i’m not sure i need a blog anymore. i haven’t posted anything since july. i have very little to complain about.

i am content.

Stress is the name of the game today, folks. Mom and sister are visiting for a week, and as it has only been 3 days, I’m undeniably in for more treats in the coming days. I’m really glad they’re here, but the circumstances of this visit just plain suck.

1. I am on major bitchy PMS.

2. I am constantly stressed out anyways, with or without Mom and sis here, due to the nature of my live-in job situation.

3. Mom knows how much I am constantly stressed out, and tries to relieve said stress by doing some chores for me. Which would be great, except this makes her stressed out because she doesn’t want to do them “wrong.” This is a valid concern because my SIL is about as Type A anal-retentive as one can possibly be.

4. Mom and Mike have issues going way back because she is not techically his real mother. She raised him from the time he was 6 though, and rather than showing a respectful demeanor, he makes sarcastic retorts, has an extremely short fuse, and a disregard for how his words, actions, and behaviors affect my mother/other people.

5. The entire purpose for this trip was for Mom to see how I’m doing and spend some quality time with me. She knows how hard it has been for me here, and I appreciate her caring so much. In turn, I feel a bit guilty for being the sole cause of this trip because there are 5 other people here that she rarely sees. I am also afraid that she’ll see something wrong with how I cope with the stress of just…living here. I know that is me projecting onto someone else my own fears about how I am perceived by the outside world, but that fear exists. And no opinion is more important to me than that of my mother. I hate admitting this but it’s painfully true.

I really don’t know how I got to this point. I left California with more self-esteem than ever, incredibly confident in my body and my mental state. I could attract men and get laid and flirt and dance without fear of judgement–and if someone did judge me, then fuck them. And now…and now…this. This is me. I have no desire to meet new people outside of the neighbors and friends Mike and Megan have. I don’t care to exert the energy when all my energy and enthusiasm are sucked up by simply being here and doing my job. Usually my job is my social outlet when I’m isolated, and I eventually get to be friends with the people there and it all works out to my advantage socially.

I’m so tired of ranting and bitching about the same shit without it ever changing. Sometimes smoking is the only thing that makes the day bearable. That’s bad, right? But seriously if my only vice is having a bowl of a legal drug that helps me sleep and relieves stress, then I’m entitled to that vice. At least it’s not cigarettes.

stillness is the move

I may have mentioned before that I have two siblings. My sister Karleigh is 20 and my brother Mike is 36. I may also have mentioned that because of my sister’s developmental disabilities and the age difference with my brother, I’ve always felt somewhat of an only child. Somewhat because I do in fact have siblings–I have to call and check up on them, buy them birthday and Christmas gifts, and other sisterly things. Karleigh and I have always gotten along in a combative but friendly way. Mike and I used to be really tight up until I was about 18. Eighteen is the age at which I learned (or chose to see) about a few personality flaws in him.

Before I go further, I must state that I absolutely love my brother. I simply do not like him most of the time.

I’ve been having a hard time living with Mike but am reluctant to admit it, especially to him. Because he is my half-brother, we only share half a set of genetics. And the other halves of our respective DNAs are polar opposites. I’m pretty laid back about everything. And I mean everything. But in order to get to this laid back state, I need to process every emotion, impulse, action and inaction. I process by talking about everything to my family and friends. Seriously, I can tell my dirtiest secrets to my uncle and aunt knowing they have my back and love me regardless. My best friends and I talk for at least a couple hours per week about the minutiae of our lives. It’s how we do. I revel in discovering new things about myself. I love to analyze books, movies, people, and just about everything else. Lit major for life. But as much as I need and love people, I am an introvert. You wouldn’t know it to see me at a club drinking and dancing with friends and shamelessly going home with some guy. On the other hand, I spent all weekend inside, save for a 9pm showing of Away We Go. I was absolutely content reading news blogs, watching mindless TV, and making elaborate breakfasts for myself. I had two dogs and a cat for company.

