What did I just say? No recollection

 

In the past two days, two people have asked me if I'm really a chronic malcontent. I've been complaining in this space since, what, 2010? Maybe this whole blog thing I do isn't clear to anyone but me. You will interpret things I write in your own special way. Probably the most practical lesson I have learned in my years of working a program has been that what others think of me is none of my concern. 

In the past, stating something like that has gotten me into hot water with my family. I can't say I care much. I'm distracted by things other than my blog and its readers. On Monday, in broad daylight, a young white man walked past my window carrying a long gun as if he was looking for someone and meant to use it. Ten minutes later, five police officers showed up with weapons drawn. On Wednesday night around midnight, someone pounded hard on my door. I peeked through the blinds and saw a young white man (not the guy with the gun) standing outside my door as if he expected me to open it for him. Maybe he was looking for the person who lives in the other same-number apartment in the other section of the complex. I didn't open my door to find out. 

I'm hunkered in my burrow, figuratively speaking, wondering how long before I give up trying to fend off reality. Maybe I'm chronically malcontented, maybe I'm just situationally malcontented. Maybe when that stupid ship I have always believed was offshore finally flounders in tie up at my dock, I can heave a sigh of relief and relax. Meanwhile, I soldier on, taking care of bithneth. 

Yesterday my friend E witnessed my signature on my healthcare powers of attorney. My sister now has the authority to pull the plug. I need to mail copies to the State of Arizona and drop off copies to my doctor's office. Next on my list is to fill out the POLST form (printed on orange paper, don't forget) and then write my will. The fun never stops. 

Last night I went through my closet yet again and pulled out some jackets I brought with me, thinking, who knows, COVID might end someday and I might need to look business-presentable. Now both things are unlikely, and I am no longer planning for a future in which it matters how I look. I'm letting go, not hanging on. It's past time to relinquish the past. Into the thrift store donation box the jackets went. I'm trying not to think about the long spaces of time that open up before me when I am less obsessed about my possessions. 

My next task last night was to go through a box of my old writings. I should have done this before I moved. I dug into some dogeared folders and found essays from early college days, as well as some lined notebooks of handwritten stories half-started, never finished. I used my old printer to scan the few things I thought worthy of keeping and jammed the moldering paper in a sack for recycling. 

Some of the handwritten stuff was hard to read. The ink was faded, the handwriting was illegible, and the ideas were trite, melodramatic, and self-conscious (unlike this blog). I had forgotten how much angst I used to have. All my characters were morose and self-righteous, all the scenarios were tense and predictable. If you think I'm a bitter writer now, you should have seen some of the stuff I tore up into pieces last night. Compared to that writer, the malcontent you meet here in this blog is Little Mary Sunshine. 

It serves no purpose except self-centered self-flagellation to retain that part of my past, even in stories. Self-flagellation is so 1980s. Stick a fork in me. Even these documents I've scanned will be lost in the cloud once I'm gone, as links to shared folders fade in memory and email addresses gather dust. Nobody cares. And I no longer care. I'm paring down, letting go, simplifying in preparation for the next adventure. Bottom line, like all humans, I will shuffle off this mortal coil empty-handed. All this stuff I thought was so essential to my wellbeing has become a concrete block around my neck. I feel a great sense of relief to lighten my load. Seven months left on my lease, then I'm off to the unknown. If I don't get shot by a stray bullet while eating my eggs and veggies. 

 

The chronic malcontent meets Jack and Jill

I'm not seeing anything funny to blog about these days. The world is in chaos, the helpless are suffering ... I'm starting to think it might be true: we really are all going to hell in a hand-basket. My brain keeps searching around for something ironic and witty to say, like a squirrel sifting gravel for peanuts. I'm just not finding the nuggets. Somewhere beyond the rainbow, humor still exists, I am sure. I hope.

Bravadita is in London. My sister is in Boston. My mother is in la-la land, disintegrating before my eyes. To top it off, the clouds won't go away. Summer refuses to appear. We've been lucky to hit 70°. I guess some people like it.

Last week I was trotting around the reservoir at Mt. Tabor Park. I happened to spy a young man trying to push a rather large young woman in a wheelchair along a dusty dirt path. The chair was heading downhill. The slope was getting steeper and bumpier with clumpy grass and weeds. The young caregiver was about half the size of his charge, and I could predict impending disaster.

I trotted up the path to intercept them. “You need some help?” I asked. A modern day Jack and Jill, I thought to myself.

They didn't say no, so I helped the young man turn the wheelchair around so his body could block the chair from escaping down the hill. I lent my weight as backup, trying to find places to grab that didn't involve her purse, her lap, or her long hair. The skinny dude was pink with exertion, casting anxious glances over his shoulder at the terrain. I was breathing hard myself.

Soon we got the wheelchair down the slope onto a smoother path and turned her around so the chair was facing forward again. “Okay, take care!” I said cheerfully, stepping back.

As I walked on my way, I reflected on what had just happened. It was a slice of real life: We sweated together for a minute and then parted ways. I realized I hadn't actually looked either of them in the face. Is that odd? I wouldn't recognize them again if they weren't in the same configuration, perched precariously on a steep dirt path.

I was glad I had arrived before she went barreling down the hill. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after ... rolling over Jack and breaking the rest of his skinny bones.

Offroading in a wheelchair seems a risky thing to do. But what do I know, I'm not in a wheelchair. Breaking free and speeding downhill might be perfectly sensible to someone who feels trapped in a seated position all the time.

The chronic malcontent experiences ego deflation

Happy effing new year, readers. All 10 or 12 of you. I hope this year all your pleasant dreams come true (and none of the nightmares). Me, I just hope to stay present as the moments sweep me along, if not savoring each treacherous moment, at least, not wishing I were somewhere else doing something else. I'm just hoping to be here now. What else is there? I've spent years trying to fix my past and manage my future, and look where that got me. Broke, flabby, and discontented. Joke's on me.

Once again, it seems whatever mojo I enjoyed over the past few months has evaporated as I've been sinking into my mother's shrinking world. Aspirations of art, writing, doing something with myself, all seem to be misting into nothing. Late middle-aged woman, interrupted. Again. Interruptions in the past I blamed on partners. This time it's my maternal parental unit who has become the baby planet nucleus of my parched existence. I've whined about this before, sorry if it is getting boring. It's boring to me too, and it's my life. I suppose it's hard to sink lower than the realization that I'm bored with myself.

I had an idea for a story today. This is nothing new. I'm a dreamer, ideas are like breathing. The frothy cloud of creativity burbled in my chest. My heart rate accelerated. I suppose my eyes twinkled, although I'm not really sure (they sometimes dance from vertigo). I chortled once. If I remember, I will commit it to a Word doc and save it in a folder that I will rarely look into again. I have enough ideas in there to last a while. Unformed hazy potential.

As I've grown older and less optimistic, I've finally stopped seeing creativity as the antidote to my malcontentedness. My creative life has pretty much shrunk to this blog, the electronic platform from which I whine. I used to paint, but what do you do with a bunch of paintings nobody wants? Build furniture out of the particle board panels. Cut the canvases into strips and weave them into placements. See? An idea a minute. I sit in meetings and draw the images you see on this blog. I have a notebook-a-month going back to 1995. Who wants them, raise your hand.

The excessive-thinking malady brought on by fear of downsizing is cutting the crutches out from under my wobbly creative spirit. Too much stuff is at war with need more stuff. (What's up with stuff, anyway? How did it turn into my higher power? There's a topic for another rant.) The Love Shack is not a big place, but more to the point, I will not last forever. Before I die, if I have the choice, I would like to jettison some of this baggage and abandon myself to the creative spirit. I'm sure it's still in me somewhere, waiting patiently for an invitation to peek around the door.

All hail the limited nuclear option

I've had a problem with ants at the Love Shack since I moved here over ten years ago, but with these warmer winters, the little beggars have been relentlessly staking out territory in every room. The kitchen, of course, would be an ant's first target: That's where the cat and I consume and spill the most food. In the living room, trails of ants congregate around the couch (where I spill food) and around the occasional pile of cat barf that blends into the rug so I don't see it.

In the bedroom, as I believe I have previously mentioned, the ants found an art project I did some years ago, which consisted of large jellybeans glued to a frame. I forget what the frame was framing; it was the colorful jellybeans that I liked, especially when sprayed with clear lacquer so they were bright and shiny. Like brand new jellybeans! Apparently, the lacquer on one of the beans finally disintegrated, thus opening the door to a swarm of ants, who marched out of the crack between the ceiling and the wall to raid the sugar in the jellybeans. This plundering of my art must have been going on for years, judging by the trail the ants left behind. I never knew; it was all happening up near the ceiling, and really, who checks for ants up near the ceiling?

