Dancing in the street

Last night I had a good time. First off: Yeah weather! Gentle sun. Cool breeze. Wonderfulwonderfulwonderful. We spent much of the night outside. My sister did some work and I read while we sat in patio chairs in the backyard, and the kids played in the swingset or with the balls, bubbles, and assorted outdoorsy paraphernalia. Unfortunately for my brother-in-law, he was stuck inside cooking dinner. But we all got to eat it outside, and it was delicious. Then we played with the kids for a bit longer. Then came cake, tasty white chocolate cake with strawberry frosting. So yeah, like I said, I had a good time last night.

Later, my gooddearfriend wanted to take advantage of the wonderfulwonderfulwonderful by going for a walk. So she came over, and we walked in through town to the fun little island park. We had a good time chatting and watching two male ducks fighting over a female duck. If you've never seen this happen before, it's quite something. The two ducks kind of wrestled and pecked at each other until one of them was able to get onto the other's back and then force his head under water. We were a bit worried that we were going to witness a drowning, a duckslaughter, but apparently there's some duck equivalent to 'uncle' because the dominant duck suddenly stopped and swam off with the female duck, the beaten duck following a safe distance behind the two. When we went back through town, we walked by a dance studio and peeked in at what looked like the pre- or post-class gathering of dancers sitting in chairs. We walked down the road a bit farther, and my gooddearfriend told me about the dance class that she went to recently, and then we stopped by the side of the road (a busy road no less), and she taught me some of what she had learned. Apparently, I'm a little grabby. I guess in ballroom dancing you're only supposed to lightly rest your fingertips on your partner. Oops. Then we went down the road a bit more, and we stopped so she could show me some Latin dancing. That's where we got honked at. It was really fun.

When I got back and my gooddearfriend had left, my brother-in-law and I played the video games he had rented. They were better than a lot of the games we had rented recently. One was a driving game that was actually more about crashing than it was about driving. So we had a good time smashing stuff up and what have you. The other game was a table tennis game. "A table tennis video game?" you may ask. Yes. And it's quite a bit more fun than pong.

My nephew just reminded me of a sweet story about my niece from yesterday. I'm a little sick. Yesterday I had a soar throat, headache, and stuffy nose. But nothing serious. In the morning I was wanting to kind of laze about for a bit, and my sister tried to keep my niece from bugging me by telling her that I wasn't feeling well and that I needed to be left alone. So the sweet thing went upstairs to her room and came back carrying her Care Bear, which she handed to me so I could snuggle with it and feel better. Awwww. THAT made me feel better.

I'm grateful for the wonderfulwonderfulwonderful (20).

Yesterday was __________

I started yesterday with a 'run' that ended with me walking. At this point, I've run the same route between ten and twenty times, and yesterday I noticed horses grazing in a field across the street from the cemetery. I was a little worried. Either the neighborhood was about to be overrun by an onslaught of horses, or these horses had been there all along, and I just wasn't observant enough to see them. Some writer I'm going to be. Takes me ten passes to notice a field full of domesticated mammal. . . Later on, my brother-in-law assured me that the horses have always been there, but they aren't always out. For the sake of my own self-esteem, I'm going to believe that yesterday was the first time the horses have been out when I've run by there. . . A bit farther down the street, on the same run, I passed a car with what appeared to be a freshly cut Christmas tree strapped to the roof. The needles were all still green, so it wasn't a really old Christmas tree that was finally getting discarded. The roots had been cut off the trunk, so it wasn't a pine tree to be planted in someones yard. I don't really know what was going on. But I'm pretty sure it's a sign of this neighborhood's decline. Horses across from cemeteries. Christmas trees in April. I don't even want to think about what's coming next.

We went to dinner at a restaurant in the area of my old apartment. It was fun looking around to see what had changed and what hadn't. There's my old grocery store. The Chinese place has changed to some other restaurant. The McDonald's has turned into some other Chinese place. There's my library. There's the Wal-Mart that the community was aggressively trying to prevent the construction of. Of all the things that had changed, I was pretty happy to see that one thing hadn't. The old man that used to walk up and down the streets, waving little American flags on sticks and smiling at cars as they passed, was still at it. I never could tell if he was some kind of crazy or just really patriotic (sometimes he wore stars and stripes shorts to go with the flags he carried), but he always seemed so happy to be doing such a thing that I feel happy just seeing him. Does that mean that I'm some kind of crazy? Or just really patriotic?

Last night I played in a poker tournament at the local American Legion. Things did not go well for me. Normally in a poker tournament, the payout is determined by figuring out a certain percentage of the prize pool for certain placements (i.e., 1st pays 50% of the prize pool, 2nd pays 30%, 3rd pays 20%, or some other payment structure). But because this tournament was for charity, they had decided that first through fifth places would receive a fixed sum and the rest of the money would go to the charity, in this case, the high school wrestling team. Well, because not as many people showed up as they had hoped, just before the tournament started, they announced that all the prizes would be chopped in half, thereby making the payout nowhere near enough to be worth the entry fee. But I was already seated so I figured I may as well play.

