It hits me at odd moments. Blinking my eyes slowly on a Saturday morning, savoring the recent darkness rendered by the blackout curtains I purchased earlier this month. Glancing out my office's twentieth floor window over the Ford Field toward the horizon just beyond Detroit. Inhaling the spice of a humid August morning waiting for the early bus into the city. Surveying the electic, artfully arranged beauty of my living room. Or just now, washing off my hands after scooping out Simon's litterbox, which I carved out by hand from a large plastic storage bin so he would have more headroom and higher sides to accommodate his aging and slightly arthritic hips. Moments when my mind is idle, thinking of nothing in particular, at rest in the ease of a quiet moment.
Joy.
It happens more and more often, lately, especially in the last month. Adjusting to life post-breakup takes a huge toll, mental, emotional and physical--a shift of identity, a drastic change to a long-envisioned future. (Especially when you move across two states for the guy and undergo two huge career changes in less than a year.) On the whole, exhaustion won out over even grief, bitterness and anger (although I had/have those in abundance). But as I've rested, as I've started to mend, to think, to heal, to convalesce, a sweet, pure joy has begun to flash through me in the moments when I'm thinking of nothing.
My life now holds so many more and brighter prospects than it did a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. I'm living in a bigger place, with more to do, more opportunities, more happening (I love Detroit). I have a living space that's as beautiful and settled-in as I can make it. I love my job, where I can keep busy and solve problems without feeling overwhelmed, where I am deeply appreciated by bosses and coworkers, where I know my own worth. I have fallen in love with public transportation, where I can read for two hours a day instead of grinding my teeth through traffic. I'm reading more than I've read in years. I finally bought a new (used) car. I am free and unfettered, both relationally and psychologically. And I'm making friends. I love that I'm finally starting to have friends.
I'm still tired, most days. But it's the tiredness that feels like healing, not the tiredness that needs healing. I'm still focusing on getting as much rest as I want, and hopefully before too many more months have passed I'll feel rested and alert.
And I take a quick, childlike pleasure in those flashes of joy. It had been a long while since I felt them. I'm glad to have them back.
Saturday, August 27, 2016
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
A is for Asshole
So out of curiosity yesterday I found a site that offers the Big Five Personality Test for free. Also called the OCEAN or CANOE test, the Big Five measures five attributes that seem to be universally applicable to humans: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. For each component, you fall somewhere on a spectrum between the poles of the attribute and its opposite.
In the past I self-diagnosed where I fall for each of the Big Five but had never actually taken the test, so yesterday I figured, what the hell. Mostly my results didn't surprise me; I fall in the middle on the Extraversion scale (drives my therapists nuts when they can't determine whether I'm an introvert or extravert), and my Conscientiousness appears to have increased to being neither conscientious nor disorganized (depending, I guess, on whether or not I give a shit). The big surprise came from my Agreeableness score: Among the other respondents, I landed in the 38th percentile, far, far closer to the harsh, abrasive, callous end of the spectrum than the nice, accommodating, cooperative end that I expected.
The test's impressively tactful diagnosis: "You find it easy to express irritation with others."
A quick life-montage of my interactions with others would show an overwhelming skew to the accommodating. From childhood on, I did what others asked, bent to others' needs, mostly in terror of disapproval or the resigned conviction that I had no choice. Apparently agreeableness isn't quite in my nature, though -- I resent impositions like hell; I detest when people behave contrary to my wishes; I do not like to share; thoughtlessness and stupidity annoy the shit out of me. I am, in short, a grumpy bitch.
I just don't often act like one.
Jeff used to describe me as compliant. It's a key concept: I didn't accommodate others because I liked to; I complied for other reasons, largely having to do with a lack of boundaries. I had to learn assertiveness and self-advocacy. As a result of my early schooling in compliance and my late training in noncompliance, I'm better equipped to express my disagreeableness in healthy ways, while refraining from ripping people to shreds (unless they really, really have it coming).
So I guess it's to my credit that most people don't have any idea how easily irritated I get; I reign that shit in hard because social acceptance is, you know, important.
But my tending toward the disagreeable possibly explains why it feels so, so good to let loose on someone who is begging for a setdown. And perhaps why, however politely I frame requests when I'm annoyed, the person I'm talking to usually gets the point.
Here's to being cranky.
In the past I self-diagnosed where I fall for each of the Big Five but had never actually taken the test, so yesterday I figured, what the hell. Mostly my results didn't surprise me; I fall in the middle on the Extraversion scale (drives my therapists nuts when they can't determine whether I'm an introvert or extravert), and my Conscientiousness appears to have increased to being neither conscientious nor disorganized (depending, I guess, on whether or not I give a shit). The big surprise came from my Agreeableness score: Among the other respondents, I landed in the 38th percentile, far, far closer to the harsh, abrasive, callous end of the spectrum than the nice, accommodating, cooperative end that I expected.
The test's impressively tactful diagnosis: "You find it easy to express irritation with others."
A quick life-montage of my interactions with others would show an overwhelming skew to the accommodating. From childhood on, I did what others asked, bent to others' needs, mostly in terror of disapproval or the resigned conviction that I had no choice. Apparently agreeableness isn't quite in my nature, though -- I resent impositions like hell; I detest when people behave contrary to my wishes; I do not like to share; thoughtlessness and stupidity annoy the shit out of me. I am, in short, a grumpy bitch.
I just don't often act like one.
Jeff used to describe me as compliant. It's a key concept: I didn't accommodate others because I liked to; I complied for other reasons, largely having to do with a lack of boundaries. I had to learn assertiveness and self-advocacy. As a result of my early schooling in compliance and my late training in noncompliance, I'm better equipped to express my disagreeableness in healthy ways, while refraining from ripping people to shreds (unless they really, really have it coming).
So I guess it's to my credit that most people don't have any idea how easily irritated I get; I reign that shit in hard because social acceptance is, you know, important.
But my tending toward the disagreeable possibly explains why it feels so, so good to let loose on someone who is begging for a setdown. And perhaps why, however politely I frame requests when I'm annoyed, the person I'm talking to usually gets the point.
Here's to being cranky.
Friday, August 19, 2016
Liberal White Male Syndrome
"So I met this guy at this atheist social group I started attending. Not my type, but pretty smart, and really seems to appreciate how smart I am." I recentered my Bluetooth collar to make sure Leigh Ann could hear me. "Into neuroscience and evolutionary psychology and stuff. And I was like, 'okay, awesome,' until this weekend.
"I just don't get how smart people can be so fucking stupid sometimes. We're at this picnic for the group, and he starts complaining about political correctness."
Leigh Ann groaned, and I grinned while I continued, "He's liberal as shit, but he's complaining about how liberals are unfairly censoring comedy and policing jokes. His example was this chalkboard sign outside a bar where a server wrote 'We like our beer like we like our violence: Domestic.' Once the Internet got hold of it, the server and the manager were both fired, and this guy thought that was ridiculous and unfair because the joke was 'objectively funny' and shouldn't have caused an outcry."
"So let me just ask something," Leigh Ann said. "Was this guy, by any chance, white?"
"Boom," I said. "Nailed it."
Because of course he was.
There's this pernicious disease rotting away at the heart of a certain sector of liberalism, where otherwise relatively enlightened people hold fast and firm to a really ugly sexism all the more damaging for its subtlety and for the denial in which its carriers live. (Incidentally, it also makes dating really, really, REALLY hard, instead of just really, really hard.)
I call it Liberal White Male Syndrome (LWMS). My last two exes had it. These are the dudes who espouse the usual, good beliefs that racism and sexism are bad, that poverty is terrible, that government should intervene to promote equality, that higher taxes for the wealthy are imperative. They call themselves feminists. They support equal wages and reproductive rights, and oppose overt sexual violence. They don't really think beyond that. Because they're feminists, all right? They've already thought it all through and they stand on the side of equality and women's rights, so there's no possible way that anything they think could be clouded by the systemic sexism that permeates absolutely everyone absolutely everywhere in our society. They have magically transcended all sexism, and so every single one of their opinions is just fine the way it is, no further examination required. To suggest otherwise is profoundly insulting, because they're feminists.
