Another stupid cold holiday season begins

As usual, the holidays stir up mixed feelings in my brain. Beyond the basics of cold, hungry, tired, or leave me alone, I often have no idea what I want or need, and it always seems worse this time of year. Is that normal? I suspect not. You probably love the holidays, am I right? All those songs, those lights, those smells emanating from frantic shoppers. What's more, I bet you go through this season knowing exactly what you want and need. The reason I claim this is because I used to know exactly what I wanted and needed. Or I thought I did. Now I know nothing, not about holiday cheer, pecan pie, or anything else.

For example, once I was positive I would have a career in the arts. Everyone around me thought so, and so did I. Now, looking back, I find I actually have had no career at all. I don't think many people who aren't in the arts can say that. Normal people go to school, get jobs that constitute careers, have families, accumulate wealth, retire, and then die. Oh, sure, they have hiccups, farts, and belches along the way in the form of divorces, deaths, illness, what have you, but those things would have happened anyway, no matter what their career, given that people are codependent frightened amygdalas most of the time. Oh, sorry, this has nothing to do with the holidays, does it? This sometimes happens. It's the end-of-year what-fresh-hell-is-this time of reflection.

My amygdala is running flat out these days, trying to get me to stop, just stop. I seem hell bent on jumping in a handbasket and setting a course straight for hell. I think I can add "as usual," because this is normal for me, this is my norm, this is my M.O. I'm regressing to my mean. I'm trying to be nice about it, but the holiday music sometimes gets under my skin. Misophonic dermatillomaniac. 

What I am trying to say? I'm saying I'm nuts. To really put paid to this season of holiday hell, I applied for a job, and this week, I had a Zoom interview. (No, it's not a Christmas sales job, although that could be a fun form of purgatory for someone who chases misery.) It's just a semi-white collar grant-funded one-year temp gig. Part of me thinks they'd be crazy not to hire me. If they do, there's a chance I might be moving to northern Arizona. However, there is an equal chance I will be moving into my car and parking it on BLM land somewhere to wait for affordable housing to catch up to the senior housing crisis. 

I'm trying to imagine how I will feel if I don't get the job. Will rejection confirm all the negative beliefs I've dragged around like a PigPen blanket all these years? Oh, woe is me, alas, alackaday, they hate me, time for some worm stew. My own private rain cloud will let loose, and I will accept it, because I rarely use an umbrella, but mainly because that is what I'm used to. I land somewhere by accident, I perch for a while, and then a strong wind (usually blown out my own butt) sends me toppling into free fall, until I fetch up on some other ledge or branch, wondering what the hell just happened.

But, holy crapolly momma moly, what if I get the job? Who will I be then? Someone whose skills are in demand? Someone chosen to be part of a team? My brain is like a piece of slimy meat that refuses to wrap around the stick. I need a new brain. I need a new persona, a new self-concept, if you will. This stupid cold season really tends to bring out my chronic malcontent. Kind of like Beauty and the Beast. No, more like Jeckyll and Hyde. Mutt and Jeff. Chip and Dale. Sonny and Cher. Bread and butter. Gay and apparel. Wait. What? 

I can write what I want here because this blog is still (more or less) anonymous and because nobody reads it anymore anyway. Or if they do, they are much too polite to bring up my latest melancholic diatribe about my attempts to live life on its own stupid terms. If I had been writing like this twenty years ago, my family and friends would have stormed me with an intervention. I'd be in rehab. Ninety in ninety, phone it in every day. 

Now, my friends and family are busy, living busy interesting lives. To be sure, some of them are probably as miserable as I am, falling down stairs and losing mothers. But others are busy going on fabulous trips to exotic places, embarking on romantic relationships, worrying about quiche and cats and husbands, oh my. None of them has time for my drama. This is healthy, this is good. Everyone has drama. They just don't barf it out in a blog. At least, not that I know of. Hm. Omigorsh, would it not be hilariously wonderful if we were all blogging anonymously? 

Meanwhile, the alarm clock in my brain is still going off once per minute, 24/7, and I'm still writing and posting a story a day on my non-anonymous blog, where I go on and on and on, simply to practice my craft. And because I said I would, and I am not a quitter. Wonder of wonders! No wonder I'm nuts. Writing a story a day is harder than showing up to write a literature review for a dissertation no one will ever read. 

Sorry to the bots, this blog is the landfill where the garbage trucks dump the crap. 

Welcome to a new season of endless cranky fun from the Hellish Handbasket. 

Digging to find the brown gopher of gratitude

I read today that writing gratitude lists sometimes can make us feel worse rather than better. I find that news a great relief. Now I don't have to feel guilty about (a) not writing a list and (b) not feeling grateful. 

Gratitude means judging. We need to figure out what's worth being grateful about before we can decide to feel gratitude, am I right? Maybe you have a clear sense of good and bad, but the older I get, the more I fail to grasp the eithor/or-ness of the whole idea. I get stuck on the judgy part, trying to parse good from bad, and getting lost in the space between. My Jungian friend would call that the liminal space. I call it a mild form of hell. Life would be so much easier if I could clearly differentiate good from bad. 

It's a continuum, bla bla bla. I'm not going to debate whether it is bad to commit murder, for example, or steal a lint roller from Walmart. Those cases are not under consideration when I might be contemplating being grateful for something. I'm grateful I haven't committed murder, is that a thing to put on the list? I'm grateful I don't care if my clothes have lint on them, so a lint roller holds no appeal. 

I've maundered far and wide in this blog on the topics of creativity, success, and bad decisions, so I won't bore you with all that again. I can't remember what I've written before, but I know a few of you actually have functional memories, and I don't want to annoy. Ha. As if it were possible. But I can seek to minimize the annoyance. You are welcome.

I'm reporting today that it is possible I've made a bad decision. Oh, I've made a lot of bad decisions, and I've told you all about them, but this one might be right up there near the top of stupid things I've decided to do, worse maybe than the decision to move to Tucson. 

I decided to see if I could write a story a day. For a year. 

Not only that, I decided to publish daily on my personal website. For a year. 

I must be nuts. After eleven posts, I'm beginning to realize I might have bitten off something that is going to break all my teeth and choke me on my own spit. Not that it isn't fun writing, but writing for an audience as if no one is reading? That gets the heart rate going. Lucky for me, my heart can take it. My stomach is in knots, though. 

I think my ego is getting in the way. I just realized posting as if no one is reading isn't all that much of a challenge when no one is actually reading. 

Oh, poor me. I'm adopting a woe-is-me posture, claiming the pressure of writing and posting daily is so intense, I can hardly stand it. Truth, I don't have a subscribe option on my website. Nobody can sign up to get notified of my daily contribution to the infinite pile of stupid, poorly written stories. Whew, that's a relief. And with my mom now dead, there goes one-fifth of my readership, which was spotty even on a good day, a good day being when she could remember how to turn on her computer. What's more, my one timid foray posting on social media was like a grain of sand dropped into the Grand Canyon. My vague post was more of a practice run, really, just in case someday in the far future, when I feel like I might want to pop my head out of my isolation hole and sniff the air. 

You might ask, why put yourself out there like that, Carol? Aren't you afraid of what people will think? Friends (if that is what you are), I am not longer a perfectionist, as you will surely see if you are one of the lucky half-dozen who know who I am and can find my website. Typos, repetitive dialog, missing punctuation . . .  it's all there, like cakes that failed to rise in the Betty Crocker test kitchen, except these cakes, I mean, stories, are on full display. 

I am not a quitter. I signed myself up for the long haul. Only I will know if I failed to meet my goal. We'll see, I guess. I will try to keep you posted. 

All I can hope for is that the internet goes out. 

The annoying choice between safe and happy

I had a birthday this week. To celebrate, I treated myself to the trifecta. I don't mean I went horse racing. I mean, I sidled on down to my pharmacy and got the COVID-19 booster in my right arm and the flu and RSV shots in my left arm. Then I went home and descended into the misery I so righteously sought and deserved. I can hear what you are saying right now. Just because your friend E got all three and bounced back like a Bobo Doll doesn't mean you can do the same. E is six years your junior! Come on, Carol. Get real!

Clearly, even at this ripe stinky old age, I still have a lot to prove. 

What did I prove? I am a superhero. After a day and night of fairly intense suffering (it's all relative, isn't it?), I emerged stronger, straighter (in a postural sense), and buoyed with optimism. Invincible is how I feel. Confident enough to keep my tube of Preparation H in the same jar as my Crest Cavity Protection. That's pretty darn cocky for someone on the glaucoma watch list.

