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Sunday, November 01, 2009
Can't Talk: NaNoWriMoing!So after letting Worst Luck languish for two years, I suddenly decide to write another novel... a 50,000-word novel, to be specific, in exactly 30 days. Due to various malign influences at FaceBook and JUB, I was inspired to join the annual National Novel Writing Month event (better known as NaNoWriMo, though I'm not sure how that's pronounced) and squeeze out a tome of approximately 250 pages at high speed.
The challenge, and what makes this very attractive to me right now, is that you simply don't have time to edit; you have to just produce, word after word, paragraph after paragraph, to get it done in time. Editing has always been my weakness, I'm forever going back and tweaking and fixing. But with the NaNoWriMo, it's all output and no going back... the Devil Take The Hindmost School of Writing.
The rules are simple: start on November 1 and finish on or before November 30, all new writing and nothing you've already written, nothing plagiarized of course, and have fun. You can use plots and characters already developed, just so long as the writing is brand new. I can do that, right? I mean, I write lengthy screeds all the time, thousands of words squandered in status updates and message-board arguments; it doesn't matter if the story is good, what matters is achieving the output in the time alloted.
So I was waffling between creating a new plot and characters from scratch or else mine one of the ideas I've had for later Danny Vandervere stories, which would take place after the events of Worst Luck. In the end, and very nearly at the last minute, I decided to compromise and do a sort of prequel to Worst Luck... a story about Danny Vandervere when he was a high-school senior.
So the story is called The Math Teacher's Dead (get the Julie Brown reference? No? Too incidental?) and is set in the town of Vandervere, where Danny's family owns everthing as far as the eye can see, and most of the people too. The math teacher with whom he is having an affair is murdered, and Danny is the most likely suspect; his family position is keeping the police from sniffing in his direction, but Danny wants to find out what happened before the luck of his position runs out.
A pretty thin premise, and I have no outline and no ideas yet about the structure of the story. They'll just have to come to me as I write (like the title did after the fifth paragraph I pounded out this morning). And it's very exciting, making it up as I go along; it's also exciting checking my word-count: one must average 1667 words a day to hit the goal, and I had 2112 as of noon today.
Of course, I won't always have four-hour stretches of time to myself, so I'm going to have to carve out the moments where I can. And on weekends, I need to really bulk up on the words (I'm going to try to make it to 3000 before bed tonight) so that when I fall short on the weekdays I won't lose out on too much time.
Anyway, I'm really excited about this project, and will keep you updated...I notice that when I have a writing project going, I tend to write more in my other outlets. And though I am putting all of my FaceBook apps into hibernation, and will not be downloading any games or watching any more TV than my Must See shows, I have a feeling I'll want to check in here to keep you posted on my progress. (And BTW, I'm at 2500 words now and it's not even dinnertime).
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Before I go back to the opus, though, here are some pix from my very festive Halloween... Caroline and I went to this nightclub she likes called Slide, and we had a really good time. And most importantly, I looked great:
And while we were sitting there, we met this lovely boy who hung out with us for a little while. I suppose you could say we chatted, but I could barely hear what anyone was saying, could barely hear myself think under that sound system; but his name is Marlin, I got that much, and he liked the movie Where the Wild Things Are. That and being cute as a bug's ass was enough for me. Oh, and guess what song was playing when he sat down with us? Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)"!
There were lots of other beautiful young people about, many of whom I wish I'd photographed... but I never like to draw attention to myself by snapping flash photos in a corner like an old letch (and I do not use "old" casually...there's a good chance I was the oldest person in that joint; there may have been a couple of contenders for older, but it would be a pretty close call).
Of particular entertainment was a gorgeous blond boy dressed as Max from Where the Wild Things Are (hence our even talking about the film, which incidentally I am completely uninterested in seeing despite Marlin's fervent recommendation). I learned later on that it was the boy's 24th birthday, and he was having a very off-the-hook evening, flashing his boxered fanny through the drop back of his wolf suit and even stripping the thing off his torso to give us a very nice view while dancing on the table; Caroline went to freak on him at the dance floor and express her appreciation, but up loomed the boy's girlfriend, who was dressed as Mr. Peanut (or rather Ms.) Said peanut didn't care for Caroline's moves, and inserted herself cane-first between them; Caroline, game and polite, smiled her regrets and came back to the table.
"Mr. Peanut salted your game," I said, hoping she'd see the joke, which I thought was a stitch.
"I know, did you see that?" she answered, not getting it.
"You got salted by a peanut," I said more pointedly.
"What?"
"Mr. Peanut salted your game, you got salted by a peanut... get it?"
She got it, and we had a good laugh about it...and she told me I have to blog about it. So here I am.
Well, back to the NaNoWriMo. I have to decide whether or not to introduce a pedophile into this introductory section of the story... well, more precisely an ephebophile, but that's a very fine distinction to many readers and I might alienate someone, so I have to think of whether and why it's important.
Toodles!