And they are giant, flaming dickholes.
Take this guy from the atheist picnic. I'll call him B. You can tell at a glance that he is sensitive, cripplingly insecure, and deeply resentful. I'm not unsympathetic to this. I listened to him ruminate angrily about his college students' complaints against him, especially how they didn't talk to him about the things they found offensive, but went right to the dean. I didn't need to ask to determine that the complainants were women; I could tell by the tone and by the attack on their passivity. (Never mind that woman are socialized never to be confrontational, and have only recently begun to be encouraged to report situations that make them uncomfortable -- report, not confront.) But sure, okay, nobody likes being complained about to their boss, I would hate it too. Guy's probably in the wrong profession for his temperament, which he seems to be realizing.
But then the diatribe on the damage that liberal censorship is inflicting on the comedy world. The server and manager who wrote the "domestic beer and violence" joke shouldn't have suffered repercussions, because that joke was objectively funny and none of the bar patrons were offended by it. B argued that it's a shame that people can't make jokes about whatever they want anymore; they have to be careful not to be offensive, and that's stupid. After all, George Carlin said, probably shaking his head sadly while he did, that forty years ago the liberals were the ones decrying censorship, but now they're the ones enforcing it, and it's a tragedy, one that Carlin never thought he'd see.
Yeah, well, as Clint Eastwood recently reminded us, forty years ago nothing anyone said was racist. Pretty sure forty years ago wasn't a good plumb line for what is or isn't sexist either.
I asked B to define "objective" humor. He defined it as the unexpected association of two unrelated things. Okay, I can buy that.
But what about objectively funny jokes that are mean? I asked.
Well, those aren't funny. A joke has to come from a good place to be funny.
And a joke making light of domestic violence is coming from a good place?
Well it was a general joke, about a general topic, not directed at someone who had actually experienced it. It wasn't intended to be harmful.
And -- the clincher of B's argument -- the server who wrote the joke on the chalkboard was a woman.
And there you have it, folks -- a perfect indicator of Liberal White Male Syndrome. Textbook case. You have special pleading (something is objectively funny when two unrelated things are brought into association. But suddenly, when the joke is cruel, intent matters and it's only funny if it comes from a "good place," which has nothing to do with the previous definition, which contained no qualitative element). You have privilege-blindness to a gender-specific subject (domestic violence is most frequently wrought against women, and therefore something that a male is unlikely to experience on the receiving end and so, from this position of privileged removal from the brutal reality, can look at the entire topic as something distant and "general" and academic). You have privilege-generated defensiveness toward being called into question (the intent wasn't harmful so the effect shouldn't be; the offender's intent matters more than the victim's reaction or the reasons for it; the victim should merely stop being sensitive). You have the instant dismissiveness of objecting opinions and the refusal to engage in self-scrutiny. You have the reactionary blame-shifting so that the problem is the person who is offended, not the person who committed the offense. And you have that mainstay defense of prejudiced opinions everywhere: The perpetrator of this particular example was a member of the group claiming offense (a woman made the joke, so it cannot be offensive to women -- which betrays a breathtaking ignorance of the internalized, systemic nature of bigotry, as only a LWM can pull off).
Fuck LWMS.
As B made his angry defense of his own sexism, the Avett Brothers' lines from "Ten Thousand Words" ran through my mind:
But their good times come with prices
and I can't believe it when I hear the jokes they make
at anyone's expense except their own--
would they laugh if they knew who paid?
Yeah, dude. Intent doesn't matter as much as you think it does. That joke comes at the expense of battered women, murdered women, brutalized girls. It's not fucking funny.
And I lost all respect for your LWM ass as soon as those arguments came from your mouth. I know exactly who you are now, and in some respects I'd prefer to deal with an overt woman-hating bigot because at least they're upfront about being total assholes. You're in denial so deep you're lying about it without realizing it. And sure, it's possible that you might learn, over time, to empathize, to think, to accept responsibility for your part in a sexist system from which you benefit daily. But with defense reactions that strong, with that much anger and resentment, Imma kinda doubt it.
Also, I've dated your type before, and it never goes well. Misogyny will out, and dealing with both the misogyny and the vehement denial of it is doubly taxing.
"I just don't get how smart people can be so fucking stupid sometimes. We're at this picnic for the group, and he starts complaining about political correctness."
Leigh Ann groaned, and I grinned while I continued, "He's liberal as shit, but he's complaining about how liberals are unfairly censoring comedy and policing jokes. His example was this chalkboard sign outside a bar where a server wrote 'We like our beer like we like our violence: Domestic.' Once the Internet got hold of it, the server and the manager were both fired, and this guy thought that was ridiculous and unfair because the joke was 'objectively funny' and shouldn't have caused an outcry."
"So let me just ask something," Leigh Ann said. "Was this guy, by any chance, white?"
"Boom," I said. "Nailed it."
Because of course he was.
There's this pernicious disease rotting away at the heart of a certain sector of liberalism, where otherwise relatively enlightened people hold fast and firm to a really ugly sexism all the more damaging for its subtlety and for the denial in which its carriers live. (Incidentally, it also makes dating really, really, REALLY hard, instead of just really, really hard.)
I call it Liberal White Male Syndrome (LWMS). My last two exes had it. These are the dudes who espouse the usual, good beliefs that racism and sexism are bad, that poverty is terrible, that government should intervene to promote equality, that higher taxes for the wealthy are imperative. They call themselves feminists. They support equal wages and reproductive rights, and oppose overt sexual violence. They don't really think beyond that. Because they're feminists, all right? They've already thought it all through and they stand on the side of equality and women's rights, so there's no possible way that anything they think could be clouded by the systemic sexism that permeates absolutely everyone absolutely everywhere in our society. They have magically transcended all sexism, and so every single one of their opinions is just fine the way it is, no further examination required. To suggest otherwise is profoundly insulting, because they're feminists.
And they are giant, flaming dickholes.
Take this guy from the atheist picnic. I'll call him B. You can tell at a glance that he is sensitive, cripplingly insecure, and deeply resentful. I'm not unsympathetic to this. I listened to him ruminate angrily about his college students' complaints against him, especially how they didn't talk to him about the things they found offensive, but went right to the dean. I didn't need to ask to determine that the complainants were women; I could tell by the tone and by the attack on their passivity. (Never mind that woman are socialized never to be confrontational, and have only recently begun to be encouraged to report situations that make them uncomfortable -- report, not confront.) But sure, okay, nobody likes being complained about to their boss, I would hate it too. Guy's probably in the wrong profession for his temperament, which he seems to be realizing.
But then the diatribe on the damage that liberal censorship is inflicting on the comedy world. The server and manager who wrote the "domestic beer and violence" joke shouldn't have suffered repercussions, because that joke was objectively funny and none of the bar patrons were offended by it. B argued that it's a shame that people can't make jokes about whatever they want anymore; they have to be careful not to be offensive, and that's stupid. After all, George Carlin said, probably shaking his head sadly while he did, that forty years ago the liberals were the ones decrying censorship, but now they're the ones enforcing it, and it's a tragedy, one that Carlin never thought he'd see.
Yeah, well, as Clint Eastwood recently reminded us, forty years ago nothing anyone said was racist. Pretty sure forty years ago wasn't a good plumb line for what is or isn't sexist either.
I asked B to define "objective" humor. He defined it as the unexpected association of two unrelated things. Okay, I can buy that.
But what about objectively funny jokes that are mean? I asked.
Well, those aren't funny. A joke has to come from a good place to be funny.
And a joke making light of domestic violence is coming from a good place?
Well it was a general joke, about a general topic, not directed at someone who had actually experienced it. It wasn't intended to be harmful.