And then, the bathroom, which you would think would be uninteresting to an ant, but I've bemoaned the sad fact that ants have congregated on my toothbrush before. Lately, a few scouts can be found wandering in the empty tub, for what reason I do not know. Lousy beggars.

Anyway, all that was to say, I've had a few problems with ants. I've been using bait traps, and that worked for a time, but after a while, I think the ant nests developed an immunity, like Portlanders develop an immunity to rain. One day a few months ago after feeling particularly dejected at ants biting the back of my neck, in my typical malcontented fashion, I happened to mention the situation to my friend Carlita. She recommended a product to spray inside and outside the Love Shack. I got some of that product. I sprayed. Carlita, I can't thank you enough. All hail the limited nuclear option!

For a day or two after I sprayed the window by the cat food, the ants were wobbling around like the walking dead. Then they all keeled over, like they had been mowed down with an unseen fist. With glee I swept up their tiny desiccated carcasses into little piles. The next day I swept up more! Ants fell out of the sky into the cat's water and floated there in little clumps, stiff and lifeless. A few desperate ants crawled up my shirt to lodge a complaint on my head, to no avail, of course. Once you've killed, it gets easier to kill again, I've heard. (Did you know ants smell rather pungent when you shmush them?)

Hallelujah, is all I can say. Yeah, it's a bit toxic, especially if you spray into the wind, but it's worth giving up some brain cells to finally beat back the relentless hordes. I'm thinking of taking up a foreign language to offset the loss of neurons, hoping to stave off Alzheimer's a little longer. Russian, maybe, or Spanish. (And if that ploy doesn't work, at least it will be easier to communicate with the CNAs in the nursing home. Although, who will be left standing to send me to a nursing home, I wonder? I live alone, so odds are nobody will know if I descend into dementia. But while I sit around wondering what day it is, at least the Love Shack will be ant free!)

If I wait long enough

I realized last night as I tried to fall asleep after watching back-to-back episodes of The Walking Dead on the re-run channel, few things give me more pleasure than posting to this blog. I return to this blog like returning to a old friend, the kind of friend who listens unconditionally, thereby giving me space to say the next stupid thing that comes to mind. How rare is that, to find that generous a friend?

What shall I tell you today, friend? Would you like to hear about the unseasonably warm weather we are having here on the west coast? No, probably not, not if you live on the east coast, where you are slipping on ice or buried under seven feet of snow. I'm sorry for you, truly. Out here on the frontier the air is downright balmy. I still fear winter will return with a vengeance, but the trees, shrubs, and daffodils apparently don't agree. Nor does my cat, who after fluffing up during the month of January is now shedding like it's spring. The National Weather Service informs me that it is 56°F here in the Mt. Tabor area of the Rose City, and it's only 1:00 p.m. This is bizarre. My conclusion is that I don't have to pack up and move to a warmer, drier climate; apparently if I wait long enough, my preferred climate will come to me.

Still, it's a mixed blessing: I enjoy these warmer drier days, but I know we need snow on our mountain if we will avoid water shortages next summer. And if I were a skier or snowboarder or a snow resort operator on Mt. Hood, I would be totally bummed. The sun is trying to shine right now. I'm opting for living in the moment.

But enough about our warm winter. What else can I tell you?

My scrawny old mother and I are still trying to find a retirement community for her to join. On Tuesday morning we met at a third place, just up the street from her condo. I was a bit perplexed at not being able to find its website, but our senior placement adviser, Doug, had assured us he had placed many happy old folks there. Mom was skeptical, but doing our due diligence, we thought we should at least go look at the place. The sky was blue, the sun was warm. Great day to tour an old folks' home.

I got there early. I parked on a side street and started walking around the parking lot of the two-building complex. As far as I could tell, the place consisted of artists' lofts, studios, and gallery spaces. I didn't see any wheelchair ramps. No blue-haired women pushing walkers. No wobbling old bald men soaking up the sun. The place looked quiet and deserted, and the signs around the parking lot advised us to park elsewhere.

I turned and spotted my mother trotting toward me. She wore her trademark red fleece jacket and thrift store faded blue jeans with tidy creases permanently sewn in. She sported huge dark glasses over her regular glasses and a knitted cap on her short gray hair. I wore much the same thing (sans the huge dark glasses and the creases in my jeans).

“Where do we go?” she said.

“I don't think it's here anymore,” I replied. “All I see is a gallery, and it's closed. That building says 'Lofts' and that building says 'Studios.'”

A long-haired young woman wearing Uggs was scuffing slowly along on the sidewalk near us, smoking a cigarette. I stopped her and asked if she knew anything about the buildings.

“Yeah, I live here,” she said neutrally.

I asked if there was a retirement community here. She said no, not anymore, and wandered on her way. Mom and I did a 360, eyeballing nearby buildings. Nothing but houses and small apartment buildings, nothing big enough to house 100+ old folks. The buildings were here, but the retirement community was gone.

I walked Mom back to her car. We agreed it was a good thing that we hadn't driven clear across town to see a place that wasn't there. She had more errands to run: post office, day-old bread store, library, I don't know what all... errands that keep her connected to the world (and driving on city streets). I watched her motor away and walked back to my own car. I drove home, made lunch, and continued editing a paper on evaluating the differences between Ed.D and Ph.D. degrees. Ho hum.

Meanwhile, Doug the senior placement adviser is AWOL, not responding to email or phone calls. I am imagining that he got tired of wrangling needy desperate clients who want the best facility for the least amount of money.

We'll carry on without him. Next up is a place in Milwaukie where Mom has some friends. It has a garden. I'm hopeful that eventually we will find the right place. I don't want to let this search drag on too long. The old mother I used to have, the one with stained bent teeth, bulging biceps, and a determined stride has been replaced by a stranger with perfect dentures, sagging arms, and a wary, wobbly step. I guess if we wait long enough, none of this will matter. But I want her to be safe and happy in her last days, at least until the money runs out.

I used to imagine that someday—and I am not proud of this—that someday after both parents were gone, that there would be some money for me and my siblings. If I just waited long enough, maybe some of the pressure of scrabbling for a living would ease. Maybe I would be able to retire, or at least not worry so much. If I just waited long enough.

Now that scenario seems pretty unlikely. Now that I know how much money my mother really has, and how much income she receives, I see that there is no safety net there, no ease, just more of the same. Of course, we all know that I'm not required to worry. Everyone has challenges but suffering is optional. That thought doesn't really make me feel better, but it does motivate me to pull my head out of my own butt just a little. I guess that is a start.

And I know that if I wait long enough, none of this will matter. It's hard for a chronic malcontent to have hope these days. Climate change, terrorists, Russia, nuclear war, and stupid people who care more about money than about people... the odds are not looking good for the human species—or any other species on Planet Earth. I carry on as if my tiny life matters, but I know that in the end, nothing matters. I'm a speck. Suns explode, planets are hit by asteroids, new havens appear in distant galaxies, and life (most likely) carries on. There is no question we all die; the question is how to live until then. I'm still working on it.

Merry ho ho ho from the Hellish Hand-basket

It's the end of the year again, time to get maudlin over mistakes made and opportunities missed. All those wasted moments spent networking with people whose names I've forgotten ten seconds after they hand me their business cards. (Even the ones I sort of liked.) All those frustrating minutes spent writing and posting content to the white meat version of social media to support a business strategy I never really believed in but adopted on the pompous recommendation of some so-called experts. All those long tedious hours spent editing other people's lousy essays instead of writing my own lousy essays. Woe. Woe is me.

Time to regret the past as it muscles its way around me into 2015. I'd shut the door on it if I could. Or at least, on 2014. I'd shove it out on the porch and slam the door on it so fast. Take that, you stupid past, you.... go fight over the birdseed with the squirrels and rats! I guess I could say it's been a tough year. But that would just make me sound whiny, self-centered, and chronically malcontented.

Is this a happy time of year for you? Do you get all amped up with the high-voltage season? Do you like all those smells you mostly only get in December? You know the smells I mean: recently cut and soon-to-be-dead fir trees? Egg nog lattes? Nutmeg and cinnamon? Bayberry candles?