Mannersized at
2:09 PM ~
Commentary: 0
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Monday, October 26, 2009
Goth? Emo? Steampunk?I'm thinking of going Goth. I mean, I look good in black, I can even rock the dyed black hair; I love old-fashioned clothes, frock coats and riding boots and all that; I'm already fairly pale, and I'm emotionally unstable, and I totally dig the vampire genre...
...but then I remember that I'm 41 years old, and that brings my big black balloon back down to earth. There may be Goths in their forties, but I'm pretty sure that's not the guy I need to be.
I think part of this yen is my sudden obsession with the following:
I don't know what it is about this song, the lyrics are nonsense but the words and phrases hit me, and something about the tempo-changes and key-changes and the way it builds just really stirs me up. I have more than once started crying while listening to it.
I've also been reading a lot of Poppy Z. Brite, who can do gothic horror like nobody's business; I figure Halloween-time is the best time to read horror novels, so I loaded up at the used bookstore... and between listening through My Chemical Romance's oeuvre trying to decide if I want to download more of it, and reading Lost Souls, and forgetting to take my Wellbutrin twice this week...well, it's no wonder. You'd want to go Goth, too.
(When did I start using ellipses instead of em-dashes, by the way? It's been a habit so long, and I only recently started noticing how wrong it is.[/total non-sequitur])
Of course, one problem I face (aside from missing the appropriate age window by twenty or more years) is that I don't know what, exactly, Goth is... and how does it differ from Emo? They seem interchangeable, and yet at the same time very different. What's the music for each? Will I like it as much as I like "Welcome to the Black Parade"? Or will it send me screaming back to the showtunes and opera?
And then of course there's the Steampunk thing, which doesn't seem to have a whole lifestyle attached... it's just an aesthetic. The first I heard of this style, by the way, was in Architectural Digest, so I'm kind of leaning that way. But it seems a lot more elaborate and a lot more expensive to carry off. Yet it's also a lot more colorful than Goth, so maybe it's worth thinking about.
Too bad Halloween doesn't come once a month instead of once a year, so I'd have an excuse to try these things out and see if they work.
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Speaking of Steampunk, I recently had a most amazing experience: I went to see Wicked at the Orpheum with my sister and my niece and my niece's boyfriend for the niece's 18th birthday.
(Can you believe Ariel is eighteen? Christ, that makes me feel old.)
Now, I downloaded the soundtrack... excuse me, the original cast recording, soundtracks are for movies... a long time ago and have been a fan of the music for years, "Defying Gravity" being far and away my favorite song. And I'd seen the production numbers put on for the Tonys, and had read a synopsis of the show so I'd be able to put the music in context. And I was afraid when Suzie suggested this outing that the touring company wouldn't live up to the original Broadway cast that I had memorized. But I wanted to see it, and I wanted to see it with them, so I went.
And I have to tell you, there is nothing like live theatre! I mean yeah, this cast wasn't up to Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, in fact the Elphaba and the Fiyero were played by understudies; but I was in tears almost the entire time, and every song blew me out of my chair. Oh, and Patty Duke of all people played Madam Morrible, and she was fantastic.
But to bring the sequitur back, the staging of Wicked is done in a gorgeous steampunk style that you wouldn't believe. The Time-Dragon Clock is sort of the superstructure of the stage, so there are clock and machine parts everywhere. And the Orpheum has a notoriously small stage, but the set was built out around the proscenium and into the theatre itself, even up the side walls... it was so cool!
Of course, I should have known it would be great... just the month before, I'd gone to the theatre with Grandmother and my cousin and my aunt and uncle for my uncle's birthday, where we saw South Pacific. Though I'd never seen the movie, I knew the premise if not the complete story, and the songs were mostly familiar as big-band standards.
But WOW seeing it live, with the staging and casting of the new production, was just amazing! The whole first act was just nothing but sexy and funny, and then it got serious, and then it got really serious, and then it had a happy ending and the lights came up on me flooding with tears (I pretty much cried through the whole second act).
(Here's the New York cast doing "Nothing Like a Dame"; the touring cast was WAY sexier:)
So if a musical that didn't really catch my interest beforehand could make me fall to pieces like that, I should have imagined that a musical whose score I had memorized would completely flip me out.
And now I'm addicted to live professional musical theatre. It's a damned expensive addiction... though we got our Wicked seats through a really neat lottery thing that they have once in a while (if there's a bargain to be had, my sister can sniff it out) and they only cost $25 a head for the partial-view Orchestra, when we saw South Pacific it was full-price central Orchestra and cost $105 a pop! Maybe I'll have to develop a taste for heights and get the nosebleed Balcony seats, those usually go for half that.
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And sequituring around from that...I feel, sometimes, like I'm sitting in a theatre box, a pair of opera-glasses to my eyes, watching myself go crazy. Like it's not really me going crazy, but somebody playing me on stage. It's a really strange feeling. Not unpleasant at all, but a little worrisome... mostly because I know I'm not watching someone else from a distance, I'm doing all this crazy shit in my body, in my life, in front of real people.