Here's a little side story: Before the tournament started but after it was supposed to start, a probablystonedmuscleydude showed up and paid his entry fee. When they handed him his cup full of chips, he said, "Oh, this is a poker tournament?" The lady taking the entry fees spoke in a fairly condescending voice, "Why honey, what did you think you were signing up for?" "Oh, I thought we were going to wrestle." A moment of silence. "Well honey, how would we do that here? We don't have any mats or anything. People would get hurt trying to wrestle with all these tables on this hard floor." "Well, I just thought it was a wrestling tournament." "Do you know how to play Texas Hold 'Em? Would you like your money back?" "I um. . . Yeah, I know how to play hold 'em, but I always lose. I thought we were going to wrestle. Maybe I shouldn't do this." And so on for about twenty minutes.

Back to the poker. I lost. Miserably. I was at a table full of people (all but one of my opponents) who didn't realize the importance of folding and raising in poker. Call. Call. Call. Call. Calling lots of chips on ace high. Calling lots of chips on a pair of twos. Just calling with monster hands. A table full of calling stations. And I couldn't beat any of them. Frustrating. I wasn't the first person to bust out, but I was the first person to actually leave because I wasn't willing to rebuy because I wasn't about to invest even more money toward winning such a small payout. So, yeah. That's that.

I'm grateful for flagwavingsmileyoldguy (20).

Oscar or Felix?

Yesterday was one of those days that support the argument that I should not be allowed to live with other human beings. To make things worse, it was the kids that got the brunt of my nastiness. They were just being kids - shrieking, running around, not listening, wrestling with each other, doing whatever else they could think of to get attention - and I poured a good deal of cranky on the poor things. At one point, my niece even said to me "Pretend like you aren't family, okay?" Because only family would even consider snapping at such adorable little kids. I hate my grumblywhydoeseveryonekeepdoingthesethings days. They're part of why I moved away from my parents. I kept biting my mom's head off for every little thing she did that was even slightly annoying. Not even annoying sometimes. A lot of the time she was just trying to help. She doesn't need that kind of crap. She has enough real troubles to worry about. But no matter how bad (pretty bad sometimes) I felt about sniping at her, I kept doing it. So, in part, for her sanity as well as mine, I moved in with my sister's family. Guess what? I still get unreasonably snappy, and I still feel bad about. I should not subject my loved ones to this. . . Maybe I should take the J.D. Salinger route, become a hermit writer that no one is really sure is still alive. . .

That last line is sarcasm everyone. I'm just now starting to test the shallow end of the pool of the living, and the water's pretty good. I don't want to get out of it just yet. One of these days I'm going to try that 30-meter diving board.

The irony (maybe not irony, I'm never sure) about my mood yesterday is that I had yoga class in the morning. To start every class, we have a centering time to clear our minds and set a personal goal for that yoga session. My goal? To be more open and understanding with people. Heh. Seems I should work a bit harder on that one. But it was a really good yoga session. None of the elderly women showed up; it was just me and a couple women in their late thirties or forties, so the instructor kind of kicked our asses. Before class, the instructor was telling me about how her baby girl was getting her first tooth and how that made her realize that everything was still new for her. They had taken her to the store, and everything she saw, the people, the products, the lights, everything, was new to her. The instructor said that she was thinking about how when you get older and jaded things often tend to get mundane and redundant. She had decided that for yesterday's class she was going to try to demonstrate how you can battle the mundane by adding a few new poses and by simply altering some of the poses that we do on a more regular basis. Yeah, many of the new poses seriously kicked my ass. The bow comes immediately to mind. She would announce, "Okay, now hold it for three more breaths," and I would think, 'we're supposed to be able to breathe?' I actually felt really good when we came out of the pose, though. We also did the pigeon, which is a pose we do fairly regularly. But she changed it up by having us stay in it for what must've been three to five minutes on each side. The pigeon is not a difficult pose for me, but by the end of it I was probably sweating more than I ever have while doing yoga. I think part of it may be because as part of the pose you rest your head on your hands on the floor. So my body heat and hot breath were collecting in the ring formed by my arms. Once I was able to relax my body and mind into it, however, it felt really good to be laying there, stretched into the pose.

Also, yesterday, as a sort of escape, I started reading for the first time since I got here. I don't know why I haven't been reading. It's something that's always been good for my mental, emotional, and spiritual state. Plus, as a writer I should always be reading something. I don't know why I had taken so much time off. But it felt good to be back at it. The book I've started is Going After Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien. I love the way O'Brien writes. If I were to try to model my writing on any writer, it would probably be him. Of course, I'm trying to develop my own voice, but his is quite compelling. It's been a bit since I've quoted anything, so here's something for you all:

"Paul Berlin, whose only goal was to live long enough to establish goals worth living for still longer, stood high in the tower by the sea, the night soft all around him, and wondered, not for the first time, about the immense powers of his own imagination."

Sounds familiar.

I'm grateful that the son of one of my occasionallurkers got his cast removed a few days ago (20).

