would have made my first two years of college easier. It wouldn’t have necessarily had a huge impact afterwards, because any additional money I had would have just gone towards my mission.

Actually, I can’t say that, because in my case, I had enough credits that it only took me eight quarters to graduate, but those quarters were spread over six years. I graduated from high school in June of 1990, worked through summer and fall, attended winter and spring, and did the same thing the next year. Then, I worked through summer and fall, and left for my mission in February of 1993. I suppose it is possible that with better funding I could have gone all three quarters for the first two years, and have completed eight before going on my mission. Still, I would have missed walking with my graduating class, and various other events.

The more important lasting impact would just be the habit of saving first and spending later. It’s not that I have been completely irresponsible. I have been completely debt-free before, I have never lived really luxuriously, and even a lot of the debt incurred now (well, before the unemployment) is because of doing things for my family. However, I certainly bought things impulsively, that I did not need or even want that much, and they did add up. Having the habit of thinking twice before spending once would be invaluable, but it didn’t seem to matter. Okay, I didn’t see job loss coming, but that’s the whole point of being debt-free and having savings, right? There are things that you can’t see coming.

So, now I have to deal with this, and it’s hard. I have liked some of the rewards with the different cards, but I swear they are not worth it, and some of the interest rates and finance charges are completely immoral. If I was financially solvent than when the rates went up I could just take my business elsewhere, but I have trapped myself. As it is, as soon as it is possible Barclay’s and Chase will be gone. I will probably keep the Unitus one. (Leave it to a credit union.)

For the phone calls, I am just being honest. No matter how much they call, I cannot pay them something I don’t have. How they act now will affect how likely they are to keep my business once I am employed again. The other possibility is that I will declare bankruptcy. The Barclays one reminded me that would affect my credit for ten years, which is true, but missed and late payments will not be that good for my score either. That decision will only be made if there are absolutely no other options. Honestly, I consider it to be a form of theft—I just don’t know how low things are going to sink.

To be fair, some of them do have various things in place to avoid penalties. If I had called when I first lost the job, I might have been able to lower payments and keep going a bit longer. Still, my current contingency plan only gets me through July. Anyway, if you have recently lost your job, but are not completely broke (or are getting unemployment, which would be lovely), it might be worth calling your creditors to see what’s what.

For myself, I have been thinking about the things I have learned, and what I would like to change, and one thing is that I think as an adult I would want to save ten percent. I was feeling like I do not have a chance to try it now, or any time soon, because with no income I cannot demonstrate good income management. However, I did recently get my tax preparation bonus, and I made a little bit dog sitting. While paying my tithing, it occurred to me to go ahead and save ten percent anyway, so I moved $13.00 to my savings account. I guess it’s a leap of faith.

Nerd alert! – 307.5

By the way, I did finally do my coping tips (or whatever you wish to call them) for the ongoing hard times. I thought that would be a multi-part series, and was not sure when I could possibly get to it, but I ended up doing one post on the preparedness blog, which seemed fitting, and I wanted to fill up one more week before we moved into the regular monthly updates:

http://preparedspork.blogspot.com/

After all, if I was the kind of person who could swiftly and efficiently move through everything I want to cover, I would still only have one blog. Right now, this one is for therapy again. Yes, I am once more turning to the past to see where I have gone wrong. Well, maybe I will find some places where I went right, but those will probably seem less significant. Anyway, the last round focused a lot on different boys, and the first round focused on shameful events, and this may be more about identity. Honestly, I’m not sure how it will work out.

I’ll start with a Facebook story though, because that’s always good. There was a note going around where there were various questions you were supposed to answer, and one of the questions was whether you were a nerd in high school. Aaron answered “Weren’t we all?” which was funny because he was the star of the basketball team, such as it was. Even if he’d had a 4.0 GPA, I don’t think he would have been considered a nerd. However, if what he was really saying was that he generally felt like a dork, well, that would be a common viewpoint, because adolescence is rife with insecurity and self-doubt, if not self-loathing, and the popular kids were not immune.

For the same question, I answered, “That was my understanding,” which was pretty noncommittal, but I had considered the question when I was back in school, and I was never clear on the answer then. I did take some flak from one or two of the guys in the group, because they thought that I thought I was better than them, but it was more complicated than that.

So, I have referenced this junior high group before, but I can go over it a bit more clearly. I’m thinking I should leave out names thought. Okay, there were six of us girls. Most of us met in what we called “block” class. That was a two-class block where you did both social studies and English. I have no idea why they put them together, but is was kind of like homeroom in some ways, I guess, because we never had official homeroom classes in junior high or high school. I really liked all of the girls, and am still friends with three of them.

There were also four boys. I did not like the boys for the most part. Actually, that’s not true. There was one that I could see was weird, but he was always nice to me, and we usually got along fine. There was another who was very nice. The other two were jerks, but ultimately, they were all part of the group, and that’s just how it was. Generally we did not have much conflict, except for the manipulative one trying in subtle ways to make you feel like dirt.

That block class that we met in was the advanced one, and we had other advanced classes together, and were generally pretty smart. We were also not particularly popular, though I am starting to realize that “popular” is kind of a floating target. You could disagree on who was popular and who wasn’t, and have completely legitimate arguments on both sides.

Anyway, when this discussion came up, I guess the issue was that I would not fully admit to being a nerd. I’m not sure that I even denied being a nerd, but I would have been uneasy with the title for a few different reasons.

First of all, I knew that I was not as studious as I could be. I slacked off on homework all the time. It was generally so I could read books that interested me, but still, on one level I was not sure if I was really academic enough to be a nerd, and that would actually be an area of feeling inferior.