Do your eyes bug out of your head with all the twinkling lights? Are your neighbors trying to outdo each other with their yards full of tasteless glowing Santas and radioactive snowmen? Oh, sorry, I mean snowpeople. And the sounds! Zounds! The endless loops of insipid music playing from staticky speakers in the grocery store an orchestral rendition of The Little Drummer Boy, pounding holes in your head?

Oh, sorry. There I go, projecting my stuff onto you. Maybe you like The Little Drummer Boy on an endless loop while you are grousing over the price of zucchini. And what's not to like, really. Drums and boys, I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

I finished a particularly tedious editing job last night about 11:00 and uploaded it into the magical cloud, whoosh! Off it went into cyberland where I assume some cranky elves are parceling each massive wretched tome back to its author, who will open up his or her nicely wrapped file in the morning and exclaim in horror at the red ink bloodbath. (Well, red, blue, and green, if I turn on all the Track Changes options.) Super festive editing for a super festive season. The author of yesterday's debacle will probably feel a little sick when he sees my hatchet job and my terse warning about the consequences of plagiarism, but it won't be anything that a little eggnog and a shot of rum won't cure.

There was nothing new in my inbox this morning, so I decided I would spend the day cleaning up around the Love Shack. If you have followed my blog over the past year, you will know that the number of times I talk about cleaning up the apartment corresponds to exactly the number of times I have cleaned up the apartment. That is to say, twice. Maybe three times at the most. So you can understand, it is a momentous occasion when I pull out the vacuum cleaner. My cat opts out, slinking under the couch until my conniption fit is over. I guess if I revved up the vacuum cleaner more often, he might not find it so frightening. Oh well. Three times a year, dude... that hardly qualifies as torture.

I changed the sheets on the bed and fed all my quarters into the greedy machines in the basement to do two loads of laundry, one of cotton stuff and one of fleece stuff. I folded all the warm undies, t-shirts, and towels and put everything away out of sight. Next, I figured out that I could use a small fine-toothed comb to remove the clingy cat hair furballs that dot my fleece jackets, pants, and blankets. That took a while and made quite a pile of cat hair. Finally, I vacuumed the bedroom rug. I even swapped out the bulging cleaner bag. By that time, my nose was in full protest, and it hasn't stopped protesting since...achoooo!...three hours later. Maybe that is why I'm a grinch tonight. It's hard to feel the joy of the season when one's nose is constantly dripping.

Well, happy holidays from the Hellish Hand-basket. Thanks for reading. (Or visiting and clicking away with an annoyed curse, which is what I suspect most visitors do.) I hope your holiday season is happy and filled with just enough joyful surprise to remind you that life is worth living, even if the future is bleary and the past is a bully. Somewhere in the now is where we'll find that old holiday spirit, kicked back in an easy chair with a glass of potent eggnog in one hand and a cigar in the other, watching reruns of Gilligan's Island. Enjoy the season, Pop, wherever you are.

Bah humbug. No wait, I didn't mean it, really...

I generally don't post in forums or in the comments sections of articles or blogs, although I get a lurid thrill out of lurking on the periphery, reading other peoples' snarky comments and wondering how they have the guts to write their nasty trollish responses to other commenters they've never even met but apparently hate on principle. It's entertaining, shocking, occasionally disgusting, and somewhat addictive. Today I must report that I stopped being a lurker. And thus, today I had my first interaction with a troll.

My grocery store invited me to post a comment in their online forum, describing my shopping behavior on Black Friday. No doubt their many research snoids will comb through the massive database of comments to find the behavior patterns and keywords that will direct next year's holiday marketing campaigns. Hey, I'm a market researcher; I know how this stuff works. More or less. I always fill out the store's online surveys, but this is the first time I was invited to comment in a forum. Out of a desire to be helpful and interest in the research method, I registered my user name and entered the forum, where I posted a short comment:

I dislike the holiday season. I avoid shopping if at all possible. I don't buy gifts. If I could sleep through the entire season, I would. I don't participate in the obligation or the rituals. The religious connotations are uninteresting and the commercial aspects of the season make me despair. (Where do all the dead ornaments and foil wrapping paper go? Does anybody care?)

Now, I admit, true to my chronic malcontented nature, I was using the forum to express a contrary view, more out of a desire to poke the frog than anything else. After all, I have this blog through which to express my whining, so I don't feel a strong urge to post my frothy resentments in other online venues. It was an experiment, you know? Research?

Frogs, when poked, jump. Not long after I posted my admittedly dark, somewhat snarky comment, I received an email in my inbox, notifying me that someone had commented on my post. I clicked on through and read:

Get a life......and move back to Communist Russia.

Huh. Clearly another troubled soul. I thought about the wide range of actions I could take in response to the comment. I could retort, I have a life, thank you very much, and what's wrong with Communist Russia, anyway!? (Is there any part of Russia that is not Communist, I wonder?) I could claim that my birthright as an American gives me the right to say stupid things, just like it does them. I could try to explain more fully my feelings about the commercialized holiday grind. I could apologize for pissing them off. I could give them some empathy and address their fears. I could ignore them. Which is probably the wisest response, considering what I've seen of vitriolic exchanges on other forums. Within six volleys, I bet we'd be fighting over Obamacare. Keep in mind all this would be taking place in the online forum of a grocery store, in response to the question, How do you shop during the holidays?

After I stopped laughing, I thought for a moment and responded as follows:

Thanks for sharing. Sounds like I struck a nerve. Sorry. Next time I won't be so open about sharing my feelings. My intention was not to create strife. I'm glad you felt safe enough to share your feelings, though. All the best to you.

It sounded pretty good at face value. But I am a liar. First, I didn't actually care if I created strife, clearly, or I wouldn't have posted such a overtly provocative comment in the first place. Poking the frog, stirring the pot, call it what you will. I can't help myself. The contrary view draws me like ants to dirty dishes. 

And second, reading the message between the lines isn't hard for anyone who has spent time in counseling for relationships: the words you stupid dick were invisible, perhaps, but clearly implied. I learned my passive aggressiveness at the foot of the master. Or mistress, I guess. 

I was curious what type of person would tell someone who was struggling during a stressful season to get a life and move back to Communist Russia. I can't tell from the user name if the person is male or female, old or young. I wonder, who responds to a cry for help—unskillful as it was—by smacking them down with an admonition to go away? Like, far away. 

Someone who is hurting themselves, no doubt. Someone who has probably maxed out her credit lines in a vain attempt to buy the perfect gifts for her many grandchildren before the looming deadline crushes her beneath the wheel of failure. Someone who is terrified that if she doesn't uphold the all-important religious traditions of the season, she will surely be condemned to the bitter hell reserved for failed evangelists. Someone who secretly wishes she could keep the festive decorations but toss the obligations and enjoy a long nap before tax time. That kind of sorry-ass soul, probably.

When I got home from a meeting tonight, I found another note in my inbox. I clicked through and read:

What a gracious response to such a ridiculous comment. Good for you, Carol!

Ha. Don't you just love it? Chickaboom!

The chronic malcontent braces for change

The moon must be aligned with Uranus or something. Fruit basket upset! Everyone important to me seems to be on the move. My jet-set sister, after presenting at a conference in France, is traipsing off to Vatican City to scour some libraries for medieval treasure (aka old books). Bravadita is moving to Gladstone, of all the godforsaken burbs a person could go to, so far away: no more monthly Willamette Writers meetings, my convenient excuse to see her smiling face. And to top it all off, my 85-year-old mother has tossed a grenade into my tenuous tranquility by declaring her intent to move out of her condo into a retirement community. Argh. Change is coming!

My brain is a shattered mess. I'm trying to hold all the bits of lumpy gray matter together, but my natural pessimism tells me it's no use, what's the point. (Don't let anyone tell you chronic malcontentedness is not like a disease. Tell me, would you judge me if I had tuberculosis?)

When I can't breathe I call upon my secret rescue inhaler: I ask myself, what would my extroverted friends do right now? Would they let this excess of exuberant change pummel them into a puddle of goo? No. They would not. They would rush out the door to meet it for coffee, preferably with a horde of friends all driving Kia Souls and Mini Coopers. Re-frame! Re-boot the shattered brain!

Lucky me! Between editing dissertations about China's healthcare system, cosmopolitan-thinking in the world's education system, and culturally relevant pedagogy in American middle schools, I get to visit retirement homes.