[This is where I make Mike sound bad.] I was as happy as can be when the fam came back from their overnight camping trip, only to encounter Mike, who asked with a hint of disdain, “So did you leave the house at all this weekend?” My pithy 3 hours outside of the house suddenly seemed inadequate. I felt like I had failed without knowing there was a test or minimum criteria I had to meet. All this and he hadn’t even set down his bag yet. I wanted to run upstairs and smoke, which I’d been putting off so as to stay lucid for the day.

It has been difficult to put into words how I feel about my brother. He’s gone through an emotional rollercoaster in the last six months. I’ve seen him cry, seen him drugged out of his mind, seen him angry at life. He’s a man who loves to control every aspect of his life. He’s very particular when it comes to decorating, clothing, and renovating. He’s a strict parent to the point where I question whether he ever wanted to be a father. There’s no doubt that he loves his kids, but they seem a bother to him most of the time, and he is among the most impatient people I have ever met. He’s frivolous with money and feels entitled to a life better than the one he has. His mother left when he was two and took her life when he was 25. For this he feels he is owed something by the world, for dealing him such a shitty hand. Having a stoma and ileostomy bag attached to his abdomen doesn’t help much either.

To put it bluntly, we are not connecting. Being around him brings out my quiet, submissive side. I suppose I just don’t want to anger him or put him through any more stress. Even when we were “tight” we wouldn’t talk much. We sat in his room, he remodeling or cleaning his bird cages, me playing quietly on the floor. That was us connecting. He used to take me to Morro Bay to the aquarium with only four seals–nothing else–in captivity and we fed them $1 worth of chopped up fish. Then we would get clam chowder and cokes at the Flying Dutchman. On the way home we would stop and look around a house on a hill being built. I fondly remember doing things like this together. But what works for a 5 year old does not work for a 23-year old.

I think I am yearning for a relationship with my brother that has never existed and may never be possible because of who he is and who I am. So we continue the only way we know how. During mornings when the kids are at camp, he drinks tea and watches The West Wing. I drink tea and clean up the kitchen/house. We acknowledge each other’s existence, with grumblings about when our 6-pack of Morning Thunder will arrive and periodic comments about how much he loves this fucking show. He is 18 and I am five. I still want his approval more than anything. And he remains oblivious.

it’s a small world after all

My world has become very small in eleven weeks. I am frequently concerned about how I am perceived by my small world, which is a direct cause of an immaculate pairing of stress and a drop in self-esteem. I hate admitting that my self-confidence has taken a toll because it means admitting that I may have made a mistake, and that I have let someone else’s opinion (or past/future opinions) of me become integral to my own self-perception. I hate admitting this may have been an impulsive choice because it implies several things I am unwilling or unready to confront. For instance, had I not moved here, I would have borne the guilt of not being around for my brother and his family during his surgeries. Not only do I feel guilty for not wanting to be here, but I would have felt guilty anyways had I never accepted their offer.

(written at 11pm June 19, 2009)

hermit crab

I just read a blog post about a woman who has chosen to live a life of solitude and prayer. She’s an unapologetic hermit. She realizes how society in general views someone like her, noting it could be misconstrued as selfishness. But she is living her life exactly how she wants to live it–and for that reason I am envious of her. I am also envious because I have come to realize things about myself lately, such as how I have social anxiety that prevents me from interacting with people even if I want to. I have little to no interest in making friends in Vermont. The one friend I have made was someone my brother pushed me to be friends with, and she has turned out to be fairly unreliable. And rather than put effort into meeting new people at random, I choose to live a solitary life right now. I believe this has been determined by several factors, the first being that the people I interact with during work  hours are the people I live with, other parents and other small children. I have no desire to spend extra time with these people. We have little in common, and generally I feel I have to remain guarded when around them because they could very well relate a slip up of mine to Megan. Another part of it is that I am constantly around people in this house. Solitude is a gift here. I look forward to tomorrow, when the family will be in Montreal at the zoo all day. I feel as if I can breathe and relax when nobody is home. When I lived in LA and SC over the past two years, I lived with people, but never felt as if they gave a shit as to what I did on my own time. They cared about me, but if I wanted to spend an entire weekend getting high and watching movies in my pajamas, then there was no judgement or blame. When you’re in your early twenties, stupid shit is expected of you. I felt I could describe my weekends of antisocial behavior to my roommate or friends, and they would giggle along with me or say, “yeah, sometimes you just need a weekend like that.” But here, there is nothing of the sort. I can’t complain about my job to my roommates, because I work at home and live with the bosses. I can’t smoke pot in my room all weekend because there are young kids in the house and it’s not my house. I can’t live separately from my place of work, and I believe that is what is most frustrating of all. There is no separation of work and home, therefore there is no boundary crossed at 5pm that gives me permission to relax and say, “I’m done with work now.” Work and personal life intersect so many times each day that even at 11pm on a Saturday night, I’m worried about Megan walking into my room and commenting on how messy it is. Or confronting me about something I did wrong today that I wasn’t aware was wrong in the first place. Or asking me to do her a favor, or run an errand tomorrow, or something that puts her in a place of power and/or judgement and me in a subservient place. And I do it everytime. Because what else do I have to do at 11pm on a Saturday night in Vermont, really? Nothing. I don’t go to bars because I’m trying to save money. I drink at home instead. Plus, I really don’t enjoy going to bars alone, without the faintest chance of running into someone I know. I don’t need to look like more of a loner. I already saw two movies at the theater today.