What bothered me more though, was an attitude that was at least true of these two boys. It could have come across as an attitude of superiority to the rest of the world, though I believe it stemmed largely from jealousy. I think there was some hostility in it, and there was definitely contempt, and if that was what made one a nerd, then I couldn’t be one. I liked the other kids who were not in our group. I liked sports, and television, and rock music. Actually, all of us girls liked popular music for sure—David Bowie, INXS, Duran Duran, The Cure—our favorites were all different, but our tastes overlapped enough that it was not a problem. I could not tell you what music any of the boys liked.

So I guess the reason that I didn’t know if I was a nerd or not, it was them. If all it meant was being smart and not getting asked out on dates, okay, definitely. I was smart—I wouldn’t have gotten so lazy academically if I had not been able to coast so much in grade school. And, well, the social life has been covered extensively in other posts. But if it meant being studious, I wasn’t enough, and if it meant looking out at the world and thinking bad thoughts about everyone else then I didn’t want any part of it anyway.

What we really need to do is to define what makes one a nerd, and maybe in the process of that we should realize that labeling people is stupid, and it’s kind of a false viewpoint anyway. I know we all believed in social stratification, first because of SE Hinton and then John Hughes, but it’s not how it worked out here, and I’m not sure it was that accurate for Tulsa and Chicago either.

I remember talking with my friend Rachel (not in my group, but we went to the same elementary school, and due to boundary changes, that was a small group) once after she had seen The Outsiders, about how you have the Socs, and then it was Stoners and Nerds, I think. But Socs could be divided into Socs and Jocks, I think, depending on if they were athletic or not, and Stoners could be divided into Stoners and Rockers, based on whether they actually did drugs or not, and we realized some people just had to be Normals, because they didn’t fit any of those categories.

I have had people say that The Breakfast Club was just like they remember high school, and I have doubted that, because again, we just did not have these strict social layers, and when I ask follow-up questions, it sort of falls apart, and anyone could talk to anyone or date anyone, even if some pairings were more likely than others. I do know people who were tormented, but that generally seems to have been more within groups than between groups.

I think these things ring true emotionally because of the dissatisfaction with our selves that we tend to feel. We certainly wish we were cooler, and other people seem to have achieved that. Or we wish we could be close to one person, and we see other people who are, so they seem popular. What we don’t know is that most of them are feeling the same emotions, even if it is for different reasons.

The big lesson for me of the last years is that truth is the most important thing. Being open and honest, but also working to see accurately. Well, kindness is really important too, and becomes more necessary the more open we are, but still, it seems like the majority of our pain comes from what we hide and where we are blind.

Well that didn’t work – 309.5

I think I’ll stick with weighing every day. It’s not that I necessarily think that not weighing daily was the problem, but I prefer knowing what’s going on.

I think the actual problem is just that I was overloaded. I mentioned earlier that I was working on a pilot episode for the series, but I had some hard days where I just was not writing, and so before I finished Tara wrote to me and asked for me to write out one episode, expanded character descriptions, and one paragraph descriptions for 26 episodes.

It was great that she was interested, and we were thinking in parallel ways. Like, I was only going to send her thirteen episode descriptions, because usually a new show will not get a full season order, but she asked for twenty-six so she could cull the best ones. Anyway, they are reasonable requests, but time-wise it was running into a get-together I was organizing, a bridal shower to attend, and contests I intended to prepare entries for, and I really needed to apply for some jobs and I did go to this employment seminar, and every few hours I need to shove another pill down Randi’s throat, and it was just kind of a lot.

I was able to get the pilot episode written okay, and the expanded character descriptions were not a problem, but where I really fell apart was on coming up with what would happen in twenty-six different episodes. Now, the reason I have always felt more drawn to feature films than television is that coming up with the different things for the same characters to do every week seems hard, so it is no surprise that this is where I had the issue. I could get some ideas, but ultimately my brain was fried and the ticking clock did not help. So, I sent her what I had, plus what the overall story arcs would be over multiple seasons, and that I would need a brief pause. This week I intend to take another stab at the episodes.

Anyway, while I was stressing over everything and frying my brain, I did not exercise as intended, and I really only ate the one apple (plus some pickles) for my fruit and vegetable consumption, so despite having the goal I did worse than the previous week (when I exercised twice).

It would almost appear that the answer is not to set goals at all, but I doubt that’s right. I know that being regular about exercise and eating well is not easy for me. It’s not that I don’t like them, or feel good when I do them, but they are not habits and they do not come naturally to me.

One thing I have had to learn is to do things imperfectly. Sometimes this means writing even when everything that comes out sounds stupid and inadequate. Sometimes it means that when the day has been frittered away, and there is no chance of getting a good workout, that I will still do ten pushups, or something insignificant like that.

So, I guess I’ll keep setting myself up for failure, and sharing it with the public. Here is my next goal.
On June 4th, I am going to go listen to some music at a club. One thing that is sometimes an issue is that I don’t really have any going out clothes. I have church clothes, and work clothes (very casual work clothes), and a couple of things that can work for church or an office more formal than Intel, but nothing for going out on the town. I did buy this top that is a little nicer, but I have only worn it twice. I also got this skit that is kind of nice, but I have only worn it once, maybe twice. They have not been worn together.

It is not exactly that they don’t fit, but there are places where they are snug so that they don’t look as good as they could, and they remind me that I am fat. On the 4th, I want to wear these with confidence.

Yes, I am going to try and improve exercise and eating again. I guess the special focus should be on push-ups and crunches, since it is the arms and stomach that make me the most nervous.

