Have You Ever Noticed the Many Ways in Which I am Awful?

I really hate the way I sound in my last two posts. I can't help but imagine them being read in a whiny voice: "Waahhh I had to clean up after peeeepppuuulll. Waahh moving doesn't fix everything in your lifffeeee." This is why I've been having trouble writing lately. The things I write are sort of making me hate myself.

I've unfortunately reached that plateau on the journey to improved self awareness where I am really really good at identifying the things about me that are probably annoying to others. For example, if I really really like an anecdote, I will tell it over and over and over and like sneak it into conversation whenever possible. It's a lot like Brad Stand and the chicken salad/Shania Twain thing.

Or, semi-relatedly-like when I want to show someone something funny/interesting on the Internet, I assume this supremely obnoxious body posture and facial expression while they watch it. It can only be described as expectantly smug.

Or like lately, I keep on jumping all over people when I perceive their comments to be even vaguely misogynistic. I am giving feminists everywhere a bad name. And the worst part is, my extremely kind and loyal friends will go out of their way to be like, "No, that entirely insane thing you just yelled at that man was totally called for. You shouldn't feel bad about it at all." My god. They are saints.

And I'm sure you've all noticed how I just generally talk a lot. Like I monopolize conversations. I have a response and often an accompanying anecdote for every damn thing somebody says.

Some others:

• I talk about my cats a lot.
• I am really really bad at curbside parking.
• I walk really really fast and purposefully around the office. It could probably be described as "storming."
• I am hypocritical and contradict myself a lot in day-to-day conversation.
• I have like a trillion "hobbies." My interest in each is so diffuse and ill-focused that I will probably never be good at anything or accomplish anything. 
• My knowledge about a lot of things that I claim to know about and care about is embarrassingly facile. Basically like this:

• I complain about going to the grocery store.

So, how is that, knowing what I know about myself, I am able to maintain any level of distaste for a large portion of the general populace?

I realize that I am awful. Just like everyone else. Brb, ascending to the highest level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Everywhere I go

There I am.

I knew this, but, will I ever really know this?

How I Spent My Summer Vacation (Plunging the Clogged Toilets of Other Peoples Children): Part One

I had resigned myself to a second summer in a row of unemployment when I received a call I didn't expect. It was a follow-up interview for a job that I had applied for back in May. Because I went so  long  without hearing anything back about it, I just assumed that I didn't get it.

I was happy and relieved to get the follow-up interview. I had signed a lease for a place with rent I could barely afford and was eager to make some money. 

My new boss explained that I would be working "front of house" in the cafeteria of a children's summer camp. Just setting the tables, restocking the salad bar, sweeping. Sounded like a piece of cake.

"We also might schedule you for cleaning once in a while. Hopefully we won't have to."

"That's fine. I cleaned bathrooms at my high school job. I don't mind," I replied. Mistake number one.

When my new boss  asked me how much I was looking to work, I told her to load me up with hours (mistake number two).

I have been extremely lucky when it comes to employment history. Never before have I had a truly terrible job. 

In high school, I worked front of house at a live outdoor theater, cleaning the bathrooms, taking tickets, and operating the concession stand. This was actually an incredibly sweet gig. I worked for my cousin-in-law and with my friends. During the show, we would roam the state park in which the amphitheater was located. We were almost always overstaffed and days off were abundant and easily requested. Also, there were only two bathrooms. Bliss.

After that, I worked as an office aid for my dad, who is a property lawyer. When I tell people about this job, I always veer toward the dramatic. Like really dramatic. I've been known to compare my dad to Meryl Streep as Anna Wintour (err "Miranda") in The Devil Wears Prada. And, in my defense, there was a time when he really did ask me to locate some lonely piece paper (which he only vaguely described) in  a entire store closet full of barrister boxes, each of which was stuffed with file folders. Very Miranda.

But if I'm being honest, the job was, most of the time, pretty mild. Some light filing, some data entry, some dictation. 

This was followed by a plethora of University positions--science camp counselor, new student orientation aid, research assistant, journal editor--each job cushier than the last. 

And finally, I was a temp in an IT office. In a lot of ways, this job made me miserable and lonely, but let's face it: I came in late, read blogs for a embarrassing large portion of the day, and never got yelled at even once.

My pampered bourgeoise ass was in No Way prepared for what was waiting me at the Camp of a Million Sorrows.

First, a few things about the camp: 1.) It is expensive, meaning, the children that attend are overwhelmingly wealthy, and 2.) It is huge, meaning, close to 600 campers at a time. All eating at once, all needing juice and peanut butter and margarine packets and ketchup and more fucking cream cheese and caviar and perrier and golden nuggets, like, yesterday.

I think that it's also important to mention that I wasn't actually employed by the camp. I was employed by a catering company that it contracted by the camp. 

This setup created a very "us against them" vibe, at least for me.

And truly, truly, every meal was like going to battle. 