Thing is, when I’m in a comfortable place, really in my comfort zone, it is then that I will seek out social situations. I stayed in so much when I lived in LA. I went out all the time in SC. Levels of comfort. I look forward to living in LA again because I know I will have people to be social with on a continual basis, and the possibility of a job that I am sure I can do, with people I have worked well with before. Social life is truly a consideration in my moving choices right now. Sure, it’s great proving to myself time and again that I can survive and kick ass in new cities and locales, but it is truly exhausting–mentally, emotionally and physically. Sometimes I wonder if the reason why I can always manage a 12+ hour night of sleep on weekends is because I spend so much time thinking and analyzing people, situations and myself. It’s exhausting subjecting yourself to that much analysis on top of ALWAYS wondering if you are unconsciously screwing up, and won’t know it until a week later when Megan flips her shit yet again. And so I tiptoe constantly, and in doing so I realize I am putting up barriers between myself and my family here. I strive to do exactly as I am asked, even if I am not asked, and refrain from saying anything controversial, bitchy, cynical, or critical. Basically I withold myself from my brother and sister-in-law. Because I never know when I’ll be blindsided by a wave of criticism. And I don’t feel it is my place to criticize them because they are the employer and I am the employee. I need this money each week to pay for a new place and to get on my feet in LA. So we become distant. Notes are left with vague instructions, I make small talk, we watch tv together and eat Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Compliments are not given unless it’s for a dinner I make; hence, it is the one thing I do here that I have had confidence in. It is the one thing I can do better than her. I hate that I need and crave her and Mike’s approval for the most mundane, trivial shit–but these are people who truly do not understand me. Mike has always had issues with my mom (his stepmom) because they are polar opposites as he is cold and emotionless, and my mother is warm and wears her heart on her sleeve. I take after my mother, though I like to add I have a bit tougher skin and a cynic within me that she lacks. But still, I can be easily hurt just like her. I can be hurt repeatedly and still not raise a fuss. I am sensitive, emotional, and I need to talk out everything that goes on with me psychologically. I need to process events, traumas, and emotions out loud. I usually do this with my friends, my mom, my aunts, uncles, grandma…and roommates. As I type, I realize that I have never been able to process along with Mike. He doesn’t discuss anything emotional about himself. Neither does Megan, but on the rare occasion she does, it is not with me. Mike and I always got along because we never had to talk about anything. I don’t see why we should be any different now. We’ve always peacefully cohabitated without much interaction between the two of us. God, what a stranger he is. I’ve always told the kids, “You don’t have to like your family, but you have to love them.” I love my brother to death. But it is really hard to like him sometimes. Same goes for Megan. My life here is one of solitude because I am constantly inside my head trying to process these events and emotions. Nobody else could possibly catch a glimpse of my life and see how hard it has been without knowing this massive amount of backstory and context and honestly, it’s exhausting thinking about it. I hardly want to unload this heap of emotional crap onto a person who doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t have time to hear it out, or isn’t being paid to care. I don’t want to spend the time qualifying and explaining my feelings and stances to anyone else. I just want someone to listen. And it’s difficult finding someone who will just sit and listen. This is why I spend a good hour and a half each week on the phone with certain friends and family members, because they are my people. The lack of judgement, the understanding of who I am and how I operate, the soothing words and helpful questions–they allow me to release, clear my mind, and be temporarily unburdened. I know they will keep me in their thoughts, and I will reciprocate and be their person too. I have no people in Vermont so far. I haven’t entirely written off the people here, but I am losing hope in finding one of my people in this state. Until then, I will be my hermit self. And my people in all my different cities will not place one bit of blame on me for doing so.