I am adding another level of difficulty. Almost everywhere I go, I where these cheap sneakers. They are very practical, and support my feet well, but I know they are not cool. For church (or when I need to dress up), I have a pair of simple black flats. They are not particularly attractive, and certainly have no heel, but if I wear them for too long my feet hurt, because they are used to the cushion of the sneakers. Honestly, I pretty much never wear heels. However I do have a pair.

I am going to try walking around in the heels (2-inch, thick, still not that impressive) a bit and practicing, and maybe they will become a part of the outfit. I have about three weeks. Dun—dun—dunh!

Death again

Yesterday I mentioned having been at a memorial service, so I thought I should write more about that. It was the fifth death that had touched me over the course of a year, but it was also the best.

With Josh, Paolo, and Luciana, one thing that made the losses harder was a complete lack of preparation. Josh and I had not been in touch for a long time, and I didn’t even know he had asthma. If I had, I do know that an attack can turn fatal, and that there is that potential, but I still tend not to expect it. Everyone else I know with asthmas is still alive. Anyway, it struck out of the blue.

With my aunt and uncle, if I had been there, maybe I would have understood. As it was, of all of Mom’s siblings, if we were to rank them, we probably would have put those two as the healthiest in general, and Paolo was the youngest of them as well. To be fair, no one called to say that things were going downhill—Mom just found out in her regular weekly phone calls with Elda. So I did know that Paolo had a heart attack and was in the hospital, but I thought the hospital would fix him up and release him, and that wasn’t how it happened. I knew Luciana was having problems with her arm, but then it was getting better, and they decided that they did not have to amputate, and I took that as a good sign too. Maybe there were clues that I missed, but both deaths shocked me.

That covers three of the people. Amy was before any of them. She started off the year that Rachel closed out. Amy was not unexpected. We watched her fight cancer for so long before she left, and when it moved to her brain we knew it was just a matter of time. She put up a good fight, but there was plenty of time to know what was happening and to be prepared for it. That did not make accepting it any easier, because she was so young, and there was so much left for her. Her daughter Mary had not even turned three yet, and the new house they were planning was either just finished or almost finished. She just had a lot to live for. So it was gut wrenching, and we were sad.

Rachel was the complete opposite of all of that. First of all, I think her life was pretty complete. She lived in to her eighties, got to see her children happily married, and then their grandchildren, and she had several great-grandchildren. Really, they are an amazing family, and she got to see a lot of that. She served two missions, and got to travel some, and ultimately lived a long full life.

Also, there was time to prepare. She had missed Brad (her husband) since his death, but it, and her stamina, had started getting worse, and things really took a turn for the worse in December, after she had a bad fall. Towards the end she had moved in with one son and his family, instead of being in her own house on the same property, and she was needing more help, and everyone just knew. Still, there are much worse declines. Hers was fairly painless, and filled with loved ones.

I have never been so sure of someone being okay since Brad died. I know she is with him again, and thrilled to be so. There are parents and siblings there, and she did a lot of family history, so she would have found lots of friends waiting for her.

It’s not that there is no sadness involved. There is. Even though her family is happy for her, and also assured that she is fine and that they will see her again, and are still a family, the separation hurts. It first struck me listening to Sam (a son) pray. His voice cracked and I heard the grief, and I felt that pain. When your parents die, you are an orphan, no matter how old you are. Later, standing there, I realized that it was the end of an era. Together she and Brad created a very special place, and memories, and her children and grandchildren want to keep that legacy going, and they will do good things, I know, but it is still change. Yet even with that very justifiable sadness, it is still overwhelmingly okay, and there is peace.

There were many people at the memorial service, including a lot of old friends, and it caused me to think of some other things as well. I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this, but all four of my grandparents died before I was born. However, it was a close-knit group at church back when we lived in Wilsonville. The Summers were an important part of that, but there was another couple, the Barkers, who were also close, and whom I actually called Grandma and Grandpa. Heaven knows they did not need additional grandchildren, because they had plenty, but they took us in anyway.

We always stayed in touch with the Barkers and the Summers, but there were other people there with whom we were not quite as close. We would still hear about them every now and then through the others, and sometimes run into them, but I don’t think you can maintain contact with every single person you like unless you just don’t like very many people. (Well, Facebook may be changing that now, but we are talking about an older generation.)

Anyway, we saw many of these people at the funeral, and it is over thirty years since we moved, but they still care, and we still care, and it’s just good. It is good that it was a close-knit ward then, and it is good that love lasts. I don’t talk to my friends as often as I would like, but we can pick up again, and the bond has stayed, and if we needed each other sooner, we would be there.

Oddly, I did not worry about being unemployed in that setting. I felt completely secure. (Okay, I did get awkward around A, but that was something else, maybe even merely tiredness because we were getting ready to leave then, and I maybe I had already checked out mentally.)

I was thinking there that maybe family is what you make it, and yet, it’s not quite that they have become extended family either. If I try and explain it, maybe I will cheapen it. I guess what I want to say is that I am grateful for love, and grateful for good, kind-hearted people, and I am grateful for the beauty that comes when you combine the two.

Still a dork, after all these years

Do you remember Cute Cafeteria Guy? I wrote about him in December 2007. Walking away from an encounter with him one time, I was amazed at what a dork I was. On one level I realized that to a large extent I had stopped developing romantically after that moment when I was taught that if a guy ever acts interested in me, it was a joke. This meant that in that area I had stayed fourteen for years, and was finally starting to progress again. (So this is my inner dater, not my inner child.)

It was good that I was starting to progress again, but at the same time, I realized that I could not imagine being cool. I can picture being thin, or rich, and I can probably even imagine being patient, but I can’t grasp “smooth”. So, it seemed like I would just have to accept being a dork and proceed anyway.