The good news is that nobody else has really noticed that I'm going crazy. I appear to be acting normally for all intents and purposes. So why do I feel like I'm going crazy? Perhaps these meds aren't doing what they ought and it's time to switch out again.
Actually, during my normal pre-Equinox freakout, my symptoms were extremely odd. Like I never felt sad during the depression bits, but I felt so unbelievably tired...one day I had to call in sick and just lay in bed. I never felt manic, but I talked faster and was so horny I couldn't concentrate. Like the emotional symptoms were gone, leaving only the physical symptoms... and intensifying the physical symptoms. Weird, and probably not what my meds are supposed to do.
But I really don't want to change again. I hate changing meds. It's so hard getting used to the different feelings, and so hard getting the dosage rhythms just right, and so hard learning new words for different pills. It's just a hassle, is all.
Oh, well... the whole "whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger" palaver. I should be ready to run a looney-tune triathlon by now. But it's all so wearisome.
So that's all I can think of to talk about just now. I'll check back in soon to tell you all about Halloween... I'm going as a pirate again!
Mannersized at
10:10 PM ~
Commentary: 0
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009
September SongIt's that time of year again, the dreadful weeks leading up to the autumnal equinox, in which my depression unpacks its adjectives and makes itself at home. Not that I don't get depression symptoms at other times of the year, but I always experience my severest symptoms from the beginning of August up until the latter part of September (the same thing happens in February and March...what is it about equinoxes that makes me crazy?)
But this time around, I had the job thing going on (see previous entry), and that kept me so wound up and preoccupied that I didn't really notice any symptoms. When I got to the end of the job thing, after a particularly wound-up week of interviews and waiting, and I didn't get the job... so everything unwound all at once, leaving me lying in a sticky smelly pool of emotional detritus. From there I plunged into a deep depression, and after a week of that I started swinging between depression and mania (swinging so fast and frequently that perhaps "vibrating" would be a better word), and just generally falling apart...where you find me now.
I must say, though, that I wasn't all that upset over losing the job. I mean, I was certainly disappointed, it was kind of exciting to think about, and a lot of thought and emotion and work went into the process; and then all the excitement ended in nothing more than the status quo.
But, in general, I am relieved I didn't get the job. During the interviewing process, I started to feel very strongly that I really wasn't ready for that big a jump... it wasn't just fear, it was a rational look at what I learned during the interviews which resulted in a distinct impression that it would require more of me than I had to give... specifically in the realms of authority.
I mean, I'm pretty good at being authoritative, but I have never been comfortable with exercising authority; and in that position I would have to exercise authority all over the place. I'd also have to hobnob with the executive level, not just listening attentively to their needs but also schmoozing them into accepting what I can give them instead of what they want. Not my cup of tea, you know?
Well, anyway, I'm over it. I got some good ideas about things I can do to develop myself professionally, and I will still keep an eye open for further opportunities; but in the meantime, I am going to focus my remaining energies on doing the job I have to the best of my abilities (if not better...better would probably be good).
So let's see, anything else going on in my life? Probably... but I can't think of it right now. So I guess I'll just slide off to work, wishing you a happy day and a pleasant tomorrow.
Mannersized at
7:33 AM ~
Commentary: 0
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Wednesday, August 19, 2009
So Here's The Thing...I was reading through my archives a few days ago, amazed at how much and how frequently I used to write here. But then, I was a few years younger and had more energy; the depression and the ensuing medications hadn't scrambled my brain yet, so I thought more efficiently; my work schedule was two fewer hours with a ten-minute commute, so I had more free time; and most importantly, I had a much easier job, so I had time on the job to write.
Nowadays, I have little energy, my brain is fried, I spend three fourths of my waking day either at work or heading to or from work, and that job keeps me completely occupied the entire time I'm there. Of course, I do have some free time, if Grandmother doesn't want me to take her somewhere, or Caroline doesn't want to go somewhere, or there are no Court shows or anything... but I seem to spend that time on Facebook or playing puzzle games or surfing for porn.
So instead of posting every time a thought crosses my mind, I've fallen into the habit of only posting when something important happens in my life... and the definition of what's important becomes broader and broader. Like, after posting about my dreadful Disneyland vacation, I rather dropped the ball and neglected to post about my quite lovely Oregon vacation three weeks later. But I didn't have any breakdowns or epiphanies, nothing amazing or horrible happened, and I took all these pictures and I'd have to upload them and I was too tired and lazy to be bothered... so the whole thing was thrown under the bus.
But before we continue, here is my favorite picture, taken along the coast:
Well, anyway, on to topic... I once again have something on my mind, something potentially life-changing, and I need to share about it and record it for posterity.
So I'm having job drama again; but this time it's neither worrying about losing my job nor being unemployed and looking for a new job: this time, I am worried about applying for a new job without having gone through the usual procedure of getting booted out of my current job first.
Wait, let me back up and give it to you in the proper order...
A few months ago, I was sitting and chatting with my office-mate (who is also my supervisor) "Beth" (not her real name, naturally) and we got on the topic of upward mobility within our company (which, you'll remember, is a social-services nonprofit).