Talk about hindsight.

I JUST realized, almost 2 years to the day that my heart was broken, that I could never have changed the man I loved into the man I wanted him to be. Namely because there were so many things I simply “dealt” with and pushed under a rug into my subconscious because I was attached to the relationship more than I was attached to who he was. And who he was was an asshole.

He used the words “fag” and “retard” in derogatory ways. It bothers me that I never spoke to him about this. I considered getting him to stop saying “nigger” (which he claimed he used ironically) to be a victory at the time. My uncle is gay and my sister is developmentally disabled. I feel like I let them down as well. I thought about this today when I saw this ad campaign for Special Olympics:

"Most people who would never knowingly use disparaging terms don't see a problem with saying "retard." This must change. It's just as hateful as any other slur. And for millions of people with Intellectual Disabilities, their families and friends, it hurts just as much. Please, don't use the R-word."

If you are one of the many people who find this word inoffensive, I hope this image makes you think. It’s likely you don’t know many developmentally disabled people. It’s also likely that you’ve never known what it is like to be called retarded, when the clinical definition of such is something that applies to you.

Dear Brain Chemistry,

Hi. We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. I am the person you inhabit–not to claim ownership or anything, just establishing my persona. But, see, this arrangement we have going–the whole 20mg of SSRIs each morning you are supposed to recognize–well, it’s clearly not working. I mean it did for awhile, but that was what, 2 months? And now I’m hovering somewhere near where I began, which we both know isn’t a good place to hang out. I would like to make the humble request that you correct yourself again. I have been doing my part in all honesty, ie working out regularly now and… ok so maybe I’ve been drinking and smoking more too. So what? It helps me cope with your inadequacies. No, not that one, I told you it’s fine and it happens to everyone. Isn’t it funny that depressants can make me feel so good? Well, I wanted to give you all this to think about so you can reevaluate our relationship. I know where I stand. I like you. I really do. I think you’re cute and quirky. But you are often more than I can handle. It’s all so tragically cliche and telling of the state of our healthcare system that I can’t do much to change you more (thank god we’ve got Obama on our side, but who knows when it will go into effect?) so we’re gonna have to work doubly hard. I don’t want to wake up each morning with dread because I know I will be exhausted before I even roll out of bed. I feel a very strong stigma attached to people like me who for whatever reason cannot be morning people. Still worse , I feel that same exhaustion as when I wake up throughout the day, though it’s periodically masked by caffeine and exercise. I hate feeling this way, being exhausted by life, by even thinking about it. I thought I was past this.

-kja

p.s. Thanks for crapping out on me when I move 3000 miles away from anything and anyone resembling home. Bastard.

adavan. prednazone. morphine. remicaid. flagyl. before thursday, i couldn’t have told you much about any of these medications, morphine aside . at this moment, all are on a fairly continuous stream into several of my brother’s veins.

the nurses appear to have spared him the trauma of inserting an IV into the black and grey portrait on his forearm. the cockatoo perching on a jungle limb is not as fortunate.

he snores like my dad. exactly like him. open mouth, slack jaw, lying flat on his back. deep, throaty snores that come and go as the night progresses. not like those annoying people with nasally snoring habits, where in the unlikely scenario that a lumberjack was nearby–which, considering the terrain in northern Vermont is more probably than one might think–he would hear a typical day’s work being performed. no, not that kind of snoring thank god.