Best laid plans

Alright, so today I was planning on getting up early (nope). Then I was going to try to eat a nice nutritious breakfast (uh-uh). After that I was hoping to write for a little bit (I still hadn't gotten out of bed at that point). Next I would go to yoga class (I did do that). Following yoga I was going to write some more (almost) and then eat a good lunch (does devil's food cake with carmel and crushed up bits of Butterfinger count?). Then I would run two miles instead of the one and a half I've been going lately (didn't want to do it, so to get it over with quickly I wound up nearly sprinting to start and too winded to continue by the time I was a few blocks away). Finally, I would update the blog and write for the rest of the afternoon (I am updating the blog, so, almost). What did I do today instead? Online poker. Yup. I've been stinking up the virtual tables of questionable legality. I'm having a low self-esteem day as a writer. I look at the most recent additions to the book and think, I'm going to have to completely eliminate or rewrite all of this crap. So, instead of facing that, today I'm ignoring it. I'm taking a day off from writing. I don't want to hate writing. I don't want to depress myself or make myself feel inadequate. Why would I want a career in something that had such a negative affect on me? I wouldn't. So, instead of forcing myself to fill whitespace with word combinations that never should exist, I've been playing poker. I'm a little worried that poker is going to become my new TV, a retreat away from whatever sucky part of my life I'm exaggerating and obsessing about. I'll keep an eye on it. I don't want to be too comfortable slipping away from reality at a pretend poker table, but for now I think I want to play a little more.

I'm grateful that I now have a real bed with plenty of storage for underwear and books and whatever else I've been keeping in the basement (20).

grateful

All of yesterday and all of today I was planning on writing a monster post about how good the end of this week has been to me, about how I'm finally getting my running legs and lungs back, about how my mom (a little biased, I know) said some really nice things about my latest writing project, about how cute my nieces and nephews are, about how I feel like Tony from West Side Story (something's coming, something good), about how I met with a recruiter at the insurance place and actually wanted to work for that organization, about how the insurance company sent me a letter the next day to ask for more information about me instead of just wishing me luck in my further pursuit of a career, about how playing Halo II online with friends is fun even if it isn't as fun as playing it with friends in the same room, about how amateurish and aggravating and at the same time wonderful the writing group I went to today was, about how I've suddenly decided that I like the sun and walking toward it with my eyes closed and my back arched, but then tonight, I was just spent. Nothing remotely bad has happened to me in the past several days, but I was pretty down for a couple of hours tonight. I know the depression was largely due to exhaustion--late night Halo, phone ringing early in the morning, running, trying to keep up with a group of very chatty, opinionated though unsophisticated (I hate that word choice there, but can't think of something appropriate that isn't condescending at the same time, maybe undeveloped?) writers, writing at the park, helping to deliver newspapers--but I got to thinking, What happens when I do get a job? Will I get this tired and depressed every night? Will I feel like writing? Will I feel like finding a wife? Starting a family? Enjoying that family? When will I find time for yoga AND running? And karate? And. . . Heh. . . Jack Johnson comes to mind here: "He got none but he thinks he got so many problems and he got too much time to waste." Yeah. I'm depressed because I'm not going to have the time or energy to do all the things I want to do? No one does. But I'm not even there yet. How about this first: Start doing the things you want to do. If things start piling up, make room. If there isn't room, pick which things are most important and focus on them. For now, you have plenty of time. Do what you can with it. Write. Date. Run. Sing. Yogasize. Make it so the things that you want to do on the side when you have a career are so ingrained in you that it feels like it would take more of a toll on you not to do them than it would for you to do them. . . Sorry, I sometimes need to give myself little pep talks like that.

I'm grateful. This may seem like a cop-out, but right now I have this overwhelming gratitude toward you, me, that guy over there, the lady from the place, this computer, televised sports, a night clear enough to feel the stars, a filling meal, driving with the windows down, this townstatecountryplanet, the dog that enjoyed smelling my hand but never let me pet him, the universe, God, everything. I'm just grateful (20).

a peek over the edge

Alright, as I began to blog this, my nephew came up and interrupted with a cute story in the making. First, some background. Since I've moved in with my sister's family, I've developed a reputation for sending kids screaming from the room. It's a new skill I've been working on in order to make myself more valuable in the job market. So anyway, my nephew came up to the table to see what I was doing. When he recognized that it had nothing to do with cars, trucks, buses, or tractors, he turned to leave. Then, as if he suddenly realized that any computer could have pictures of cars, trucks, buses, or tractors if you flirt enough with the grownup sitting in front of it, he spun around, in the process smashing his face on the corner of the table. "Are you alright?" He looked stunned, but wasn't crying. "You're alright." Confusion. "You're fine." Realization. He ran into the other room where both of his parents were. "I didn't do it," I shouted. WaaaahhhWaaahhhWaaahhh. Once again, a kid runs screaming from the room with his uncle. . . sigh. . .