As is normal for a chronic malcontent, my unearned sense of optimism wore off fast. Now I'm back to my usual gloomy self. The alarm clock in my head relentlessly chimes once or twice per minute of every waking hour. I can't say for sure what happens after I finally fall asleep, but judging by the amount of time I spend awake and staring out the bathroom window at the stars, I'm guessing the alarm rings while I'm sleeping, too. During the day, like for instance, right now while I'm typing, I can tune it out. But when I'm lying on my foam rubber mattress on the floor, the noise in my head is deafening. I wish I were deaf, but I have a feeling this kind of sound is the kind you hear through your eight cranial nerve. Sort of like the way trash truck noises travel through the floor of the trailer at 4:00 a.m. and permeate my bones. Oh, the humanity.

It's so fun to hear other people express righteous anger on my behalf. I have to remind myself, though, that they might possibly be right. I'd rather not consider that possibility. Some of their suggestions are downright annoying. For example, people give me suggestions (advice) on everything from eating to dressing to finding a home to managing my healthcare. Some of it I've heard since I was a kid, so it's easy to tune it out—get a job, wear a bra, grow your hair, learn to type, draw flowers and fairies. Lately, I've been told to apply for senior housing, move closer to family, put my art on t-shirts, be more assertive, sell on BookTok . . . The list goes on and on. I suppose I do the same to them, so I fair's fair.

I usually fall into the trap of trying to defend myself and justify my choices. Later I berate myself for once again falling into the trap of trying to defend myself and justify my choices. It's futile, yet I still slip and fall right in. More like I dive in headfirst. I'm self-trained to defend first and self-berate later. And of course, because I live in constant doubt, I wonder, are they right? Is the problem that my hair is too short? Or I don't eat the flesh of dead creatures who would prefer to still be living? Or that I should just accept where I am, even though I don't like this town, and focus on being safe, forget about being happy? 

I've done so many things wrong in my life, it's easy to nod and say, you're right, I'm sure you are right. Everything would be different if I just put on a bra once in a while. Or stopped picking my teeth with toothpicks. Or yelled at my doctors instead of sucking it up and whining to any friend who will listen. 

In the end, with all the noise in my head, I can't hear my own voice among the voices of all my well-meaning advisors, mentors, and fixers. How much of my predicament is the product of a lifetime of thoughtless choices, and how much is attributable to a structural problem in the U.S. affordable housing market? I read an article today about someone who works in Los Angeles but has to live 100 miles away to find affordable housing. That's a 2- to 3-hour commute! I did not create this housing shortage. Neither did I create the fiasco that is the U.S. healthcare system. I just happen to be caught up in the vortex of ill health, age, poverty, inadequate housing, and a deep desire to rest in silence. 

A good friend's mother is dying. Another friend just found love for the first time in many years. The refrigerator is working. My check engine light went out. My sister's cat finally pooped after days of constipation. Lives are cut short from war, earthquakes, sea-level rise, gun violence, and COVID-19. The world is busy. I want to be busy, too, writing. I don't need much to do that. Maybe I can find my own version of Walden Pond. Is it out there? I won't know unless I go look. One thing I am sure of. It is not here.

In retreat, on retreat

Homelessness probably can be a spiritual experience for people who are supremely enlightened. I’m not one of those people. Homelessness to me says total loser, you fail at life. Instead of saying I’m homeless, how about I say I’m going on a retreat? Would you judge me any less harshly if I told you I’m going to unplug for a while in pursuit of my spiritual and financial wellbeing?

Going on a retreat is a time-tested way to disconnect from everything in search of . . . what? Higher meaning? Spiritual purpose? Lower body mass index? There’s even a thing called an adventure retreat! Who knew.

I’m in good company: People have been going on retreats for millennia, seeking whatever they believe they are missing. Wellness, connection, adventure, God. I’m not lookingn for anything fancy. I want some time, peace, and solitude so I can get back to my writing.

Of course, it’s true, I have so far not been able to find affordable housing, but that doesn’t mean going on a writing retreat is proof that I’m a colossal failure. The stock of affordable housing is low right now. It’s a structural problem, not a personal moral failing on my part. Yes, it’s a moral failing on the part of American society, and I suppose you could say I’m part of that, but seriously, as a bleeding heart liberal, I always vote on the side of the homeless. Homeowners need to stop complaining about their property values and practice a little compassion. We are all one tornado, one hurricane, one wildfire, one flood away from homelessness. If you think your homeowner’s insurance policy will save you, think again.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah. Writing retreat. Not a failure. I could claim it as a victory of sorts. If all goes according to plan, I will be able to live within my means while being creative, productive, and maybe even helpful to others, if I can figure out how to have occasional access to the internet.

Some of my friends have expressed fear and anxiety on my behalf. I understand. Being homeless is one of their worst fears. To them, homelessness represents a massive catastrophic failure of some kind, usually on the part of the one who has become homeless. I hope my friends will remember they still have their housing. They have little to fear. They are not the ones who will soon be living in a minivan. Probably. In addition, I hope they realize that projecting their fears onto me will not make anyone safer or more secure. Please, friends and loved ones, I am not responsible for your anxiety. It is not possible for me to live my life in such a way that you have no fear.

Seeking the road less traveled was cool when I was young. Being a bohemian artist, out till all hours, sleeping on friends’ couches, mucking up strangers’ beds. I could dress as wild as I pleased, it was part of my mystique, my creative self-expression, if you will. My style. I was highly invested in looking strange, acting weird, being unpredictable.

Now I’m old, and I care very little about what others think of me. Newsflash to only me: I was never unpredictable. I realize that now. My path was laid out for me from the moment I chose art over accounting. Anyone could have seen what was coming, even me, if I’d cared to look, which I did not. Living in the moment doesn’t involve a lot of self-reflection or concern for the future. I always assumed somehow it would all magically work out.

If by “working out,” I meant living an unorthodox, creative, road-less-traveled sort of life, well, by golly, I got what I asked for. Nobody thought to ask me how I defined success. I certainly never asked myself. Success meant doing what I wanted on my own terms. Ha. Boy, look how successful I have become! By that definition, I am a total success!

The tradeoff is that I have had to be willing to give up the trappings that come with a traditional definition of success. Career, house, family, wealth. Ho hum. The truth is, I’d be living in a Ford Focus if it weren’t for the random fact that my mother died before she spent all her money. Thanks, Mom. Still miss you, by the way. Hope you are enjoying that wind-blown, shrub-lined grotto we dumped you in last month. (I’m using the word “grotto” in the most generous sense and the word “dumped” in the most literal sense.) I still feel a little iffy about how that went down, but at least you are out of the box and gone with the wind. That can’t be a bad thing. I hope someday someone does the same for me.

So, what I was I saying? Oh, yeah, retreat. I’m in retreat. I’m going on a retreat. I’m following in the footsteps of millions, it’s definitely a road well traveled. Adventures could happen, miracles could occur, disasters could ensue. Anything is possible, whether you are a believer or not.

Fear is everpresent. Some fear is healthy. I hope not to meet a bear, for example. However, other fears are barriers to living. Taking a chance means I don’t know what will happen. What’s behind Door No. 3? Will it be a bear? Will it be a broken leg? Will it be a creative life filled with meaning and purpose? I won’t know unless I open the door.

Destined for greatness

Howdy Blogbots. I'm happy to announce, my glitchy heart keeps chugging along, dragging the rest of me with it. I guess I follow where the heart leads me—haven't I always done that, isn't that what making art is all about, following our bliss? Who knew I was supposed to take it literally. Like, my heart is pounding out the beat of my life. When it stops, I stop.

The good news (according to my cardiologist) is my heart is misfiring but not so often or so badly that there's anything to be done about it yet. The other good news is that my upcoming CT scan was postponed until after Christmas because the machine was broken. I'm over it, this whole IV needle in the arm thing, this let's shoot you full of iodine dye thing. Probably I'll be fine.

Now that I'm probably going to live a while longer, I have had the luxury of thinking about other things.

I was thinking the other day that I have paid a high premium for the privilege of eschewing a "normal" working life for a life of creativity. At each major crossroads I encountered, I said no to money and yes to creativity. I never found a road that led to both at the same time. For me, it was always one or the other. 

Oh, sure, I had jobs, as do we all. I've had many. Among my many jobs, I've been a waitress, an administrative assistant, a gardener, a bus driver, a graphic designer, a seamstress, a warehouse worker, an activities assistant in a nursing home, and a teacher. Any one of those jobs could have been a career. But nope, not for me, I was born retired, which is to say, when a career opportunity crossed my path, I ran in the opposite direction. I said no, not to be stubborn, but because I knew I was destined for something else. I could have gone into marketing or marketing research. I could have pursued a teaching career. I could have worked my way into nursing home administration. I could have been an executive secretary for some dude in a suit. Crossroads that would have most likely led to a much different life: nicer cars, maybe a house, some money in the bank, and a healthy retirement fund.