Upward mobility is actually fairly common here, as the muckety-mucks always prefer to promote from within whenever possible, as it saves time and keeps good people working for us instead of for someone else. So Beth and I were talking about jobs that we'd seen that we might like to move on to someday. And I said I'd like to have the quality assurance job held by "Janet" (again a pseudonym), based on what I'd seen of it... she's the person you call when some input error needs to be fixed in the database, the person who trains new employees on how to use the database, and the person who massages the data and generates the data into reports for various internal and external parties.
My cup of tea, right? I love data! And it has a teaching component and a customer service component (internal customers rather than external customers, even), so it looked like the best job for me to grow into when I get tired of the job I have.
But just three weeks after this conversation, Janet up and quits to take a more research-oriented job somewhere else. I was stunned! I vowed to not covet anyone else's job ever, for fear that they would also leave abruptly. In a company that is always at least a little understaffed, sudden departures create havoc.
I particularly thought it was very poor timing... if her departure was to have been any use to me, I'd have to have some more experience under my belt, more of a reputation in the company, and more... well, moreness. I figured someone would be hired shortly, and I'd have to wait ages and ages for him or her to vacate in my favor.
Well the months passed on by, and I sort of forgot about the whole thing, except when attending the meetings of the POMSST committee (which which stands for "product outcomes management system strategy team...the POMS part is what I refer to here as "the database") on which Janet and I both served... and even more, later, as the circuits by which one requests data-corrections became increasingly Byzantine. But it did not strike me as unusual, jobs frequently remain vacant for a long time, since our company does take forever and a day to complete a hire.
But then "Doug" (who was Janet's boss) stopped by my office and asked me to please pretty-please apply for the job... all of the resumes he'd received since Janet left were from recently-laid-off engineers from video-game companies, people who had the technical quality-assurance experience but lacked the customer-service component the job requires. Though I lack the advertised qualifications (such as a business degree and three years of related experience) Doug thinks I can do the job, based mostly on my contributions to the POMSST committee as well as emails I've sent him about improving the intake forms.
Sooo... what do I do? There are so many pros and cons.
I mean, yeah, I want the job, but I don't feel ready for it yet... I wanted to stay in my current job at least another year before I started looking for advancement opportunities; but this opportunity won't be there in another year, it's here now.
On the other hand, do I really want to give up my cozy desk in my comfy office with my agreeable boss/office-mate in our lovely Berkeley location, and go work in the hideous rabbit-warren Richmond office with people I don't know in a room without windows?
On the other other hand, this new job pays WAY more money than I'm making now, like half again as much...and considering the deplorable state of my finances, this is a very persuasive point.
That's a lot of hands. There are more hands, but they're really sub-hands to the hands listed above, concerns about the commute and potential personality clashes and leaving Beth in the lurch by vacating my position. It's been very confusing and upsetting, all in all.
Well, after three weeks of dithering over all these hands, I decided to go just say "fuckitall" and go for it. Part of that decision was inspired by a whole week of customer-service overload while I covered the career center duties for its vacationing admin (after which the idea of never speaking to another external customer again had great appeal)... but more importantly, most of my objections were fear-based: a fear of responsibility and a fear of stress and a fear of being so much more of a grownup than I'm ready to be and a fear of what would happen if I got into the job and totally sucked at it (in my current job, if I make a mistake, only Beth knows; in that job, if I made a mistake, it would be known and obvious to a dozen people, several of whom are at the executive level).
Of course, some of those fears are perfectly valid... I mean, I can't take a lot of stress, it makes me sick; and my happiness does depend a lot on my environment, I need spacious rooms and windows and trees...the Richmond location is truly ugly, in a sketchy neighborhood, and a lot further away from home on congested freeways.
However, my friend Jason (who doesn't need a pseudonym, since I have been talking about him in this blog for years) who also works in the same company (who in fact told me about and helped me get my current job) soothed some of these fears. Our company almost never fires people for getting in over their heads (gross breaches of company policy being the usual cause), they just move the offending person to another position that better suits him. Our managers also respond well to negotiation, so I might very well (if offered the job) negotiate having my office in Berkeley instead of Richmond since it's more centrally located for travel to all our offices.
But the main thing he pointed out to me is that applying for the job doesn't oblige me to accept the job; I can bring up my concerns at the interview, float the idea of working from the Berkeley office... and if I decide I don't want to take the job after all, I can simply decline.
I don't know if I'll have the nerve to decline, I've never in my life declined a job... but like I said, I've never in my life been in the position of having a job I actually like when being offered another job. It's very strange.
So anyway, having decided to take the step, I had to update my resume to reflect my current job so that I could send it in with my application. But (on top of the difficulty of having to encapsulate my current job duties) after taking a gander at my most current resume, the one that I used for the job I have now, I discovered that it could not be converted... it was an administrative assistant's resume, completely unsuitable for a quality assurance job. I had to rewrite from the ground up.