So, at the writer's convention, I went to a session about creative nonfiction. One of the most important things I took out of the session was that you should never bring the reader to the edge of the cliff without giving them a look over it. If you aren't willing to go into detail about certain episodes, you should leave those episodes out entirely. Well, in the name of full disclosure, I wasn't just panicking earlier this week, I had a couple of panic attacks, which is new to me. I've had issues with my nerves my entire life, but I've never really experienced anything quite like this. I was sweating, having a hard time breathing (maybe hyperventilating), pacing furiously, saying who knows what, fidgeting with my hands, rubbing them together, and I don't know what else. During each of these episodes, there was a logical sanity in my head saying, "Calm the fuck down. This won't help you with anything. You will come out of this whole experience, and you will be better because of it." etc. etc. etc. But there's a sort of anti-logic to panic that's almost as convincing as actual logic. "Imagine how good you'll feel if you just give in and allow yourself to become a panicked wreck. Chicks dig a guy that's an emotional wreck." Yeah, shut the fuck up panic. I'm not listening. I'm plugging my ears and humming the Belgian farting pig song (I can't believe I just linked to that. I blame Piwok). As I made the mistake of freaking out in front of my mother, I wound up in front of the doctor Tuesday afternoon. He said he had never heard of anyone reacting to the medication I was on for my headaches in such a fashion, but we might as well take me off of it anyway since I seem to be having more headaches while I've been on it than I did when I wasn't on it. He also gave me a prescription for something to take if I feel another panic attack coming on. He says a lot of times just having the medication available is helpful, because once someone has had a panic attack, they tend start to worry that they will have another one, and that worrying will actually trigger another one. So having something that I know will stop a panic attack, might actually keep me from ever needing to use it. Did that make sense? So, that's where it stands I guess. I'm supposed to give him a call in a week and tell him where I'm at. If I'm still not happy with what's going on with my headaches and my anxiety, he said he thinks that maybe we'll skip the beta-blockers and anti-seizure medicines and try some anti-depressants because that will probably help with anxiety as well as the headaches. Honestly, what will help my head and my anxiety the most is a job, a girlfriend, a publisher/agent, or a life. . . Until then. . .

I was going to write about the job search today. But really, I just went back to the insurance place and talked to a guy who said that they would start out seeing if I was a fit for any of the agencies needing someone in underwriting or claims. He said it would take at least two weeks to get my info spread out. So. . . more waiting. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Fun.

I ate lunch today at one of those greasy places that has those place mats with ads for various local businesses (usually septic maintenance companies, construction companies, and what-not). This one had an ad for His Way Alpaca Farms, because if you're going to be buying an alpaca, you really should be buying one that was raised how the Lord wanted him raised. . . I'm grateful for that (20).

ah crap

I just spent the past hour finishing the story of the writer's convention and when I was preparing to be grateful I got "Explorer has encountered a problem and must shut down." Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap. So I lost everything. I'm not sure if it was really good enough to write again, so you guys may have to be left in the dark regarding what happened during the rest of the convention.

I'm grateful for this comic given to me by z-man (20).

corrections

Alright, a few corrections on my last two posts:

Street Beater: I realize that the lyrics to that Fountains of Wayne song are actually "I'm gonna get my shit together," but the words feeding the panic in my head were "I gotta get my shit together." Sorry if some of you were citing my blog as a source for your big important research papers and were led to use incorrect lyrics because of me. But really, you should know better than to quote me for anything academic.

The Convention: Since I quoted the keynote speaker, I feel I should probably mention his name to give him some credit: Lev Raphael.

I'm grateful for kind words from strangers (20).

Street Beater

Alright, so today and yesterday I've been having some emotional issues. Yesterday I woke with this urge to be somewhere else, doing something else, maybe even being someone else. So I drove to my parent's house. Mostly for the drive I think. I wanted to drive, but I didn't want to be alone at the end of the drive. So I came to my parent's house, where I am right now. I think I'll stay one more night, take advantage of their cable sports channels, and watch the Red Wings. This morning I woke and I wasn't too bad. But I had that song "Bright Future in Sales" by Fountains of Wayne running through my head, and so I went online to actually listen to it, and the whole "I gotta get my shit together" bit sent me into a bit of a panic. I kept hearing that line over and over in my head. Igottagetmyshittogethergottagetmyshittogethergetmyshittogether. . . And I had a hard time breathing and thinking and. . . That song. . . I needed to get it out of my head. So thanks to the happiest theme song ever, I was able to get the song out of my head and collect myself. I'm not sure what any of this means, but I really do need to get my shit together.

the convention

The writer's conference was yesterday. Funny how I didn't have the energy or motivation to write about the writer's conference on the day of the writer's conference. Actually, that's not true. I did write about it. I just never put it down on paper or screen. So we'll start from the beginning.

