Caterwauling

Garfield and friend

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn.

Scenes from the backseat of my car. Garfield’s buckled in ’cause I drive like a maniac and he ends up in the front seat sometimes otherwise. 😉 I got him a girlfriend last weekend, a Steelers teddy bear cheerleader. (Oh, the stories THAT can invoke. …)

Note that Big G is wearing a Washington Capitals hat. I have my loyalties — just to different cities!

Anyway, this makes me smile when I come out to my car, even though I want to torch the fucking thing sometimes. (Damn mechanics broke the coolant chamber, so the instrument panel’s all lit up no matter how much fluid I pour into it ’cause it’s always emtpy. Whee.)

It occurs to me that people think I play games when the only thing I am ever trying to do is preserve what little of myself that I can. I just need to be handled with kid gloves right now. That’s all. Even if I’m the one who has to slide on the gloves and handle me with care.

It also occurs to me that I don’t just make the occasional questionable decision. When a choice I make turns out to be not the best one, it spirals into a 14-karat fuckup with seemingly unlimited waves of aftereffects. It’s what keeps me from taking even the smallest chances sometimes. Hence being fra-gee-lay at this particular moment.

I’ve been in a weird little depression lately, and I swear it would take a stick of dynamite to blow me out of this funk. And I only got to see the last half of “House” tonight, but it was that TNT enema that I needed. I identify with him so much — someone exceptional who is always getting frowned upon and, this week, deprived of a true victory that could have brought him out of his miserable mental state and helped him to save someone else.

That’s exactly what’s wrong with me — I have nothing left to give. I just get into my little hamster wheel and keep spinning until I can’t see straight. Forcing my heart to be present isn’t happening right now — my heart needs to go join my muse who’s off sipping margaritas in Tahiti while I watch the leaves die and fall and crumble beneath my feet. I asked myself if X or Y happened, would it help? And the answer was a big fat “I don’t give a shit either way.” I am House. I do not cease to give a shit until there’s a happy fucking ending in it for everyone and maybe even a feeling of, if not victory, then non-defeat.

Someone said something that stuck with me today, that why should I be different than others. I guess it meant I’m not unique — that when it comes down to it, I don’t stand out. Screw it — I am different in every possible way. I’m special, damn it, but you’ve got to dig for it. I’ve just spent a lot of time being punished for it, but that doesn’t stop the fact that I am not and never will be like everyone else. And I happen to LIKE who I am, so instead of apologizing for it, I just don’t always let it out there.

God, this blog has turned into a dark little place lately, no? I’m going to go finish drinking that bottle of Riesling that I uncorked last night. Still too lazy to reach up to that middle shelf for a wine glass, though. 😉

[audio:TheSecondDay.mp3]
Kendall Payne, “The Second Day”

Just in casual conversation, I wondered aloud whether anything would change. I see a lot that goes right, but a hard-to-ignore amount that’s broken. I also see opportunities to fix what’s broken. But the answer was probably not. I posited that broken is the new functional — we could choose to thrive or choose to survive. And by default, if survival wins, it’s still a victory, sadly enough. Even if we don’t have time to wash off the oozing wounds before the next battle begins.

Anyway.

Because Sabre is so goddamned smart and articulate (happy belated birthday, babe! The party was LEGENDARY! *mwah!*), her latest rant got me to thinking. For those of us who refuse to operate under any illusions, we don’t appreciate those who spin their lies so eloquently that even they are shocked when you call bullshit on them.

To wit:

As I’m looking through blogs, and yes, I stumbled upon some that are written by people I know, I’m almost stunned at the amount of disingenuous nonsense I’m reading. Hello? Why on earth would anyone do that?

Okay so we are here to meet new people, score a date, maybe even find love. Okay, cool, I’m getting that. But why on earth would anyone waste their time typing up blog entries about the type of person they are that is simply not true?