Back at those crossroads, I would have said I was destined for a life of fulfilling creativity, as a painter, most likely, or as a famous fashion illustrator or clothing designer. Now, years later, with not much road left in front of me, I can say all those refusals have produced a life of poverty and struggle. I admit, I am a little sad. I can't say I regret my choices. I would probably do it again, if I had a do-over. I chose it, it chose me, who knows? They aren't kidding when they say do what you love and you'll probably starve. 

I can't tell if I'm simply addicted to poverty or if this is just what happens to some creative people in a society that doesn't value or support creative low-income earners. I've never made the kind of art that sells, and I wasn't willing to adapt my art to suit someone else's esthetic. I guess you can say I chose this life because my brain made me do it. That makes as much sense as anything else people have diagnosed me with. I always wondered if my brain was trying to kill me, but maybe it's just life with a thousand tiny knives making a thousand tiny cuts.

I'm too old and tired to whine about it (except here, sorry). There's nothing to be done. When I find myself wading into a pity puddle, I stop and get busy writing. It beats all the alternatives.  

To earn or not to earn

Somehow I've managed to divorce earning money from receiving money. It's as if the hose got disconnected from the faucet or something. No, that's not right. It's as if I'm putting energy into a meatgrinder, cranking the handle for all I'm worth, sweating up a storm, and nothing is coming out the other end. Not meat juice, not water, not air. Then when I go look in my refrigerator, there's meat in there. Like, how did that happen? 

I am not a meat eater, so this is a bad analogy. All I know is, something is wacky with me and money. I'm turning the handle but nothing is coming out the spigot. It's similar to the wackiness between me and time, the challenge I discussed last week. 

What the heck am I talking about? Vertigo is clawing my brain into pieces. My head is reeling from a storm system moving through. Actual rain is coming down from the sky. Moisture. Falling from the sky. So weird. 

Anyway, I can't think very well when the bucket is sloshing in my head. I think what I'm trying to do right now is describe my experience this week of doing work for no pay. I seem to be caught up in swirls and eddies that take me nowhere. Words are failing me.

The past few weeks, I've edited three papers for the for-profit higher education institution that hired me as a part-time dissertation editor. I'm supposed to get paid a certain amount per student per term. It isn't hard work. The hardest part is learning the quirks of the institution's dissertation guidelines, which seriously depart from APA style. 

Enough palaver. What I'm saying is that I've done a bunch of work, the term is over, and I have not been paid. I think I recall the supervisor saying they pay twice per term. It's a paltry amount, minus taxes, so I'm not holding my breath, hoping to have money for bread. What am I saying? I don't eat bread. Okay, milk. I don't drink milk. Money for onions. I don't know. My brain is going sideways. 

The agency guy I sometimes edit for sent me a little paper to edit yesterday. A proposal thing in a weird institutional template. I polished it up and shipped it off. Five hours later, the guy writes back, oh hey, here's the institution's handbook, can you see if what you edited complies with the format in Appendix E? I wanted to yell at him (via email), you idiot, why didn't you send it to me before I edited the paper? But I thought, what would be the point, other than releasing my frustration? So I downloaded the handbook and looked at it. It had some examples of title page, copyright page, you know, all that front matter stuff nobody ever reads, as well as some formatting requirements.

I wrote to the agency guy: You want me to format this paper?

He wrote back: Yes, would you?

I'd already spent over two hours just editing the text. Now I was expected to reformat the paper and add a title page, copyright page, acknowledgments page, and a table of contents. 

Oh, did I tell you how much I am getting paid? Sixty dollars. 

I might as well be paying him for the privilege of being of service. Ditto the institution I supposedly work for. 

I recently decided to stop teaching online Zoom classes for artists who want to learn business. It's not worth the hassles. I'm intrinsically motivated, you know that. I have to be. The pay is $25 per hour to teach a class. Minus taxes. I'm paying transit tax for a county in which I no longer reside. I spend many hours gathering my material and refining it into presentations that I hope artists will enjoy and understand. I don't expect praise, although I get some now and then. I also don't expect to be reamed for using incorrect personal pronouns when students don't turn on their cameras or otherwise give me a clue. 

Have you tried speaking without any personal pronouns at all? It's quite challenging. I have changed all my business emails to "pronouns: any." Honestly, I don't care what you call me. Pronounce it any way you want, make up your own spelling. My sense of well-being does not depend on you using my preferred pronouns. 

What was I talking about? Oh yeah: the meatgrinder. I put in energy and effort, I turn handle, and no meat comes out. It's a metaphor. Not a good one. I have a commitment to self to blog every Sunday, no matter what. Sometimes I can't find the words. I don't even know what I am feeling, other than dizzy.

And yet, my fridge is full. Not of meat, but I have plenty of eggs, yogurt, vegetables, fruit, nuts, twigs, and gravel. I'm not starving. There is gas in my car (I hardly go anywhere, I think gas prices will probably drop by the time I need to fill up). I'm doing fine. 

The disconnect I perceive might not be real. 

If I have to choose between a "real" job that pays a "regular wage" and this weird quasi-freelancing editing gig, which is better for me? If I'm not going to get paid, is it better to be useful? Or is it better to work on my own projects and tell everyone else, no, I can no longer do your projects for a few pennies or no pennies at all? Rain is a suitable mood, and the Bat Cave is a perfect place to excavate the words that escape me.
 

A mild case of existential dread

COVID is still a thing here in Arizona. I'm laying low in the Bat Cave, hiding out from omicron, even though I know, as a bleeding heart liberal, I'm prone to believe the sky is falling, has always been falling, will always be falling. I don't fear death. I do fear long COVID. My brain already has enough hiccups. I double-mask and glove up when I go to the grocery store. Other than that, I've stopped going into buildings. I walk the streets alone, reveling in the 64F sunshine and wishing it were warmer. Meanwhile my sister in Boston is buried in two feet of snow. She's been feeding birds on her balcony. They are lined up like marauders on the railing. I'm afraid I'll get a text saying she was pecked to smithereens by chickadees and sparrows trying to get to her birdseed stash. 

Meanwhile, it's mild and dry here in Tucson. While I wait to die from a stroke, I have been patting myself on the back for finally getting the upper hand with the little dudes. I have been spraying weekly. I rarely see a little skittery dude now. Not alive, anyway. I see a few on their backs with their limbs frozen in the air. Did you know that some cockroaches are the same color as bits of sautéed onion? I know. Kind of puts you off your feed, doesn't it?

Let's see, what else? No more men with guns this week, no more people pounding on my door at midnight. Yesterday my neighbor on the other side of the wall had a little party with the girls. I couldn't hear the music but the bass from her stereo pounded for several hours through the wall. I wanted to rip a hole with my hammer and stick my head through. Here's Johnny! Now I kill you. However, I refrained. Once again, I was driven to the Internet to discover the name of my malady: misophonia. It's a thing, look it up. Earplugs don't work. I took a folding chair into the closet and sat there with my mp3 player going in my ears until the noise stopped. Eventually my heart settled back into its own rhythm rather than trying to beat in time to a song I could not hear. Neighbors. They come and go. Come August, I will be one who goes. 

Of course, life is uncertain. I'm feeling some existential dread. I heard that term on the radio today. I really like it. I think I will adopt it as my description for my state of mind. How are you, Carol? Oh, feeling a little extra existential dread today, how about you? 

It's hard to mope when the sun is shining. I have to put my back into it. Really make an effort. On these mild sunny days, it takes some serious motivation to maintain my chronic malcontentedness. It's like belonging to Misanthropes Anonymous. Sometimes I have a little slip and hate someone or something but mostly I've got this recovery thing handled. I have a lot to be thankful for. For instance, I think I might be getting a little stronger after five weeks of the bisphosphate pills. One false step on the treacherous Tucson pavement could shatter my timbers but I have hope that if I keep moving, gradually my bones will strengthen. Then when vertigo trips me over a curb, I'm more likely to pop up like Bobo the Clown. 

Mom used to say it's hell getting old. Now that I'm my mother, I can say it too. It's hell getting old. She lasted until 91, though, and I'm only 65. What the heck, Universe?

Speaking of what the heck, when I was fourteen years old, I wrote a book about some pioneers traveling the Oregon Trail. I wrote it in pencil on notebook paper. Five hundred pages. It took me four months. I tied the pages together with yarn and bound the book with kelly-green fabric glued onto corrugated cardboard. I'm looking at it right now as I'm typing this blogpost. It has traveled with me through the years, mainly because I didn't know what to do with it. Scanning it would take forever. Typing it is out of the question. Does it have any value as an artifact? If I were a famous writer or artist, it might. Like, wow, she was only fourteen when she wrote it. Nobody cares, but I still can't bear to relegate it to the recycle bin. 