When I try to explain to people what made this job so terrible, I can't find the words to adequately express the press of 600 children at the salad bar and the "peanut butter station" (a table that we kept stocked with peanut butter and jelly ingredients and fruit all day). The children were extremely competitive about food procurement, which led to some maddeningly inappropriate and annoying behaviors. First, they would not move away from a salad bar or PB station item long enough to let me restock it. I would have to fight my way through them to give them the shredded cheese or grape jelly that they were so desperately clamoring for. Additionally, they could not take one fucking extra second for civilized behavior. They ripped the bread bags at the PB station open because they didn't want to waste time untwisting the tie, grabbed cartons of milk or pitchers of juice off carts while I was still wheeling them out, and threw garbage into trash cans that we had not yet had the chance to reline after hauling the garbage out.

And I guess the garbage was actually partially our fault, because we should have learned, by that point, that the meal time battles were as much about defense as they were about offense. We should have known that kids were going to throw trash in the unlined cans and not left them unlined for even a second. Because you had to do that, to determine how the campers could use things you left out or provided against you.

It was exhausting, setting up this huge cafeteria for a meal, serving the meal, cleaning the huge cafeteria up, and then doing it all over again. I think this was the fist job I ever had that actually made me physically tired. Holy privilege! How could have gotten this far through my life without ever experiencing that before?

And actually, that exhaustion--that feeling that you had actually earned your money--felt pretty nice. I use to come home from my cushy office job feeling angsty and irritated as all get out, absolutely seething with dissatisfaction. But the sore arms and aching feet that marked the end of a day at the camp  felt weirdly wholesome, and i returned home with the simple happiness of having had a defined task to complete and completing it, I happiness that all my amorphous and vague office work could never provide.

Windows into the Past. Smeary Ones. With the Blinds Only Partially Opened.

I’ve been in Beckley for the past few days. Unemployment frees up a lot of time for family. On Sunday, I went to dinner with a branch of the family that I hardly know: the progeny of my dad’s mother’s siblings. (So, they are my second cousins? This is confusing.) My dad’s mom (my Grandma Emma) died before I was born. I’m not exactly sure how long before I was born and I’m not sure why. Something liver-related maybe?

Anyway, it turns out that she had like eight siblings, so there are quite a few second cousins(?) who, in turn, have children and grandchildren. I think I was vaguely aware that these people existed, but never before had I attempted to create a mental “family tree” that pieces that branch of the family together before this dinner.

During dinner, one of the cousins mentioned that many members of this branch of the family lived together in the Paint Street House in a multigenerational situation for a while. The Paint Street House. I’d always thought of this house as my (late) paternal grandpa’s. He died when I eight or nine, and he lived in this house for most of the time I knew him. He was very into fruit trees and had all kinds of them in his yard. He and that house are just so synonymous in my memory. It’s kind of blowing my mind that it’s actually more accurate to think of the house as Emma’s.

This discovery has really changed my perception of my grandpa. It seems weird to me that he moved in with his wife, her mother, and her intellectually disabled sister (and possibly even more of her relatives?) when they got married. But maybe this wasn’t weird at all in the 50s?

The older I get, the more I realize how little I know about my family. It’s so funny because it’s not like my parents are deliberately secretive or are purposely trying to obfuscate some sketchy piece of family history. I’m assuming that their lack of info sharing is coming form one of two much more mundane places. Either a.) the information does not seem interesting to them, and therefore they do not share it, or b.) the information seems obvious to them, and therefore they do not think to state it.

But back to the Paint Street House. It’s this tiny house in a neighborhood that has sort of deteriorated over the years. Growing up, I was always equally fascinated and terrified by the basement, with is dug out and unfinished so that the walls are all craggy and earthen.

When I think of my family origins, I think of my dad’s family, which is actually to say that I think of my dad’s dad’s family, which is very much to say that I think of this very intimate and modest little house and its basement and my grandpa’s trees and grapes and his tendency to wear sweat pants all the time and never throw anything away, and never buy anything either.

But no, it turns out that all of that was wrong. This weekend, I met all of these people. They were blonde and loud. They live Texas and Florida.  And they are wealthy (or I’m guessing that are, based on their appearance and mannerisms). Their children are counselors and television actors and all kinds of things. And many of them (the cousins) actually lived in the Paint Street House at some point.

I am a white, American, middle class, post-Protestant person of unspecified European ancestry, which is to the say that I have a tendency toward naval gazing and a latent and oft-denied obsession with my identity. And part of my identity is “where I came from,” to use a phrase that I hate. And where I came from, is, figuratively, the Paint Street House. But my conception of the Paint Street House was incorrect, which means that my conception of “where I came from” was, too.

I wonder if my (hypothetical future) children will know as little about my parents’ lives and I know about my grandparents’ lives?

Upswing

Time Warp

Found a old notebook with some sporadic "journal entries." From one dated March 28, 2010:

When people ask me what I aspire to be, I'd like to say, "I think that ambitious people are the most dangerous people on the planet. I think that ambition is one of the most dangerous forces in the world. I wish to be one less ambitious person. I wish to reduce the number of ambitious people in the world by one. It's my dream."

To 21-year-old me: You'd be pleased to know that excess ambition is the very least of your worries. Also, improve your handwriting. It's terrible.

 Good to know that while it may seem like I am unmotivated,  I'm actually just fulfilling my dreams.

