February: The Tough Month

It's been a while since I posted anything other than videos or quick blurbs about nothing. It isn't that I haven't had the time--hell, I've been working hard to find ways to put off working--but I haven't had the mental capacity to even consider what to write, let alone bother trying to compose my thoughts on a subject.

The truth is, February was a tough month. And the difficulty with February started way back in October. When we got to Norman I felt lucky to get work right away, but I still had to hold out for two and a half months before I'd get paid. We made it, even if it was stressful. Just part of living the glamorous adjunct life, I guess. But then around the middle of October I realized, "Rut-roh. That not-getting-paid thing is going to happen again at the end of January." Sure, this time I'd only go one month without pay, but could there be a worse time? Right after Christmas? Right after a planned drive to Minnesota (and all the costs that entails, even if others are entirely too generous with us). No pay going into February? The month with Valentine's Day? The month with Michele's birthday? Her first birthday ever spent out of reach of her family? A birthday that might be made easier for her if I can do something to make a big deal about it? An actual milestone birthday on top of that?

Needless to say, I've been a basket case for months (I heard that "your whole life" from the back . . .), and I considered staying behind in Oklahoma over winter break so I could find a job and just keep working--keep the difficulty to a minimum. For a number of reasons I decided that wasn't going to work out, so I made the trip and gritted my teeth for the coming depression.

And that's the funny thing about stress. Even though I knew I could make the situation more bearable by picking up a weekend job I didn't. I tried a few times, made some halfhearted stabs at some extra work, but in the end just sighed and resigned myself to a month of self-loathing.

And then one of my sections was cancelled (not enough enrolled), so I had a smaller paycheck to look forward to on the other end of February. That was nice.

Add into that strain a class that insists on challenging every announcement I make. Add to that a few job openings I needed to get myself together to apply to. Add to that my complete inability to write on any of my projects. And on top of that goes a further inability to even read productively. I was a mess. A mess of my own making.

But now it's March, and I've submitted my applications, and I see the end of this stack of grading easing over the horizon, and I got paid on Friday. So the tightness in my chest has loosened a little. I'm less likely to make a (misplaced) snarky comment to anyone (poor Michele--this was not a good month). Maybe now I can write, can spend some time thinking without my thoughts meandering off in negativity like a drunken butterfly headed for the pretty forest fire.

Maybe now I can blog. There's plenty to talk about. Even if my decision on Election Day will be a no-brainer (Obama's my first choice, but if Hillary wins the Dem nomination I have her ranked next --here's my list 1. Obama, 2. Clinton, 3. A loaf of bread, 4. Ralph Nader, . . . 389. The BTK killer, 390. Paris Hilton, 391. Carrot Top, 392. John McCain (or any other conservative)).

And it gets better: in two weeks my mom and Skiffy* and the Cat Whisperer** are driving down for a ten-day visit over Spring Break. The weather is beautiful (75 and sunny yesterday), and the trees are budding. I feel almost human. Almost.

* I need to find a better name for him. "Skiffy" was momentarily funny, but it isn't anymore and it doesn't exactly encapsulate who he is. I'm working on it.
** "The Cat Whisperer," however, stays. Because it's perfect.

On Unusual Anniversaries

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. I don't remember that day, but I remember the next day, when my friend Judd (yes, that was his name) said, "Elvis died yesterday."

"Elvis who?" I said.

I had no idea who Elvis was, though I'm sure I'd heard his music more than a few times in my life. My mom liked his music, even if she wasn't a fanatic about it. A few months later my brother and I would get a double-record set of Elvis's fifty greatest hits for Christmas:

But as momentous as Elvis's deathdday is, I usually remember August 16th as the day I left for basic training. In 1988. Nineteen years ago. When I was eighteen years old.

Ugh.

I feel old.

August 16, 1988 was a traumatic day for me--part of the worst year of my life. It was the last time I saw my father alive, and even though I didn't know that would be the case, I should have. He was too sick then for any other possibility. Only my emotional numbness kept me from realizing it, from considering the possibility that maybe I should wait a while before leaving my family. A week later I took leave, bought an overpriced, last-minute airplane ticket, was suited up in a hastily-tailored set of dress whites, and flew home to attend his funeral.

And then I went back to the navy. It took me a while to realize I hated working on electronics, a little longer to realize I was a pacifist, and maybe another decade to want to be a human. And now my life has come together so well it's like that year--those years--happened to someone else. I think of my desperation in the months following basic training and I know I'm not capturing how disabled I was. I know I can't recreate the emotional paralysis I felt. And I don't want to. There was a time when I thought I'd never feel any differently, and now I can't even remember it completely.