And when I'm not doing that, I am earning some money by calling people in faraway places to interview them for a research study about fluid connectors. So far I've dragged my double-wide out of bed before dawn to dial people in Italy, Germany, and Minneapolis. Talk about exotic locales! And Shanghai, China, too, although that interview took place at a very civilized evening hour. I am really starting to get a sense of the size of the planet by calculating time zone differences. (Big place.) Although I have to use Excel to figure it out. Or my fingers. I have always had a precarious relationship with analog time. I have no pictures in my head to explain time. I dread the moment we shift from Standard time to Daylight Savings.

Part of my problem is I think making my mother's last years pleasant is my responsibility. I want her to be happy. She's not happy. Last week she had a doctor's appointment. I offered her a ride, and she accepted: Warning sign #1.

Her doctor was a tall, slender Asian man with a scraggly beard and a charming smile. He didn't hesitate to shake my hand (germs, dude! Really?). My mother and I sat on the two square stiffly cushioned blue chairs, the kind you've seen in waiting rooms everywhere. The doctor sat on the rolling stool, waiting calmly, looking at my mother. I waited, too. My mother scooted forward in her chair. Warning sign #2. I thought, she's getting ready to make a presentation. The audience is in place. Showtime.

“My digestive tract seems to be on the mend the past three days,” she began. Good news for my scrawny mother who eats like a sparrow and weighs barely 94 pounds.

“Great,” said the doctor.

“But I just don't seem to want to eat anything.”

The doctor and I both looked at her expectantly.

“I hate to cook, I always have,” she said. I could have said something, but I didn't. Memories of canned green(ish) beans and gray peas floated through my mind. “I just don't feel like cooking or eating much of anything,” she added, frowning. I felt guilty for not cooking for my mother. Even though I'm a worse cook than she is.

“Are you depressed?” asked the doctor.

My mother thought for a few seconds. “No,” she said flatly. “I'm bored.” Immediately, I felt guilty for not doing a better job of entertaining my mother.

“I'm tired all the time. I think I'm bored. All I do is play video games on my computer,” she said. It suddenly dawned on me that since my mother's co-treasurer position on the condo board ended last fall, she's got nobody to complain about. Oh, she always finds something, but without the monthly hassles and gossip of the condo meetings, she's bereft. My mother the pitchfork-wielding extraverted rabble-rouser. No wonder she's bored. She needs a cause!

“I've got too much stuff,” she complained. “I want to move.” No use uttering a squeak as my heart fell into my stomach: I've known this day was coming for a while. I just... I guess there's just no good time for change, is there?

“If you moved into a retirement community, you would have more social interaction,” the doctor observed. “You would probably eat more.”

“That's just what I was thinking,” she said. “I have friends in a place over by Mall 205.”

“That's all you need,” the doctor agreed. “More friends.”

And that is how I agreed to take my mother to a retirement place next week to eat a free lunch and take a tour. I can hardly wait. Next chore: get boxes, start sorting out the ten years of junk she collected since she moved into the condo and the sixty or so years of crap she's dragged with her from place to place along with a husband and four kids. I'm just really glad she doesn't collect Franklin Mint plates or Beanie Babies.

Un-join me

As I slide down the dark tunnel toward winter, I'm embracing my inner curmudgeon by de-connecting from social media. I started with LinkedIn groups, ruthlessly clicking the "Leave" button with a sense of relief and hope that there would soon be less in in my box. After un-joining half my LinkedIn groups—just the ones swamped by ubiquitous discussion posts from desperate small business owners who write pleading blog posts with titles like “The ten ways using LinkedIn will make you a content marketing star!”—I moved on to my modest roster of Meetups, wearily choosing "Leave this group," and then typing in the subsequent box exactly why I was un-joining: I'm tired. My feet hurt. I can't stand people. Your inane networking sessions at crappy Chinese restaurants are killing me.

I know it's not much, but it's a start. Next I'll take the hatchet to Facebook. Every time I get an email that says, Joe posted a new photo to their timeline, I cringe at the bad grammar and vow to de-friend everyone. Well, from experience I know it's as hard to leave Facebook as it is to rid your computer of AOL. The best I can do is un-follow everyone (except Carlita and members of my immediate family, of course. My sister is in Europe. Can't miss those photos of Paris and Lyon. Can't breathe, wish I was there).

Today, as my stomach roils with the remains of almost-raw onion eaten at a networking Meetup I went to last night, I find that indigestion and general dissatisfaction with life feel much the same. I fear I've learned to associate nausea with networking. (Have you noticed that Meetups seem to find hospitable homes in the backrooms of Chinese restaurants? Wonder why that is.)

My friend Bravadita is bravely downsizing in preparation for her impending move to Gladstone, a suburb of Portland about 20 minutes south on I-205. As she described her desire to have less stuff, I found myself yearning for something similar. Except for me, rather than unloading my books at Goodwill, it's more of a jettisoning of social baggage, a conscious uncoupling, as it were, from the faceless groups of rabid networkers swarming Meetups and after-work networking parties all over the city. Hey, networkers, back off. You met me, you didn't care to genuinely know me, so stop pretending. You can keep your tar-baby emails.

Argh. I confess, I'm as much to blame: Did I try to know anyone deeply? Not so much, especially not if the place was noisy and crowded. Did I wall myself off in my introvert suit of armor and exit at the first available moment? Yes, mostly, I guess I did. Is my current dissatisfaction evidence of my chronic malcontentedness, or is it just a special case of non-digesting onions? In fairness, I must say, not all networking events are the same; I'm learning to be discerning (no more Moxie mixers for me). And not all networkers are the same, either. I have met some smart, strong, interesting, and determined women in the past year, people I respect and admire. I fear the stinky truth: I'm just ashamed to admit I'm as desperate as the next hungry shark waving a business card at a crowd of fellow sharks. Rather than admit I can't compete in that pool, I'm disconnecting by choice. I'm following the artist's way: If you build it, they can come or not, as they please.

The chronic malcontent suffers from existential constipation

When I am sitting like a blob at networking functions, or ripping along the freeway cursing out slow drivers, or picking cat hair out of my eggs, I keep saying to myself, I gotta remember to blog about this. This is worth blogging about. Because the minutia of my life is so meaningful, right? To me, maybe not so much to you. I get it.

If I don't post anything for awhile, though, all these minor epiphanies and major revelations pile up until I am paralyzed by a serious case of existential constipation. Ahhh. Everything is meaningful! Everything is important! But where to start?

Should I write about being the only woman at a meetup about customer experience from a software designer's point of view? Rarely have I ever felt so old or out of place. They were kind to me, in that special way we often treat the elderly and infirm. I really need a new look.

Wait, I must write about the meetup where a so-called marketing guru (his nickname is Dream Killer, no lie) leaned into my space, red beard quivering with passion, to tell me, “You haven't figured out the what! Until you figure out the what you don't have a business!”

No, wait, maybe I should tell you about the local AMA luncheon, my third event since joining the AMA, where I ate wheat, dairy, and sugar while “networking” (talking) with two guys from a company that makes aviation headsets in Lake Oswego (I know, Lake Oswego! Who knew!) I'm chagrined to admit I was more interested in the ravioli and chocolate chip cookies than the headset guys or the presenter (whose topic I have already forgotten).

Or maybe I need to write about my second meeting with my SBDC counselor (what did I call him before? I can't remember. Fritz, maybe? He looks like a Fritz.) I swore to myself as I was driving to the cafe that I wouldn't treat him like a therapist. All I can say is, he asked for it.

So much has been happening! I've got too many papers to edit, on scintillating topics like prostate cancer imaging (eeewww), achievement gaps between white and minority kids (yawn, old old news, but so popular among educators), preteen sex (that was a good one, actually), and grief (complicated and uncomplicated). My hourly editing rate varies because I get paid by the word: sometimes the authors are good writers. Other times their writing skills suck. My reward for doing a good job, apparently, is the opportunity to edit more papers.

I'm reaching in all directions, grasping for something I can call success (income). On the teaching front, I'm planning on testing my first class in ten days on a small group of women—two hours on a market research topic. For the third hour I will get their feedback on the class (and feed them lunch). I haven't printed the workbook, or prepared my lesson plan, or finished my PowerPoint. Instead, I've been learning way more than I ever wanted to know about prostate cancer imaging techniques.

And, lo, the planets have aligned and the waters have parted, and now I have a little research project to work on over the next few weeks. I think it will be both challenging and fun. For a brief moment, my heart lifts. Then I think all the thoughts that come naturally to a chronic malcontent: two months till money appears, and half goes to taxes! What about the editing projects? What about my class? And knowing my luck, my car, my teeth, and my cat will all fall into disrepair at the same moment, and I'll have to move in with my mother. It's like winning the reverse lottery. Ahhh.