Dream Salad...and Other Things...But Mostly Dream Salad

Via this blog, via google image search for "dream salad"

Dream Salad
 I have always been fascinated by dreams. Apparently most people are not? I've heard people say that dreams are the kind of things that are only interesting to the people that have them, and no one else. I disagree! I have a bad habit of asking people about their dreams, and then badgering people for ever more details until they want to kill me. If you want to talk about your dreams but are facing an unreceptive audience, get in touch with me.

Why do I love dreams so much, you ask? Well, I ask, why don't other people love dreams more? Personally, I am amazed that my unconscious mind can devise nutso scenarios that my conscious brain is not even aware of.

I started writing my dreams down in a little notebook (sporadically) this winter with mixed success. The idea is that you wake up and immediately record your dreams while they are still fresh in your mind. But I'm really lazy, so I never wake up early enough to have time to both record my dreams and get ready for work. Normally I record my dreams once I get to work. Sometimes I wait until even later in the evening. Sometimes I even put it off for a day or two. Invariably, I forget a lot of dream details. But then, dream details are almost impossible to capture in words anyway.

So today at work, I was recording a dream I had over the weekend in my little dream notebook. The dream begins with me in the cafeteria of my elementary school. I am eating a chef salad out of a beige plastic bowl (reasonable). There is iceberg lettuce, and boiled eggs, and cheese, and ham. When my dream pals and I finish up lunch, we go exploring in the school's old creepy basement (not reasonable). We open a door and unleash a dark force that can only be described as a Shadow Lion (not even sort of reasonable). The Shadow Lion chases us, and we try to hide in a library (reasonable, but my school did not have a library), the perimeter of which is entirely surrounded by a narrow catwalk (not reasonable). The Shadow Lion gets into the library and chases us around the catwalk, but it eventually gets stuck behind an obstruction on the catwalk (not logical) and my dream pals and I get away.

But I don't want to talk about fictional Shadow Lions. I want to talk about real salads. This little detail was fully elucidated when I recorded my dream today. Suddenly it occurred to me that, at some point, my elementary school actually offered salad as a an alternative to hot lunch. It was real! The long forgotten salad option!

So what happened was: I remembered something in my dream that my waking, conscious mind had forgotten! Or, in more imaginative terms: My dreams were sending me messages from my past! Or something. I don't know. But I feel like this is profound. Not the salad, exactly, but what it represents.

There are a handful of settings in which a lot of my dreams take place. Now I'm wondering if these places are actually real places (or at least representative of real places)  I went to (or saw?) as I child that I no longer consciously remember. For example, I've had a few dreams that take place in a museum with a sand sculpture and a big hour glass. Maybe I actually remember a museum with a sand sculpture and big hour glass? Which elements of my dreams are ridiculous fabrications of my mind, and which are ridiculous memories? Wow. So many new dream layers. THINK ABOUT IT.

Blogging
So. I'm starting to think that this trend of personal blogs (of which I am casually participating) is seriously the worst thing. Even I, with my amateurish, rarely updated, prefab layout-ed blog, have found myself turning disturbingly inward for blog content. Some introspection is healthy, but I think that I, at times, am partaking in lethal levels of self-involment with this blog. And I don't even include pictures of my face!

Oh, the face pictures. So many, on every post. And the staged photoshoots of, like, picnics. And bike rides. And walking down the street. I'm so confused by this. Sometimes I see pictures of bloggers crossing the street. Do they stop in the middle and ask someone to take their picture? Do they set up a tripod? In the middle of the street? I just can't imagine it, and I just wrote like 400 words on dreaming about salad!

I think that having a successful blog has the potential to change how you look at the world (in a bad way). For example, I was reading this really terrible (but popular) DIY/fashion/lifestyle blog the other day, when I came across a post titled something like "10 ways to wear a scarf." It was like: Tie it around your head! Tie it around your neck! ect, ect. You just know that the blog author, desperate for content, was putting on a scarf when and thought to herself, "Yes. That's it. This will work."

And then in the comments, all these girls are like "Wow. So inspirational. I never thought of wearing a scarf around my neck before!" But what I think they really mean (whether they know it or not) is "I never thought that you could write a fucking blog post about how to wear a scarf and publish it on an income-generating blog." Because yeah. Now that I think about it, this is really kind of brilliant.

It just seems like you'd reach a point where you'd start  experiencing the world in terms of what could potentially be, or could not potentially be, blog content. So instead of going on a whimsical picnic and then blogging about it, you go on a whimsical picnic so you can blog about it.

I am no where near that point because a.) I write one blog post a month, b.) maybe two or three people read my blog,  c.) I don't include pictures, and d.) I don't really write about the day-to-day. But it's the principal of the thing, of writing about the details of your life as though someone would want to read it.

I started writing here when I was really lonely and did not want to drive my remaining friends away with my bitching and inanities. But now I have, miraculously, managed to meet some new people and I find myself with less of a need to take my Europe stories and dumb reflections to the internet. I had pretty much resolved to delete this blog when the salad dream happened. The internet needed the salad dream.

So, I guess the blog will remain, new content pending whether or not I have additional incredible epiphanies that must be shared. But, I will never include pictures of my face. Never.