Now, at last, through the wonder of modern technology, I discover I can have Google Docs type it for me. All I have to do is read it aloud. If I can stomach my teenage maunderings about covered wagons, Indian raids, and cute Indian boys, I don't think it's going to take all that long. Three pages of longhand scrawl condenses to about three typed paragraphs. If I manage to read this entire tome aloud, I think I will find out it's only about a hundred pages. Then I can store it in the cloud, shred the book, and let my literary executor deal with it, if I'm fortunate enough to have one of those. 

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. 

 

Monsoon stampede creative vertigo head mess

I'm working on my second novel. What else is there to do when it's 110°F outside, I don't have a television, and moving day isn't until August? I'm a writing machine. Who cares if it is any good? The goal is to amass words into an irresistible mass of persuasion, otherwise known as a story.

In a coincidental instance of life imitating art, a couple days ago, I wrote a scene of about a small herd of escaped cows. That same evening, I saw on the news that a herd of cows had escaped from a slaughterhouse and were rampaging through a California neighborhood. My cows were not escaping from a slaughterhouse, they were escaping from a movie set in the hills above Malibu. However, any story about cows running amok in a city neighborhood makes a fun story. I watched the online video to see what a herd of forty cows looks like. I originally wrote thirty cows into my herd but I changed the number to forty. If you need a herd of stampeding cows, forty is the minimum, in my opinion.

I run my errands on Mondays before it gets too hot. On my way to the grocery store this week, I stopped to get gas. I always feel my heart rate go up when it's time to get gas. For one thing, my beast of a car takes a lot of gas, compared to my old Ford Focus. For another thing, here in Arizona, we pump our own gas. I haven't had to pump my own gas in over twenty years. Now they have gas pumps that are computerized. They even talk to you. I don't do a lot of driving so every time I have to pump my own gas, I have to relearn how to do it. This time, the pump screen was showing a news program. How long do they expect me to be standing there? I mean, the thing holds a lot of gasoline, but it's not the Queen Mary, for heaven's sake.

There I was pumping my gas, watching the ticker tick higher and higher, sucking money out of my bank account, when I saw a driver in a sporty white car drive away with the gas nozzle still in his gas tank. He was oblivious. I was like, uh, hey? He had his music turned up and didn't hear my plaintive little voice. And being an older white woman, I already know that I am invisible. 

He took off down the street with the nozzle dragging on the pavement behind him. I was concerned about the gas pump. I went over to look at it. Nothing seemed to be leaking. I finished pumping and paying for my gas and locked my car and went inside to see if the guy at the counter knew that someone had driven off with one of his gas nozzles. He looked at me like I was crazy. I thought I might have been invisible to him too, but finally he understood my pantomime. English was not his first language; I'm not sure what was. My first language is always self-conscious self-deprecation. Still, we managed to communicate, even with masks. He came outside and stood there looking around. Then we both laughed and shrugged our shoulders. 

I wonder what that driver thought when he realized that banging sound was him dragging a gas pump nozzle after his car. Maybe he didn't realize it until he pulled up into his driveway. Oopsy. I wonder if he came back to make amends. I guess drivers drive off with nozzles frequently. Gas stations have breakaway gas nozzles because drivers are stupid sometimes. I'm sure it will happen to me someday. 

It's hot here, but hotter in Portland where I moved from two months ago. Instead of my brother listening to my hour-by-hour announcements (now it's 107F!), I'm listening to his. Looks like today topped out at 112°F where he lives. Tomorrow could be worse. Welcome to the hot new world. We broke it, now we will have to wallow in it while we whine about how it wasn't our fault. 

Monsoon is here. That means the summer wind direction in the desert has shifted. In the evenings, wind comes rampaging up from the south. Sometimes it brings thunderstorms and torrential rain. The sprinkle of rain we had last week was just enough to sluice off the back end of my car. I helped it along with a yogurt container of water. No soap, I just wiped the dust off. As I mopped the dead bugs off the front, I said a prayer that the metal awnings covering the carports in this trailer park are all securely battened down. Awnings that come loose and go flying create bad hair days. 

My writing isn't great today. Vertigo is clawing up the inside of my head. I am pretty sure it's because of the vacillating air pressure; the readings are yawing up and down the barometer as storm systems ride across the land. The little ear crystals in my inner ears apparently want to ride along with them. Yee-haw. I feel like I'm galloping on horseback most of the time. Vertigo makes it hard to think. The waves in my head slow me down some—I have to do some acrobatics sometimes to get things to settle. Still, vertigo doesn't stop me. It's been six years, after all. I just keep writing. 

Can you prove that you exist?

When I planned my move to Tucson several years ago, it never occurred to me that I might have a hard time renting an apartment. There was and still is no lack of apartments in Tucson in my price range. After eighteen years being a model tenant (she said modestly), I really thought finding an apartment would be easy. Who wouldn't want me? I'm like a property owner's dream tenant. Clean, quiet, uncomplaining, and most important, I always pay my rent on time. What's not to love?

Apparently in this computerized world, decisions involving risk depend on algorithms. In the case of rental housing, the decision to rent is orchestrated by credit reporting agencies. You've heard of these outfits: Experian, Transunion, and Equifax. They all collect data on all of us all the time. Unless you live under a rock (which I haven't ruled out if my plans fall through), you can't avoid getting on their radar.

Unless you don't borrow money. I haven't borrowed money for a quarter of a century. That means I haven't purchased anything with a credit card, taken out a loan, or bought anything on time payments for a long time. With no data to report for over twenty-five years, my credit report is pretty sparse. In fact, the only data on the form are the four addresses I've had since 1997. I know this because I asked to receive a copy of my credit report. I can see how a property manager might not want to take a chance. They'd be like, does this person actually exist? Maybe she is just a pile of boxes in a storage unit, ever thought of that? It's hard to evict a pile of boxes. Nah, better pass on this one.

What this means is that I have no credit score. Decisions regarding hiring, housing, and insurance rates are made based on credit score. If you have no credit score, companies might not be willing to take a chance renting to you. They aren't really 100% sure that you exist. 

I emailed a modest property in the neighborhood and explained my situation. It was sort of a message in a bottle. I'd sent a few before. You know what I mean, those contact forms on websites that are prefaced with something friendly like, "You've found your new home at Palm Oasis Desert Canyon Vista Terrace Village! We want to hear from you!" I can hear you yelling at your computer monitor right now. You are yelling, how can she be so naïve? Well, you are correct, yes, I live in my own world. You probably don't remember, but a long time ago I wrote a blogpost about how I'm not really a chronic malcontent. I'm actually an optimist. I act like I'm constantly in despair, but the truth is, I really do believe that people are inherently good and that the world is a benevolent place. I can hear you screaming again.

Anyway, to my surprise, a man named Robert called me back the same day. He was remarkably kind. He asked me some questions and seemed to laugh a lot for some reason. Maybe he was astounded that I could be so naïve too, like you are. My excuse is I'm new in town, haven't figured it out yet. Out-of-towners always get a mulligan or two, don't they? We yell at them when we are behind them on the road because they are driving like idiots, but the truth is, we sort of like them too. Newcomers to the place we know so well and love to hate. Well, I'm guessing that is how it is here. That is how I sometimes felt in Portland, when I was younger and could still remember how to get from SE Portland to NW Portland without driving in circles. Here, I drive in big squares, because the roads are laid out on a grid, which is so helpful for me. I just keep turning right until I get somewhere.

So, here's this nice guy Robert asking me questions on the phone and I'm doing my best to answer honestly without telling him I'm a nutcase. With my luck I'll never meet him. Luckily for him and the company he works for, I'm the right kind of nutcase, the kind that pays her rent on time. He told me he thought they could work with me. He recommended I fill out the online application (only $51.95, including the $2.95 admin fee). After seeing some of these applications requiring a nonrefundable $200 administration fee on top of the application fee, I was like, right on, no problem, I'm on it.

I jumped on that form like a hungry cat on wet Friskies and the next day I got an email telling me I was approved to rent an apartment at XYZ Apartments. I felt like I'd been given an existence permit—you know: You have the right to exist! You exist, therefore you belong! Come live at our property. We accept you, we accept you, one of us!

Later I looked at the floor plan and the Google Earth footprint and realized the place is an overpriced dive on a busy street. The unit I believe I'm renting is in the back, though, so that is good. But it's on the ground floor, so I expect total darkness—but all the units will be dark. Each unit has only one window and the blinds will be drawn all the time. This is Tucson, after all. No sunlight allowed in the habitat. On the downside, instead of a park, there's a car repair shop on the corner of the block. Or is that a plus, hmmm, not sure. For sure a plus, there's a library just around the corner, no doubt placed to serve the middle school that is right across the street. As long as there are no lockdowns or active shooters, I should be okay.