Is it possible that they think this is the way to find love? Oh my. Come here children, let Mistress Sabre impart some wisdom upon your fool asses. If you are just looking to score some easy action, rock on with your bad selves. Tell fantastical stories about the goodness of your soul and kindness of your nature. Ramble on about finding beauty in streams and rivers. Talk about your inner strength and independence as if the world relied upon it. Reinvent yourself as many times as it takes. Knock yourself out.

But…

If you are seeking something else, and I see that a lot of people are, then maybe the trick is to stop spending so much time trying to convince everyone how wonderful and noble and awesome you are, and start spending more time being real. Because here’s the trap you are getting ready to stumble right on into: after dating your new found someone for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, hell it may take a couple of years for the slower natured of us, your true self is going to come out. And that is not to say that there is anything wrong with your true self, it’s probably a fantastic self. But it’s not the person you advertised.

It’s funny, the way people want to be perceived. But just because you write that you are special and fabulous and original and caring and God’s freaking gift, believe me, you need to qualify that statement. What you think is God’s gift might, to us, be a bag of flaming dog poo on a doorstep. (Read: Explode elsewhere, please.)

There are those of us out there who really do want to believe that wonderful people are out there. But we’re also smart enough to know that anyone who sells themselves as perfect is someone who has already lied to us before we’ve even met them.

We all sell the “new and improved” versions of ourselves, which means most of us know that nobody’s perfect so don’t bullshit us that your shit doesn’t stink. The deepest and best relationships (friends, employment, etc.) have been the ones in which everyone was completely themselves in the beginning. I respect the person or the workplace that says look, these are our shortcomings. Maybe not in the first conversation, but I dig anyone who doesn’t claim that everyone sits around singing Kumbaya, holding hands and having a love-in, as standard practice.

I am sort of fired up because I know exactly where Sabre is coming from in that post. I had an ex who posted an ad in the City Paper back before Teh Internets saved us from many a lonely night. 😉 I remember his ad — I wanted to date the person who was advertised! Oh wait, already had. Hah.

But seriously, he sold himself as witty, intelligent and attractive. My girlfriends read it, and I’ll never forget my friend Becky, who looked appalled and said, “Somebody should sue him for libel!”

I don’t know. He did get a lot of responses. Nobody really stuck around, though. I guess where he and I differed is that he was quick to put himself “out there” and get a date, no matter how much he had to lie his ass off to do it. 😉 (Just kidding, he had to have more than a few redeeming qualities to get any attention from me!)

But I’m the opposite. I put my heart on Teh Internet every day of my life, but I never really actively seek the romantic affections of strangers. I do have a dating profile or two out there, and they’re sparse. I don’t tell you more than you need to know. I expect for you to know that there’s a lot more to learn than I could ever publish, and I refuse to sell you on something I can never be.

If you’re brave enough to get close to me — and I will let you, if I think I should — this ride is not for the faint of heart. I will expose you. I will find your wounds and maybe even pour salt in them sometimes, but I have the power to heal them. I am trained to hear what people say and to pay even more attention to what they’re not articulating. I can call bullshit on you without breaking a sweat. I will not give you the time of day if I suspect anything artificial about you, especially if you’re handing that artifice to me on a pretty, shiny silver platter.

I’m not aiming this rant anywhere in particular as I am actually surprised to be “meeting” quality people online. I am the world’s greatest skeptic, so go figure. But I do so love when exes and otherwise-horrid people are putting themselves out there like they’re the “answer to your question” and “a good person who’s always had bad luck” and “a hidden treasure,” I think it’s necessary for them to list the phone numbers of their last two exes and/or enemies.

When someone tells you they like nature, it’s probably because they don’t have a job (and walks through the park are FREE) and they’re hiding in Mommy’s attic, hoping for women to find them pitifully cute. And they won’t be so cute when y’all go out to dinner and he makes you pay. 🙂 Doesn’t mean he’s not a great person, truly, but he sold you on someone else. And wouldn’t it be nice if, when you returned them back to their natural habitat, the refund policy also included a little bit of help for your battered heart after unnraveling all the stories that became built on the first mistruth that so easily seemed to roll off their typing fingers at 3 a.m. when they typed up their perfect little profile?

