dispatch from the fortress of solitude

Birthday time always means taking stock of my life. This year I have an extra special identity crisis to contend with, yay! (Not yay) I'm pretty sure that is a result of quitting my job, which really was my life for the last five years. When I moved back here from Santa Cruz, I really had nothing but that job. I had no place to live, a huge amount of debt, a scattered family and my friends who still lived here had lives of their own which did not really include me anymore. My life now is completely different, yet the past casts a long shadow on the present. I find myself wrestling with a strange irony: starting a new life from scratch is quite terrifying, yet some days I just want to run away from the (reasonably comfortable) life I have made. I must confess that I entertain fantasies of ditching everything I've worked for (grad school, museum career, city life, ect.) to start a farm animal sanctuary and rescue. Seriously, that is my wild fantasy and if you didn't think I was strange before you certainly do now.

Sometimes being an adult only child can seem a lot like being an orphan. I find myself to be a scavenger on holidays, desperate to find a nice family to let me crash their parties. Something occurred to me yesterday which came off as a major revelation: I think I'm finally ready for a family of my own (orphan sanctuary and rescue?). It's a strange shock as I have spent my whole adult life avoiding the issue, but something seems to have changed in the last year and I am ready to ditch my orphan identity for something more fulfilling. I have no idea how to even start to make this a reality, being an unemployed grad student with no income and a intense fear of intimacy. Every once in a while I get lucky and things work themselves out naturally, I hope to be so lucky again.

people I don't talk to anymore

I have a really hard time letting go when it comes to friendships, even if they are clearly over. Maybe it's an only child thing. This is especially true when a friend needs to dump me. This tends to happen after a long period of tension and misunderstanding. I also have a tendency to say the worst possible thing at the best possible moment, I hate it when ironic statements backfire. True, I don't like conflict either but for some it is easier to cut someone loose than to work through a minor difficulty.

*******

People I don't talk to anymore:

Ami - I guess it was bound to blow up but I still wish we could have worked it out. It's true that I got a little obsessive and paranoid when it became clear you were drifting away. I did not mean to get all up in your business, I feel bad about that now.

Lainey - For you there is no forgiveness, even though 20 years have passed since you destroyed my Jr. High life. Your evil minions tortured me into a breakdown and the worst part was that I had once called you my bestie. I had to change schools to get a fresh start, I never looked back.

Zach - I'm not really clear on what happened here, but I assume since we have not spoken in 4 years it is indeed over. Even more unfortunate is that common friends chose teams, I try not to invoke loyalty clauses in these situations but it always ends up happening regardless. Sadly I'm still figuring out the extent of our collateral damage, but I still wish we could work things out.

******

I suppose I am one of those who meditates too long on failures and not enough on success. Of course blogging these caveats won't change a thing, I guess this is a half-assed attempt at closure.

all work and no play make Homer something something...

I'm finishing off week two of my new life of leisure. I quit my job to devote more energy to school, but so far I have just been slacking off, playing video-games and watching tv on the internet. The cat Bunny has been very pleased with my new schedule of sleeping in and laying around. It's been 10 years since college, I graduated in 1999, and oh yes, we partied. Since then I have never not worked, except for about three weeks: I left what was to be my "after college" job after enduring the evil machinations of my wildebeest of a boss. Seriously, she weight 300 pounds and ate mousey secretaries for brunch. I imagined her not unlike the headmistress of Miss. Minchen's select seminary for young ladies. This woman had me so terrorized that I was almost guaranteed to burnout or have a nervous breakdown. She would call me from her big crazy Mercedes every morning on her way in, after this I would run to the ladies room and throw up. I digress but the point is that for a decade I have always had a job. Even during the George Bush Economic Miracle of 2001, I was able to stay employed. I think for now I will do as the Eagles have before me and take it easy. At some point I will have to get out there and make some money, I'm lucky I have a few months to look for part time work. I will dust off the ole' resume (it's a well oiled machine), go to Express and buy some button-downs with French cuffs (express has never failed me for career-wear), and pull a Mary Tyler Moore (and make it after all).

stormy weather

It's been raining bears and frogs all day, I guess the summer is definitely over and I am now having a hard time staying in denial. I really do like the first rains of fall, it washes most of the crap off the sidewalks and keeps the sketchy freaks from wandering out of the Tenderloin and loitering on my street.

There have been so many changes in my life that I'm adjusting to, this is never easy for me even if the new situation is good. In the last few months I have quit my job and started grad school. I keep wondering if this was the right path to take, I don't miss the incredible stress of my job but I do miss my friends and my old paycheck. The other thing I'm not good at is adjusting to a more modest lifestyle. I just hope I can make it all work, at least until I can find a part time job that will accommodate my school schedule. Or maybe I should get started on that future best-selling teen fiction novella, oh yah any day now.

angst for the memories

I'm feeling incredibly vexed about my writing, on several levels. Firstly, I don't blog nearly enough, I have a very silly inner monologue and it would make great copy if I shared more often. I'm still trying to sort out where I want this blog to go, and I'm feeling quite intimidated by the SF blogging community, of which I'm a relative n00b and a mousey little nobody. And then there is this whole grad school thing I'm trying. I fear that for too long I've been rejecting principles of grammar and basic punctuation, if I felt it interfered with my style or expression, and relying on editors to catch my errors. Maybe I reject punctuation and write intuitively, or perhaps selectively apply it where necessary (i.e. my day-job), maybe it's far too many little rules to remember. I need to remember how to write for school, it may not be as easy as falling off a log but I'm sure I can get my head back in the game. At the orientation it was clearly stated that our professors are desperate to make us better writers, this is equally exciting and terrifying.

why my neighbors hate me

I like loud music. What’s the point if not loud? I mean, not everything has to be loud but what about metal, rokk, glitchtronica and obnoxiously gay dance covers? I think its also possible that my neighbors hate me for all the aggressively cheerful indie rock and British girl bands I also play at maximum volume. I have been lately, however, going through an 70's metal phase. I live in a very noisy part of the city, the traffic is really loud (among other annoyances) and I swear that irritating mooks are bussed to my hood from parts unknown.  My corner is representative of how I envision living in New York or Paris, only with homeless crack-heads migrating out of the Tenderloin.  The buildings are really pretty, we light them up at night so you won't notice all the crap on the streets.  

But what of my neighbors?  If loud is a given, then what is the acceptable level of personal noise?  I live in a very well designed building for it's era, there are only people living directly below and on one side.  But the old man downstairs must really hate my guts, my pretty wood floor creaks at the slightest weight, whether from a spontaneous dance party or my night-time pacing.  And now with the cat knocking playstation controllers and other things to the floor coupled with my own clumsy problems with gravity + objects, we are indeed the noisy up-stairs neighbors anyone would hate.  The cat also likes to run around for no reason, scraping her claws on the wood ineffectively trying to gain traction.  

That guy must be plotting my destruction as I type this.

rosebud (was a sled)

I found a book on the interwebs that I couldn't leave behind, even though lately I've been shedding books like a school-board in Kansas.  It could be my personal Rosebud.  It arrived from Ohio via post this week.  I'm sorry, but about this I need to brag. Every kid has a favorite book, and this was mine.  By the time I got around to reading it in the 80's, my copy was a later edition paperback.  This is a first edition, first printing copy from 1973 with the original Edward Gorey illustrations.  I love that it came from a school library in Sag Harbor New York (the stamp by the card pocket tells me so) and that lots of kids were privy to the awesomeness of this book.  

So maybe Rosebud was a sled, but in my case it was a book.