And -- the clincher of B's argument -- the server who wrote the joke on the chalkboard was a woman.
And there you have it, folks -- a perfect indicator of Liberal White Male Syndrome. Textbook case. You have special pleading (something is objectively funny when two unrelated things are brought into association. But suddenly, when the joke is cruel, intent matters and it's only funny if it comes from a "good place," which has nothing to do with the previous definition, which contained no qualitative element). You have privilege-blindness to a gender-specific subject (domestic violence is most frequently wrought against women, and therefore something that a male is unlikely to experience on the receiving end and so, from this position of privileged removal from the brutal reality, can look at the entire topic as something distant and "general" and academic). You have privilege-generated defensiveness toward being called into question (the intent wasn't harmful so the effect shouldn't be; the offender's intent matters more than the victim's reaction or the reasons for it; the victim should merely stop being sensitive). You have the instant dismissiveness of objecting opinions and the refusal to engage in self-scrutiny. You have the reactionary blame-shifting so that the problem is the person who is offended, not the person who committed the offense. And you have that mainstay defense of prejudiced opinions everywhere: The perpetrator of this particular example was a member of the group claiming offense (a woman made the joke, so it cannot be offensive to women -- which betrays a breathtaking ignorance of the internalized, systemic nature of bigotry, as only a LWM can pull off).
Fuck LWMS.
As B made his angry defense of his own sexism, the Avett Brothers' lines from "Ten Thousand Words" ran through my mind:
But their good times come with prices
and I can't believe it when I hear the jokes they make
at anyone's expense except their own--
would they laugh if they knew who paid?
Yeah, dude. Intent doesn't matter as much as you think it does. That joke comes at the expense of battered women, murdered women, brutalized girls. It's not fucking funny.
And I lost all respect for your LWM ass as soon as those arguments came from your mouth. I know exactly who you are now, and in some respects I'd prefer to deal with an overt woman-hating bigot because at least they're upfront about being total assholes. You're in denial so deep you're lying about it without realizing it. And sure, it's possible that you might learn, over time, to empathize, to think, to accept responsibility for your part in a sexist system from which you benefit daily. But with defense reactions that strong, with that much anger and resentment, Imma kinda doubt it.
Also, I've dated your type before, and it never goes well. Misogyny will out, and dealing with both the misogyny and the vehement denial of it is doubly taxing.
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Jonah Day
Well, this wasn't going to be a good day from the beginning.
Last night, exhausted, I turned in at nine-thirty anticipating a much-needed eight hours' sleep, only to toss and turn for two hours before falling into a state of fitfulness that barely counts as rest. Woke up shaky and weepy with tiredness, had to take a different route to work due to a traffic accident, took several wrong turns, ran over a curb because Detroit has a few stupid randomly placed parking lanes that are indistinguishable from turning lanes except for the curb itself rearing up just before the intersection which blends seamlessly into its environment especially with the morning sun screaming into your eyes and now I have a bulge in one of my tire sidewalls which I will need to fix tonight costing up to $250 and I just bought the car last week, and then a lady behind me lay on the horn for about ten years when I was driving too slowly trying to figure out how to get to the correct turn and worrying about the damage to my car (I was a giant dick about it and stuck my hand out the window to flutter my fingers at her in a really passive-aggressively nasty-polite wave because fuck her; the rage that contorted her features before she had to take her turn while I kept driving straight gave me an ugly satisfaction that I've felt bad about all morning), I'm so tired that I'm dropping everything that I touch and running into things and awkwardly slow on my feet in conversations and nothing that I say or do is coming out right, and I just want a hug from someone who loves me but I don't have one of those and I've been struggling with loneliness and old hurts the last few days and I just want to collapse into tears and hide from the world until this miserable day is over.
And I have to clean the house tonight because my childhood best friend is coming to visit tomorrow and all I want to do when I get home is stare at the TV for ten minutes and then go to bed. And that's without taking into account the necessary visit to the tire shop.
I would say "someone shoot me," but this is Detroit, and I try to be careful what I wish for.
Last night, exhausted, I turned in at nine-thirty anticipating a much-needed eight hours' sleep, only to toss and turn for two hours before falling into a state of fitfulness that barely counts as rest. Woke up shaky and weepy with tiredness, had to take a different route to work due to a traffic accident, took several wrong turns, ran over a curb because Detroit has a few stupid randomly placed parking lanes that are indistinguishable from turning lanes except for the curb itself rearing up just before the intersection which blends seamlessly into its environment especially with the morning sun screaming into your eyes and now I have a bulge in one of my tire sidewalls which I will need to fix tonight costing up to $250 and I just bought the car last week, and then a lady behind me lay on the horn for about ten years when I was driving too slowly trying to figure out how to get to the correct turn and worrying about the damage to my car (I was a giant dick about it and stuck my hand out the window to flutter my fingers at her in a really passive-aggressively nasty-polite wave because fuck her; the rage that contorted her features before she had to take her turn while I kept driving straight gave me an ugly satisfaction that I've felt bad about all morning), I'm so tired that I'm dropping everything that I touch and running into things and awkwardly slow on my feet in conversations and nothing that I say or do is coming out right, and I just want a hug from someone who loves me but I don't have one of those and I've been struggling with loneliness and old hurts the last few days and I just want to collapse into tears and hide from the world until this miserable day is over.
And I have to clean the house tonight because my childhood best friend is coming to visit tomorrow and all I want to do when I get home is stare at the TV for ten minutes and then go to bed. And that's without taking into account the necessary visit to the tire shop.
I would say "someone shoot me," but this is Detroit, and I try to be careful what I wish for.
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Sarah, Then and Now
It's been about seven years since I blogged regularly, I think. New posts aren't going to have a lot of context unless I fill in some of the gap between then and now.
Some things have changed, some of them drastically; some things have remained much the same.
I have gray hairs now, glistening at my temples, worked in shining threads throughout the many-shaded, gold-edged brown of my hair. I let them be; I like them. When I attended the First Baptist Church of North East as a teenager, I always admired the hair of a woman who sat with her husband several pews ahead of us -- she never dyed it, and the gray and silver mixed beautifully with the range of natural brown. I always hoped I would go gray that way, and I'm still waiting to see if I will.
I give less of a shit what strangers and bare acquaintances think of me. That might not appear to diverge much from my younger self on the surface, but it feels more secure and less defiant than it used to; Meg and I agree that something magical happens after turning thirty, where you feel freer to shed all your fucks and do what you want. So I dress as I please (having developed, since my last serious blogging days, a fairly fantastic sense of style all my own); I wear my hair in a ponytail and wash it once a week because I couldn't care less about fussing with it (and it's curlier now); I speak my mind frankly, with varying degrees of courtesy depending on the occasion; I stay home when I want to stay home; I go out when I want to go out; I don't apologize for feeling "peopled out" and wanting only the company of my beloved Simon (who is now fourteen and just as frisky and affectionate and grumpy as he ever was).
Where then I read entirely fiction and poetry, now I read almost entirely nonfiction, having developed a ravening hunger for the facts, the knowledge, the information denied me from my earliest childhood. Where I then listened to indie folk and indie rock, I now mostly listen to instrumental jazz (heavy on bebop) -- an exploration completely my own. In 2008 I moved from Michigan back to Pennsylvania; in 2015 I moved from Pennsylvania back to Michigan (full circle and a half).
I have better boundaries now, a stronger sense of self. Often I have won them at great cost.
Back then I struggled under the weight of depression; I have since learned to manage it. I walked through the valley of the shadow of death to get there, and feared, and faced, and relived much evil, and I learned to comfort me. Now the occasional rough patch is milder, and I have learned to listen to what my condition is trying to tell me when the ground swells rise more than they ought. The listening has led me out of some deep darknesses into light of my own making, and some of that very recently.