We don’t like for our guys to be pussies, but for God’s sake, don’t sell yourself as a knight when you’re a serf. In this day and age, we fair maidens would rather have something real than a glass slipper that’s going to shatter if we step down too hard on it. If you can’t trust us with who you really are, how on earth do you expect for us to love that person if we don’t get to meet him until we’ve fallen for the visage you instead presented to us?

I guess broken really is the new functional, in every life domain. We all want to feel like we can fill a gap for someone, to feel like we can add to their lives somehow. But by the time you reveal your true self, if you hadn’t presented it from the beginning, for us it’s the same as starting a relationship with someone new. Which, we would rather do, because we don’t want to be around if/when the next personality decides to come out.

We had a “House” party last night, but the real entertainment is having a room full of Mac geeks cease all chatter in total reverence the moment the Mac ads come on TV.

I had somehow missed this, but now that I know about it, I must share this cute little MacBook spoof ad. 🙂

Two years ago today, I had my exit interview from the last employer, known not-so-affectionately as Club Medicated. I had pulled the plug on this blog and set up camp elsewhere for the time being, and I’m sharing that day’s entry below the fold.

It really hurts to recall the frustration and pain — it always rains over me like a bad rash — but it helps sometimes, too. I hated that place so much, and I never, ever wanted to look back and miss it. There was a nasty, hateful, horrible person who was exiled right before I left, and I never met a person who could bitch so much. She made me look like a well-adjusted ball of sunshine. Yet, after she was gone, she sent in poems that were published in the employee newsletter on how much of a glorious opportunity it was to work there and how she misses it so. *gag* Thank GOD that I was able to rise above all of it at that island of misfit toys.

My successor was nice enough and talented enough, but lacked my passion. So they paid him more and insisted he work less than I did. I think that’s a pretty decent epitaph to the rejected creativity and dedication I had when I was there.

Anyway, here’s something from the old files. It reminds me of the old Irish saying that “May the best of your yesterdays be the worst of your tomorrows.” Or, in this case, may the people who caused you so much pain be left to rot while you go on to shine where you’re appreciated.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a saying that you can’t actually be yourself when you’re first dating someone. Instead, you’re selling the best version of yourself — a cover that can be slowly peeled away as your beloved gets more and more hooked. Meaning, no one could possibly be enamored with who we really are so, by all means, be someone else that they might grow to like. Brilliant strategy.

I think we all do it across all domains of life. If you want to impress during a job interview, you chirp that you are organized and detail-oriented and persistent and enthusiastic and ready to hit the ground running and *snooze.* Me? I am detail-oriented on a good day. And I don’t have many of those. 😉 But boy have I ticked off that list to four dozen people I wasn’t even sure I wanted to impress. The goal is to get hired and THEN show them all the great skills they didn’t even think to ask about … and that’s when you get your leeway to be grumpy in the mornings (afternoons, evenings, late evenings …).

Probably like, oh, EVERYONE else, I have a very hard time being anyone other than myself for an extended period of time. I am expressive and over-the-top and opinionated and impulsive and unashamed of it. I can justify any emotion — exhaustively so, sometimes. People who don’t emote bug the crap out of me, and I thrive around people who get just as excited over the things that make me happy.

That said, I am sort of at one of those (many) crossroads in life. I am passionate about a hell of a lot of things. If I’m running my mouth, that means I’m running my brain. I want so much to understand, oh, EVERYTHING in life, and I want to improve everything I can. I bitch a lot, or so it seems, but in my head I’m solving world crises — if anyone would just be smart enough to listen. 😉

I get concerned when situations arise in which I (after the fact, usually) wish I had censored my immediate reactions. Usually it’s through the power of suggestion, and I wonder whether they just don’t want to know or if they think it’s for my own good to chill out. I think there’s merit to either side of the equation, but I? Implode.

I admire people who seem as unruffled as can be. I want to be like them sometimes. But the world doesn’t change when we’re all marching in time. I’d be the chatterbox in the back of the line wondering where everyone was going and why can’t we go THAT way instead. I’d be the one getting enough people to question the movement and I’d probably succeed in getting the majority to follow my crazy idea to go in the opposite direction. I’m always fighting, it seems, to not follow anything that remotely resembles a lead.