i can’t stand the colors of a hospital room. pale pastel green blankets on every bed, and i wonder if they have all been put through an industrial washing machine too many times, or if they were purchased that way. neither answer would satisfy me, although i wonder if this particular shade of green was deemed inoffensive enough so as to not offend any religious sect or stir unwanted gang activity. then again, you don’t see many pastel-laden hoodlums these days.

the only vibrant hues come from construction paper paintings hung alongside his bed. rory made a rainstorm with roof shingles blowing about. emma painted glittery pink fish in a glittery blue ocean. harper infused as many colors as humanly possible onto butcher paper. and of course, there are his sleeves and pant-leg of tattoos, which he refers to as his shant (short-pant).

i am refusing sleep at this point, just in case. if he has another unconscious psychotic episode, i have to stop him.

new home

When I do something that really scares me, I go to a dark place for a while. I notice that it tends to happen when I move to a new town. Having done this recently, I am documenting this occurrence in hopes that it will help me with the inevitable next move that will happen in six months.

This dark place is a cave that houses my innermost insecurities and deepest wounds. Everything I have ever been certain of is pried from its foundation. It unraveled over several days in the latest instance. The friends I have maintained–in my mind at least–seem to call less. Why? Why wouldn’t they want to check on me? Don’t they know how scared I am? Relax, they have their own lives too. Then the worrying takes a sharp dive. What if I’ve misread our whole relationship and I’m actually an outer circle friend whose calls they simply tolerate? What if I don’t stop stressing about it and become obsessive like that one time? My chest begins to constrict.

Worrying about worrying. Wonderful. (I am not my mother). After this comes the anxiety about family. I call my mom much more often when brought out of my comfort zone to such an extreme. And she calls me. Because she knows this is how I am, without us ever talking about the fact that this is how I am. And I love that about her. I am extremely needier of motherly attention in these situations and she always has energy and love to give. But then. I start to stress about how when I fully adjust to my new home, I will be calling her less, which to her is equated to me loving and needing her less. This hurts her. I do not want to hurt my mother, but this is how I am. The conflict makes my chest constrict further.

Then, as illustrated in my previous post, come the demons. Regrets surface like a corpse in a lake. Old wounds are picked at, a stony quiet sets in. I become mechanical, as if by controlling each mo(ve)ment I may shift focus onto something simpler and emotionless. It takes concerted effort not to spend all day in bed. The social anxiety becomes more pronounced as I put off going into town and running simple errands. Public radio is constantly humming in the background, mainly so I can have conversation starters. Will I ever have a job that I’m not constantly paranoid I will be fired from? All of this concerns me. I can barely breathe.

It’s midnight. I tiptoe outside for a smoke. Thoughts drift away and I head upstairs for bed. I already decided I’m calling mom tomorrow.

ugh

Alright. I hate making overly personal posts about my love life, but the past resurrected itself last night in the form of a dream. And this particular part of my past has not chosen to be in my dreams for quite some time. About a year and a half to be exact.

Yesterday was April 10. Exactly 6 months before my birthday. And exactly the day of my the ex’s birthday. I mentioned this to my sister-in-law last night while watching a House repeat, because we were talking about why we both take anti-depressants. I admitted that it is a family disease, which only became pronounced when the ex and I broke up a little over 2 years ago. I have definitely moved on, and only think of him occasionally because I wonder how he’s doing and what his life is like and how it has changed since we last spoke. Our last point of contact was July 07, via an email where we decided we could not be friends because he had moved on (ie, was seeing someone else) and I did not have that same, peculiarly swift rebounding quality.