Well, that took me a couple more weeks. I've always hated writing resumes anyway, the idea of trying to sell myself is always difficult for me; and I know from working in employment services that resumes have changed somewhat in form and content since I first learned to write them (more than ten years ago), so simply describing the jobs I've had won't cut the mustard anymore... I needed bullet points and sans-serif fonts and action words.
As usual with writing problems, it resolved itself on a phrase... I went to sleep thinking about personal professional assets, and woke up with the words "a strong sense of investigative curiosity" in my mouth (literally... I spoke it aloud when I woke up). From that, it was cake.
Of course, cake though it may be, the resume suffered the same lack of time and energy that affects this blog, so it was another week before I finally completed it and got it ready to fax. And even then, I had a qualm or two about faxing it... but I held my breath and pushed the buttons, and now the whole thing is out of my hands.
That was all a week ago, now I just have to wait to hear back. And I'm not on pins and needles about it, either; in fact I can't say I'm really invested in whether or not I get the job at all... making the decision to apply was enough investment, now I am perfectly content to just wait and see.
However, I am trying very hard to get caught up with my backlogged work: if offered the job, I'd really hate to leave Beth holding the bag and trying to keep up the office's workload while searching for my replacement. And even if I don't get the job, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being all caught up.
So that's what's going on with me these days. How's with you?
Mannersized at
11:01 AM ~
Commentary: 1
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Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Et tu, Mickey Mouse?I have always loved Disneyland. It's so bright and colorful without being idiotic, so beautifully realized and meticulously detailed... and, most importantly, clean. There are lots of huge restrooms and lots of different kinds of food and lots of shopping. The rides are fun, and the areas for the lines to the rides are usually entertaining in themselves; even the roller-coasters, which I generally loathe elsewhere, are exciting without being uncomfortable or scary. I've been there a half-dozen times before, and though some trips were better than others, I always had a great time.
Until now. I didn't realize that is was possible, but: yes, Virginia, you can be suicidally miserable in the Happiest Place on Earth.
To begin with, it was unbearably crowded (and longtime readers will know immediately that this in itself is enough to ruin a trip for me); worse, it was unbearably crowded by very small children: we visited the week of Memorial Day, just after a national holiday but before most schools let out, so there were many people on vacation but very few school-age people: most of the adults in the park were pushing strollers.
I have no idea why anybody would bring a stroller-sized child to Disneyland, most of the charm of the park is going to be lost on such creatures: they aren't going to see any magic, they can't discern how different it is from reality, they won't be going on many rides...they're just going to be pissing and screaming and wishing they were back at home with their Disney videos and their Disney toys.
To make matters still worse, there were two such creatures in my own party, my cousin's youngest two, a boy and a girl aged two and three. And while I won't go so far as to say that these tots were ill-behaved, they certainly behaved with rather less decorum than I am accustomed to expect from my companions. They did not scream ceaselessly, but still screamed rather more often than is ideal. And, like everyone of my bloodline, they have opera lungs.
Sadly, these two weren't the most frustrating aspect of our group. The thing is, unless you're going to either split up completely or stay together completely, you cannot coordinate the movements of twelve people in a crowded amusement park. Considering the width of differences in age, mobility, and tastes of all the people concerned, what we should have done was make an itinerary of what each of us wanted to do, arrange the best way for everyone to do what they wanted, and then split up and meet at exact intervals for meals and visiting; instead, we went wandering off in all sorts of directions, following one person's whim or another's, splitting up with only the vaguest plans to regroup at a particular place without agreeing on a time.
As a result, we didn't see or do very much in the park, and considering that Grandmother hadn't been there since 1960, I thought that was really too bad. My whole purpose in going with them in the first place was to be of assistance to Grandmother, to push her wheelchair and see to her needs... and what I believed she needed was to go on a couple of rides, see around the park, and spend some time with her kids, grandkids, and greatgrandkids.
Instead, we spent a lot of time waiting in a small group for the other people to show up at whatever rendezvous point we'd set. And I mean a lot of time: I spent three hours sitting at a table outside the Enchanted Princess Experience (or whatever that shillfest was calling itself; it wasn't even a ride, it was just a shop where you could buy princess paraphernalia and then stand in a line to get your picture taken with a princess character) before all of our party returned; then we went to take the Mark Twain Riverboat ride and spent another two hours waiting for everyone to regather because they split up on the way.
If you've ever been to Disneyland, you're probably aware that the Riverboat ride isn't very interesting in the dark.
And all this in roiling densely-packed crowds. Frustration + crowds + muggy heat + screaming toddlers = one seriously fucked up me. I was skirting the edges of an anxiety attack, which frequently threatened to spill into a psychotic episode, the entire two days we spent in the park. It was utterly utter miserable hell.
Oh, yeah: and there were no cute guys. NONE. That was just wrong.
But you know, even though Grandmother didn't get to do all the things I wanted her to be able to do, she did get to go on some rides, she did get to visit with family, and she did have a fantastic time: that was the whole point of the trip, so I guess it should be enough for me. And though the hell of it was quite hellish enough, it wasn't completely hellish: I did manage to get hold of the fabulous beignets at the New Orleans Jazz Cafe in Downtown Disney, and I rather enjoyed the parade (during which I cried) and the fireworks (during which I also cried...but then, I was crying a lot, anxiety does that to me).