My life is quieter now, less ambitious. I feel no burden to change the world, although I would like to make a meaningful contribution, to leave the world a little better than I found it--I still haven't determined how. In the meantime I take pleasure in my work and leisure; I have a job that I like--I am still a legal secretary (after a brief and loathed recent stint teaching high school), much better paid now, and loving work at a large city firm which offers a brisker pace and greater challenges--and I satisfy my brain in other ways while I work out how to satisfy my soul...
...a word that I now use in metaphor. Once I counted myself a Christian; now I don't. My journey out of faith was long and strange and wonderful, and I have never encountered such fullness, such miraculous satisfaction, such shattering, transformative joy, as I have on the other side of belief. My deconversion is a story of love and liberation that I am still learning to live in.
I am still profoundly lonely. In the last seven years I have entered into two serious relationships; neither worked out. I ended the last one two months ago. It was necessary; it was wonderful, if sad, to break free; I have become again the self I recognize, happy, whole, complete and sure in myself, and, hopefully, a little surer, a little wiser, a little more shrewd for the latest experience. I have deeply loved only once, a long time ago, before either of the last two relationships. I never had the chance to tell him, and evidently not sharing my regard, he married someone else. I have never met his equal since, and I'm not sure how likely it is that I will. I hold out some hope, while resolving, without condition, to be fulfilled with my own company until such time, if ever, as I do.
So there you have it--the comparison in a nutshell. I remain (as Lizzie Bennett might say) much the same in essentials, although some essential things have changed, and for the better. Every year I find life a little richer; every failure, setback, disappointment, shows me my way a little more clearly.
I am, ever, Sarah.
Some things have changed, some of them drastically; some things have remained much the same.
I have gray hairs now, glistening at my temples, worked in shining threads throughout the many-shaded, gold-edged brown of my hair. I let them be; I like them. When I attended the First Baptist Church of North East as a teenager, I always admired the hair of a woman who sat with her husband several pews ahead of us -- she never dyed it, and the gray and silver mixed beautifully with the range of natural brown. I always hoped I would go gray that way, and I'm still waiting to see if I will.
I give less of a shit what strangers and bare acquaintances think of me. That might not appear to diverge much from my younger self on the surface, but it feels more secure and less defiant than it used to; Meg and I agree that something magical happens after turning thirty, where you feel freer to shed all your fucks and do what you want. So I dress as I please (having developed, since my last serious blogging days, a fairly fantastic sense of style all my own); I wear my hair in a ponytail and wash it once a week because I couldn't care less about fussing with it (and it's curlier now); I speak my mind frankly, with varying degrees of courtesy depending on the occasion; I stay home when I want to stay home; I go out when I want to go out; I don't apologize for feeling "peopled out" and wanting only the company of my beloved Simon (who is now fourteen and just as frisky and affectionate and grumpy as he ever was).
Where then I read entirely fiction and poetry, now I read almost entirely nonfiction, having developed a ravening hunger for the facts, the knowledge, the information denied me from my earliest childhood. Where I then listened to indie folk and indie rock, I now mostly listen to instrumental jazz (heavy on bebop) -- an exploration completely my own. In 2008 I moved from Michigan back to Pennsylvania; in 2015 I moved from Pennsylvania back to Michigan (full circle and a half).
I have better boundaries now, a stronger sense of self. Often I have won them at great cost.
Back then I struggled under the weight of depression; I have since learned to manage it. I walked through the valley of the shadow of death to get there, and feared, and faced, and relived much evil, and I learned to comfort me. Now the occasional rough patch is milder, and I have learned to listen to what my condition is trying to tell me when the ground swells rise more than they ought. The listening has led me out of some deep darknesses into light of my own making, and some of that very recently.
My life is quieter now, less ambitious. I feel no burden to change the world, although I would like to make a meaningful contribution, to leave the world a little better than I found it--I still haven't determined how. In the meantime I take pleasure in my work and leisure; I have a job that I like--I am still a legal secretary (after a brief and loathed recent stint teaching high school), much better paid now, and loving work at a large city firm which offers a brisker pace and greater challenges--and I satisfy my brain in other ways while I work out how to satisfy my soul...
...a word that I now use in metaphor. Once I counted myself a Christian; now I don't. My journey out of faith was long and strange and wonderful, and I have never encountered such fullness, such miraculous satisfaction, such shattering, transformative joy, as I have on the other side of belief. My deconversion is a story of love and liberation that I am still learning to live in.
I am still profoundly lonely. In the last seven years I have entered into two serious relationships; neither worked out. I ended the last one two months ago. It was necessary; it was wonderful, if sad, to break free; I have become again the self I recognize, happy, whole, complete and sure in myself, and, hopefully, a little surer, a little wiser, a little more shrewd for the latest experience. I have deeply loved only once, a long time ago, before either of the last two relationships. I never had the chance to tell him, and evidently not sharing my regard, he married someone else. I have never met his equal since, and I'm not sure how likely it is that I will. I hold out some hope, while resolving, without condition, to be fulfilled with my own company until such time, if ever, as I do.
So there you have it--the comparison in a nutshell. I remain (as Lizzie Bennett might say) much the same in essentials, although some essential things have changed, and for the better. Every year I find life a little richer; every failure, setback, disappointment, shows me my way a little more clearly.
I am, ever, Sarah.
Friday, July 01, 2016
Tenuous
Found myself on the verge of a panic attack this morning.
It was a weird feeling, only half familiar. The nausea. The almost atomic-level trembling, invisible to the naked eye but beginning to quiver through the particles of my body in subtle, seismic portent. The fluttering almost-hitch in my breath. The internal barometric pressure building to some black-clouded break. The ache tightening my tear ducts. The flash of adrenaline through my blood. The pinned wide eyes sweeping lightning glances around the room, the desperate urge to flight. I experienced it half-distantly, thinking, oh. I remember this.
The weirdest part was the emptiness behind it - not the emptiness of loss, but rather the emptiness of any real cause. I cast around in my mind for what might be causing stress, anxiety and panic, but couldn't locate anything.
Which, I think, is what triggered the panic.
My mind keeps racing, trying to latch onto one of the many anxieties that have consumed it for the last two years. It grabs at a shadow that looks like job worry, to fall back confused that job worry is gone. It scurries to relationship worry, but that has vanished too. There's some sadness and loneliness and exhaustion there instead, but those aren't sources of anxiety. In mounting consternation my mind leaps to money troubles, but those are well in hand, bills paid, bills scheduled, budget accounted for. Kerflummoxed, bewildered, it starts whirling in frantic circles, spinning up a dervish of emotional turmoil.
I keep thinking that there's something I'm forgetting to worry about.
But there's...nothing. And I have lived in stress and chaos for so long that I can't relax my CONSTANT VIGILANCE. (Pseudo-Mad-Eye-shout-out.) Non drama feels strange, and strangely threatening. Ominous.
We've been here before. Convalescence from trauma can be traumatic in itself. (Does the butterfly ever have a panic attack because it's not a caterpillar anymore?) It's taxing, changing your brain wiring to be adapted to happiness instead of misery. Happiness is unfamiliar, feels fragile, alien, suspicious.
It'll take some time to relax my rigid muscles, calm my racing brain. My working memory will be occupied for awhile, relearning what it means to operate from happiness as a baseline normalcy. I'll forget things. I'll feel scared and nervous, unaccustomed to a lack of reasons to worry.
But this is better. I just have to batten down the hatches when the panic brews, curl up with myself, and talk me gently down. It's okay, it's okay, you're okay.
And I will be.
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
I hate baseball.
Dissolving a long term relationship and starting over in your mid-thirties does weird shit to your psyche.
Today's bus commute home mostly involved sitting still in a glinting vehicular sea of day-game Tigers traffic - the American pastime apparently being to drive exhausted office workers longing for the quiet of home to the brink of suicide for the sake of something to do while they wait for traffic to move forward another half-inch. Staring absently out the window - an occupation in which I decidedly revel as part of my public transportation commuter lifestyle - I caught my reflection in the window of a neighboring SUV. The convex pane of glass, presumably just to be cruel, gave my mouth the appearance of jowls.