I'm happy that I managed to convince one property management company that I exist and I'm worth taking a risk. They won't be sorry. I might be, but they won't. I'm heartened to think that if one company bucked the algorithm, there might be more. I'm going to get a secured credit card, though, because this level of uncertainty has been hellish.

The apartment comes open in early August, so I have time to obsess over how I will place my boxes in the postage-stamp floorplan. Meanwhile, I'm working on my novel. It's blazing hot here, too hot to do anything else. Enforced creativity while I wait for my little abode in Tucson is not the worst thing that could happen. 

Welcome to another stupid cold holiday season

 Hello, happy holidays to my seven blog readers. You sly anonymous folks, you know who you are. I've been anonymously writing this blog for some years now, hiding behind the moniker of The Chronic Malcontent (like about a hundred other bloggers). Now we are all living anonymous lives, hidden behind plaid and paisley masks, or tasteful cotton chambray, perhaps. Or maybe you use one of those disposable things I see lying on the ground in the Winco parking lot. Whatever we are covering our faces with, we are all hiding, waiting for this stupid cold Covid season to be over. 

I'm done trying to figure things out. I'm taking things as they come. You want to be stupid? Go right ahead. You want to complain? Right on, go for it. I support your right to be loud, stupid, and annoying. 

I'm taking my cue from my mother, living in the moment, not looking behind me, not peering ahead. She's the Zen Master of the Senior Vista Villa, or whatever the place is called. 

"How are your fellow inmates?" I asked a few nights ago as we sat outside the back door under the porte-cochère, six feet apart, me masked (plaid), her bundled in fleece blankets against the December chill.

"Those idiots are so dense!" she said with disgust. 

"Why, what are they doing?" 

"They do it all wrong," she complained. "The contract gets moved, and then everything goes haywire." I nod in agreement, even though I have no idea what she is talking about. 

"Are they messing with your puzzles?"

"You have to keep your eye on Vivian," she said. "She will try to get out the door if you aren't careful."

"You mean, she'll try to make a run for it?" 

"Yeah, she's a real pistol. Sometimes she tries to sit in my place." 

"At the table?"

She nodded, lips pressed tight. Clearly, the drama does not fade once we hit the nursing home stage. It's just like junior high all over again, only the mean girls are toothless and wear house slippers. 

"Well, if she takes a swing at you, you scream bloody murder. Erin won't stand for it."

"Yeah, she runs a tight ship." High praise. Moving Mom to this care home was traumatic for everyone but almost three months later, she's doing better than fine. She's happy and thriving. 

So, what about me? Thanks for asking. My life is no more precarious than it has ever been, hence my strategy of living in the moment. Nobody controls the future, nobody can determine outcomes. I try not to be stupid but hey, I'm human. Sometimes I don't wait as long as I should for the vents to clear the fog off my windshield before I tentatively drive the eight blocks to the care home. 

Every day brings new opportunities to remember that the Universe does not care what I think or feel. Gosh. I wish I could go back in time and have a little do-over. All the energy I have wasted whining about things over the years could have been spent writing ten novels or painting fifty portraits of my cat or planting a garden or waxing my car or my upper lip. Combined! I've been operating as if my complaining about how unfair life is and how mean people are and how stupid everything is has one tiny bit of influence on the Universe. The Universe does not care. Now I know. It's not about me. It's never been about me. I'm glad I figured that out before I catch Covid and die gasping in my bed.

The great benefit of living in the moment is that I'm free to pursue what interests me. I wish I'd done that back when I was eighteen, instead of doing what everyone else thought I should do. Oh well. All those choices brought me here. What a long strange trip it's been. 

Manifesting introversion

The world has gone mad. Blogger has zeroed out all my view counts. It's official. I have ceased to exist. I always suspected I wasn't real. Now I know. All sound and fury, signifying a failed attempt to garner attention. Clearly, no one cares. I guess we all have better things to do with our time now, right? Like worry about our unkempt hair. I have to laugh when I see shaggy-headed women carrying placards reading Open up the country. I need a haircut. Poor dears. It's moments like these I am grateful I am so self-contained. Not only to I do my own nails but I also do my own hair. I have the photos to prove it.

There's only one thing I want and I can't have it, so as a second choice, I have decided to see if I can practice my visualization technique to manifest something. I'm willing to start small. Manifesting stuff hasn't really worked before but I'm feeling lucky. Today, I would like to manifest some glow-in-the-dark paint. I'm not sure why, exactly. I just think it might be entertaining to have arrows to guide me around my dark apartment at night when I am wandering with insomnia.

I often wake up thinking about my mother. Usually I have a playlist running in my head, whatever I listened to before taking my nightly bath and going to bed. Last night I watched a YouTube video of the life of Cher so I woke up humming If I could turn back time. I'm not a big Cher fan; as a former fashionista, I was more focused on Bob Mackie. Still, that song seems like a good theme for an insomniac during a pandemic.

The news is not all bad. I'm heartened to see images of wild animals taking over empty roads, city streets, and yards, raiding refrigerators and busting into cars. Right on! I read that birds are altering their songs now that the world is quieter. I saw video of jellyfish in a Venetian canal. If we humans all just go away, the world will be fine. I'm willing to consider going away.

Then again, half the population would be delighted to kill off everyone over sixty. I reconsider my willingness to consider going away. I won't go willingly, I just decided. You'll have to take me out back and shoot me.

I did my part to tickle the economy by replenishing some footwear I have needed for several years. I didn't want to buy from the big mean online megastore so I bought from a different online megastore I hoped was less mean. How can you tell? I heard some American brands aren't paying their overseas contractors. This is not a good time to be poor. Hmm. Is there ever a good time, I wonder? Before I clicked the button, I gave some thought to the plight of the workers who would pick and wrap my package and the delivery driver who would drop the box on my porch, pound on the door, and run. Then I clicked the button. I could almost hear the funds draining out of my bank account into the pockets of the big online megastore.

I wonder how much my insurance rates would go up if I decided to become a delivery driver? Several months ago, I applied to be a Census taker, just for the experience. That so far has tanked; for me, I think that ship sailed over the edge of the earth. I could probably be a candidate for contact tracing training. You know, calling people to ask them where they went and who they talked to before they got sick. Ugh. Yeah, probably delivering footwear would be a better fit for me. I don't really like people up close, and I really dislike them on the phone.

Speaking of phones and people, I video chatted twice today, once with a friend and an hour later with my sister. I told my friend I thought that over the next several years, families with children (and resources, of course) would start migrating out of cities into rural farmland, seeking safety, space, and sustenance from the land. My friend listened thoughtfully and said, wow. We discussed the possibility that red counties could start turning purple. In contrast, my sister said she didn't think that would ever happen. I get the feeling she doesn't like to think about the possibilities of large cultural change. I mentioned my belief that we'd soon have robots doing personal care. She rolled her eyes. (Don't you love video chat?) I didn't tell her my other predictions about how children will learn to distrust people from outside their family tribe, or how there will likely be less personal privacy, or how new houses will be built with self-contained quarantine units.

I admit, I don't like change either. I'm still pissed off that all the hair on my legs has migrated to my eyebrows, nostrils, and upper lip. But like I said last time, what is fair to the cat is not always fair to the mouse. Or the other cat.

An acquaintance who works in the alternative wellness industry called me last week. As we were talking, I coughed. A short dry cough. Twice. Sounding alarmed, she asked me if I was sick. I said no, I just have allergies. Later in the conversation, I told her that I would be disinclined to sit in a small meeting room with a group of people anytime in the near future. Sounding amazed, she asked me why. I said because I would feel bad if I unknowingly spread the virus to someone in the group and they got sick or died. She had no response. I chalked it up to her youth.

Since then, I have asked several people how comfortable they would be going back to the old way of gathering in groups. Even my older friends are itching to hug their friends. I seem to be the only one reluctant. I guess in my case, introversion is sort of like a disease. Too bad it's not contagious. It could save your life.

Happy new year from the Hellish Hand-Basket

I'm relieved to have survived 2019. As I wait for 2020 to blow us all to smithereens, I am reflecting on some accomplishments, challenges, and surprises from the past year. I mean mine, of course. I'm not qualified to judge anyone else's, although that never stops me. I wonder, should I be looking forward rather than backward? Good question. I'll look forward some other time. The wreckage of the future always beckons. Tonight, I'm reflecting backward.

First, I've been a writing machine this year. I'm like the meat grinder of writers. Ideas in, content out. Of course, like any meat grinder, the quality of the output depends on the quality of the input. Luckily for us all, I never let a little thing like concern for quality stop me from grinding out words. Sometimes I string words together into actual sentences. I know. I'm amazing.

Second, I'm getting things done around the Love Shack. It is good to be proactive when one is preparing for homelessness. To that end, I'm ticking things off that have been on my list for twenty years. For example, this week I have been transferring my music audiotapes to digital format. I know! I'm a dynamo.