Also, if you remember when I posted my list of regrets and resolutions (September 2008), well, I was going to act on things and not duck away from them. I mention these things because I think I recently failed to live up to this.

It all covered the space of a weekend, with two very different circumstances and similar results. For the Friday night, I went to see a band play. Actually, this is E. I have written about him too. What I wrote was that although I was attracted to him, I did not think he was attracted to me because he greeted me with a handshake, and said goodbye with a handshake, and I just think if he were interested he would have escalated to a hug goodbye. No problem—I am used to guys not being attracted.

So, I went to see him play, still no hug, but the friend accompanying me felt that there were other signs that he was into me. She believes in me, so it would be easier for her to see evidence of this, where I am a skeptic. Still, he will not touch me.

Anyway, one of my resolutions was specifically that in situations where a guy is eyeing me, I will make eye contact instead of turning away, and I could not do it. Every time he made eye contact I felt the back of my neck turning red, and I could not maintain the connection.

The next day, I was at a memorial service, and ran into an old friend from childhood. This is A. I could not make conversation with him. Okay, it was a funeral, but I had been doing really well up until that point. Maybe part of it was that I believe he is married, and yet he did not seem to be acting married, but instead of clamming up I should have had the presence of mind to check his hand for a ring, or at least ask leading questions. Maybe I was just tired out at that point, but with the two events following so closely, I was feeling pretty hopeless. Ultimately, these events probably pushed me to the plentyoffish.com signup. (Plus, a cute guy recently referred to me as a terrific lady, and okay, I am older, and he is right, but it sucks.)

Ultimately, I keep thinking about Geno, and wishing that I had another chance to talk to him. I specifically remember not being attracted to him, and yet, maybe I should have gone for it anyway. I wouldn’t want to lead someone on hurtfully, but maybe you can just go out with people sometimes, without falling in love, and it’s not a problem. I’m normally a very practical person, but in this area, not so much. I’m still kind of working things out.

I could probably, with a little effort, find Geno, but for what? Invite him to coffee, which I do not drink and cannot pay for? I probably will not see A. again any time soon. E is the one I think about most, and the trickiest.

I was thinking, well, you’re just going for it lately. Maybe you should just tell him you like him. That it seems like a crazy plan is a reason to do it, but still, what purpose would be served? If he is holding back because he knows I am pure (which he does), or because, well, I’m not going to get into that, but there are multiple potential complications if we were to try dating, and it might be better that we don’t. But I am attracted to him. Maybe next time I see him I will just hug him.

Are boys really worth the trouble?

This could be a mistake

No weight right now. The battery on the scale went out. We got it replaced, but I was thinking how I have been hovering around this same weight range for a while, and I want to try something new, so I am not weighing until Saturday. I do intend to exercise every day, and really focus on getting more fruits and vegetables. Normally when I make an effort to take healthier steps, the numbers bounce around in frustrating manners, and I do not want to be distracted. I am afraid not weighing will take as much willpower as getting the exercise in, but it is not really for that long.

I have joined a dating site. That was abrupt, wasn’t it? It happened about as quickly. I have had many people tell me I should, and I have thought about it, but I am leery about computer dating for multiple reasons.

For one thing, I don’t really work that way. Looking at my track record, both times I have fallen in love it has been at first site, and those were relationships I could live with, whereas the ones I talked myself into ended up being really bad for me. I guess chemistry is really important to me, and I have doubts about how well that can be transmitted through a web site. Of course, I should not really rely on my track record, because, you know, I’m thirty-seven and have never been kissed, or dated anyone seriously, and I haven’t even been on a simple date for maybe two years or so.

I was on eharmony.com for a while, and I even ended up paying for a subscription. However, I found that I didn’t really want any of the matches. I kept up the communication anyway, but we still never went beyond questions, and even if there was a little bit of feeling down from them not wanting to go further, I still did not want them. I have doubts that I will want anyone that I find through a site.

Also, I hate putting myself on the line like that. So many people are judging you by your looks, or at least your fitness level, and who needs that? Except, that is exactly why I am doing it. I am doing something that is scary, and uncomfortable, because I don’t want to live in fear, and I want to push my boundaries, and I want to break barriers. I have believed for so long that no one could love me or want me because of my weight, and the easy thing would be to wait until I have gone lower to try this, but what if I don’t? What if I never go lower than I am now? Does that make me less of a person? Ultimately, it’s more valuable to me if I do it now.

I am also doing it for my sisters. They also feel like no one will want them. They are thinner, but not by enough. I have been bothered by their dismissive attitude when I have thought someone might be interested in me, because it feels like a slur on me, but it is really an attitude that is self-injuring for them, and if I have not specifically taught it to them, I have not contradicted the lessons. They deserve better, and I do too.

I had kind of had in mind a very honest profile. I nearly posted on match.com, but there’s a charge for that too, so I posted on plentyoffish.com. This was a concern too, as I guess slutty people do use the site for hooking up, but apparently that was just one option, so I’m trying it. This is my profile:

“First the bad. I have been unemployed since September, and it is starting to wear me down. In addition to searching for regular jobs, I am working on my sixth screenplay, and hope that will pay off someday. I am overweight. Currently losing, but it is not a short-term thing.

On the plus side, I am smart, funny, and creative. I am kind, understanding and loyal. I can handle extremely stressful situations without losing my cool. Also, I will never lie to you, or that first paragraph would not even be there.

I love to travel, though I am not currently making any plans until I have income again. I like staying informed about what is going on in the world. I have a soft spot for musicians. I love language in general--not just reading and writing but also foreign languages. I have studied French, Spanish, Italian, and Laotian, and can get the gist of things in a few more languages.

I'm skeptical of internet dating, but my life is all about trying new things right now.