And I panicked. Yanking out my phone I stared at my mouth in the reflection and started poking at my face thinking,
Shit I need to stop frowning so much.
Oh my god I'm turning into Jon Voight.
The person who someday falls in love with me will never know me looking young. No one will get to love me while I'm still pretty. Shit shit shit.
About half a minute later I was kindly telling myself that millions of women look gorgeous into their 90s and I have many years before I turn into Jon Voight.
But still. I'm smiling a lot just to ease my face muscles, knowing full well it won't do a goddamn thing.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Incidence
Saturday night as I waited to pull out of the condo complex where my friends K. & E. live, a cop car drove past me.
Shit.
I contemplated returning to my parking spot and waiting awhile, but figured that would look even more suspicious, and in a sleepy affluent small town where not much happens the cop might wait for me, so I carefully turned left, watching my rear view mirror. The marked SUV spun a U-turn.
Shit shit shit.
When the lights flashed I was already pulling over. I gathered all the necessary documents, rolled down the window, and waited.
A surprisingly pleasant voice said, "Hey."
I craned my neck around and smiled at her and said "Hey..."
She didn't waste time on condescension. "Where's your headlight?"
With cops I don't normally cry or waffle or make excuses. "Gone."
She took my license, registration and proof of insurance. As she glanced them over, I offered, "It's an expensive repair, and I'm going to be replacing the car soon."
"Oh? How soon?"
"Like two weeks?"
She nodded. The scant midnight traffic pulling past stared, offense on their faces, looking to see what kind of monster gets pulled over in their town.
"Where are you heading?" she asked. I named the town. "You heading there for the night?"
"Oh yeah, yeah, I live there, I'm just here visiting friends."
"So the headlight is completely gone?" Her tone was matter of fact but still pleasant, with a thread of humor tucked away in the back like a hidden seam, which made it easier to answer frankly.
"Oh yeah, the whole assembly, just gone. It's like a $200 repair and since I'm getting a new car soon, I haven't replaced it."
"How's your driving record?"
In my nervousness I blanked on a humble way to say it. "Perfect."
She nodded again. "I'll be right back."
While I waited I laughed sourly to myself. The last time I visited K. & E. I thought my chances of getting pulled over were significantly higher here, where probably the only crime was kids TP-ing the occasional house on Halloween. I've driven past so many cops all over the county since the headlight assembly fell out (due to a really stupid careless maneuver on my part, no further comment) and none of them had ever even blinked. Oh well...bound to catch up with me sometime. Fucking money.
I heard her coming back.
"Here's your paperwork," she said. "I completely sympathize. Just be careful."
"Thank you so much," I said fervently.
It's been a rough few weeks, and as I drove carefully home over the dark highways that hold the far flung neighborhoods of Detroit together like webbing, my heart felt a little warmer. A little humankindness from an unexpected source.
Good people are everywhere.
Sunday, May 01, 2016
shaken
I am enjoying my new job, my new life; enjoying the time I now have to myself. I find my position as a legal secretary far more satisfying than I could have predicted. I am saturated with the relief of no longer being a teacher. All is going well when suddenly I get a call from my old job: There is a teacher shortage, and I have to come back. I want to say no, but they inform me that my official quit date has not arrived, and I have no access to the proof I need to show them otherwise.
Filled with impotent anger, I take precious time off work from my new job, terrified that somehow I'll lose it and have to teach forever; filled with dread, I walk back down the halls that still suffocate me with the haunting smell of decriptude and despair that leaks from the mortar of a building fallen from glory to ruin. I try to slip into my classroom unnoticed; I fail. Students drift into the room to confront me, rage at me, mock me. Some are kind. Most are not. I am tired. In the midst of their questions, beratings, insolence, I am inexorably aware of the clock ticking toward the first bell. In a few minutes I will have to teach them, and I have no lesson plans. My nerves, my bones remember this potent cocktail of stress, anxiety, and indifference.
The bell rings and I attempt to call the room to order. The students laugh at my raised hand, my raised voice counting backward from five. They point while they laugh, and I look down and realize that I am wearing a long summer gown, low-cut, beautiful but utterly unsuited for teaching. The boys are all leering, their eyes bright. Now I must try to rise to authority over their view of me as a sex object. The vice principal walks past my room, a malicious half-smile on his face. I flip him off. Everything disintegrates in a kaleidoscope of chaos. I wake up sweating.
I still have nightmares about teaching.
Filled with impotent anger, I take precious time off work from my new job, terrified that somehow I'll lose it and have to teach forever; filled with dread, I walk back down the halls that still suffocate me with the haunting smell of decriptude and despair that leaks from the mortar of a building fallen from glory to ruin. I try to slip into my classroom unnoticed; I fail. Students drift into the room to confront me, rage at me, mock me. Some are kind. Most are not. I am tired. In the midst of their questions, beratings, insolence, I am inexorably aware of the clock ticking toward the first bell. In a few minutes I will have to teach them, and I have no lesson plans. My nerves, my bones remember this potent cocktail of stress, anxiety, and indifference.
The bell rings and I attempt to call the room to order. The students laugh at my raised hand, my raised voice counting backward from five. They point while they laugh, and I look down and realize that I am wearing a long summer gown, low-cut, beautiful but utterly unsuited for teaching. The boys are all leering, their eyes bright. Now I must try to rise to authority over their view of me as a sex object. The vice principal walks past my room, a malicious half-smile on his face. I flip him off. Everything disintegrates in a kaleidoscope of chaos. I wake up sweating.
I still have nightmares about teaching.
Monday, December 28, 2015
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Seeking out the center
Teaching in the inner city is hard.
It's funny though - the things I want to think about the most don't have to do with teaching. Time and again I find my mind wandering, not to my lesson plans or upcoming project-based unit or more efficient grading systems, but to my financial stability and plans, to spending time with my boyfriend, to working in more quality time with Simon (who is currently drowsing in the kitchen chair next to mine, overjoyed to have me back after a 5-day vacation). I find myself wistfully thinking of the hobbies I wish I had more time for, like making my own red wine vinegar, or finally finishing that goddamn afghan for my sister, or cleaning my room, which I haven't gotten around to doing since I moved in in July.
There's just never been a break. Moving here was a haphazard, frenetic, multi-stage affair that at one point involved two different storage units in two different states. Once the move was completed, I've had to bounce from activity to activity like some nomad electron whizzing uncoupled around the cosmos -- apartment hunt, job hunt, summer training, job training, new career, relationship adjustment, trying to make new friends -- and with the terrible energy drain that is a) teaching and b) teaching in the inner city, I have felt...emptied. Diminished.
And really, really tired.
I miss the things that used to make me feel like me. Waking up on a Saturday and drinking coffee and journaling. Cooking on a weekend afternoon. Hanging out with Simon. Reading dogeared old favorite books. Spending quiet time just thinking. Exercising.
A nice little vacation down to Disney World gave me some physical and mental space to do some thinking; a violent illness upon my return forced me to rest. I'd like to return to work in the morning with a sense of self-groundedness. That I am my own center, and everything else flows from that.
It feels like I've forgotten how to do that, sometimes. Maybe it's one of the challenges of being in an intimate relationship -- the desire to be separate and whole, and the desire to be together and whole. I've never been particularly skilled at that balance -- my experience of close relationships hasn't lent itself that way.
But I can learn. If I'm going to be able to keep a sense of self, I need to learn. And there's no time to start like the present.
It's funny though - the things I want to think about the most don't have to do with teaching. Time and again I find my mind wandering, not to my lesson plans or upcoming project-based unit or more efficient grading systems, but to my financial stability and plans, to spending time with my boyfriend, to working in more quality time with Simon (who is currently drowsing in the kitchen chair next to mine, overjoyed to have me back after a 5-day vacation). I find myself wistfully thinking of the hobbies I wish I had more time for, like making my own red wine vinegar, or finally finishing that goddamn afghan for my sister, or cleaning my room, which I haven't gotten around to doing since I moved in in July.