It was really easy once I figured out where to plug the cable. Thank you to all the wonderful people who post tutorials on the Web for idiots like me. So now I can throw away all these hissing compilation tapes of songs captured off scratchy albums I dragged to Portland from Los Angeles and then donated to thrift stores. As if Portland needed an infusion of Monkee albums. Downsizing is an incremental process—first the albums, then the tapes, then the computer. After North Korea's bomb destroys the power grid, I'll be completely free.

Third, I've learned some new words this year:  Shingrix. Costochondritis. Ganglion. Retinal artery occlusion. It's good to expand my vocabulary after many years of shrinkage. Where did all my words go, I wonder? Probably the same place my socks go. Inside my duvet covers.

I've learned some new skills this year, too. Taking my own blood pressure! How cool is that! It's so fun to wrap my arm in Velcro, one of the great human inventions, and then grimace as my arm is all but severed.

A few weeks ago, I made my every-other-year visit to my doctor for a wellness exam. I brought her a drawing I made of my naked body labeled with all the things I thought might be failing, head to toe. Cysts, warts, hiatal hernia, bladder, high cholesterol, arthritis, yep, the works. In moments like these, all those years of art school really pay off. She was surprised, perhaps nonplussed. Perplexed, confused, astounded . . . all words that might apply.

“Can I keep this?” she said, holding the drawing carefully between two fingers. I magnanimously said, “Of course, I made it for you.”

Finally, my major achievement for the year is showing up for my mother. Almost every evening, I drive over to her retirement facility, park my car, hike through weather, and enter the code on the back door. I stride down the hallway, noting which door name plates have come and gone. As I walk by the dining room, I dodge white-haired people heading back to their rooms, most assisted by aides, who smile at me and greet me by name. I look to see if Mom is still eating. Almost every evening, one old lady waves at me. Another one points at me and says, “Who is that guy?”

In Mom's room, if the lamp and TV are on, she's sitting up watching the Flintstones. If the lamp and TV are off, she's snoozing on the couch.

A few nights ago, the room was dark. She was lying on the couch under her blue plaid wool blanket. I entered with my usual greeting: “Howdy, Slacker.”

She opened her eyes and looked at me. She didn't say anything, which is not normal. I sat on the couch by her feet.

“Do you recognize me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “You're my daughter, Carol.”

I guess some days are better than others. Tonight, she was sitting up, laughing at Fred and Barney, as alert as ever. We enjoyed the rest of the Flintstones, followed by the last thirty minutes of Love it or List it, and then M.A.S.H. came on, my cue to leave. I drove home in pouring rain, wishing I wish I could freeze time.

Let me just stay here in this moment. This moment in which my email inbox remains blessedly empty. This moment in which my phone is silent. This moment in which my mother knows me and loves me. This moment in which I can let my mind wander among the dwindling choices in the word boutique. Tonight, in my quest to be prolific at the expense of quality, I will choose a few overused words and spatter them at this blog. Happy new year, everyone. You go on ahead. Let me just stay here in 2019, in this moment, before everything goes to hell.

Eighty thousand words in thirty days

Next Saturday is my mother's ninetieth birthday. Family is coming. The weather should be good. Not hot, not humid. (I feel for my sister, who is sweltering in Boston right now.) We don't have anything big planned. Mom can't handle a crowd. One balloon, one bunch of flowers, one cupcake, one candle. One or two people at a time. We don't want to disrupt her routine, which is all she has left, besides her television.

M.A.S.H. isn't on on Saturdays so we typically switch between Fixer Upper and the Three Stooges. She laughs at Curly, Moe, and Larry. She can't understand the plots but she understands the slaps, pokes, and punches. If my two brothers come to visit, we can all sit on the couch and marvel at the violence we kids grew up on. No wonder my older brother felt motivated to break my nose once in a while.

On the maternal parental unit front, Mom continues to deteriorate. It's a slow crumbling of mind and body. She's still talking, but not as well. She's still walking, but with more difficulty. She's not walking me to the back door anymore, but she's still walking herself to meals. Sometimes (they tell me), she has to interrupt her meal to hightail it back to her bathroom. Hightailing happens in slow motion, which means she often needs some clean-up assistance before she can come back to dinner. It's chronic and exhausting.

Speaking of clean-up, I'm cleaning the Love Shack. This endeavor happens only once a year when I have visitors (my sister). Today, I vacuumed the two lime green shag rugs in my front room. That shag really stands up and salutes when I run the vacuum cleaner over it. My sneezing fit has subsided, thanks for asking. I moved the cat litter box and scrubbed the bathroom floor. Within minutes after cleaning the box, the cat went in. When he came out, there was once again litter all over the floor. I washed a load of towels and cotton scatter rugs, scrubbed part of the kitchen floor (the white squares), and hunted down tumbleweeds (cat hair, dust, and detritus that coalesce into floating allergy bombs). My sister arrives tomorrow. I'm not ready.

I could have started cleaning sooner. However, as you might remember, I've been doing my own personal NANOWRIMO. I gave myself a timeline of thirty days. My goal was to write a 50,000-word novel. When I committed to doing this insane task, I estimated I would have to write 2,000 words per day. Yesterday was the thirtieth day. Today, I laid down my pen, metaphorically speaking. I don't actually write with a pen anymore. I used to when I was a kid, or pencil, too. I didn't care, as long as I could write. Anyway, I digress.

I'm pleased to report the results of my personal month of self-inflicted torture. Counting the chapter headings, a short blurb, and the title, I just barely exceeded 80,000 words. I now have a first draft of my novel. I wrote an average of 2,760 words per day. During the thirty days, I cooked, ate, slept, did my grocery shopping, visited my mother daily, and attended my weekly meetings, and in between, I wrote. I did bathe a few times, too, in case you were wondering, and I'm sure I did some laundry, although I have no recollection. I immersed myself in a world of fictional characters who now seem more real to me than many people I meet in real life.

It was the best thirty days I can remember. Better than ice cream. Better than sunshine. The best.

I don't know where it goes from here, but if I die tomorrow, I will die satisfied.

Happy Independence Day, if you can stand it

Happy Independence Day, blogbots. I hope your Fourth of July celebration is . . . celebratory. If that is what floats your boat. Laser shows, fireworks, rumbling tanks, sloppy BBQ ribs dripping with carcinogenic sauce . . . whatever works for you. May you enjoy your day. My little leaky boat is floated by peace, quiet, and solitude. I will be hunkered down in the Love Shack, helping my cat ride out the artillery barrage that will begin at dusk. To each her own.

My schedule for tomorrow is unusually busy. I have two entire things planned. I don't know how I will manage. In the morning, I plan to Wire with my sister, who is stateside in Boston. In the evening, I will visit my maternal parental unit, as I do daily at 6:15 pm. After that I would like to bury myself in the bathtub, but I have a self-imposed obligation to write 2,000 words per day. What's that, you say? Thanks for asking.

For the past couple weeks, I have been torturing myself with my own personal NANOWRIMO commitment. If you don't what that is, no fear. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. Officially, it happens every November. I tried it once, a few years ago. I did not reach the word count goal of 50,000. I am still working on that book; it's the book of blog posts about my mother. Unfinished. You are reading one more chapter right now. How cool is that.

In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote, “When an idea thinks it has found somebody—say, you—who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit. . . . This idea will not leave you alone until it has your fullest attention. And then, in a quiet moment, it will ask, ‘Do you want to work with me?’” (pp. 35-36).

An idea came to me in a dream. I had a choice: say yes or say no. I chose yes. Sorry, I can't tell you what it is about. I can tell you it is a novel. That is all I will say.

My self-imposed commitment is to write (at least) 50,000 words before my sister arrives on July 22. To achieve that goal, I have to write at least 2,000 words per day. I've been writing almost every day for two weeks. Today is Day 14. I have 28,000 words.  I will add, there's not much magic involved in flogging oneself to write 2,000 words per day. This is a classic case of stop whining and just do it.

I work better when the temperature is at least 80°F. It's 71°F and overcast. The sky is gray and gloomy. It's cold in the Love Shack, but I refuse to drag out the space heater. It's July, for garsh sake. Two days ago, we had a tornado a few miles away. Just a little bitty EF0, lasted only six minutes, only managed to go a mile. Tore up a bunch of trees and power lines. How endearing. Summer in Portland officially starts July 5. It can't get here soon enough. I'm so ready to be warm.

When I came strolling down the hall at the retirement place, Mom was still in the dining room, sitting alone at her table. I went in to see what was going on. She said she was late getting out of dinner because she had to run for the bathroom. I use the word run loosely. More like, shuffle along with the walker, squeezing her butt cheeks as she goes. Unsuccessfully, apparently. Luckily, a staff member was there to help clean her up and get her back to the dining room to finish her dinner. Everyone was sympathetic. The Med Aide patted her shoulder when she brought her a little cup of pills.