I am LDS, and have tried to avoid dating outside of that, but LDS single guys in my age group tend to be single for a reason, so I am starting to bend on that. I will not bend on living the religion myself (i.e. no sex).

If despite all that you are interested, great. I am too.”

I do have a few concerns about it. Honestly, I probably should be worried about axe murderers and other psychos, but I’m not feeling like that is a real threat. Obviously I will follow the public places rule. I am more concerned that I will draw guys who view the no sex bit as a challenge (they won’t win, but I am not interested in the hassle) or that I will draw guys who are specifically interested in the weight. I know there is a subset of the population that can be referred to as chubby-chasers, but I think they are sick. In the words of the lolcats, Do not want!

Also, I am a little worried that LDS friends will look down on me for the part about being open to dating non-members, and I’m worried that it’s a mistake myself, but it also seems like a necessary step to take, if for no other reason than that a non-LDS guy is a lot more likely to give me the time of day, and I would like to be given the time of day every now and then.

What I like most of all about it though, is that I am clearly no apologetic. I apologize for myself a lot, and I do not think I am cured of that by a long shot, but I am better, and I can tell.

And honestly, I have no interest in pretending to be anyone else. I’m good as I am, flaws and all. That feels good to realize, and it should keep me out of game-playing (which again, no interest).

So, I put that up. Someone added me to his favorites list, and two guys have sent me messages. The one I wrote back to has invited me to coffee. I don’t want to go, but still, it’s nice to be asked.

Here we go again – 306

Well, Julie’s car repair cost twice as much as she was expecting, and for Maria, even though she knows she looked, and the other driver admitted that she did not look, the other driver’s insurance company has decided that the fault was fifty-fifty. Since Maria does not have the cash to cover the deductible (she is still not getting full hours at work), her bumper will not be getting fixed any time soon. Also, I have hope again, so there could be a horrible crash coming.

Still, it is not horrible to have hope. Basically, I sent a friend two very short treatments for potential series ideas. Her contact thinks that the one will probably sell (not the one I would have expected, but we’ve established that I don’t know what I’m doing). Although I have thought about both ideas a lot, I had never written anything on either of them until I did these page and a half treatments. Now she has asked if I have anything written, to which the answer is “no”. However, I feel like the right thing to do is to just write a script for the pilot episode.

I do not know what I am doing. Not really. I’ve had some practice with the feature film format now, but with television, no only are you working with shorter time periods, but the timing is more important, because it needs to fit the programming slot. You also need to put in little starting and stopping points for the insertion of commercials. There are conventions for this, but I am not familiar with them. So, in addition to working out more information on my characters, and the premise, and how to best introduce them so that viewers would want to watch additional episodes, I also need to watch a current hour-length drama and jot down the time intervals.

That should not sound like a complaint—I am just worried about it. That’s the question that comes up all the time with this: Can I really do it? I hope I can. There’s no guarantee I will make any money with this. Writing the episode is not a job; it is what I feel is the best way to show them that I could do this job, and that they should take me seriously.

I had been intending to make April television month anyway, though this is not how I pictured it. In addition to writing the screenplays, I was thinking that now that Leverage is shooting in town, I could try and get on there. I personally am more drawn to features, but it would still be professional writing, and it would probably be good experience.

Generally, the way you try and get on a show writing staff is to write to sample episodes of a similar show. You never write for the show you want, because the people reading it have their own concepts of the characters, and it is personal to them, so it is easy to step on toes, or to look like you have completely missed the point. The good thing about this is that there are fewer obstacles to getting someone to take a look than with a film. A big part of why film screenplays will only be reviewed when submitted through agents or entertainment lawyers is the fear of lawsuits—that you will have something similar already in the works, but someone will claim the idea was copied. I believe the reason that it is looser with shows is that you are sending them something that they really can’t use. It’s different characters and locale, and even if the plot contains a germ of an idea that they could adapt, the potential for outright plagiarism is much lower.

Anyway, my original plan for this month was to figure out a series in a similar vein to Leverage, watch a bit, write to episodes for it, and get them submitted. I may still do that later, but I have something else to work on right now. (Also, I can’t think of any really similar current series, though there are some departed series that would be a good match.)

So that’s where I am. Scared, which has almost become second nature to me now, but not quite down for the count.

Oh, did I mention that bandaging bleeding dogs is really hard, and we've had two separate dogs get bleeding injuries yesterday and today? And my allergies are acting up.

Re-cycling – 304.5

On thinking it over, it should not be surprising that I need to go through things and over things more than once. Just because you learned from an experience one time does not mean you have necessarily learned everything possible. In time you grow as a person, you have more experiences to relate to it, and so it’s reasonable for there to be more. I have already noticed one cycle that comes up every so often for me, but I understand it differently after the last time.

Every now and then I will start getting too much money from stores. That sounds weird, so I will explain. The first time it happened, there were three incidents. I purchased something from the self-service bakery at Fred Meyer, and accidentally got the wrong code, thus being undercharged by fifteen cents. I got two egg rolls at a grocery store deli and was only charged for one. Finally, I was buying several things for an adopted family (this was around Christmas) at K-mart. These all happened within a few days.

For the egg roll, I just went back the next day and had her ring me up, and she was very nice about it, but was also kind of making a big deal about it, and it was complimentary but I was still not entirely comfortable about it. At K-mart, they were really rude. I tried to take care of it over the phone, and couldn’t, and it was like I was just burdening them to make them take care of this shirt issue. The irony here is that the shirt cost about ten times as much as the egg roll did, so there is more value, and scanning a shirt is not even that much work, but what can you do?