Once again, my brain is trying to kill me. I'm flailing in the wreckage of the future. And I'm constipated. I need to blog more often.

What's with this twiddling thing?

Hey, all you chronic malcontents, here's a question for you:  Is there some new meaning of the word twiddles? Like, is it a new euphemism for doing the nasty? (Or having fun, depending on your point of view, I guess.) The reason I ask is that I can't understand why one of my posts is getting so many page views. One post is getting five times as many hits as any other post. Maybe it's the word frets? I don't get it.

Well, just thought I'd ask. Although, because this is an anonymous blog, five times as many hits adds up to a whole lot of not much. Don't worry, I won't be selling out to advertisers any time soon. Just keep on drifting by, and I'll keep on ranting about my strangely malcontented life.

It's late. I've been working on revising my website today, learning WordPress as I go. I am proud of myself, I wrote a few lines of code to fetch an image. Wow, look at me go, I'm like coding now! Oh, wait, isn't that jargon for oh, oh, my heart just stopped? Well, I'm so tired right now, I could be dead and not know it.

I've been receiving the Oregonian newspaper for free for a few months. I think it's a promotional effort to motivate people to become subscribers. The newspaper has reinvented itself into a magazine-style format, complete with minuscule fonts and color photos of car wrecks and unpopular politicians. It looks to me like the paper is gasping its last breath and will probably expire shortly. I'd feel worse about it, but today in the advertising inserts were two slick perfume ads. You know what I mean, those flyers where you lift up a corner and peel back a strip to release the scent? Well, if your nose is anything like mine (large, constantly clogged, bristling with nose hair), you would smell that scent (and I use the word scent very loosely) the moment you carried the paper into the house.

Which is exactly what happened. Once I realized my error I quickly isolated the offending ads and shoved them out the back door. The cat watched me with some confusion. I don't usually dispose of paper by throwing it out the door. But we are both interested in maintaining the integrity of our indoor air quality. All this is the long way of saying I'm going to call those numskulls at the Oregonian and tell them I don't want their stinky paper, even if it is delivered free to my front door (only once into the garden, not bad) four mornings every week.

Oh, and in other news, I got paid for all the academic editing jobs I did in May, and I used the money to join the AMA. That's the American Marketing Association, in case you thought being a Ph.D. suddenly allows me to practice medicine. Har har. I am now a fisherman. My strategy is to go where the fish are. Next week I will attend a local marketing event and hobnob with the hoi polloi. Yay. More networking.

I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, stop twiddling! It's probably bad for your health, whatever it is.

Driving in circles

Yesterday I had a job interview in Tigard, which is a... I guess you would call it a suburb of Portland, although you can't tell where one city ends and the other begins. Tigard isn't as far as Wilsonville, which is where the career college I used to work for is located, but I can't get to Tigard by sneaking down the scenic route, I-205 (trees, dead deer, open fields). I had to muscle my way through the meat of the city. First I went west on I-84 (formerly known as Sullivan's Gulch, a tree-filled canyon that was carved up for Oregon's first freeway, AKA The Banfield). I-84 splits when you get to the Willamette River. You can go north. You can go south. I went south and crossed the river on the Marquam Bridge, a tall imposing double-decker that will plunge into the drink when the earthquake decimates the Rose City.

Time out while I bask in the glow of one of the greatest driving songs of all time: The soundtrack to Route-66 is playing through my speakers. Okay, I'm back. I wish that song were longer. So, where was I? Oh yeah, driving across the bridge, headed for Tigard. It's really not that far, if there's no traffic. I knew where I was going, more or less, and eventually I arrived at a multi-story office building housing a number of businesses, including some well-known brand names I wouldn't mind working for.

My destination was in the basement of that building, where a proprietary college from the Midwest has planted its flag, staking out territory for its first foray into the west coast market. At first glance, it appears to be just like the career college I left last year, perhaps with slightly deeper pockets and a longer reach. Why the Portland market, I wondered? Who cares. I looked at their reviews online, both students and employees, and they weren't any different from any other career college's reviews, that is to say, unimpressive.

Still, I was there to interview to teach one marketing class, their first ever on-ground class in that location, so I put my best malcontented foot forward and stumbled through the rain from the parking lot to the basement door. The place was empty. No students yet, just two administrators and some hardworking salespeople, I mean, admissions counselors, working the phones in little cubicles in a long narrow room with no windows. The administrator took me on a tour—see the lovely break room, the medical lab?—but we didn't go in the boiler room.

I had prepared a short first-day icebreaker lesson as a demonstration of my teaching skills, which I presented to the two administrators in a computer lab with one window high up on the wall. Through the window I could barely make out the grills and undercarriages of parked cars and pickups. As I talked, I had the eerie feeling I'd been there before. The computers looked a little different, but the beige walls and bland gray carpet looked the same. With fewer fingerprints and coffee stains, maybe, but give them time. I should have felt enthusiastic: Yay, I (might) get to teach marketing. But all I felt was a neutral resignation. Yay, a job, maybe. $500 for a couple months of wrestling with traffic and unmotivated students.

Haven't I been down this tired path? Why am I chasing one lousy marketing class at yet another despised for-profit college? I'm a dream come true for this outfit. I know their market as well as anyone they'll ever hire to teach there, considering proprietary vocational education was the topic of my doctoral research. They don't deserve me. They can't afford me. And if they offer me the class, I'll probably say yes. Because some money is better than no money.

This stupid cold season

My mother and I went out to celebrate. I'm celebrating the completion of my doctorate. She's celebrating the completion of her stint as co-treasurer on the condo board. We went to brunch at Shari's, her favorite place, not mine. As far as I am concerned, they might as well serve up gravel, dirt, and machine oil, topped with antifreeze. It's all poison to me. But I admit, those pies sure look good inside the shiny glass case.

We sat across from each other in a booth on sky-blue benches whose springs were sagging (broken by years of obese guests, I am guessing). I sat just a little too low. Or the table was just a little too high. We ordered coffee, black, and the young waitress brought a little carafe to leave on the table. My mother ordered quiche, with a muffin. I ordered eggs, with fruit: What can they do to ruin eggs, right? The food came quickly. (It doesn't take long to scramble a couple eggs.) Mom skinned the top of a little container of grape jelly and spread it generously over one of her muffins. She did the same to the other one. She took a big bite of jelly-covered muffin. For the rest of the conversation, she had jelly on her chin. I tried to ignore it.

“I'm really glad to be done with this condo board stuff,” she said. “But some of the residents aren't too happy with the way the board president handled the elections.” She picked experimentally at the little slice of quiche pie with her fork.

“Oh, why is that?” I replied. I was doing my own experimental poking, at my eggs. Scrambled. They looked okay, so I ate a bite. Just about what you would expect of scrambled eggs.

“She nominated and elected people who weren't even there!” my mother complained.

“Wow, you mean people were elected in absentia?” Having served on a board before, I understand some of the shenanigans that can go on when chairpeople start feeling their power.

“That's right! And some of us are not going to stand for it!” She took another bite of muffin. Purple jelly sprayed gently across the table.

“Uh-oh,” I said, sipping the weak brown coffee. “Mom, what are you going to do?”

“A group of us are getting together to decide our strategy,” she said, popping a grape in her mouth and looking smug.

After a moment's reflection, I interpreted her comment. “You mean, you've formed a cabal and you are planning a mutiny of the condo board.”

She looked a little abashed. “Well, when you put it like that...”

I tried to explain to her what would happen when the board found out that a group of residents had gone outside the committee/board process to express their grievances. It would look like the condo equivalent of a military revolution. I pictured a horde of old folks shuffling along the condo walkways toward the chairperson's unit, pitchforks in hand, mumbling, “Get her,” and “No guts, no glory” and “Slow down, ooh, my back.” With my mother leading the pack. She'd be a holy terror with a pitchfork.

I sighed. “You are a lightning rod for trouble,” I said.

She grinned. “I know.”

We ate in silence for a minute or two. I thought longingly of my lovely Trader Joe's Bay Blend coffee waiting for me at home. Even cold, the stuff will put hair in places you've never seen hair before. Delicious. Oh well. Shari's does the best they can, with what they have. It's not Starbucks, after all.

“She won't even call on me anymore in the condo meetings.”

I looked at my mother with some perplexity. My mother, this scrawny woman with the wrinkled skin and flyaway halo of gray hair, with her squinty eyes hidden behind chunky trifocals, this skinny little person with her elastic-waist blue jeans, old white sneakers, and dentures... somehow my mother has managed to intimidate the board chair to the extent that the chair will no longer let her speak at the condo meetings. Way to go, Mom.