I got there too early. By at least a half an hour. I'd never been to the west campus of the school before, and I didn't know what the parking situation would be like, and I didn't want to be rushed. There was a lot of free parking right in front of the building. I got there way too early. When I arrived, there were already a bunch of people, professionals in businesswear, milling about the tables in the hallway. I thought that these people did not look like writers. I was correct. There was a dentist convention going on at the same time. So, I went into the bathroom, and a man, blatantly ignoring men's room etiquette, came up to the urinal next to mine despite the numerous empty urinals that would leave a buffer urinal between the two of us. Out of the corner of my eye I saw his glasses, slightly mussed hair, and nice shirt that didn't quite fit right, and thought that this guy looked like a writer. He washed his hands a little quicker than I, and I therefore had to wait behind him at the paper towel dispenser. He apologized as if his presence were regretful. He was a writer alright. Back out in the main hall/lobby area, I didn't see the man from the bathroom. But, a little ways past the dentists there was a momish woman and a dangerously (illegally?) young woman, who I later found out was kurtvonnegutskiller, standing awkwardly and chatting. I went up to them and asked if they were with the writers, and they said that they were. We smalltalked a bit. What do you write? What do you read? Is this your first convention? And the normal blah that goes into laying the foundation for more meaningful conversations later on. Then the man from the bathroom joined us, made a sarcastic joke of a question having something to do with how many books we had each written, or were writing, or. . . I can't remember. It wasn't funny. But the effort was appreciated and I think we laughed. kurtvonnegutskiller explained her writing with a fairly pretentious swagger of teen cynicism and overconfidence. The momish woman had disappeared. They asked me what I wrote, and I just said stuff. I have a clever answer that I like to use when people ask me that question. But I didn't really feel like bringing it out at this point. Then the man from the bathroom told us that he had researched Salem a lot, and he was writing a book based on that research, and something else that I'm failing to remember right now. He then said that he wasn't sure he was going to finish it, because his mom had read it and said that people who don't know a lot about Salem wouldn't really get that much out of it. kurtvonnegutskiller said that he should finish it because she loved stuff based in Salem, and I then kind of slinked away because the two seemed to be kind of hitting it off a bit, and I didn't want to interfere with the jailbaiting. . . Before the event actually began, kurtvonnegutskiller had left the man from the bathroom, and he came back up to me. It turns out, I think he was maybe a warning to me: a 42-year-old man who was just now starting to make it without his parent's supporting him financially. I'm not sure why he shared this bit of information about himself when he'd just met me, but I'm glad he did. It makes me think, at least I'm not to that point. . . but don't let yourself get to that point either. He was a really nice guy though. Smart. Friendly. He offered me so much advice and encouragement. Whenever I would mention some plan or idea of mine, he would say "I think you should do it. Yeah. It sounds good. What could it hurt, you know?" I was glad to have met him, and we sat together during the keynote speaker, a good credentialed author who many people, not including me, have heard of. He's published like eighteen books and done things for NPR and several of his books have been translated for international publication and he's won awards and one of his books is in works to be made into a movie. But anyway, while we were sitting at our table, waiting for the keynote speech, a guy with scraggly long hair came, set all of his stuff on the table, sat for less than ten seconds, and then stood and hurried out of the room. I had never seen a picture of the keynote speaker, but I knew that this guy must be him. When he got back, I, along with the other people at the table, got to speak with him for a few minutes before he went on. He was nice, funny, and very approachable.

The Keynote Speech

The keynote speech was good and bad all at once. It was good in that it was very entertaining and had some good advice that I found quite helpful. It was bad in that it started with the guy tooting his own horn, listing credentials that were already listed by the woman who introduced him, and had a lot of the cliche advice that one can get out of every book on writing known to man: in order to write, you must read. . . blah. . . I actually wrote down several of the things he said, because they seemed relevant to me. The one I'll share here seems relevant to this blog: "Lack of experience can lead to a book. The things that don't happen are often as important as the things that do." I hope that's true. I've got a life full of things that didn't happen. Another thing that he said that struck a chord with me was that, instead of trying to find an agent right away, it might be just as beneficial to seek one of the smaller publishing houses that accept unagented submissions. . .

alright. I'm getting tired. I don't want to cut any more corners than I already have on this post. I'll finish it tomorrow.

I'm grateful for Stranger Than Fiction (20). Wow, did I love that movie.

Expecting too much

So today I was going to storm the local insurance companies. I donned my suit, equipped my laptop and binder, and mapped out my plan of attack. I would take on the national headquarters of two mid-large insurance companies on their home turf. I would be charming. I would smile. I would be confident, walk tall. I would sell myself. I would shake hands, look them in the eye, and say "Thank you for the time. It was a pleasure. I look forward to speaking with you again." I would leave with my head up. They would think to themselves, "Boy, we need that guy in our company. How have we gotten along so long without him?". . . Um. . . Ok. . . reality. . . I would realize that the location Google maps gave me for the first place I planned to stop is nowhere near the headquarters of this company (nearly opposite sides of town, actually). I would curse under my breath. I would take an unintentional detour on the way to the next place because I apparently can't curse under my breath and remain in the appropriate lane at the same time. I would take an unmarked detour after facing a road that more resembled a dirt parking lot for construction machinery. I would drive past a road with a name strangely similar to the road I was looking for, but the road I was looking for didn't have a 'c' in it. I would drive past the expressway, realize that I wasn't supposed to drive past the expressway, and look at the map to realize that the street I was looking for did indeed have a 'c' in its name. . . When I finally did arrive at the second place, I went into the wrong building. "Personnel is across the street." Wow. The building across the street was something. A big, flowing water fountain. Nice furniture. Ambient lighting instead of blue-white flickering fluorescence. I would like to work in that building. Unfortunately, all of the recruiting agents had left for the day. Gone by 2:00 on Friday? I would like to be a recruiting agent. So, I filled out one of the forms and I'm supposed to stop by sometime next week. . . Damndamndamndamndamn. I was hoping for some kind of hope. I should've left earlier. I should've gotten up earlier. I should've lots of things.