We watched Property Brothers. I made snide comments about people spending $1.2 million on a house. Mom said she didn't know what was going on. I get the feeling she loses a few more brain cells every time she gets stuck in the bathroom and can't figure out how to leave. Every day I shudder through about five minutes of hell, knowing for certain that I am going to end up just like her, but minus the helpful daughter.

She hasn't walked me to the back door at all this week. I left her sitting on the couch, watching MASH. Tomorrow is my sixteenth anniversary of moving to the Love Shack, the beginning of my personal independence. I dread the day I lose it and so I try to cherish every drop.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Chronic Malcontent

During the holidays, people like the idea of connecting more than they like the reality of connecting. A friend sent me a nice email to express her appreciation for our friendship. She suggested we talk on the phone sometime soon. I emailed back my willingness and eagerness to connect.

“I'm cooking right now,” she replied by email. “Let's catch up soon.” We all know that means: I fulfilled my obligation of reaching out and making contact. Now I can relax and feel good about myself without actually having to endure an in-person conversation. Real time? Nuh-uh, no way. Too busy. Too real.

It's Thanksgiving. I'm guessing a lot of Americans have pulled or are right now pulling their turkeys, hams, or tofurkeys out of the oven; dressing them with stuffing, mac and cheese, yams, or whatever the preferred side dish is in their part of the country; and yelling over football with family in anticipation of gorging and then hitting the stores.

I got a late start on the day (I spent an hour video chatting with my sister who is in France, nine hours ahead of me), so I just now finished lunch (apple, blueberries, yogurt). In twenty minutes, my smartphone will alert me that it is time to visit Mom. You know the drill. I will drive over there in the dark rainy night, interrupt M.A.S.H., and valiantly sing and smile and encourage her to ... what, keep living? No, I don't do that, but I don't discourage her either: Mom, don't die, what will I do without you? No. Yes. Argh. I'm conflicted.

One thing I know I will not do tonight or tomorrow is go shopping. I feel a certain smug satisfaction in claiming that every day is Buy Nothing Day for me. Even when I had money, I avoided large crowds of shoppers. Now that I'm four months from living in my car, life is pretty simple, which might be why I've chosen this lifestyle time and again over the years. Decisions are easy. Shelter, food, transportation. What else is there? Oh, yeah, healthcare.... my healthcare plan is pretty much don't get sick. However, thanks to the ACA, I have basic health insurance. Something to be thankful for on this day made especially for being thankful. Thanks, Obamacare.

Every week, my sister encourages me to make time for my creativity. I counter each suggestion with a reason why it won't work. She doesn't get mad, though. We've come a long way. We still give each other advice, but we no longer get irritated when we don't follow it. After we ended the video chat, I realized I had an excuse for everything because I'm terrified.

Ho hum. Nothing new. Same old fear, same old resistance. It's time to listen to my own best advice: Don't think, don't feel, just do. Stop whining and get busy. This blog post represents my creative effort for the day. Ten minutes to go time. Don't think, just do.

The Chronic Malcontent resists

Winter came late to Portland this year. As I wait for the snow to melt (again), I crank up the bass on my old New Order CD so I don't have to listen to my neighbor's stereo reverberating through the bones of the Love Shack. While the cat hunkers down under the couch, I fish for cat hair between the keys on my keyboard with the sticky edge of a yellow sticky note. I guess I'm a bit stir-crazy.

I finished a couple editing jobs yesterday. After I submitted the second job, I immediately started cleaning. I vacuumed my two rooms and the hallway, I washed cat blankets, I swept up cat litter, I cleaned the mold growing along the edges of the tub, I scrubbed the toilet. I recycled a foot-high pile of reports I will never read again. I even started a new batch of wheat grass for the cat. When I finally stopped for dinner, I felt righteously deserving of something special. Mmm, waffles.

Later I fell asleep on the couch in a carb-induced haze with the murmur of angry town hall voices in the background. I dreamed of buying a decrepit hovel in Italy for $1.00. Growing beets and broccoli. Washing in creek water. I'm ready to drag up on this town. Any town. Anywhere where people congregate and spit hatred at each other. I want out of the tribe. I want to belong to no tribe.

Speaking of tribes, my sister and I Skype weekly. (I like my sister, so for her I will make an exception and let her into my tribe. Or maybe I should beg her to let me into her tribe, she's way cooler than I am.) My sister travels to Europe almost every year. These days she's in Munich, nine hours ahead of Portland. Her day winds down as mine begins.

We usually discuss our progress on our current research and writing projects. I have a long backlog of ideas, some half-started, many of them suggested by my sister. She's a dynamo when it comes to brainstorming writing projects. Today she suggested I write an illustrated memoir about our mother. When she said it, my heart skipped a little, possibly because my heart is old, but more likely because the thought of writing such a book crowds too close to my heart. Mom disintegrates daily into a stranger.

I was born to write and illustrate books. I've known this since I was nine. The thought of actually fulfilling my destiny terrifies me. The financial logistics of living my purpose are baffling. I don't know how to live in the world of money. After we ended our call, I went back into frenetic cleaning mode. I'm trying to ignore the images in my mind. I can see them so clearly I want to weep. The book is practically written. All I need are some drawings. And the ending.

It's almost spring . . . time for a little networking!

I've hunkered in my cave long enough. It's almost spring. Time to do a little networking! If you've read any of my blog posts from 2015, you know I think networking is highly overrated. Especially when the facilitators hand you a “Networking Bingo” card with stupid questions like, Find someone who wasn't born in Oregon, and Find someone who was! But tonight I was ready to get out of the house, so I waited on the corner in the freezing rain for twenty minutes for a bus to take me downtown to a networking event.

The event was billed as a speed mentoring event, a chance for entrepreneurs to meet some so-called experts to pick their brains about marketing, strategy, finance, and legal issues. What could be more fun? Thirty entrepreneurs in a new age concrete and wood conference room, milling around trying to avoid eye contact with each other. Ho hum. So been there done that. But I was ready! Let me at that Bingo card!

I was easily the oldest person in the room. I guess I should start getting used to that. The upside to being old, though, is that I don't care what people think about me anymore. I can say anything to anyone. I'll never see them again. And few of these people were likely to be in my target market, so la la la.

The six mentors had to take us two at a time; each entrepreneur was supposed to get fifteen minutes of one-on-one time. Oh boy!

My first two sessions were with marketing experts, a couple of smart, confident women I could have talked with for a long time over coffee. They both valiantly gave me what they could before the bell rang and it was time to move on to the next table.

Actually, my first session lasted only about ten minutes, because my partner hogged the time. I mean, hogged the time. She even came back and gave the mentor a swatch of her unique (and pungent) geranium aroma-therapy oil. I tried not to be resentful.

My third session was with a “strategist,” Josh, a young man with a diffident air. No one else had signed up for that time slot, so I sat alone as I handed him a postcard for my recently published book. He asked me some polite questions, trying to get a feel for my business direction.

I was just drawing a breath to begin waxing poetic about my dream of establishing a small publishing empire when a young woman sat down in the chair next to me and heaved an enormous sigh. My session partner had arrived.

Josh's eyes left me and settled on her. We both stared. She was dressed in a rumpled vintage get up that I might have worn when I was in my twenties, back when I cared how I looked. Her skin was smooth, her lips were red, her eyes were shadowed, her hair was fluffy and pulled up into some kind of shape. She looked messy but real, coy but accessible, and within seconds, I was pretty sure I had her figured out.

“Well, let's let that percolate,” Josh said vaguely, setting my postcard aside. To the newcomer, he said, “Hi, what brings you here?”

“I had a business. Gardening. With my boyfriend. He signed me up, and then he left me. Now I have this business, mostly contract work for walls and walkways, and I don't have insurance, and I don't know what I'm doing,” she said breathlessly, eyelashes fluttering. Her lips were mesmerizing, I had to admit. Josh was certainly mesmerized. The temperature between them ratcheted up a peg. I sat back in my chair and watched.

Her name was something like Nora, and she was on the prowl for attention. Josh was bored and ready to comply. Nora described her business in a self-deprecating way, casting sidelong glances at Josh, and occasionally at me, because I was there, after all. Nobody could deny that I was there, watching. Finally, she ran down, and Josh seemed speechless. Without thinking first, I asked, “What could go wrong?”

“What?”

“What could go wrong? If you don't have insurance...?”

“Yeah, good question,” Josh said.

Nora said a few things, I said some things (devil's advocate is my best role), and Josh pretended to agree. As I listened to Nora talk about her landscaping business, I could tell her heart wasn't fully in it. I know what that feels like, and I've seen it many times in my former students, who were struggling to get associate's degrees in fields they didn't care about.