But something about that conversation with my sister-in-law struck a chord with my unconscious mind. That, combined with feeling incredibly isolated, having just moved across the country to a state where the only people I know are the 5 I live with, led to my anxiety-ridden dream. It went like this: I was at a carnival or fair of some sort. Dusty ground, people everywhere, carnival games all around. And I saw him in a crowd. Not even his face, but the back of his head. It’s not a particularly remarkable back of a head, but it becomes so when you look at it for countless nights for a couple years. He hadn’t seen me yet. I had a split-second to decide if I was going to be a coward and hide, or be the bigger person and go up to him. Not wanting to regret a chance for closure, I walked over. He turned suddenly, seeing me walking towards him. He looked startled, then uncomfortable, then guarded. We both mustered fake smiles, not enough for teeth to show, so it looked even more forced. We exchanged greetings and asked how each other was. I believe “good, really good” was about all we said. I think he had to run off to do something, and he did so with a hurried “goodbye.” What I had been preparing myself for for almost two years had come and gone in less than a minute. I felt awkward and foolish, and no better than I did before I saw his dark brown hair. Thankfully he had grown out of his mohawk phase, which I had detested, mainly because he had beautiful hair–dark brown with a tinge of red, which he got from his mom.

Then somehow I was at a house party with a few of my friends. Shameem and possibly Brit were there. I was telling them about the earlier events of the day, still kinda pissed and a little hurt that I couldn’t have a pleasant conversation with the ex, to prove to him that I was sooooo past that stuff, and brag a bit about how much I’d accomplished without him. We were hanging out in someone’s bedroom I think, and a of people I didn’t know were in there as well. Then the ex walked into the room with his girlfriend, or what I assumed was his girlfriend. He saw me and nodded his head in acknowledgement, but sat down with the other people we didn’t know and kinda ignored me for the rest of the night. I recall remarking to Shameem, “He’s an ass, obvs, but isn’t he hot?” Later in the night I ventured out of the room to see who else was at the party, and for some reason his parents were there in the living room. I said hi to his dad and reached out to shake his hand, but he pulled me in for a surprisingly long, meaningful hug. Their friend Jodie was there and hugged me too. I think I hugged his mom the longest. I truly miss talking to her, even though she’s overbearing and crazy like my mom. I think we both said we missed our chats, but knew we could never have the same relationship as before. It would be inappropriate. So I got a little bit of closure from his parents, even though I was uncomfortable and felt like someone had socked me in the stomach every time I saw the ex.

I woke up baffled at the clarity and content of the dream. Come on, eighteen months of no dreams of him, then I get slammed with something like this??? I’m going to escalate my search for a cheap but good therapist now. I don’t need things like this cluttering up my life anymore.

Ode to California

Dear California,

I regrettably have to put our relationship on hold for the time being. It’s not you, it’s me. Well, actually part of it is you. But don’t take it personally. You have the eighth largest economy in the world–being that big means you crash harder than most. Don’t get me wrong, I love well-endowed states. But your (ahem) shrinking assets leave our relationship on rocky ground. I can’t live in a state that offers no long-term growth, which honestly isn’t fair to either of us. Well, I should really come out with the truth: I have found another state that offers stability, safety, and job opportunities. It cannot ever match what we have had these last 23 years, and who knows, maybe there’s a future for us down the road. Our history alone makes you unforgettable. But this is what I have decided, and like it or not I am leaving you.

You’re truly amazing, Cali. I spent all my formative years growing up in Atascadero, which has grown on me since I left it. Los Angeles was our period of mutual dislike and distrust, and I hadn’t realized how you had let yourself go until I was stuck there. Santa Cruz has quickly become the epicenter of putting myself back together. Now whole once again, I must move on. I hope to return someday, be it 6 months or a few years. I have grown so much, especially in the last few years, and I thank you for that. Your diversity is breathtaking, your ocean and mountains reassuring, and your residents change my life on a regular basis. Don’t ever change… and if you do, progress rather than regress.

I love you,

Kylee

ch-ch-changes

My computer operating system is Windows Vista. It is, in my opinion, a decent upgrade from XP and I appreciate the translucent window frames, flawed mainly in the exclusion of MS Office Suite.

In truth, I really don’t care about Vista very much save for the drop down bar in Firefox of frequently visited websites. The very last one is the login page for this blog. I don’t update this very often, nor do I check up on it regularly. I believed that as a writer, I would do both several times per week. And yet, as infrequent as my attention is to both this blog and my career aspirations, it remains #12 among my most visited websites, barely clinging onto the edges of my immediate consciousness.