This sounds like a seventeen-year-old's poetry.

Suffice it to say that life is much better now. On August 16th.

And as an added bonus, here's a blurry copy of my boot camp picture:

August 16th is also a day of famous arrests: Charles Manson in 1969 and Ted Bundy in 1975. Bundy escaped, though.

I did, too.

In a Snit

I’m getting angry again. I spent some time this morning reading the Washington Post, and for whatever reason I was more interested in the political articles. I read about John Edwards, Ann Coulter, and Newt Gingrich. I read about Dubya’s tour through South America and Hugo Chávez’s response. It irritated me that I agreed more with Chávez than I did our own president.

Sometimes I feel like I should run for office. I get angry about the way the country is led, and I get angry about the lack of real alternatives on the ballot. The Republicrats and the Demublicans are two adjacent shades of the same color and they both have a vested interest in keeping the nation’s attention on the false dilemmas of their issues. The whole concept needs to be revised, not tinkered with.

The attitude of America as the Global Parent, whether the conservative “do as I say” version or the liberal “let Mommy kiss it and make it better” paradigm, is crap. It’s time our leaders recognize this country is just one of two hundred (or so) and we have no more business invading Iraq than, say, Sri Lanka has sending troops to secure Kansas (even if it seems sometimes they need to be saved from themselves). We have no more business dictating to Argentina how to operate than France has telling us what to do. We need to get all our shit in one sock before we even consider diddling with other countries.

And all this talk about the economy and our way of life needs to end. “The economy” isn’t an entity with value of itself. It’s an abstraction that represents the very issue running this country into the ditch. Our economy is a sham and our prosperity is hollow as long as the whole structure is based on luxury spending and speculation. Our currency isn’t even based on a real standard. And our “way of life?” Greed, selfishness, and self-righteousness regroupthought as “ambition,” “self-reliance,” and “moral clarity.” Crap.

Okay, I purged. Thanks for indulging me. Here's a random happy picture:

It's Been a Hell of a Week

I haven't posted in a while, but that's only because there isn't much to say. Life has been bumping along pretty monotonously since the holidays wound down, which is mostly a good thing. I'm only working about 55 hours a week now, so I get a little more time to write than I'd had while Book Store was blazingly busy. Just a few things are worthy of mention:

1. It's cold. According to Michele's perusal of the internet this morning, it was -13. With wind chill? -34. I'm not one who generally takes note of the temperature, because it just doesn't impact what I do or how I do it, but this is crazy. The air, without movement, makes my cheeks sting. My eyes continue to water ten minutes after I've gotten inside. Days like this make me hope Michele gets a letter of acceptance from the University of Texas at Austin. And fast.

2. I'm a loser. American Zoetrope announced the winner of their screenplay contest, and it wasn't me. They also listed the top ten runners up. No me. The semifinalists and quarterfinalists included about a million names. But not mine. Lucky for me I have another screenplay in the works and it feels better than Running the Asylum did as I wrote it. It's more cinematic, funnier, and more commercial. I hate thinking of that as a benefit, but screenwriting is as much business as art. Maybe more.

3. I was sick. Yesterday I only lasted two hours at work before I had to go home, green and gasping with nausea. Just the day before we'd been exposed to others with the same bug, but I didn't worry--I never get that stuff. I have a stomach of iron. If either of us gets something, it's usually Michele. No consolation when I was facedown in the throne yesterday doing the technicolor yawn.

4. I'm interviewing. I sent my resume off to an online university, and while they're not hiring right now, they want to put my materials on file for future possibilities. I identified about ten courses they list that I'd be qualified to teach and they agree on four of them, so they sent me an e-mail interview. It feels weird interviewing without seeing the interviewer, for a job at which I may never see my supervisor or my students. Complete disconnect. But I have no way to predict our direction for the next six months or so, and I really want to teach. This might be the only way.

Hopefully we start hearing from grad schools soon. That will help a lot. This limbo crap sucks. On the bright side--I'm writing pretty well now, though I have creative ADD. I spend a week on my short story, then completely fail in the AZ contest and hit the screenplay hard. I should be taking some sort of drugs, I think. Prozac or Zoloft or crack*. Something.

*I am, of course, kidding. I would never take Zoloft.