I think I figured her out. Tonight as I avoid watching the re-run of the Sound of Music and some country music Christmas special, as I wait for Saturday Night Live to put this stupid cold season into perspective for me, I have some time to think. After all the photo scanning I've done over the past week, I have a visual sense of my mother from her earliest days, through teenhood, into marriage and motherhood, into middle age and retirement, and into widowhood. I think I have her pegged. My mother is a rabble-rowser. She's a pot-stirrer. Oh, my! She's a... she's a chronic malcontent!

I guess that old saying about apples and trees might actually be true.

The chronic malcontent supports Buy Nothing Day

As I count down the days to my oral defense, I have done my best to take each day as it comes, free from expectations and judgment. That Zen-like approach does not come naturally to me, as you might imagine, considering I sometimes call myself a chronic malcontent. Malcontents have lots of expectations, which means when things don't go their way, which is often since that is how life is, they end of with a buttload of judgment. This week I found myself whining about all sorts of things... Christmas, waiting, weather...

I know, really? Weather? It's the height of ego to take weather personally, I know, but I still do it. I don't want to look outside, because it is probably snowing. Ugh. Snow. Still, knowing me, I would find a reason to complain about something, even if it were 85° and sunny. That's what malcontents do. We complain. Unfortunately, incessant complaining has consequences, as I discovered this week when I caved to the urge to spew my vitriolic viewpoint over my hapless friend Bravadita.

We ate pizza at a tiny pizza/pasta joint in SE Portland. I added coffee to my meal, because I knew wheat and dairy wouldn't quite be enough to send me over the top into utter mania. As I tried not to moan with indecent pleasure at the rare taste and feel of cheesy pizza in my mouth, I felt the urge to express myself. And because both Bravadita and I are frustrated creative souls stymied by forces beyond our control (our perception), that is of course what I focused on: my frustration. I'm not sure I knew what I was frustrated about, but it was something to do with art, writing, dating, unemployment, body image, poverty, and Christmas.

Looking back on it now, I would guess my frustration was fueled by the endless waiting for my doctorate to be over and the overwhelming terror of what comes after, peppered with fallout from a conversation I had with my sister about why I always wear clothes that hide my less-than-svelte figure. The spark that set off the conflagration was the time I spent the day before scanning dusty slides of wearable art projects, paintings, and fashion illustrations from my former lives as a painter, illustrator, and costume designer. (So much creativity. So much crappy art.) Stir all that into a big a potful of fear that I've spent eight years and $50,000 on a doctorate from a less-than-stellar university and what do you get? A big steaming pile of frustration.

Then Bravadita tentatively offered up her own dark frustrations, no doubt in a futile attempt to make me feel better, and suddenly I felt like marching on Washington in protest against the injustice of a society that judges women by the size of their ass. How can it be possible for one so gorgeous and talented to be so miserable? It defies logic and reason! But wait, am I talking about Bravadita, or am I talking about myself? Oh, I'm so frustrated and confused! And then, insult to injury: It's Christmas! That horrid music is everywhere! And did I mention plummeting temperatures! I'm using too many exclamation points!

I know what you are thinking: It's a wonder I'm even functioning. However, lest you fear for my sanity (Sis), truly, no worries. I've got a program to help me get through the holiday season. My strategy is this: Lay low, drink water, blog, and buy nothing. And when I lose my sense of direction, I will bury my face in cat fur. It's all good at the Love Shack.

After the pizza dinner, Bravadita and I walked across the street to the Clinton Street Theater, an old somewhat crusty neighborhood theater that boasts the longest running midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show in the nation (Who knew! [Who cares?]). We weren't there to see that. We were there to see opening night of Monkey With a Hat On's production of The Noir 10-Minute Play Festival. Ten slightly bizarre, sometimes funny vignettes that were presumably created to represent the concept of noir. Not surprisingly, there were many seedy PIs in trench coats. But there were also some quirky stories: a moment in the life of a suicidal family of ghosts, a sci-fi intrigue complete with a silver-faced female robot, and a depiction of a finishing school for call girls. Between each vignette was a unique musician playing piano or guitar or drum machine or muted trumpet. I think I liked the musicians better than the plays, except for the last vignette, which featured singing, dancing FBI agents. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that dancing FBI agents is exactly what I needed to help me get through this wretched holiday season. Thanks, Bravadita!

The chronic malcontent has a close encounter with the Mall of America

Greetings from the Chronic Malcontent. There is more than one of us, as you may have discovered. I'm the one that illustrates her prolific whining. I may not be much of an intellectual, but I can illustrate the crap out of malcontentedness.

I returned from a weekend in Minneapolis, vacation capital of the world... well, maybe not of the world. But you got your Mall of America there, and that counts for a lot. I stayed in a hotel right across the street from the Mall. It was a very wide street, too wide to walk across. The hotel provides a shuttle to and from the Mall every half hour. I did not make the trip, but I did take a photo of the giant Mall of America sign to commemorate the moment the shuttle from the airport sped by on the way to the hotel. In my photo, the three-story sign is barely discernible, lost against the massive edifice of the Mall.

Time divides into two time streams when you travel. Do you find that to be true for you? There's the home stream, where life carries on in the usual routine. Back at the Love Shack, the cat dozes on the window seat. The cat gets up, stretches, jumps up the strategically placed chairs to the food court, crunches some kibbles, licks a paw. Looks around, wonders what is missing, slurps some water from the jug, jumps down, goes to another sleeping spot, curls up, and falls back into a doze. That's life at the Love Shack.

The other time stream is me, moving and being moved through the world of transportation. Parking the car in the Economy Lot (remember Red Lot, F9!), waiting for the bus to the terminal, looking back with some melancholy at my largest asset, hoping it will start when I return. Hoping someone will find and reclaim it if I die somewhere en route.

Falling into line at the security checkpoint, hoping I don't look so eccentric I am pegged as a suspicious character. Shoes off, hat off, jacket off, boarding pass clutched between dry lips, stand on the footprints while they take an x-ray of my naked body. She's clean! Not even an underwire bra! Rushing to grab my shoes, my hat, my backpack as the crowd shoves from behind.

All of that just to be allowed to the gate. Continual fear that I will lose my identification, my boarding pass—oh, no, where's my boarding pass? On the floor of the restroom, where I dropped it. Whew. Still there. (One thing you can count on is people don't pick up anything that doesn't look like money.) The flight to Phoenix was delayed 20 minutes. I'm late! There was just enough time to hit the restroom and rush down the hot gangway onto the plane. I would have liked to have stayed in that warmth, that light, but no, gotta go!

I arrived Friday evening, met my friends, ate horrendously expensive hotel food, slept in a fabulously comfortable hotel bed, and then repeated the entire journey in reverse and in the dark on Sunday evening. The plane lifted off into the setting sun at about 8:50 pm. I wondered if we would keep up with the turning of the earth, speeding along at a standstill like Alice and the White Queen, but no, it got dark. I was barely awake, but I couldn't stop watching for the clusters of lights far below, all the little towns in the middle of nowhere. How can they... what do they do out there, so far from anyplace worth mentioning? Gather string and make it into large balls, I guess.

Back through Phoenix at almost midnight. The place was lively, packed with travelers, like a galactic hub, so much activity. I found my gate. We boarded. We taxied and taxied and taxied, clear around the huge terminal, and back to a gate. Wha—? Something's wrong. Passengers began to mutter when they realized we had been diverted from the runway. Eventually the pilot fired up the intercom to tell us an “alarming” passenger had been removed, and all is well, we are cleared to depart. Yikes.

We leaped into the darkness, headed for Portland, and two and a half hours later, we landed so softly I wasn't sure we weren't still airborne. It was 2:00 a.m. The Portland terminal was deserted except for cleaning crews, vacuuming in circles. A far different picture from lively Sky Harbor. We shuffled en masse through the empty terminal, beyond weary. The bus to the Red Lot arrived, driven by a maniacally cheerful driver, who commented after her third joke fell flat that we must be very tired. Someone muttered, “Plane...an hour late.”

My car was waiting where I'd left it, looking strangely desiccated in the fluorescent light. The air inside was dry and flavorless. The engine started with a hesitant cough. After a detour or two, I found the place to pay the $30 that would allow me to exit the parking lot, and I wended my way home through empty streets. I pulled into the parking area at 3:00 a.m. I staggered to my door in the dark, wondering if someone would hear me mumbling and come out to shoot me. My cat met me at the door, like he'd been expecting me.