Since June, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I rediscovered my latent dream of being a writer, pushed off through four years of college and a year of post-bacc parties and work. Everybody I have spoken to since knows about my desire to attend grad school at Emerson College in Boston, obtain my MA in Journalism, and work for a radio station or news site. I began my applications six months before they were due, before most even had the 09-10 school year apps ready. I networked with people, took a job at a newspaper hoping to eventually transfer to editorial, and even wrote an article for my hometown paper. I visited Boston in November to make sure this was really what I wanted. I concluded it was.

And yet. I missed deadlines. I haven’t asked for letters of rec. I haven’t taken the GRE. I haven’t touched the app essays in over a month. I haven’t even filed my tax return, thus applying for FAFSA is impossible. Worse yet, I have no desire to do any of these things. Emerson’s app deadline is March 1.

Right now I am faced with making enormous decisions. Two weeks ago my brother asked if I wanted to be his kids’ nanny, living for free and getting paid to hang out with my neices and nephew. I accepted. As of April, I will be living in Vermont.

But as I am faced with the stress of moving far away from my California life, I also am having to face the likely postponement of a dream I cannot afford. Neither my parents nor I have the money for grad school. My lack of motivation is driven by a lack of self-confidence and inability to commit to things under pressure. And I am left wondering, would it really be so bad if I put this off for another year?

I really don’t know. Between quitting my job, moving home, seeing family and friends, and planning a cross-country road trip to VT, I see little time for getting my shit together.

I believe I will close with a little quote from Salon’s Cary Tennis:

But if you simply lack ambition, I take my hat off to you. The world is way too full already of overly ambitious fucks elbowing us out of the way on the streetcar.

I take my hat off to you. Give yourself a break. Take another day off.

Sinking Ship

I have a unique opportunity in my, well, what one may call a profession, though as Jim Halpert would say “if this were my career, I’d have to throw myself in front of a train.” This opportunity I have is to be a first hand witness to a newspaper expelling the equivalent of a death rattle.

I’ve been employed at the RP for 6 months. In that time, the Christian Science Monitor announced it will be converting to web-only format (save for a single weekend edition). The Tribune Company, which wields the Chicago Tribune and LA Times, declared bankruptcy. The New York Times is roughly $1 billion in debt and recently mortgaged its buildings (worth $225 million) to pay off some debt. Etcetera.

I was brought on amidst our paper’s top two advertising executives leaving for more profitable publications. It’s not hard to see why advertising sales positions, especially in print media, have such high turnover at my company. My boss unceremoniously dropped account files in my lap my first day there. A brief overview of the roughly 100 business profiles commenced. “5 Star Heating, they owe us money. Oh yeah, forgot to mention sales is also in charge of collections since we’re so tiny so you’ll need to put some pressure on them. They’re a few months behind…. And ACE, PAMF and Granite, they all used to be big spenders but have pulled out of their contracts recently. But you can still call them. Hmm, oh and Central Texan BBQ, HA! You’ll either love or hate that guy. I mean he’s kind of creepy and will come on to you, but you’ve got a nice body so he’ll probably buy stuff.”

Etcetera.

What is pretty unique about my time there is how I have to act like none of this dire information phases me, or is even relevant to the current promotion I’m working on. “Hi Susan, it’s K___, and I was calling to tell you about our upcoming Career Opportunities section, in which we highlight job openings and job services with ads and editorials that will–Sorry? Oh, you don’t have any budget for our area? Alright then. Let me fax over the info anyways so you can take a look. Thanks. Bye.”

All said with an unfamiliar lilt in my voice that I employ only when pitching and mocking myself later that night in a drunken reenactment.

Experiencing rejection after rejection allows me to commiserate with some local business owners and talk to them about how they personally are doing in our modern-day depression. It’s actually a relief sometimes not to close a sale–aside from dreading going back to work at the end of the day without a close–because then I get to meet the person rather than the business-owner. We eventually find something to bond over. The Central Coast is like a stretched out small town, and there’s always a friend of a friend waiting to be discovered. Each business and business person has a story. And I would love to tell it.