I'm going to a writer's conference tomorrow. I think I've already mentioned that I was planning on going to it. It should be interesting. I got hold of the schedule of events. The last session doesn't really have an event that I'm interested in, but the second session has three. Doesn't that just figure? I'll probably go to something during that last session, just in case there are some networking/friend-making opportunities, and maybe flit through a couple of the events during the second session. I'm looking forward to it. It should be fun.

I'm grateful that I'm somewhat familiar with the area and able to say that I was never really lost today, even though I strayed from my path several times (20).

As promised. . . the plunger

It seems like every time I'm looking after the kids and my niece needs to go into the bathroom there's an incident. The first time, I was helping her with something (maybe washing her hands?) after she had finished, and I didn't notice that her brother, the sideways-looking type, was aiming a nerf ball at the toilet. Let me tell you something: you haven't really lived until you've fished a urine-soaked nerf ball out of the crapper. . . As for the plunger incident, last night I put my niece on the toilet, and. . . well. . . I lost track of her brother again. At some point, he stuffed a big wad of toilet paper into the toilet and then flushed. His sister, announcing that the water wasn't going down, proceeded to flush the toilet again. That's where everything went into slow motion: "Nnnnnnnnooooooooo!!!" I hollered as I lunged far too slowly to stop anything. Water, water everywhere. . . In case you were wondering, they keep the plunger next to the mops and stuff in the hallway at the top of the basement stairs.

I went to my old lady yoga class again today. There were two more old ladies than the first time I went. I'm thinking I may actually stick with this class as long as my schedule will allow it. If there were a bunch of young, flexible women around, I may be distracted from the yoga or a bit more self-conscious about my poor form. Plus, the instructor has really helped me to feel welcome in the class. She's given me advice on the job search and recommended a book for me to read. I've really enjoyed the class the two times I've been to it. And during this second class, we did a lot of poses different from the poses we did the first time I went. I think the new lady had some hip issues, so we did a lot of poses that work on the hips. Which is good for me, because my hips may be my weakest part. At least, I seem to feel it most whenever a pose works the hips. . .

Oh, one more thing. I just found out that this MA program doesn't require the GRE for admission. So that's a bit of a relief for me. I wasn't really sure I'd be able to get the test in in time to meet the deadline. Now that I know I don't have to take it quite yet, I can relax a bit more and focus more on the writing samples and the job search.

I'm grateful for not having to take the GRE. . . yet (20).

I wish I were 4

So my niece is right now at the point where the whole toilet training thing is starting to come together. Which is really good. Tonight, she was so excited about her success for the day that she was running/skipping/trotting/bouncing/crazying around, waving her hands, and shouting "I peed and pooped today! I peed and pooped today!" I wish I were in that place in my life. I can't imagine how blissful my life would be if I were able to count days as successes if I both peed and pooped during them. Maybe I'm just expecting too much out of life? I don't know.

After that downer post from this morning, I got a little bit of the fire in my belly going. I want more from my life. I want it now (Verruca?). But now doesn't seem to be completely realistic. So I want it at the soonest now I can get. My first move was to look around on careerbuilder.com (again). There were several promising looking postings, but they seemed similar to others that I've already applied to with no real positive end for me. But I'll apply anyway. But I started admitting to myself one thing that I was trying to avoid admitting to myself: I probably need to go back to school. . . crap. . . crapcrapcrap. . . So I looked at the graduate programs at MSU, and they've got an MA in Digital Rhetoric and Professional Writing that looks pretty good for me. The website says that the degree is a professional degree and also preps students for PhD programs in Rhetoric and Writing. Sounds good to me. Looks like working toward the degree will give me the opportunity to gain experiences like internships and even publishing that are distinctly lacking from my resume. Cool. The fact that it can feed in to the PhD at MSU is another plus. Looking back on my BA, I've realized that it was mostly the literature classes that burned me out on studying English. I loved my linguistics, rhetoric, composition, editing, and other similar classes. But the lit classes were just so much of the same thing. I loved reading all the different literature. But I hated writing papers about literature because it was always so clear what the professor was looking for from a paper (regurgitation and imitation), and I rarely got the opportunity to express my own opinion instead of an opinion that synced with what the professor expected. . . That last bit probably makes more sense to me than anyone else. Sorry. . . But I loved my classes that emphasized writing and the mechanics of language and what have you. So if I were to get a PhD and maybe even teach someday, it would probably be best for me if it were to be a degree in Grammar and Rhetoric. . . Oh yeah. School would be a good place for me to meet people, especially since I'm now in the mindset of trying to meet people. . .