There's just never been a break. Moving here was a haphazard, frenetic, multi-stage affair that at one point involved two different storage units in two different states. Once the move was completed, I've had to bounce from activity to activity like some nomad electron whizzing uncoupled around the cosmos -- apartment hunt, job hunt, summer training, job training, new career, relationship adjustment, trying to make new friends -- and with the terrible energy drain that is a) teaching and b) teaching in the inner city, I have felt...emptied. Diminished.
And really, really tired.
I miss the things that used to make me feel like me. Waking up on a Saturday and drinking coffee and journaling. Cooking on a weekend afternoon. Hanging out with Simon. Reading dogeared old favorite books. Spending quiet time just thinking. Exercising.
A nice little vacation down to Disney World gave me some physical and mental space to do some thinking; a violent illness upon my return forced me to rest. I'd like to return to work in the morning with a sense of self-groundedness. That I am my own center, and everything else flows from that.
It feels like I've forgotten how to do that, sometimes. Maybe it's one of the challenges of being in an intimate relationship -- the desire to be separate and whole, and the desire to be together and whole. I've never been particularly skilled at that balance -- my experience of close relationships hasn't lent itself that way.
But I can learn. If I'm going to be able to keep a sense of self, I need to learn. And there's no time to start like the present.
Monday, August 24, 2015
observation of the day: haircut as the secret joy of living
What is it about getting a haircut that renews your entire view of everything?
The other weekend I went to my favorite hairdresser in Erie - I happened to be in town and she happened to have a last minute opening. As always, she gave me the best haircut I've ever had, knowing as no hairdresser has ever known before what to do with my excessively abundant, incredibly fine (if my hair were pasta, it would be three pounds of angel hair), slightly wavy tresses. I left feeling light and sexy as the air around a supermodel, but it took over a week for the New Haircut Honeymoon to set in because a.) she blow-dried it straight since it had been manhandled too much to wave, and b.) I haven't washed my hair more than once a week since the romance went out of the last haircut, so I didn't appreciate the differences until I gave my hair the grudging bare minimum of attention (I relate to my hair in much the same way as a retired couple relates to each other) and ran it under a faucet a week after the cut.
And oh. my. god.
It's fucking beautiful. I like it so much I've been wearing it down. I like it so much I went to the store on vacation in another state to buy headbands so I can wear it down while keeping it out of my goddamn face which is why I've always hated wearing it down. I like it so much I've been, if not washing, at least wetting it every day in the shower to reapply product afterward to compensate for the end of the day when I give up on the headband and put my hair in a ponytail. I like it so much I've started letting it air dry so it can wave naturally...and with NO FUSS.
I like it so much.
It's a new lease on life. I went out today and savored the joy of buying new shampoo and conditioner too (the last bottles lasted over a year, and they're too expensive for my unemployed budget right now, so I selected something different off the cheapo shelves of Wal-Mart - the Wal-Mart near my apartment looks even more like a picked-over flea market than even most Wal-Marts do, why), and decided I might as well wash my hair today to see how they work. (So far: satisfactorily.)
Yep. Haircut. Renewed view of all of everything. One of life's strange mysteries.
"So how do you observe the sacred and bring joy into your life?" (asks the imaginary, and also judgmental and rudely intrusive inquisitor.)
"Well, judgmental and rudely intrusive inquisitor, I solemnly observe that most holy of human duties by paying someone to apply scissors to the dead keratin strands produced by my scalp."
Total recipe for spiritual joy.
Thoreau wept.
Friday, May 22, 2015
the year of the increase of reading
(Incidentally, until I put up the posts I wrote on my laptop while I was on vacation, this is my 1001st post on Coffee Spoons! It's not a great average over ten years, haha, but milestones are milestones.)
The other night I finished Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane (which I had started the night before). I almost hate writing about literature anymore because I feel obligated to have some kind of deeply insightful academic criticism, and I'm so far out of the habit of thinking like a critic that any attempts would just be silly. But it was a lovely book. The only other Gaiman work that I've read is American Gods, which, like The Ocean at the End of the Lane, still haunts me in really beautiful ways. Gaiman weaves some kind of imaginative magic that draws you in and holds you. It's beautiful. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a short novel, and it's just about perfect. I just wish there were more of it.
It got me thinking. I used to be a risk-taking, curious reader. As a kid I would grab up any book I could get my hands on and dive right in it, happily, hungrily spending most of my time in other people's worlds. I was a weird, lonely, unhappy, imaginative, passionate child. Books were my friends. They weren't just my escape; they were my teachers, my mentors; the protagonists and I conquered the conflicts together; I came away from a story both longing to go back and better equipped for the life I returned to. I couldn't learn enough.
That adventurousness sort of evaporated in college. Majoring in English kind of killed my love of free reading for awhile; reading three novels a week will do that. But it was more than that; the hesitancy to embark on a new bookish journey has continued to the present, and has only seemed to have grown stronger in the last three years. If anyone were to ask what I'm reading it's always a book I've already read a dozen times. Something familiar and comfortable. Something safe.
I used to be braver. More curious. I think I'm shy about being moved. Since coming back to Erie almost seven years ago (seven years!), I've had to deal with some tough, all-too-real things. One of my experiences hurt and drained me so badly that I lost the ability to feel any sense of connection with anyone, myself included, for a year. Recovering from that left me...missing something. I don't stare at the stars much anymore, or notice the little daily flashes of beauty all around me. I don't waste random minutes throughout the day playing with Simon and losing myself in his adorableness. I don't spend countless hours -- or any hours -- spinning my own fiction in my head, delighted in the power of imagining. I don't write much, don't give myself over to the creative process. I don't listen to new music. I don't read new books.
No wonder I feel so stagnated. I miss the vitality I used to live in. I think I've become afraid of opening myself up, or used to closing myself in. When it comes to connecting, I still feel tired. Reaching through the pages of a book and touching a character will cost me something -- pain, sympathy, loss of self.
But I want that courage, that curiosity back. That willingness to slip into another self, see from another person's perspective, feel another person's joy and heartache, live another person's experience. I want to feel alive again.
So I'm going to read more. Taking a cue from Meg, I want to always be reading something new. Not something necessarily profound or great. Just stories. Fiction. There's lots of it out there. And lots of it on my bookshelves in my own home. Time to stop using my books to line the cases. Time to open them up and let them take me outside myself.
The other night I finished Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane (which I had started the night before). I almost hate writing about literature anymore because I feel obligated to have some kind of deeply insightful academic criticism, and I'm so far out of the habit of thinking like a critic that any attempts would just be silly. But it was a lovely book. The only other Gaiman work that I've read is American Gods, which, like The Ocean at the End of the Lane, still haunts me in really beautiful ways. Gaiman weaves some kind of imaginative magic that draws you in and holds you. It's beautiful. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a short novel, and it's just about perfect. I just wish there were more of it.
It got me thinking. I used to be a risk-taking, curious reader. As a kid I would grab up any book I could get my hands on and dive right in it, happily, hungrily spending most of my time in other people's worlds. I was a weird, lonely, unhappy, imaginative, passionate child. Books were my friends. They weren't just my escape; they were my teachers, my mentors; the protagonists and I conquered the conflicts together; I came away from a story both longing to go back and better equipped for the life I returned to. I couldn't learn enough.
That adventurousness sort of evaporated in college. Majoring in English kind of killed my love of free reading for awhile; reading three novels a week will do that. But it was more than that; the hesitancy to embark on a new bookish journey has continued to the present, and has only seemed to have grown stronger in the last three years. If anyone were to ask what I'm reading it's always a book I've already read a dozen times. Something familiar and comfortable. Something safe.