But I can’t. And I don’t. The conflict of being an ad rep and aspiring journalist smarts at these moments. The conflict of interest is too great for me to put a single word to page about a client. I think of my accounts, regardless of how much I like or dislike them, in terms of revenue. Any story I write would be tainted with my intimate knowledge of their lukewarm reception to cold calls, or how they pulled out at the last minute and caused me to lose my commission last month, or how they spend more money at a competing publication. That, and there are no open writer positions at the RP.

My paper is dying. My company bought my paper because it is in the business of buying dying papers. One of my clients is actually dying. And I get to be a big bleeping ray of sunshine despite it all.

“Could be worse,” Mom says. “At least you have a job.” Which is worse? Working a job you merely dislike, or working a job you dislike at a company that pays people with your ideal job less than you make for doing something you would gladly do for free?

npr

I am a cynical, sarcastic 23-year old naysayer who really does not care for Thanksgiving. But sentimentalism got the best of me, courtesy of NPR, my most reliable source of news.

NPR recently aired this story of an unassuming farmer who decided to give away the unharvested portion of his crop to anyone who wanted to get their hands dirty and harvest it themselves. He advertised that they would open the farm to the public at 9am and expected about 5000 people to show up over the weekend.

People began to arrive at dawn. In one weekend, Joe Miller estimated 40,000 people showed up to his farm. Don’t you wish you could give this much to people?

Yesterday I spent about 8 hours doing community service in Watsonville, CA. I rang a bell for the Salvation Army for four hours, then proceeded to cook and serve dinner to the homeless at the Salvation Army building. I had not done either of these things for at least six years. I truly don’t feel any better about myself for having done these things, because I did them grudgingly and with a hangover, but I will say for a moment, after all those people had been served, I did feel a sense of accomplishment. Which was immediately followed by the knowledge that these 50+ people would not get a meal this fulfulling for maybe another couple of weeks.

Welcome (original first post)

In a friend’s blog a few months ago, I responded to a post in which she highlighted an article in NY Magazine about an NYU student who wrote a scathing assessment of the New York literary scene. Though I know virtually nothing about said scene, the uproar I witnessed in several blogs caused me to think about the purpose of blogs.

Blogs are an uncomfortable artistic medium for me, something between cerebral vomit, hastily scribbled break-up poetry and (rarer still) a few aesthetically decent words strung together forming an original thought. Part of me still sees blogs as a juvenile libation meant to spark creativity, where inevitably the words are drunk with their own self-importance, the author’s “feelings” a daily source of inspiration. The other part sees the potential for a valid and articulate source of art, a refreshing down-to-earth approach that again totes honesty as it’s foundation.

I’ve seen both…. I feel the two styles shouldn’t mix.

I continue on to note a primary rule of journalism: be a filter. This is difficult in blogs because when you self-publish like this, an untrained writer acting as his/her own editor lets things slide that a separate editor would parse down or scrap altogether. This is not to detract from more sentimental writing of a non-journalistic style. Stream-of-consciousness (or rants or  is quite a valid way to express oneself. Put simply, sentimental posts and articles have their place. One must be willing to defend everything they publish that is made available to the public.

That said, I intend to make this different from my first stab at a blog, which began five years ago. I aim for more intelligent drivel this go-around, from which intelligent conversations are borne. However, far be it from me to assume that I will be completely immune from the emotionally-fueled blogging I mentioned earlier. Trust that they (hopefully) will be more intelligible and interesting than oh say the latest drama with my BFF. Not that there is any.

Chances are you stumbled upon this by accident, or by referral. In any case, thanks for looking.

First Post

I started this blog a couple months ago with the goal of making it into a testing ground for the career in journalism I hope to have. I wanted to make it poignant, funny, thought-provoking, and ultimately the opposite of my now defunct Livejournal blog. I wanted perfection.

Still waiting on that first perfect entry. I concede defeat. Many drafts of many posts lay in my drafts folder.  It was a goal far too lofty and with far too many expectations.

So here we are. Me and my rusty hand are going to try for those ideals stated above, but let’s face facts. This is a blog, and until Politico or Salon or NY Times enlist my services, this is going to be severely imperfect. I can’t wait to see what happens.

-kja