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So anyway, the rest of my vacation (I took the whole week off, one day to drive down, two in the park, one to come home, and one plus the weekend to recuperate) was extremely pleasant. I got some laundry done, slept a lot, watched some movies (if you can get hold of The Fall, I heavily recommend it), and just lay around and depressurized...both from the trip and from the work and family. Grandmother and the rest of the family went on to Arizona for a few days, so I had the house to myself, all kinds of quiet and blissful with dearth of responsibilty.
One of the things I most enjoyed was the reorganization of my wardrobe: all of the clothes that I set aside to go to Goodwill have to be revisited, since many of them were thrown out because I was too fat to wear them; but now they'll fit just fine, while many of the things I kept are now too floppy and huge for me. I'm also having to buy new pants, because the ones I had in storage weren't enough to suit my need for sartorial variety. I even had to buy new underpants because most of them were too big and didn't fit anymore.
Oh, the woe of having to shop!
But as of this morning, I have lost 40 pounds since starting my new eating habits. That's a number that makes me dance around with glee, let me tell you. Forty pounds. That's as much as my little screaming toddler cousins weigh: imagine detaching an entire toddler from your body. It feels really good.
And in general I feel really good. I'm still having money troubles (exacerbated by shopping for my new form, not to mention taking expensive vacations in Hell), the guys over at Match.com aren't falling all over themselves to get at me (though I did meet one guy, whom I really like, which is worth the price of admission), and I've been finding it unusually difficult to concentrate on anything, from work to play... despite all that, I'm really enjoying life.
I'm not going to let that enjoyment be ruined by any of the above, nor by my fear that it's all a pink cloud that will evaporate once my body completely adjusts to the new meds. We're just not going to think about that.
So I shall check in with you again next time something interesting happens; if I don't check in, it will be because nothing interesting is happening.
Hugs!
Mannersized at
6:37 AM ~
Commentary: 1
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Monday, May 18, 2009
Cautiously OptimisticI'm almost afraid to say it aloud (or in print) for fear that the Fates will hear me and snatch it all away, but I actually feel happy right now. Can it be that my meds are working? Is all the effort of positive lifestyle change finally paying off? Can it be that life might just return to normal after years of psychochemical chaos?
Time will tell... but for now, the Lithium-Wellbutrin cocktail is definitely doing the trick. And the exercise and the revised but still shockingly healthy diet are helping. The wearing of smaller pants, putting on shirts in which I had despaired of ever looking like anything other than a Macy's Thanksgiving Parade balloon... and having cheekbones, and beautiful hands again, I have a feeling all of these are improving my mood.
Oh, hey, take a look at some fresh photos where you can see my cheekbones and my nearly-vertical silhouette:
That last picture is my favorite... I've entitled it Alas, poor Artichoke! I knew him well, Horatio. And the second one is what I look like to myself, the face I see in the mirror but have never seen in a photograph before. It is a very exciting photo set. Caroline was the photographer, by the way...the last pic was actually taken first, in the Whole Foods produce department, the others were taken in my backyard just before sunset...it's all about the best lighting.
I had a motive in having those pictures taken... something that has come up (pardon the pun) since I've started on this new cocktail is a sudden resurgence of interest in having a boyfriend. I don't know what I would do with one, I just suddenly wanted one; and so in a fit of curiosity and romantic hopefulness, I actually signed up for a dating site. A paid dating site, even (Match.com, in case you're interested in joining me).
The first challenge was the creation of a really good profile essay. The online guides always stress selling yourself, pointing out your good qualities and demonstrating what a great catch you are. Unfortunately, I couldn't sell blankets to Eskimos, I don't really know what my good qualities are, and I don't actually believe I'm much of a catch. I mean, I know I'm a good person, I can be a lot of fun in the right circumstances, and I'm certainly presentable... I can knot a tie and tell my forks apart and everything. But I haven't ever really had a boyfriend, not in adulthood anyway (and I count "adulthood" as starting at twenty-seven), so I have no idea what qualities I could bring to such a relationship.
The first draft of my profile essay was, to my eyes, a masterpiece of charmingly self-deprecating explication. My theme was Contradictions, and I played on that theme beautifully, three paragraphs of mismatched characteristics and false appearances arranged with Aristotelian precision. I also wanted a person to approach me with no illusions that might later be problematic, so I then presented a half-dozen potential-turn-off facts about me that I read as "refreshing honesty" but others would likely read as "good reasons why nobody in his right mind should date this freak."
The response from my fellow hopefuls was a Thundering Silence. I got a couple of "winks," but all from people on the other side of the country (which baffles me), and no direct emails. During my own searches, I found a guy whose profile I absolutely loved, who referenced some favorite films and had a good gag in each paragraph, who was fairly easy on the eyes, and I thought from his comments that he might like me... so after a whole day of working up the nerve, I wrote to him; the next day he replied with a very courteous "Thanks, but no thanks" that left me reeling for another whole day (I never did learn how to process rejection).