Between the two, I just did not want to deal with Fred Meyer, especially for such a small amount, so I taped the coins to a note card and mailed it in with an explanation, but no return address.

Anyway, at other times I will get a bunch of similar incidents occurring in a group. Vending machines will give too much change, and then the checker will miss an item, and it adds up, and then I have to fix it, which is a nuisance and embarrassing, and that is where the new realization came in.

I always thought that my honesty was being tested, but really, the amounts were always so small that the extra money is not a temptation in itself. Of course I would rather have my integrity than an extra dollar. It’s not even a question.

The last time around, I started to see it as more of a trial of pride. Of course I don’t care about the money, but I do care about convenience and embarrassment, and I do get embarrassed about things that should not be embarrassing. The emotions I was fighting did not involve greed as much as they did irritation and (unreasonable) humiliation.

I may get other opportunities. No one seems to know how to make change in their head anymore, so it is probably really easy for them to get confused, and there is a lot of general incompetence flying around, especially in these low-wage jobs. I guess if it strikes again, I will try and remember that honesty is important to me, and I can handle it if someone compliments me and I can handle it if someone is rude to me and thinks I am an idiot for correcting the mistake. Those things don’t really matter, right?

I do have one exception to the honesty rule. If when going through the drive-through of a fast food restaurant you check your order and see that you were given extra items, there is no point in taking them back. Once they have handed the food over they can’t take it back, and it certainly wouldn’t be right for them to charge you, so at that point you are just making their lives harder without accomplishing anything. And yes, you should still go back if they short you. I’ve worked drive-through, and I am comfortable with this.

Flying blind – 306.5

In terms of blows to self-esteem, this has been hard because I am used to being capable and generous and a valued employee. Coming to grips with losing these things is hard. The other way in which this is really outside of my comfort zone is that there are so many unknowns that are completely out of my control.

I am starting to realize that I am extremely neurotic. I have a sense of humor, and am easy going about a lot of things, so it is not obvious and I know I could be much worse. However, I do worry about things and overdo, especially when I am in charge, and I have a hard time trusting other people to come through. I have looked at my behavior before, and seen it as a combination of two things. One is that persistent feeling of not being good enough, where I feel like I need to overcompensate. Maybe if I bring three dishes to the potluck, instead of just one, I have earned a right to be there. The other part is just not trusting people to be flakes. In a lot of cases it may be fair, and comes from experience, but it is probably still overly judgmental.

I knew that I did this, but had never really pegged myself as neurotic, which I associate with New York and annoying people after reading books by East Coasters who obsess over things that don’t matter to me. (So maybe the annoyance is not because they are neurotic, but because it is about getting their kids into the “right” pre-school and crafting the right image.) I started using the word neurotic for me after two incidents.

One was standing in line at a church potluck, where they were trying something new to get enough people to bring food, but the discussion was on how people get flaky, and the person I was talking to was saying how ninety percent of people are flakes and the rest are neurotic, and I realized I was the rest, but I also realized that we get things done. Then I was volunteering at a blood drive, escorting people to the canteen and making sure they got their drink and snack before leaving. I was stressing, because people were supposed to wait for me to come, and if I was not there fast enough they would just start walking on their own (and we had a fainter and another one who got really weak, so it does matter), so I was always looking and trying to gage how long they would take, and just uptight about it. However, I was told later by one of the phlebotomists that I did a great job, and she was right. I did. I was stressed the whole time, but I did a good job. Neurotic people get the job done.

So, you can call me neurotic, and a control freak, and it is fairly true, though I do not try and control other people, and I can live with that. The problem comes when I am here with something that I can’t control. I like to always have a plan, and I can’t plan now. I can plan trying different things, but I have no idea on what the results will be or when I will know, and that is hard. I have had to set aside plans before (like when I realized I was not going to get married when I was twenty, and that I was supposed to go on a mission), but I can’t even make short-term plans now. I am used to seeing very quickly what is needed for a given situation, and how to implement it and just going for it, and that is not something I can do now.

I recently saw a film clip that I am trying to bear in mind. I think it is called “Facing the Giants”. A football team is doing conditioning, where some players are crawling with other players on their backs. One expresses some doubts, and the coach asks if he can carry one player fifty feet while blindfolded, repeatedly asking the player if he will promise to give his very best. The player agrees, and they start, and it is hard. Because of the blindfold he has no idea how far he has gone, or how much is left, so he can’t pace himself at all, and the coach actually has him go one hundred yards.

I don’t know what I have to do, but I probably also don’t know what I can do. It looks like I’m going to find out.

Bitter – 305

I ended on kind of a bitter note yesterday, so I thought I should at least clarify the advice issue. The two big things that people are saying (besides to not get discouraged, which, how exactly?) is to adjust your resume with keywords for each position, and to make sure everyone knows you are looking. Those are things I have done. I admit that I did not start out with the specific resume adjustments, but lately I have been doing it, as well as customizing cover letters. For networking, there may be a few people who don’t know that I am looking for a job, but I can’t imagine whom.

I think I have shared my theory about good listening before, but if not, it is that you don’t offer advice. The reason for this is that the person with the problem has been thinking about the problem more than the listener. They have a personal stake in it. They are worried about it. If they are like me, they are obsessing over it. You’re not likely to come up with anything new in your five minutes. It’s not impossible, maybe if you have some expertise in the area, or you are just way smarter, but generally, you are going to suggest things that they have already ruled out, and it increases the frustration.

It’s interesting, because I was taught that solution-providing is how men communicate, and then men and women have problems because the woman just wants to be heard, and share emotions. It sounds reasonable, but in my experience women try and provide solutions too, and sometimes men like to vent. Maybe in reality the person with the problem wants to be heard, and the person hearing wants to just fix it so it will go away. I do understand the desire to help someone, and for things to be fixed, but I believe the listening is helpful, and there are things you can do. You can ask clarifying questions, which may help the person see things in a new light, and after they have poured their heart out, if they ask for advice, you can give it then, but otherwise I say you are hurting more than you are helping.