“It seems like you aren't really into this business,” I said respectfully. “What would you rather be doing?”

Nora took a deep breath. A smile lit up her face. She sat up straight in her chair and waved both arms. I thought, wow, this will be good.

“I want to build a huge garden, twenty acres, with a sauna hut in the middle, in the hills outside of [some town I didn't recognize] in Massachusetts!”

Then she slumped. “But I love my clients!” she moaned. “Their gardens are my babies. The vines and flowers . . . I can't leave my babies.”

“They won't love your gardens the way you do,” I said unsympathetically. “They'll forget to trim those vines and let them grow all over their houses . . .  You'll never get away. Your clients will drain you dry if you let them.”

Nora made a pouty face. I thought, whoops, maybe that was a bit harsh, so I smiled disingenuously to ease the sting. I used to be afraid of young women like Nora, I realized. Looking into her vapid, self-centered eyes, I realized, she doesn't want to be in business. She just wants attention. Then I realized that I was actually talking about myself, about my editing clients draining me dry, and suddenly I couldn't breathe.

I said to Nora gently, “Think about where you want to be in five years, ten years... Don't wait until you are old like me to pursue your dream.”

Josh said, “I know what it's like to detour away from doing what you love.” I thought, hey, something is going on with him, too. I turned my earnest gaze his way and asked, “What detour did you take? What would you rather be doing?”

“I play the upright bass in a jazz band,” he said sheepishly. “I like doing this business thing, but . . .”

“It's hard to make money doing music,” I said. He nodded.

“I have a family to take care of. But I'd really just like to be shredding my bass.” We all sat quietly for a moment, pondering detours and shredded basses. Then Josh shook himself and turned to me. “What about you, what's your dream?”

I reflected for a split second and said, “I'm closer now to my perfect life than I've ever been before. Writing, publishing, making art. It's what I've wanted to do since I was nine years old. And now I'm doing it.”

A few minutes later, the bell chimed, and it was time to move on to the next table.

Don't pretend like you know what is coming

We are barreling into a new year. This year, I'd really like to put the brakes on. Can we just freeze time before we get to January 21? Then I could pretend I've been watching a particularly gruesome and disgusting reality show. I would like to change the channel and return to sanity. Where's the BACK button on this thing?

Clearly I'm still in shock. I'm not ashamed to say it, I feel like I've been bludgeoned by stupidity. My own stupidity. All my yammering about empathy and listening, yada yada, and still I'm shocked when unhappy people express their needs in unskillful ways. When will I learn? I'm just as unskillful as the rest of us. I include you, sorry, readers. We are all in this hand-basket together, and you know where we are going.

Guilty, again! I make cynical pronouncements (like that one I just made) as if I know what is coming. I spout nonsense as if I have the inside track on knowledge about the future. It gets me every time. I act like if I just say something enough times, and loudly enough, that by itself will make it true! We're all going to hell in a hand-basket! There I go, wallowing in the wreckage of the future! I'm masquerading as a person who knows what the future holds, when in fact, I have no clue what's coming! Argh. I hate not knowing. (Not to mention the small detail about defining my terms... is there a hell? And what is a hand-basket, anyway? Whatever it is, how will we all fit into it? I have no idea.)

I hate not knowing even more than I hate my fear that good things could actually come from stupid decisions, and then I won't have the perverse pleasure of saying, see, I knew it! I told you so. Sometimes it happens that "bad" outcomes ensue from "good" intentions, and "good" outcomes manifest from "bad" actions. Despite all the stuff written to the contrary, we humans don't have a Magic 8 Ball that allows us to peer into the future, except by using past outcomes as a predictor. And if you have ever lost money in the stock market, you know that past performance is no guarantee of future results.

I get lassoed by my fear of uncertainty into believing I know what is coming. Besides the certainty of death (and taxes), does anyone know what is coming? No. That doesn't stop us from prognosticating about the future as if we have a hotline to fate. As if we are inside the mind of Secret Santa. As if we know what is in our stockings. Let me guess: a toothbrush and a Hershey's chocolate bar. Whoops, that was 45 years ago. (Good news: at least I still have teeth).

We are having a little snow day in Portland. One inch of snow and a half inch of ice and the city shuts down. The electric trains can't run with ice on the wires. The buses can't get up and down the hills. I can't get my car out of the parking lot, and walking on this ice is likely to result in a trip to the ER with a broken hip (I'm not certain, I'm only guessing, based on past experience). So here I am, hunkered down in the Love Shack, waiting for the ice to melt, bored and trying to avoid the tedious task of turning my print book into a Kindle book.

I guess it's good I don't know the future. If I knew that writing this book would be a waste of time I probably wouldn't have spent two years writing it. Even now, I can hold out hope that soon people will find it, buy it, like it, talk about it. Hey, it could happen, right? Nobody knows the future.

Here's to creativity at the end of the world

Almost two years ago I started writing a book about helping dissertators get their dissertations approved. Dissertators face many challenges in the process of earning their doctorates. I ought to know. I have blogged extensively about my own sordid and gruesome doctoral journey—in fact, that is how this blog came to be. If you have read my blog, you know I often have a lot to say, and this new book was no different. Within a few months, the chapter about getting the dissertation proposal approved ballooned into a mushy amorphous monster. To keep from losing my mind, I whittled the project down to focusing just on helping dissertators get their proposals approved. And now, almost two years later, I'm pleased to say, I've published that book.

Sorry, I can't report that it was published by one of those snappy academic publishers like SAGE or Taylor & Francis. No, because I'm a DIY kind of gal (control freak), I decided to self-publish through Amazon's Createspace. Wow. Am I glad I lived to see the day when artists, writers, and musicians can send their work out into the world without the interference of those pesky intermediaries (galleries, publishers, record labels). Anyone can publish, and they do! The Internet is clogged with creativity. It's so exciting.

Because I am a Word expert (more or less), I can format the heck out of a document and make it look like something someone might actually want to buy. I hope. And through the magic of the digital on-demand printing revolution, Amazon can print my book for anyone who might want a copy.

I sent away for a proof copy so I could see how it looked and felt, expecting to be disappointed. I opened the cardboard box, feeling a little sick. Inside was a miracle. It's so thick! (Did I write all that?) I paged through to find the screenshots I had inserted to show dissertators how to use Word. Oh joy, the screenshots (low resolution images, red flag!) were perfectly acceptable. The color cover (low resolution, uh oh, look out) was shiny and bright. The book (500+) pages felt hefty and substantial in my hands, definitely something I would have bought back when I was struggling to get my proposal approved. I can only hope others will feel the same.

So, with one project off my plate, it seems appropriate to tackle another seemingly impossible task: NaNoWriMo. That's where people commit to write a 50,000-word novel in one month. Starting exactly five days ago. I'm a little behind. So far I've got 600 words.

I committed to it to support my good friend Bravadita, who has a lot to write about it, if only she would start. I wasn't sure how far I would get, to tell you the truth. I'm expecting an editing job tomorrow with a short turnaround, not much time to do anything else but eat, sleep, and watch TV.

I told my sister about my writing commitment, and she brilliantly suggested I take portions of this blog and write a book about our mother. Is that not brilliant!? I think it is. Thanks, Sis.

Last night I downloaded all the content I've written for the past two years. In Microsoft Word, I can search on keywords, so I highlighted all the instances of Mom, mother, and maternal. Next, I'll cull through the posts and see if I can make some sense, maybe glean some structure. I'll put on my editing hat and look for the bones. Maybe I'll actually be able to finish a first draft by November 30. Maybe not, but at least I can say I tried.

It feels a little odd to be focusing on my creative endeavors when democracy could be on the verge of falling apart. People are apparently prepping for the end of the world. Whether it's a bizarro nutjob in power or an earthquake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, I have resigned myself to be one of the casualties. I just don't have the energy or gumption to go out and prep for disaster. Prepping would mean, what, buying a tent, a sleeping bag, a propane stove? A year's supply of ready-to-eat meals that are full of chemicals, sugar, fat, and salt? Is survival really so important that I would eat garbanzo beans straight out of a can?

I suppose I'd eat just about anything if I got hungry enough. That's one of the perks of living white pseudo-middle class in America—At least until my savings run out, I can pretend I have nothing but luxury problems. My fridge is full of fresh food, because I try hard to eat healthy. When all that fresh food is gone, though, my cupboards are bare. If the earthquake (or the coup) happen to occur on the day before I go shopping, well, I guess I'll be eating squirrels. Lucky for me, they are used to eating at my bird feeder so they might be easy to catch. Some of them look very plump and juicy. And there's a big gray rat out back, too, if I get really desperate. But he might be harder to catch ... he's a loner, like me.