After that, I decided to rethink my approach to the profile essay. Maybe Caroline was right, and I talked too much about myself. I mean, the "what I'm looking for in a guy" paragraph was oddly brief and waaaaaay at the bottom of the column. So I bid adieu to my fantastic paragraphs and started fresh... this time starting with what I was looking for in a relationship, who I was looking for in such a relationship, and what they might find in me (this being the approved order). And then I blathered on at some length about the rest of my profile: see, most of the profile is just dots, you click a radio-button for a choice that describes your political leanings, turn-ons, pet types, and the like. I felt a little cheated by the sparsity of those answers, so I filled the rest of my profile essay with proper expounded answers.
Wanna see it? I don't suppose you can look at it without joining the website, so I'll just copy and paste what text I can:
RobertWrites
Life is a banquet...but where is the fishberry jam?
* 41-year-old man
* Oakland, California, United States
* seeking men 25-55
* within 10 miles of Oakland, California, United States
Relationships: Never Married
Have kids: None
Want kids: Do not want to have kids
Ethnicity: Asian, White/Caucasian
Body type: About average
Height: 6'3" (190cms)
Religion: Agnostic
Smoke: No Way
Drink: I don't drink alcohol
Hair: Dark brown
Eyes: Grey
Best Feature: Eyes
Body Art: None
Sports and exercise: No Answer
Exercise habits: Exercise 3-4 times per week
Daily diet: Keep it healthy
Interests:
* Book club/Discussion
* Coffee and conversation
* Dining out
* Movies/Videos
* Museums and art
* Music and concerts
* Performing arts
* Playing cards
* Shopping/Antiques
Education: Bachelor's degree
Occupation: Administrative / Secretarial
Income: $35,001 to $50,000
Languages: English
Politics: Liberal
Sign: Capricorn
My Place: Live with parents/extended family
Pets I have: Reptiles
Pets I like: Birds, Dogs, Fish
For fun:
Reading, writing, online message boards and social sites; trivia, etymology, languages, history, art, jewelry; bargain shopping, window shopping, grocery shopping; finding surprising new things to like.
My job:
I work for a non-profit social services agency, chiefly engaged in data management, but also poking my nose into other facets of human services. It's incredibly satisfying to do work that supports people in need.
My ethnicity:
I'm only one-eighth Chinese (people usually say it shows in my eyes), but I'm very proud of that heritage; I'm also Irish, German, Dutch, and Norwegian, but these were all homogenized by too many generations in the US.
My religion:
I believe that God exists, the creator and central intelligence of the universe... but that's as far as I'm willing to commit myself.
My education:
I'll never stop learning, though I stopped paying money for it when I got my BA in English Literature from San Francisco State (magna cum laude, which means very little but I'm unreasonably proud of it).
Favorite hot spots:
Bay Street, Piedmont Avenue, College Avenue, Solano Avenue, and Mountain View Cemetery (no, I'm not goth, it's very pretty there) are favorite local hangouts; Victoria BC, Waikiki HI, and Disneyland are my favorite vacation spots (so far).
Favorite things:
Mystery novels, jewelry, all kinds of art, crossword puzzles, elephants; Big Band music (especially Ella Fitzgerald), classical music, pop and rock and whatever else makes me move or think; conversations with lots of laughter (dry humor is best).
Last read:
Just finished Charlaine Harris's 'All Together Dead' and started on 'From Dead to Worse.' I'm on a vampire serial binge these days.
About my life and what I'm looking for
I'm looking to add a zing of romance to my life... and I don't mean the "candlelight, flowers, and strolling violinist" kind of romance (though that's nice), I mean the "I get a thrill of electricity in my heart when I see you" kind of romance. How that zing might develop, I have no idea, no agenda: it could be a flirty friendship, dating, LTR, or even marriage (once it's legal again); I'd like to see what happens without pushing it in one direction or another.
Nor do I have a "type" when it comes to men, none of the men I've loved in the past had much in common, physically... what's important is that mysterious "click" of attraction. We have it or we don't, and you can never predict who will click.
I do, however, require a man to be kind, to have a generous heart and a teachable mind, to have a respectful suspicion of social convention and an instinctive distrust of easy answers, to be fairly free of expectations and resentments - but not quite perfect just yet. The quirks and imperfections are where the flavor is found!
But enough about you, let's talk about me! I'm a lot of fun in conversation (I even like talking to myself), I have a head full of arcane facts and pertinent analyses, I'm great at color-coordinating, and I have excellent table-manners. I prefer ideas to opinions and questions to answers. I vastly prefer being indoors to being outdoors, though there are some outside things I like; I hate all sports...nothing wrong with them, they just bore me into a coma; strenuous physical activity is anathema, and though I go to the gym to keep myself healthy and will occasionally dance or lift heavy objects or push a vacuum-cleaner around, I don't find any pleasure in it.