And that's the story of my weekend. The reality show of my life began again on Monday morning, with calls to the career college, resubmissions to my Chair and the IRB committee, laundry, shopping, rent... life picked up almost where I left off. But I am not the same. I've seen the Mall of America. I've seen a real Minnesota potluck. I've seen the half-moon and the brilliant stars from 36,000 feet. I know my place now, and it is good: I am a speck on the skin of a big, mysterious, and beautiful planet. It's not a bad place to be.

Unemployment, public speaking, and coffee

In two weeks I will be unemployed. I have mixed feelings about it. When I imagine not having to use obsolete technology to teach keyboarding to bored students, I feel ecstatic. When I think about not having to work a split shift, working in the morning and then again until 10:20 p.m.—and then being back first thing the following morning, as if I could actually function and do a good job with only five or six hours of sleep... when I think of not having to do that, I feel profound relief. But when I think of not seeing my colleagues Sheryl, Mella, and Denny, our little cabal in the Business/General Education department, then I feel really sad. And when I imagine the final paycheck I will receive on May 2, I feel sick.

Mixed feelings. Happy and sad. Excited and terrified. I'm so disconnected from my body I have no idea what stress might be doing to me. Something is going on, I'm sure, but my brain hasn't caught up yet. I'll probably realize the toll stress has taken when I wake up on May 3 with no hair. Or covered in hives. One doesn't skate blithely unscathed through life-changing events. Death, divorce, and loss of a job rank high on the trauma scale. And public speaking, don't forget public speaking.

Did I ever tell you about my public speaking debacle? It happened in 1991, I think. Here's my suggestion for overcoming one's fear of speaking in public. Join Toastmasters, sign up for a speech contest, and then stand up unprepared in front of 100 people and forget your speech halfway through. To really get the full effect, slink off stage in abject shame. If the ground doesn't open up and swallow you whole at that point, if the hand of god doesn't smite you for being an idiot at that moment, then you realize you can live through anything. You've pretty much survived the worst social humiliation you will ever experience. If I were completely honest, which I sometimes am, I'd say that forgetting that speech partway through was worse than living through the two and a half weeks of my dad dying. Proving again that for the chronic malcontent, self-obsession is the word of the day. Every day.

I've started drinking coffee again. That is one sign that I'm going crazy. Just one cup per day, so far... one very strong cup of French Roast with nothing in it, no milk, no sugar, nothing. There's a joke here, which I will attribute to the great poet and performance artist Linda Albertano: She said she likes her men the way she likes her coffee: cold and bitter. I always chuckle when I think of that joke, which is pretty much every time I drink coffee. It's only funny because I have no interest in being in a relationship with anyone, bitter or otherwise.

Back to the unemployment tornado looming on my horizon. I signed up for unemployment online, although there were some questions in their online tool that didn't quite fit my situation, so I expect I will get a phone call or email from some irate underpaid Oregon Employment Department representative, who will rip me a new one in the process of signing me up. Oh well. I'll bend over and take it. Desperation makes people put up with a lot. Poor people don't argue: they know not to bite the hand, etc. I will be one of them soon, so I'm practicing now. Yes sir, no ma'am. Sorry, sorry. My error, my mistake.

Catching the disease of chronic malcontentedness

Everyone is unhappy, mostly about work. Does it seem that way to you? My sister, a published author and expert in her esoteric field of art history, hates her admin job so much she is ready to jump off a bridge. (I told her she would be missed.) Bravadita, my former colleague and now friend, is a talented writer/photographer wasting her creativity teaching bratty, germy children how to read. My friend in Minneapolis, I'll call her Chica, is itching to start her own digital marketing business. And then there's me, of course, on the verge of unemployment, hoarse from complaining about the unfairness of it all.

Is it something in the air? I'd say yes, but there are always exceptions. My friend E. has figured out the secret to happiness: condense your life to a 35-foot motorhome and hit the road. I dream of bundling my mother and my cat into an RV and heading south toward the warm desert air of Arizona or New Mexico. A silly dream: My cat would hate it. He would reward me by upchucking all over the linoleum. And my mother would probably die on the journey. I'd have to strap her coffin on top of the rig and head back home. We'd sail through little American towns trailing a stench behind us, sort of like a modern day Addie Bundren. I don't think my sensitive nose could handle it.

Well, we can't all take to the road in massive rolling living rooms. There wouldn't be enough room. Or enough fuel to keep us all moving. We'd have to hunker down, butt to nose, wherever we sputtered out of gas. We'd slide out our slide-outs and roll out our awnings all along the shoulders and gullies of the interstates. We'd have to live off of stuff people threw to us as they drove by. Here, catch! A bucket of the Colonel's extra crispy and some coleslaw, if you think fast.

I'm just yammering. It's a day for yammering. I'm waiting for my dissertation proposal to be rejected or approved. I'm waiting to find out if I will have a job when the term ends. It's a day for expressing my malcontentedness. It appears I'm in good company. With the exception of E., everyone I know seems malcontented to some degree or another, from mild to extreme, from resigned irritation to raging fury. I'm somewhere in between. My mother, though, is edging toward the boiling point. She's laid up with some weird swollen ankle disease, bored out of her mind.

“You need a new hobby,” I suggested when we talked on the phone.

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

I pondered, but couldn't come up with anything that she hasn't already done: knit, write letters, read books, do crosswords, play computer games. Maybe I need to get more creative. What if I could get her hooked on World of Warcraft? Or even Farmville. That always worked on our students. But Mom's Internet connection is too slow. (She's the only person on dial-up left in Portland. It takes 12 hours just to download an update to her virus program.) Hey, maybe she could open a phone sex business. Or be a phone psychic. That could be fun. (Hmmmm.....)

I know what she wants. What she wants is go outside and root around in her garden. It's spring. Things are blooming. The air smells like fragrant candy. There are about a billion shades of green going on. But it's been pouring rain off and on all day. I reminded her that we need the rain, that we are six inches below normal. She whined like a child: I'm booooorrrrred! Man, I'm glad I never had kids. I don't know how parents do it.

The Chronic Malcontent is a... what!? No way!

Yesterday I drove to the campus in Wilsonville for our quarterly in-service. Some time back one of the program directors thought it would be a good idea if we had in-service on the day after the end of the term. Sadly, faculty weren't consulted, and now we have three fewer hours to finish our grades and prepare for the new start on Monday. More like four hours if you count the time lost driving to Wilsonville. Luckily, I have the weekend to grade and prep, right? More like, luckily, I still have a job.

This post isn't about how frustrating it is to be required to sit in workshops for three hours when I could be grading Access exams, although it's always satisfying to vent. No, this post is about something that happened in one of the workshops.

We are usually given a choice of workshop topics. The options for session 1 were LinkedIn or Positive Psychology Part 1. The options for session 2 were Multiple Intelligence or Positive Psychology Part 2. You've heard me talk about my tendency to look on the dark side. You know I call myself a chronic malcontent. It's not that I'm not satisfied with my role as... resident cynic. But lately I've been pondering the idea that if you keep doing what you've always done, you will get what you have always gotten. Bad grammar, I know, but you get my drift. The so-called Law of Attraction and all that stuff.

So I chose to attend the Positive Psychology sessions. I went in with an open-mind, to learn, like an anthropologist peering through tall grass at a newly discovered indigenous tribe. What will I hear, who will I see? Is everyone here part of the happy tribe? Or will there be any other malcontents lurking in the bush?

About twelve people attended, mostly folks from the medical department. If you know anything about medical faculty at a career college, you know they are the most outgoing (loudest), most people-oriented (drama, drama, drama), most compassionate (nosy parkers) of all the departments. I sat next to Molly (not her real name) who has oddly enough become a friend of sorts. She is the type of person the moniker Little Mary Sunshine was coined for. Seriously, she's over the top maniacally ebullient, all the freaking time. She likes me because she saw me drawing goofy characters in my notebook at a previous in-service. Her 21-year-old son is an artist, which is to say he lives at home and does nothing. I guess she recognizes something in me that reminds her of her son.

Our facilitator Trish (older gal, wheezing with the dregs of the flu) showed us a TED video of a self-styled positivity guru Shawn Achor, and then challenged us to take a pledge to do five things for 21 days. “It will change your life,” she wheezed. I list them here in case you want to try it yourself: (1) make a gratitude list, (2) journal about a positive experience every day, (3) exercise, (4) meditate, and (5) perform a random act of kindness.