OK. So here's the plan: I'm going to take the GRE real quick and apply to the program before the May 1 deadline. At the same time, I'm going to keep looking for work. If the work I find seems like a career that I would like to stick with, then I probably won't go back to school. If the work I find involves a nametag or a mop and I get accepted to the MA program, I'll probably go back to school. So that's the plan.

When I got back to my sister's place, my sister told me that one of her friends from work thought I should apply to work for one of the insurance companies in the area that's going to be opening a new branch in the area soon. As my brother's-in-law barber, whose wife works for that same insurance company, had also recommended that I apply there, I feel like I really need to do that.

I was going to tell you the story about how, while I was looking after my niece and nephew, I got to find out where my sister and her husband keep their plunger, but I think I'll maybe leave that for another post.

I'm grateful for the fire in my belly (20).

Homeless

So, I'm here at my parents's house after the holiday weekend. I'm heading back to my sister's later in the afternoon, but I haven't posted in a few days and I want to get this thing updated while I have the chance. The first sentence and the clause that followed it to start this post reflect a recent revelation of mine: I have no home. After spending a few weekends here at my parents's house, I realize that it depresses me. A lot. The house has come to be a symbol of everything that I've been struggling against in the past few months, and it depresses the hell out of me. Earlier, I went up into my room to gather my stuff up, and I nearly started crying. It was as if the room was haunted by the daysmonthsyears of my life that I had killed in the space, and I was overwhelmed by the loss of such valuable time. I may not be able to come back here until I get my life a little more in order. However, I'm not really at home at my sister's house either. Her family has done so much to make me feel comfortable and at home, but it will always be their house. I will always feel the need to ask before doing certain things. I will always feel like I'm not contributing as much as I should. I will always feel slightly out of place and in the way. And there's nothing anyone can do to change it. It's the way things probably should be. I'm extended family, not immediate family. I should be living in my own place, making my own immediate family. I'm planning on using my lack of a home as motivation to get my shit together and get out on my own. Not my sister's own. My own. I need an all out attack on the job market. . . On that note: I got another job rejection today. It was actually a position that I don't even remember applying for. . .

While here at my parents's, I got out my classical guitar for the first time in a long while. I had forgotten about how soothing playing the classical guitar can be when compared with playing a regular acoustic. I'm considering taking the classical guitar back to my sister's, but I'm not sure if there's enough space for me to have two guitars there right now. . . That's it for now.

"Homeless, homeless
Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake." Paul Simon, "Homeless"

I'm grateful for always having a roof and clothes and food, even though I've been homeless and jobless for quite some time now (20).

Maybe I wasn't being sarcastic. . .

You remember how I wrote, "Maybe I should become a yoga teacher. . ." in my last post? Well, after the idea has bounced around in my head for the past couple of days, it doesn't seem as ridiculous as it once seemed. I can think of worse things to do with my time. Yoga has been really good for me. So it's probably really good for other people as well. I wouldn't mind being able to share with other people something that's helped me so much. . . Of course, I don't know that a Yoga instructor can really make a living off of teaching Yoga alone. . . I guess I'm not at the point where I'm taking the idea very seriously or rejecting the idea entirely. I'm just mulling it over. . .

I applied for more jobs around town. No bites yet, but something will come. . . I haven't been able to run during the last couple of days due to the nice Easter snow we've been having. I'm finally getting to the point where I feel like my body's adjusting to the headache medication and where I feel like I'll actually be able to put together a decent run, and the weather says, "Not so fast. I'm gonna be COLD." Crazyspringwinter.

I'm grateful for goodnight hugs and kisses from nieces and nephews (20).

Holy Crap!

It's 9:00 already? Today just kind of happened. And I'm not really sure if I was here for any of it. I didn't do much. I don't think. But here we are at the end of the day, so something must have happened.

Last night I observed a Ryu Te, martial arts, class. I liked some of what I saw and also disliked some of what I saw. I don't know exactly what the best criteria for picking out a dojo is, but here's something I do know: No matter what dojo you go to, no matter what style they teach, a representative for that organization will come up to you and try to sell their system to you, and their system, no matter what system it is, is the most complete system offered anywhere other than eastern Asia. The other systems are all too flashy with no real substance. They emphasize this aspect of the martial arts by neglecting this other aspect. These other systems are all impractical. . . The head of this dojo I went to last night was a real salesman. He asked two questions, "What didn't you like about your last dojo?" and "What other dojos are you planning on visiting?" Then he depicted his school so that it sounded exactly the opposite of my previous experiences. He told me everything that was wrong with the schools I was planning on visiting. He put me in an arm lock (he called it an arm bar, but it wasn't really what I would call an arm bar) and bent me over at the waist to show how effective his style was. He was a pretty good salesman. But I don't like being sold to. . . Also, the class didn't really include any conditioning or strength building exercises. All of the students, even (or maybe especially) the advanced ones, had large bellies that shook when they laughed. I asked the instructor (sifu?, sensei?, I don't know his title) if he had some sort of routine he taught or recommended, and he said not really, because this system didn't really rely on strength (for some reason I thought of the instructor guy from Napoleon Dynamite right at this moment) so there was no point in building up your muscles. . . What? The way I look at it (though, the more I look, the less certain I am that I'm right), studying martial arts is supposed to develop the entire person physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. Even if I don't need to be strong to use this style effectively, wouldn't it be good for me as a person to be in good physical condition? . . So, I'm not sure about this place. I haven't mentioned the good stuff about the school. But I think I've exhausted myself on the subject.