The desire to fix is still nice, so it may not be fair that it doesn’t help, but this is how it looks to me. The thing is, it would be great if someone could tell me something new, because I don’t know how to get out of this.

The situation is that I don’t have a useful specialty or highly in demand skills. When I got out of college, the situation was good and it didn’t matter what you had majored in. I got opportunities to try new tasks, and I did well at a variety of things, but I essentially ended up pigeonholed in customer service. Since they wanted to keep me around, even when there were department changes and management changes and off-shoring, I ended up making really good money at it, that I would not really be able to replicate starting over somewhere else.

I have accepted that, and I can take less money, but no matter how many versions of my resume I make, I’m not going to tell outright lies on it, and so there is a shortfall for a lot of the more attractive positions. I could overcome a lot of that in the interview if I could get in, but a few months ago you could count on 80 to 140 applications for every open position, and the number of applicants keeps going up while the number of open positions goes down. It would be hard to stand out in that crowd anyway, but the way things are going, that crowd probably contains several people who have multiple years of experience and a degree in the right specialty. Truly, this is where networking should come in handy. I guess I don’t know the right people.

What’s really hurting now is that the less attractive positions are not calling me back either. I haven’t heard from Stream, K-Mart, or Fred Meyer, and I know I could do any one of those jobs. Maybe they are worried that I am overqualified, and will have an attitude. A lot of those applications only ask what you have made at previous jobs, not what you are willing to take, but ask me!

Actually, I waited to apply for retail for a while, because I am afraid that a job where I am on my feet a lot will bring on another cellulitis outbreak, but I’m desperate here. My doctor wants me to come in before she renews the Metformin prescription, I haven’t been to the dentist for over a year, and ultimately I am worried that I am going to start falling apart physically, which would at least make the outside match the inside.

So, that’s where I’m at. I don’t know what to do, I’m prickly on the outside because of all the torment inside, and I want to rip the heads off of people who try and help when they do it so ineffectively and smugly. Maybe it is time to start fast food applications.

Here we go again – 308

It was kind of mean of me to dump a lot of doom and gloom, and then procrastinate posting coping methods. It was not intentional—I have just gotten lost in my own problems again. I had said I was going to start another round of self-examination, but I thought I was going to do the other thing first, and maybe that was the wrong strategy. I may mix the two up, but I need to work some things out, and I think I am going to try posting every day for a bit, possibly for the next two weeks.

Maybe the first thing I should make clear is that I don’t think that every thing that happens is necessarily specifically designed by God for us. First of all, turn a bunch of us loose with moral agency in a telestial world and plenty of things happen, where we all get plenty of opportunities to be tested and rise to the occasion (or not). Also, since that agency is definitely there, that alone should indicate that He is not orchestrating every single thing despite being over the whole.

This is important because there are people who try to read specific meaning into situations where the real meaning is that someone is a jerk, or was careless, when they would be better off going for specific lessons, but looking at the greater meaning and how that situation fits into the greater plan. These people are also more likely to view specific trials as punishments (instead of just part of mortal life), and there just seems to be a lot of room for error. I don’t want to fall into those traps.

That being said, I don’t rule out the possibility that at times there are things being orchestrated for you, and even if the trial came up on its own, the end of the trial may be pending upon some change or progress within oneself. And that leads us to the crux of this next writing spurt—I need relief and I am trying to make sure I am eligible for it.

Being unemployed is taking a real toll. It has been all along, I guess. It feels worse now partly because of the cumulative weight (part of my survival has come from moving money around different places, like paying a credit card but then charging the cable bill), and I have run out of wiggle room. Also, well, I had a ray of hope last week, and it looks like that was turning out to be a false hope, so there’s a crash down effect.

When I went through my last bout of depression, I really thought that it was a one-time thing. I lost a key characteristic (my cheerful nature), had to deal with a false belief (that I could not be loved) that was affecting my entire life, but then I did learn and I did get my cheerfulness back, and I thought it was done. Even if there was still residual learning to do (like believing that a specific person could love me, or knowing how to act since I am not the hopeless case that I thought), still, the big part was over and I did not think it would ever have to be repeated. That turns out to only be partly true.

For one thing, I oversimplified my self-definition. When I didn’t recognize myself anymore as this depressed person, I thought, okay, this is my core characteristic, even above intellect. It looks like I have multiple core characteristics. It sounds logical, but it was something I had not thought of until I lost something else that I had always taken for granted: my employability.

This is really unfamiliar territory for me. I have always been able to get the job I want, and then be a star there. Even back when I was first job hunting as a sixteen-year old girl, I applied at a lot of places, but where I wanted to work was McDonalds, and that’s the job that I got. (The desire came from a visitor to my personal finance class who really talked it up.) Then I wanted to work at K-Mart, and Burlington Coat Factory, and those happened. I wanted the job at Clear Connections, and I got it, and even if I was applying for other jobs while I was going after the target, it was like that was all white noise and only one application really counted. There were moments of doubt, when Clear Connections was falling apart, and that one month after my redeployment ran out, but in general things went my way.

This is all different now. That it took a trip around the world right at the time the country was starting an economic freefall for me to have employment problems is impressive, I guess, but it doesn’t help. I still need a job and I am not getting one.