Huh, 2325 characters left to go. I hate blank space. Allow me to elucidate some of the radio-button questions that dissatisfied me:
Want kids: I hesitate to admit that I don't like children, as it makes people think I'm an ogre. Thing is, I do like children, but only from a distance: I can't keep up with their needs, I exhaust quickly around them, and I would make a miserable parent.
Body type/Diet: I just lost 30 pounds with a diet and exercise plan. I've become so accustomed to the diet (mostly oats, lean meat, green vegetables, and supplements) that I get sick when I eat "normal," which has made restaurants something of a challenge. Now I need to step up the exercise portion to tone and shape what's left. But I feel oddly shy about going into the shape/tone part of the gym, I always feel like people will laugh at me.
Smoke/Drink: I quit smoking 11 years ago; my aunt has cancer and my father has COPD, so I've become a bit of an anti-smoking fascist. I've also been sober almost 14 years; I'm not so fascistic about the drinking, but I don't like the smell of it.
Hair: it's dyed dark brown; underneath, it's mouse-brown with great clumps of rat-gray.
Best Feature: I had to say "eyes" because nothing that I consider a best feature was listed... I'm told I have a beautiful speaking voice, I've received many compliments on the texture of my skin, and I think my toes are cute.
Sign: Capricorn with Scorpio rising and Gemini moon.
My Place: I live with my Grandmother. She's ninety and Texan and conservative ("the whole gay thing" is still a bone of contention between us, since I am out), mostly very sweet and kind but occasionally cantankerous. She is my priority: she was here for me from the beginning of my life, everything good in me comes from her; and I'm going to be here for her to the end of her life.
Pets: my Claudius is a 2.5-year-old red-eared slider, almost 5 inches long. He's very standoffish, he hates being touched and spends most of his time staring at me from under his basking rock...and I love him dearly.
If there's anything else you want to know, I maintain an open-books policy, so shoot me an email; let's see if we can get that "click" to happen for us.
*** So, that's not too bad, is it? You wouldn't hit the back button so fast it breaks your mouse, would you? Well, the proof shall be in the pudding... I just posted the new essay yesterday, along with a new profile pic (cropped from the artichoke picture above...do you think I should have used another one?) and there hasn't been time for much response.
And, honestly, I don't have much hopes of this yielding anything more than something I can chalk up to experience. But hey, I already spent the money, I might as well spin the wheel.
Well, anyway, I'm out... I have to go check out the menfolks in my Daily 5 matches, which I noticed had refreshed when I went over to copy my profile text. Have a super day, and don't take any wooden igloos.
Mannersized at
6:21 PM ~
Commentary: 2
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Thursday, April 16, 2009
Climbing the ChasmAfter that last post, my yo-yo got stuck at the end of the string, and I was in an extremely unpleasant place for a couple weeks... angry all the time, and tired, and uncomfortable in my own skin. But then my psychiatrist told me to just jack up the lithium to the next dose and see if that helps (and if it doesn't, we'll add an antidepressant, maybe Zoloft or Wellbutrin) ... and it did! It made me very very sleepy for a whole week, but I was no longer depressed or angry.
Well, I was angry, but not so much. I've discovered that a lot of the free-floating anger I've been experiencing lately is actually caused by people: I am very angry with certain specific people, and I have no way of talking to them about it... I actually doubt that talking to them would even make a positive difference; and with no way of processing the anger, it just sits and festers and makes me irritable so that I become angry at other people and things and situations for no apparent reason.
But my mood, in general, has been pretty good (aside from the fatigue, though that's starting to pass off, as well), no crying or screaming or needing desperately to get out of my body. And I guess that will just have to do for the time being... unless you have a pill for this creeping sense of hopelessness? This odd sensation that no matter how hard I try, I'm never going to get any farther than the quagmire in which I currently wallow? Do they make a pill for that?
?
So, during that very dark period, I had to go off of my diet. It occurred to me (and this opinion was backed up by other authorities) that my severe limitation of carbohydrates might be having a deleterious effect on my mood... apparently, too few carbs can trigger serious depression. So I went off the diet, allowed myself to eat a scone here or some toast there... but nothing crazy, still no candy or white-bread or potato-chips.
In fact, I probably only added a few hundred calories to the daily intake, almost exclusively from whole-grain (or "slow") carbs. And my weight-loss slowed, but didn't stop. I'm now 22 pounds down, and almost ready for those size-36 pants (which I fortuitously stored in the basement when I had to start wearing 38s...I got rid of the 34s, though... I mean, let's be real).
The financial diet has been harder than I expected, though. I have been paying my bills, stashing my savings, and keeping very close track of my expenditures; but numbers are not exactly my forte, and I can't figure out why my financial register (which I maintain in Excel) doesn't match with my bank statement. So then I sit and try to compare and (uhm, what's that word again?) reconcile the numbers, and it gives me an immediate headache.
Maybe I'll get better with practice. But I'd rather spend my frightfully limited energy on something else, like maybe my work. Speaking of which, I have to go there again...
May the heavens tickle you in the naughty places!
Mannersized at
7:45 AM ~
Commentary: 0
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