Again, I think everyone’s internal compass tends to lead them away from tradition and what has supposedly worked for everyone else. I remember trying to teach people the art of fading into the scenery, not permanently but to earn enough respect that when it’s time to pick their battles, they will be given time on the playing field because they’ve earned it. But I have a hard time following my own advice.

Maybe that’s why the proverbial “they” also say that “those who can’t, teach.” It’s weird to be so full of ideals and yet I can kick anybody’s ass but my own. Well, I can and do, but it requires me taking every last blessed, available detour. I realize that I can spin stories like I’m 100 years old, but maybe it’s because I learn everything the hard way. Not necessarily by choice, but as an occupational hazard for being the person I am.

I can hide the scatterbrained, stubborn, evasive, distracted, easily bored parts of me, but they usually ooze out from behind their dungeon walls at triple the force than if I’d just let them have their rightful seat on the crazy train in the first place. I’m feeling that now.

My doctor was asking today about my coping mechansims. I love that woman. Her approach is so holistic that she’s equal parts clinician and psychoanalyst. She said that anyone who’s ever suffered a huge upheaval is prone to losing their entire grip and it’s sometimes better to learn new methods of healing instead of relearning the ones that didn’t work when we needed them most. And I realize in a BIG way that I lost my belief in myself that I could save me. Even though I DID save me, I attribute it to luck or the supernatural or what the fuck ever — just not to my own ability to scratch and claw my way back up to ground zero.

I very much fear that something dumb will again knock me back down. I expect everyone loves me and respects me and knows how damn lucky they are to know me. I seek to surround myself with equally irreplacable people. I want to believe that the universe will always have a safety net under the tightwire we might not recognize that we’re crossing sometimes. I want to not worry about asking for a lot more than survival as the month’s main achievement.

I remember telling a friend long ago that it bugs me that being single is such a crime in this world. We can’t as a nation allow same-sex couples to marry, but really, singletons make some folks just as uncomfortable as a happy couple holding hands if they don’t have different body parts.

I went to a restaurant by myself recently, only for the fact that I was en route somewhere and I was hungry and not planning to go to eat again till hours later. I walked in and people looked past me, wondering where the rest of my party was. I said, “One” for the table, and everyone looked uncomfortable. The server took me to the nearest small booth and asked nervously if I’d rather have a bigger booth.

I said, “No, this will be great. All of my imaginary friends will fit here just fine.”

She didn’t laugh. She looked terrified.

And I loved it.

I ordered my food, and the server was ridiculously attentive. I didn’t get the impression that she felt sorry for me or anything; I just wondered if their policy is to just get the lone diner out as fast as possible. The thing is, I don’t care. Well, I do — I’d rather be having good conversation and making plans or whatever, but I don’t mind being by myself. I happen to like me. Damn it. 😉 I’m an only child with an active imagination. I am NEVER lonely!

But that’s why I second-guess myself all the time. If I really, truly suck, I wouldn’t know. I don’t really trust that many people’s judgment anyway to listen to them even if they DID let me know that I don’t meet their standards. That’s why I love “House” — he might be an impossible asshole, but you’ve got to respect someone who defies convention and even outsmarts God, fer crissakes. 🙂

In any event, one of my bajillion goals in life is to never apologize for giving not only 100% effort, but also 100% personality. Scaling back on one means reducing the effectiveness of the other. And I don’t want to be known as anything or anyone less than what I am. Because that’s cheating the world of the potential I have to contribute to it.

But believe me, we’re all celebrating for him. Especially those of us who are familiar with the joys of commuting three hours to go 15 miles in metro D.C.:

Long-Suffering Commuter Gets to Blow Up Bridge

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Aug. 29) – A long-suffering commuter fulfilled the dreams of generations of Washingtonians on Tuesday morning when he blew up a detested Potomac River bridge.