I used to be braver. More curious. I think I'm shy about being moved. Since coming back to Erie almost seven years ago (seven years!), I've had to deal with some tough, all-too-real things. One of my experiences hurt and drained me so badly that I lost the ability to feel any sense of connection with anyone, myself included, for a year. Recovering from that left me...missing something. I don't stare at the stars much anymore, or notice the little daily flashes of beauty all around me. I don't waste random minutes throughout the day playing with Simon and losing myself in his adorableness. I don't spend countless hours -- or any hours -- spinning my own fiction in my head, delighted in the power of imagining. I don't write much, don't give myself over to the creative process. I don't listen to new music. I don't read new books.
No wonder I feel so stagnated. I miss the vitality I used to live in. I think I've become afraid of opening myself up, or used to closing myself in. When it comes to connecting, I still feel tired. Reaching through the pages of a book and touching a character will cost me something -- pain, sympathy, loss of self.
But I want that courage, that curiosity back. That willingness to slip into another self, see from another person's perspective, feel another person's joy and heartache, live another person's experience. I want to feel alive again.
So I'm going to read more. Taking a cue from Meg, I want to always be reading something new. Not something necessarily profound or great. Just stories. Fiction. There's lots of it out there. And lots of it on my bookshelves in my own home. Time to stop using my books to line the cases. Time to open them up and let them take me outside myself.
Monday, May 18, 2015
what i think your personal email domain says about you (i am a horrible person) (for meg)
Gmail: You're savvy, probably a bit bookish/nerdy/artsy/geeky, and there's a strong chance that we can be friends.
Hotmail: You are an aging partier who thinks Coors Lime is classy and you wear fashions three decades too young for you, thinking that the frozen faces of the people you pass in the street are complimentary.
Yahoo: You try but you should know better. We couldn't speak even if I wanted to because all of my emails in your inbox are drowned out by spam. That's fine because your discussions of the news are usually focused on celebrity gossip thanks to Yahoo's homepage.
AOL: You are retired and call your children and grandchildren when your computer isn't working because you forgot to turn it on. I'd send you an email but your server will take a month to download it. Every time I visit and you check your email on your huge desktop I'll be looking around for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan on TV because everyone stopped using AOL twenty years ago and dated rom-coms are the only realistic source for the nostalgia besides your living room.
Outlook: You don't know your own email address and couldn't find your password if you tried. You have better things to do like catch up on all those new reality shows.
(The Oatmeal has his own awesome version here.)
Hotmail: You are an aging partier who thinks Coors Lime is classy and you wear fashions three decades too young for you, thinking that the frozen faces of the people you pass in the street are complimentary.
Yahoo: You try but you should know better. We couldn't speak even if I wanted to because all of my emails in your inbox are drowned out by spam. That's fine because your discussions of the news are usually focused on celebrity gossip thanks to Yahoo's homepage.
AOL: You are retired and call your children and grandchildren when your computer isn't working because you forgot to turn it on. I'd send you an email but your server will take a month to download it. Every time I visit and you check your email on your huge desktop I'll be looking around for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan on TV because everyone stopped using AOL twenty years ago and dated rom-coms are the only realistic source for the nostalgia besides your living room.
Outlook: You don't know your own email address and couldn't find your password if you tried. You have better things to do like catch up on all those new reality shows.
(The Oatmeal has his own awesome version here.)
Saturday, May 16, 2015
more stuff
SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED.
I'm completely fucking exhausted, but since I've been doing about as well with this "daily post" thing as I've expected, I figured I'd better get an update out there before I lose all resolve and fizzle into silence like I have for the last seven years.
So I passed all the necessary exams for my teaching job, which I just found out on Friday. I've been waiting for the results for a month; I honestly wasn't sure what to expect, since the exams were a lot harder than I'd anticipated, and I haven't done high school math in like eighteen years. The only real studying I did was a crash review in probability and statistics and trig with Chris over Google chat a few days before the tests. (And you guys, my boyfriend is an amazing teacher and science/math communicator.) I left the testing site a month ago shaking, weak and demoralized, certain that I'd have to retake all the tests (at about $150 a pop, so I was looking at another $300-400 if I needed to retake them all).
Of course everyone I know is spectacularly unsurprised. It's both touching and a bit deflating. I've been losing sleep over this for a month (omg, what if I failed and I fail the retests, then I won't be able to participate in the summer program and I'll never get a job, etc.), and when I got the passing scores I was like OMIGOD WAHOOOOOOOO and my friends and family are all like, "Yeah, and the sun came up today too."
I guess the real moral of the story is that I need to have the confidence in myself that everyone else has in me. There's plenty of other shit to agonize over besides things that are probably ridiculous, like the notion that I might have failed a standardized test.
Also I found a roommate! I'm still not really thrilled about needing a roommate - I LOVE living on my own - but I just can't afford it. So, roommate it is. She seems nice, and cool. She likes cats and is a more quiet-preferring homebody who wants to be more adventurous, so that's a good place to start. Also she uses Gmail, which automatically sets a higher baseline opinion of people as far as I'm concerned.
Now we just need to find an apartment.
I'm completely fucking exhausted, but since I've been doing about as well with this "daily post" thing as I've expected, I figured I'd better get an update out there before I lose all resolve and fizzle into silence like I have for the last seven years.
So I passed all the necessary exams for my teaching job, which I just found out on Friday. I've been waiting for the results for a month; I honestly wasn't sure what to expect, since the exams were a lot harder than I'd anticipated, and I haven't done high school math in like eighteen years. The only real studying I did was a crash review in probability and statistics and trig with Chris over Google chat a few days before the tests. (And you guys, my boyfriend is an amazing teacher and science/math communicator.) I left the testing site a month ago shaking, weak and demoralized, certain that I'd have to retake all the tests (at about $150 a pop, so I was looking at another $300-400 if I needed to retake them all).
Of course everyone I know is spectacularly unsurprised. It's both touching and a bit deflating. I've been losing sleep over this for a month (omg, what if I failed and I fail the retests, then I won't be able to participate in the summer program and I'll never get a job, etc.), and when I got the passing scores I was like OMIGOD WAHOOOOOOOO and my friends and family are all like, "Yeah, and the sun came up today too."
I guess the real moral of the story is that I need to have the confidence in myself that everyone else has in me. There's plenty of other shit to agonize over besides things that are probably ridiculous, like the notion that I might have failed a standardized test.
Also I found a roommate! I'm still not really thrilled about needing a roommate - I LOVE living on my own - but I just can't afford it. So, roommate it is. She seems nice, and cool. She likes cats and is a more quiet-preferring homebody who wants to be more adventurous, so that's a good place to start. Also she uses Gmail, which automatically sets a higher baseline opinion of people as far as I'm concerned.
Now we just need to find an apartment.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
vacation high
Goddammit, I keep meaning to post before I'm on the verge of falling asleep but I'm so tired that I completely forget until I go to shut down my computer and see the Blogger icon in my browser tabs. (How's that for a run-on sentence.)
Man, a good vacation is exhausting. The cruise was fantastic, and now I'm just all punch-drunk on post-vacation bliss and having a hard time focusing on anything. (Also the tired thing.)
And then tonight Chris posted most of our vacation photos to Facebook, and clicking through them has made me all moony and happy and daydreamy.
I feel like my writing lately is totally crappy, but whatever, at least I'm doing it. Getting in the habit is something for a start.
Oh and I want to go back to Chichen Itza. Desperately. That was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.
Man, a good vacation is exhausting. The cruise was fantastic, and now I'm just all punch-drunk on post-vacation bliss and having a hard time focusing on anything. (Also the tired thing.)
And then tonight Chris posted most of our vacation photos to Facebook, and clicking through them has made me all moony and happy and daydreamy.
I feel like my writing lately is totally crappy, but whatever, at least I'm doing it. Getting in the habit is something for a start.
Oh and I want to go back to Chichen Itza. Desperately. That was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
gearing up for winding down
Well, getting back from vacation isn't as soul-killing this time around because I only have two and a half weeks of work left. (Ohmyjesusgod.) And the closer it comes, the more excited I get. Also I pee my pants in fear a little because I hate taking the risk of going without income. Arrrrgh.