“Get with a partner now and practice this together,” Trish directed in a cracked version of her school teacher voice. I turned to Molly and asked how her son was doing. “He joined the Furry Convention,” she said in frustration. “He made his own costume!” We were in a computer lab. While the other medical faculty were flailing about doing sloppy jumping jacks and knocking into things, I looked up Furry Convention. Wow, cool. People make costumes and hang out. Why didn't I know about this when I was 21? I didn't say that to Molly. “Best thing you can do is kick him out of the house,” I said bluntly.

“Ok, class!” Trish wheezed. “Now I want you to take the Optimism test.”

The pessimistic cynic in me mentally rubbed her hands in glee. At last, a test to prove I am a malcontent. All this positivity stuff is great, but I really just wanted validation for my self-inflicted moroseness. I registered on the website and dove into the 32-question questionnaire. The medical faculty were cackling loudly. Trish was talking over them, trying to sell us on the idea of being more optimistic. I said to Trish, “If you want me to fill out this survey, I'm going to need you to stop talking.”

“What?” Trish said.

“Stop talking!”

There was an awkward silence. We all got down to it. The questions came in pairs. Many of them were about relationships. Nothing seemed to apply to me. I floundered in confusion at first, but rallied and forged ahead, finishing first. Clicked the button: Calculate. A moment later, a series of graphs appeared. I stared in shock. Out of 8 possible points, I had scored a 7 on optimism, and a 2 on pessimism! No, this can't be! I'm the chronic malcontent!

I furtively hid my graphs and leaned over to see Molly's results. She scored a 2 on optimism and a 7 on pessimism, the exact opposite of me. No way!

I had to read the fine print and think past my defenses. Eventually, I understood. The questions were worded so that one of the pair represented a permanent situation, while the other one reflected a temporary situation. The idea is that optimists will consider positive situations enduring and permanent and judge negative situations temporary and fleeting. Apparently I have been looking on the bright side all along. I just hid that fact from myself. This is not unlike the day I looked in the mirror and realized I had grown a mustache.

What can I say. The jury is in. The former malcontent is outed. I've been a closet optimist all along. Please don't tell anyone.

Resistance to change: The ongoing challenge

The theme for January is always the same: Do it differently than I did last year. Don't eat so much, eat better food, get more exercise, drink more water, read better quality trash, write more, live less fearfully... bla bla bla. After years of New Years' resolutions abandoned by February, it seems sort of pointless. So I am enjoying the fact that I got a few things done over the winter break, without any expectation that my new behaviors will turn into ongoing habits. If I drink more water today, that doesn't mean I won't dehydrate myself tomorrow. I make no promises.

My dissertation chairperson took time out of her holiday celebration to send an email letting me know that my concept paper was approved by the mysterious Graduate School reviewers. I know this is good news, although all I can see is the even taller mountain ahead of me, the mountain known as the dissertation proposal. It's just more of the same: writing to persuade some anonymous reviewers that my study is worth conducting. It's hard to conjure up enthusiasm for a project that has long since lost its allure.

Someday this will all be over. Right. And someday I will be dead. There's no telling which will come first, when you get to my age. I was heartened to read in the university discussion posts that I'm not the oldest graduate student: Several are in their sixties. Well, at the rate I'm going, that could be me in a few more years. Funny, I don't feel that old.

Whenever I want to stoke my internal boiler of bitter self-righteousness, I read books on servant leadership and think about how the management style at the career college that employs me is anything but that. In fact, I would characterize the college management style as slim on leadership and devoid of service. Servant leadership is a concept that appeals to the frustrated idealist in me. I have a deeply held belief that employees have value and should be treated with respect. Further, I believe that management's job is to serve employees, so that employees in turn can serve their customers. To me, it seems self-evident. That is why I get so cranky when the so-called leadership at the career college treats faculty as if they are an expendable resource, like tissues to be used and tossed away.

Rumor has it that it is now a fact: the site in Clackamas is moving. Where and when remains uncertain, but because the lease is up in June, we surmise it will be before then. It is unlikely management would move during the middle of a term. If management intends to move between terms, then moving day would likely be Friday, May 3. If this is the case, the new term would start Monday, May 6, in a shiny new location. Whether they will bring their old grimy teachers to the shiny new location remains to be seen.

One of the precepts of the servant leadership philosophy is that management includes employees in discussions about disruptive change. I think moving or closing a campus is a change worth discussing with employees, don't you? It is eight weeks till our next in-service meeting. How much you want to bet management fails to mention any specific plans for moving or closing the campus? Further, how much are you willing to bet that, if we ask straight out, that direct answers will not be forthcoming?

As I was cruising indeed.com doing what all people do when they cruise indeed.com, I found a new job listing for the college: Instructional Designer for growing career college's online division. Must have a Master's in education. That sounds sort of interesting. I don't qualify, of course, even if they were willing to hire a snarky old teacher from within. I got the feeling as I read the ad that, as their brick and mortar campuses are tanking due to lack of enrollments, the school owners and managers are putting all their hopes on the online dream. Like every other college and university on the planet. Yeah, lots of luck with that, dinky career college.

There is no shortage of change in the world, that's for sure. It seems to me the people that survive and succeed are the ones that are able to adapt to change, whatever form it takes. The ones that wither in the ditch are the ones that say things like, We've always done it that way; This will never catch on; I can't learn anything new; Don't tell me, I don't want to hear it. I can relate. I have my own resistance to change. No new technology, please, my head is exploding. No new laws, I can't keep up with the ones we have. No new jargon, I can barely understand you as it is.

What if I learned to embrace change for its own sake? What if adapting to change was a grand adventure rather than a terrifying obligation? What if I knew I could not fail? Would I do anything differently in this new year? Or would I slink back into my snarky role as the Chronic Malcontent and blame “management” for my resentments?

Don't ban guns, ban people

The fragility and unpredictability of life hits home this week, with the Oregon mall shooting and now the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school. I'm struggling to process these tragedies, as many people are doing right now. Reading the comments section of the online news articles illuminates some fundamental philosophical differences in the solutions people propose.

Some folks say we should ban guns. That is the obvious first thought, isn't it? At the first mention of banning assault weapons, people shout, “Guns don't kill people, people kill people!” Well, duh. But it seems like banning guns might be a good first step. Or would have been a good first step. Now, of course, it is too late. In this modern age, every other teenager and half the pre-teens already have or in five minutes can get their mitts on the assault weapons of their choice. Barn door, horses, etc. Strengthening a ban on assault weapons may help 20 years down the road, as current models jam, melt, or get turned into lampbases and as new middle-schoolers have a harder time getting access. We may not have 20 years left at the rate we are going. I wish we could go back to cap guns.

I chuckle at the argument from the rabid gun supporters who say, “Cars kill people! Maybe we should ban cars!” Actually, I think the idea has some merit. I would gladly give up my car if my neighbors would give up their assault rifles. Hey, what if we all drove two-wheeled cars? Besides being super fun, we'd probably wreak a lot less havoc if we decided to jump the curb and mow down pedestrians on an urban sidewalk.

Well, we all know the problem isn't caused by cars or guns. The problem is crazy people. And stupid people. The stupid people leave their guns laying around for their stupid children to find and blow their stupid heads off. The stupid people fail to lock up their guns, so their stupid children find the guns and take them to school, where they accidentally on purpose blow away their friends and enemies. Stupid people let their crazy friends borrow their guns. The answer is simple. Ban stupid people and their stupid children.

But that is only part of the story. What to do about the crazy people? The crazy people sometimes look like non-crazy people. And what is crazy to one person might be perfectly rational to another. Just like defining stupid, defining crazy is hard until the person in question pulls a Columbine. Then it's easy to say, he was crazy. And his family was stupid. (If, of course, his family survives, which is often not the case.) So what do we do?

Ban people. It's the only solution. If crazy people and stupid people are the problem, and if they are walking hidden among us, there's no hope for society as we have fashioned it. From now on, to minimize the current pressure on crazy people, we should no longer be allowed to congregate in groups, so we present less of a tempting target. We should all stop talking about our fear of being randomly cut down in our shoes. Crazies feed on fear. The media should be silenced; crazies feed on publicity. And finally, we should not be allowed to propagate. Procreate. Whatever the word is. Because people are the problem.

The end.

Of course you know I'm being my usual snarky chronically malcontented self, right? I love people. Even the stupid ones. Even the crazy ones. Even as I weep for the dead, I pray for the souls of the living. And vice versa.