Maryland electrician Dan Ruefly won a contest to detonate a section of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge, which carries the Capital Beltway across the Potomac between Maryland and Virginia just south of the District of Columbia. Regional authorities have been building a replacement since 2000.

“It’s past due. It was past due a couple of years after it was built,” said Ruefly, who crosses the bridge before 6 a.m. on weekdays to beat traffic on his two-hour commute.

… The bridge was designed to handle 75,000 vehicles a day when it opened as a four-lane span in 1961, and the six traffic lanes of the current bridge now carry 200,000 vehicles per day.

Dan, we salute you. Unlike with the bridge, we will use all five fingers!

So I went to get my head examined this morning. Other than a general confirmation that I’m pretty much toeing the line between the shallow and deep ends, I learned that my blood pressure has dropped practically in half and that I’ve lost 14 pounds.

Sad to say, I hadn’t noticed either. I mean, I knew with my headaches that I hadn’t been eating, but I unfortunately have gotten back my appetite. Damn it. 😉 Maybe I’ll refrain from taking the headache meds next time I get a doozy and drop another clothing size!

Well, actually, to be fair, I haven’t dropped a size but instead fit better into the size I currently buy. Still gots the muffin top but it looks less like a bakery window display. Progress, though, nonetheless!

I bought some crappy Asian-style dinners from Lean Cuisine to have for lunch at work. And you know how you get checkout coupons? Is it odd that my “related product” coupon turned out to be for Whiskas cat food? I don’t know if Whiskas tastes better (it probably does) or it’s a sign that cats were ground up to make my meal. Either way, ew.

I hate to admit I am so very dependent on Reader Poll Monday questions, as I really have nothing worth saying otherwise.

I left work well after 9 p.m. Wrote the bulk of copy for two weekly newsletters, so I’m feeling somewhat accomplished. My byline doesn’t appear on ’em (so don’t go searching!). That’s OK, I guess. If they suck, I feign ignorance. 😉 But really, I am surprised what I find when I pull things out of my butt — it’s a veritable magic tophat, I say. I’m surprised by either how much I really do know or how completely I’ve gotten myself fooled that I understand the subject matter.

My main goal in my vocation, no matter where I’ve been, is to learn everything. First, to surpass my peers in knowledge/ability, then to master anything I can. I do not enjoy leaving things up to someone else. I can ask for help, but I get antsy when I can’t do what is asked of me because it requires someone else’s skills/equipment/savvy. It’s not a control thing, just a way to — when I promise that I will take care of something — actually say it with conviction because I know how possible it is instead of waiting for others to rise to the occasion.

But then again, I would like to start moving in the direction of mastery of specific things than doing a bunch of things somewhat well. I would like to be able to pick and choose what’s right for me and help others to grow into what works for them.

I’ve had a series of converations lately with people who know a lot about life, and I am starting to realize in a big way how some dreams slip so far out of reach that you’d never recognize them if you fell over them — like we outgrow them — yet how other goals grow out of the ashes — things you would never have considered because you didn’t even know they existed, let alone were within the realm of possibility.

I have a new set of dreams that I’m hammering out in my head. That means sucking it up and having the patience and resolve to deal with the insomnia (and its accompanying nightmares) currently before me. One wonders whether the happy little thoughts in our head, in our imaginary playlands, are meant to fuel our fire and keep us energized for better days, or whether they’re a glimpse of what’s going to happen and it’s our job to work toward those images.

I’m working on my 10-year plan for my life. If I am exactly where I am in a decade, or even half of that time, shoot me. Do not resuscitate, do not pass go, just make it quick — I’ve suffered enough. You just can’t make a big, life-sized boo-boo (or 20) and expect you’ll ever recover from it.

The fact is, once you make a mistake or two in your life, you will spend the rest of that life paying for them. I forget what happy is like, or for that matter, comfort. I spend every day thanking God that things weren’t/aren’t worse. I worry to death that the most horrible time in my life could recur. My female counterparts have a similar fear of becoming a bag lady, no matter how hard we’re trying to not let that happen. What I wouldn’t give, instead, to just be grateful that things just couldn’t seem like they could get any better.