This morning I went to a yoga class. Most yoga classes seem to offer the first class for free, so I'll probably do a circuit through as many of the free introductory classes as I can find. The class itself was quite good. Having an actual person there to correct my mistakes and offer encouragement tailored specifically to me was incredibly useful. . . On a quick side note: When I said that yoga class would be a good place for me to meet people, I had meant yoga class would be a good place for me to meet female people. And when I say that yoga class would be a good place for me to meet female people, I mean that yoga class would be a good place for me to meet female people that haven't yet reached menopause. When I say that, I am completely inaccurate if I'm discussing the yoga class I went to this morning. . . A kind of funny little factoid about this yoga group is that it meets in a local wedding chapel. I chuckled to myself a bit when we were laying on our backs with our arms stretched out to the side, kind of crucifiedish, and we then turned our heads to the left where there was a big stained-glass depiction of Christ as the good shepherd. I'm not sure if that kind of connection is irony or blasphemy, but. . . Heh, the yoga class had a part during which we all were supposed to say namaste, which literally means "I bow to you" but has more of a 'best wishes' or 'peace' or 'good tidings' or some general message of well-wishing/gratefulness, to each other. That part of the class reminded me of the "peace be with you" part of the Catholic service I went to a while back. It's amazing how similar these very, very different ways of life can be.

I finally have a bed here at my sister's place. I'm sitting on it as I type. It'll be nice to be able to sleep without waking up to catch myself from falling over the edge or to rearrange the couch cushions. We also seem to have gotten my Internet issues taken care of, so I can now access the web from my laptop and will hopefully be updating a lot more regularly now.

I'm grateful for yoga instructors who can relate to a guy trying to figure out what to do with an English degree (20). Maybe I should become a yoga teacher. . .

Not a lot of news yet

Well, I don't have much news as of yet. The new headache medicine seems to be working pretty well for me to this point. Of course, my good head condition might have just as much to do with the fact that I've eased up (not abandoned, just relaxed) on the headache diet a bit and am no longer stressing out about every little thing I put into my body. I am still going to try to eat healthier, however. . . Unfortunately, I fear the medicine is affecting my running. I can't seem to make it very far at all before I completely peter out. I have been assured that my body will adjust to the medication after a bit, and I should be able to get back to "normal." I can't tell how much of my drowsiness is a result of the medicine and how much is a result of the rest of my life. But hopefully once I've adjusted to the medicine I'll be a bit more alert again. . .

I got a phone call from myfavoriteaunt yesterday. It was strange that she was calling to talk to me because I have little to no contact with any of my extended family. However, I'm glad that she did call. She called to tell me about a week-long writer's workshop that's going to be held in her area in June, and offered to let me stay with her and my uncle during the workshop if I decide I want to go. She also offered to pay for my application fee because she knows I'm not working and that money is a big concern of mine right now. How nice is that? I've wanted to do one of these extended writer's workshop/getaway things for some time now, but I haven't done it because of school and the fact that during the past tenish years of my life I haven't really had any definite idea about where I was going to be within a couple of months of any given time (as it turns out, a good bet would've been my parents' house). I'm kind of on the fence about committing to the workshop right now because I hope to have a job by then, and if I do, who knows if I'll be allowed time off. At the same time, however, my new no-procrastinating goal would seem to indicate that I shouldn't avoid doing something that I want to do simply because some other obligation may arise later on. I also would like the opportunity to get to know my Aunt and Uncle a little better. I've been hermiting myself away so much lately that I don't really know a lot of the people that I feel I should know. I should decide for sure by the end of the week, but I think that right now there's a 75% chance that I'll end up going.

Now for a story about me being a really bad uncle: So my nephew was sick and throwing up on Saturday. While my sister and brother-in-law were dealing with him, I tried to keep my niece out of their hair by playing with her. Good plan, huh? Well, wait until you hear the rest of the plan. The second part of this plan was to send my niece screaming to her mother's arms while bleeding from the lip. Yeah. Distract the kid with a gushing wound. Good plan. The best part of the story, however, is that after she was mostly calmed down, my niece came up to me and said, "Uncle [Procrastinator], next time try not to do that. Okay?" Okay. I'll try not to make you bleed anymore. I promise.

I'm grateful for myfavoriteaunt (20).