But still. I'm ecstatically excited for the change. I can't wait to teach. I can't wait to move. And once I finish with my current job, I'll have the time I need to tackle the upcoming tasks.
Short post today; I'm happy-but-exhausted from the trip and have a lot on my plate. But the vacation was like the best thing ever. It was so good we're already planning our next one. It was just what we needed, and I feel a bone-deep, suffusive sense of goodness and peace.
Sunday, May 10, 2015
fort lauderdale
The Fort Lauderdale Airport is mean.
We arrived, tired and sweaty, after two hours in the exit line from the cruise ship, dulled by the swarm of other tired, sweaty people, misplaced luggage, customs, finding cash for the porter, climbing into a taxi. The twelve feet from the taxicab to the airport door smelled like Florida: hot saltwater air and cigarettes. I reflected fondly on the many vacation-associated memories dredged up by that smell as we dragged our (well, mostly my) luggage into the airport.
It started out pleasantly enough. I honed in like a shorthair pointer on the luggage scale and made a beeline for it to fuss over the weight distribution of my suitcases (I wound up paying an extra hundred dollars on the trip down for heavy luggage, ugh). That accomplished, we checked in, checked our bags, traded cruise-travel banter with the white Jamaican attendant (years of trying to cultivate my own awareness of racial privilege and I'm still an idiot at it), and got wearily in line for the security check. My bags dragged my spine into a curve never intended by nature. My back hurt. My hair wisped wildly around my shiny, bare, vacation-blurred face. I just wanted to sit down.
I hate getting bullied by airports. The staff barked out orders suited to wayward, stupid dogs, rolling their eyes at the slow responders. "Shoes off. OFF. OFF. YOU DO NOT NEED that bin for that bag. Sweatshirt off. Over here. Keep moving. Laptop BY ITSELF. SHOES OFF." The line of people scurried to obey, looking harassed and cuffed and cowed.
I think the airport personnel would have pushed us if they'd been allowed. I can imagine what a shit job that must be, but I also know from experience that shit jobs are made less shitty by exchanging kindness with people.
Now they're informing us that the full flights are very full and we will not be allowed to take our standard one carry-on and one personal item; larger carry-ons will be taken and checked.
Chris and I are finally in seats near the only strip of wall outlets in the terminal, half of which don't work. We infiltrated the seats like Stoogish spies, hauling our carry-ons nearer and nearer to the bench until finally a seat opened up and I fell over my bare feet to throw my shoes into the seat. Chris lurked nearby until the seat next to me opened up.
We've been here since 10:00 and our flight doesn't board until 5:45 - another two hours.
Thank all the gods and angels for technology. I look around, now that the terminal has mostly emptied out, and see bored people engaged in the first world's primary occupation of passing the time, a pursuit made easier by laptops and e-readers and tablets and cell phones. On the way to the bathroom you can see people contorted into awkward sitting positions on the floor, chained to the walls by the electrical umbilical cords feeding their entertainment devices. The pizza is good but costs too much. The day outside would be beautiful if we were anywhere but at an airport. Angry babies grizzle hollowly over their parents' defeated attempts at pacification. The most common sound is someone's tired sigh.
So we block out the soul-stripping nothingness of the terminal and pass the time. Chris is playing Civilization V. I've read the remaining 60% of Charlie LeDuff's Detroit: An American Autopsy -- extra reading for the training program that we'll book club at some point this week -- a fascinating, devastating account of noir journalism that has left me feeling sad and small and determined to try to do something for the city I'm moving to.
And now I really have to pee. I hope Chris can save my seat.
We arrived, tired and sweaty, after two hours in the exit line from the cruise ship, dulled by the swarm of other tired, sweaty people, misplaced luggage, customs, finding cash for the porter, climbing into a taxi. The twelve feet from the taxicab to the airport door smelled like Florida: hot saltwater air and cigarettes. I reflected fondly on the many vacation-associated memories dredged up by that smell as we dragged our (well, mostly my) luggage into the airport.
It started out pleasantly enough. I honed in like a shorthair pointer on the luggage scale and made a beeline for it to fuss over the weight distribution of my suitcases (I wound up paying an extra hundred dollars on the trip down for heavy luggage, ugh). That accomplished, we checked in, checked our bags, traded cruise-travel banter with the white Jamaican attendant (years of trying to cultivate my own awareness of racial privilege and I'm still an idiot at it), and got wearily in line for the security check. My bags dragged my spine into a curve never intended by nature. My back hurt. My hair wisped wildly around my shiny, bare, vacation-blurred face. I just wanted to sit down.
I hate getting bullied by airports. The staff barked out orders suited to wayward, stupid dogs, rolling their eyes at the slow responders. "Shoes off. OFF. OFF. YOU DO NOT NEED that bin for that bag. Sweatshirt off. Over here. Keep moving. Laptop BY ITSELF. SHOES OFF." The line of people scurried to obey, looking harassed and cuffed and cowed.
I think the airport personnel would have pushed us if they'd been allowed. I can imagine what a shit job that must be, but I also know from experience that shit jobs are made less shitty by exchanging kindness with people.
Now they're informing us that the full flights are very full and we will not be allowed to take our standard one carry-on and one personal item; larger carry-ons will be taken and checked.
Chris and I are finally in seats near the only strip of wall outlets in the terminal, half of which don't work. We infiltrated the seats like Stoogish spies, hauling our carry-ons nearer and nearer to the bench until finally a seat opened up and I fell over my bare feet to throw my shoes into the seat. Chris lurked nearby until the seat next to me opened up.
We've been here since 10:00 and our flight doesn't board until 5:45 - another two hours.
Thank all the gods and angels for technology. I look around, now that the terminal has mostly emptied out, and see bored people engaged in the first world's primary occupation of passing the time, a pursuit made easier by laptops and e-readers and tablets and cell phones. On the way to the bathroom you can see people contorted into awkward sitting positions on the floor, chained to the walls by the electrical umbilical cords feeding their entertainment devices. The pizza is good but costs too much. The day outside would be beautiful if we were anywhere but at an airport. Angry babies grizzle hollowly over their parents' defeated attempts at pacification. The most common sound is someone's tired sigh.
So we block out the soul-stripping nothingness of the terminal and pass the time. Chris is playing Civilization V. I've read the remaining 60% of Charlie LeDuff's Detroit: An American Autopsy -- extra reading for the training program that we'll book club at some point this week -- a fascinating, devastating account of noir journalism that has left me feeling sad and small and determined to try to do something for the city I'm moving to.
And now I really have to pee. I hope Chris can save my seat.
Friday, May 01, 2015
polarized
Went on a last-minute shopping trip this evening for little incidentals for the cruise. Primarily I wanted (and found) a smaller shoulder bag than the primordial monster I usually carry around with me; the thing works great as a spine dislocator (if you don't already have scoliosis but always wanted it I'll let you borrow my purse) but I'd rather travel a little more lightly for prowling around beaches and resort towns.
Secondly, and even more, I wanted a pair of sunglasses. This might sound like an easy quest. Unfortunately, my beglassesed state of being makes the quest rather more like trying to reach the portal cake. I can't wear contacts (the only time I tried, I wound up with blisters on the insides of my eyelids), so normal sunglasses are out; and I can't afford prescription sunglasses; so for years I've subsisted on clip-ons. They've served adequately, but as I've prepared for the cruise, a sullen flame of rebellion began a slow burn. Dammit, I want sunglasses. I want big silly sunglasses like everybody else wears, that make me look like a space insect.
Yesterday Mom told me about a kiosk in the mall that she'd heard sells sunglasses that go over your regular glasses. Pessimistic but hopeful, I headed to the mall after work. And I came away with two big, beautiful pairs of slide-over sunglasses that look just like regular sunglasses except they fit completely over my prescription glasses.
I could weep for joy. I wish I could wear them to bed.
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