It’s not just that I am worried about bills and depressed about not having money to do things (though I am). It is not just that there is family pressure. It is also that I placed a big part of my value as a person in my ability to earn a living, and to be the smart, helpful one, who knew the job really well and that the rest of the team relied on. I was never doing anything really great, but I earned enough to do what I wanted, and to help my family. I donated to charity. I was generous with people. Now I feel like a big nothing. What am I really doing? Okay, I write (not as regularly as I could, but still), and I apply for jobs, but there’s no payoff. This is the seventh month now.

Honestly, I cannot think of a worse blow. Losing Mom or one of my younger sisters would hurt a lot, but it wouldn’t change who I was. I have struggled with my weight and with being single for a long time, but I am also used to those struggles. This is something completely new, and utterly destroying—except that it is a slow, grinding down destruction rather than a sudden obliteration.

My family is finding me to be a bear, and they are not wrong, but at the same time, every waking moment my emotions are composed of anxiety, fear, despair, humiliation, embarrassment, anger, and self-recrimination. They’re lucky it only boils over when they say something about the job. There is some improvement from last time, in that I have not been as down for as long periods, but still, I am having a prolonged hard time.

Also, what they are saying is not helpful. I am afraid a lot of that has come from Misty. She keeps complaining to Mom that I am not taking her advice, and so it is not my fault. The problems with that are that she actually never gave me advice, she just told Mom she did, the advice that she gave is something I have already been doing anyway, and also, I think anyone who has not successfully gotten a job in this economy needs to shut up. If you were able to successfully get a job in better times, good for you. I was too. The rules are different now. Misty needs to shut up more in general anyway.

Anyway, I’ll allow that ego is a problem that I need to overcome (also, revulsion for my older sister), but that’s why I’m putting it all out here, tearing down the facades that lend any shred of dignity in the hopes that it will help.

The shape of things to come - 305.5

While I was writing my last post, an unauthorized charge was being placed on Maria’s debit card, sending her into the read and ringing up $70.00 in bank fees. It looks like she had gotten them all successfully removed now, but then her car was rear-ended, and some trashy ex-friends of hers started another round of harassment. Add it to our litany of woes. Perhaps that makes this a good time for me to predict a dystopian future.

In December I went ahead and predicted the future a little bit, and now I am basically adding to that. There are trends that I see that are disturbing, and if things are heading that way, well, it’s something to be aware of.

First of all, I don’t see much coming in the way of economic improvement for the next three years. Some will argue over whether that is because the government is not doing enough, or because everything they are doing is wrong. Realistically, I think anyone would have a difficult time cleaning up after this mess. I personally am confident that additional tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations are not the answer, just as I am sure that additional deregulation is not the answer, but again, fixing this is going to be really hard.

Unfortunately, economic hard times lead to despair, and we are seeing a lot of that. I remember watching one news feature about the economy, and strongly feeling the impression that people were going to take their lives over this, then I remembered that at least one person already had (a financial advisor who had lost everyone’s money and felt bad about it). What I did not foresee was how brutal it would be, with so many suicides turning to mass murder first. We already had a growing suicide rate for our returning soldiers, and coming back to find poverty and no job prospects is not going to help. Expect depression, desperation, and rage to be common.

The other thing I have noticed is that the typical bugs are lasting longer. Diseases that you might normally shake in three days are lasting five weeks. This isn’t even an issue with the bugs becoming more resistant to drugs, because these are things like colds that you don’t normally medicate, but I have seen it with myself, family members, friends, and even reading about people I do not know in other parts of the country.

Maybe it is that we are becoming unhealthier. There is already the obesity epidemic and the increase of diabetes, which does not do your immune system any favors. In addition, the average diet is becoming more over-processed, and even some people who were making an effort to be active may be losing the battle, now (either through having to work extra hours or from sheer depression). Also, a lot of it may be stress. Who is not more stressed now than last year? And that does no favors for the immune system either.

Expect to see growing crime—not just violent crimes stemming from the rage and despair (in an environment where alcohol continues to post strong sales)—but also more theft. So much of where the world is now is the result of greed, and from people who stole and cheated big, but there are still a lot of little cheats, and they will be getting grabbier, from ocean piracy to check fraud. This may be somewhat driven by economic necessity, but also we seem to be getting more permissive as a society.
This may not seem like the most pertinent indicator, but marijuana use is becoming really prominent in recently released movies, and it’s being treated as very routine, without their being concerns for it being illegal or killing brain cells. Add sexting, and other trends, and, okay, some people will argue that the moral core has been missing for quite a while, but I think it’s getting worse, and so people and the things that they do will be getting worse.

Weather will continue to be more extreme, and more unpredictable. The last season was really rough on local farmers, and we need to care about them, because the other thing that will happen is fuel costs are going to rise and it will affect everything, including food. When you have cheap fuel, you can get cheap food from all over the world, and the transportation is minimal. That’s not going to last.

Anyway, those are the lowlights. Every now and then I will read something and have a thought, like I think Macao will be swallowed up by the sea, and I’m really curious about the direction that the Catholic Church is taking, what with Pope Benedict restoring indulgences, and pardoning Holocaust-deniers, so I think lots of interesting things will happen, but these are the main trends. Yes, I am sure there will be more natural disasters, but in ways those will almost be a relief from the squalor of regular daily life.

From the December post, I was predicting big calamities around 2012, and then a grace period. Maybe those calamities will shake us out of the economic meltdown much like World War II ended the Great Depression. If there is a need for new construction and repair, and we can work together, you can have a mini-Golden Age before the corruption starts again. Or maybe Christ will just return, and fix things that way. Even if I have a certain amount of pessimism for the moment, my overall belief is that all will be well. Nonetheless, this moment can be very hard. Next time I will write about getting through.

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2008/12/proposed-timeline-for-apocalypse-3185.html