I'm a sensitive inner-person and I need a nap

This is going to be an exercise in brevity because I am determined to get my daily allotment of blogging done before I have to leave for work. Since this was my plan, you’d think that I would have scheduled time for writing it. Alas, I slept in. I have an excuse, however weak for sleeping in though. I didn’t sleep well last night and frankly I haven’t slept well in a couple of days. I think that it’s the stress of starting a new job (everyone knows that I hate being a door-hoverer and question-asker) and a few other random stressors. Whatever the reason, I haven’t been sleeping well and I’m the sort of lout who needs her sleep.

I use the word “lout” because I like the sound of it so early in the morning and because I am a little ashamed of being the kind of person who needs to log a solid 8 hours of sleep. I remember long ago when I was in high school I would always overhear my classmates talking about how they hadn’t started a homework assignment until 10 p.m. the night before and that they’d been up until 2 a.m. finishing; in college the situation was similar, only my classmates enjoyed bragging that they’d never been to sleep at all. It’s a rite of passage strewn with wasted time and 5-Hour Energy tubes.

At the risk of sounding like a goodie-two-shoe (WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?), I’ll admit that I never had much to contribute to the pissing contest of late nights. I’m not really much for planning and I’ve never been much for marathon studying, but somehow, I always got to sleep at a decent hour. I guess the sad thing here is that I would rather go to bed at midnight than eke out a few more percentage points on a test. And I always slept awesomely. That’s a lack of resolve right there.

I’ve written before about how I used to sleep in such an amazing way – that I used to just fall asleep on couches and bean-bag chairs and sleep uninterrupted through the night. Even when I met my main squeeze 3 years ago I was a champion sleeper; we would sleep twin bed in a room with no air conditioning and I would drool into my pillow as he laid wake.

Sometimes I try to reason out the difference between now and then. Obviously this was before and at the very beginning of my random night-time carpal tunnel pains; my perpetually tingling fingers and the splints (which I’m always determined to try sleeping without and then regret it) are probably factors. But then again I think it might be mostly stress. It’s easy for me to get stressed out, squash it all down inside of me as I traipse cheerfully through my day and have it erupt in random, tense awakenings. Stupid sensitive inner-person and stupid sleepless nights.

Alright, I should get ready for work. I hope that this proclamation to write before work doesn’t just lead to many entries on my sleeping habits. Those are bound to be worse than the many entries on my much-debated showering habits.

I'm sure pretty I've never washed a window

I am trying to write and I find myself very distracted by the idea that we might be getting a house sometime soon. It’s not for certain; in all honesty it’s not even all that likely. But it is a possibility and I’m the kind of person who finds possibilities very distracting. (As an aside I’m also having trouble coming up with something to write about that doesn’t center on houses and nostalgia; I have a hunch that I should be reflecting more on the world at large instead of thinking about chickens and escrow.)

I was writing recently about how I never expected to be the kind of person who would buy a house. First and most dramatically, I never expected to be able to afford to buy a house and without the fortuitous (ha!) explosion of the market, I never would have in this sunny state. Secondly, I figured that house buying was for squares with, like, kids and Precious Moments figurines. As I’m light-years away from anything so domestic, I didn’t think that buying a house was in the cards.

But here’s the thing: I’ve always been obsessed with houses. I have that misguided impression that the coolness of your living situation rubs off on you and you must strive to find a home that expresses your personality. This is total crap, I know; the kind of emotional sloppiness that sends droves of post-collegiate scoundrels wandering towards the east coast each year. It’s shallow (and we’ve been over my profound shallowness before) to think that your house has a bearing on your personal worth and that there can’t be perfectly decent human beings living in luxury condos. That said, I’m not in favor of settling.

I’m of the opinion that people shouldn’t settle and they shouldn’t buy houses for their alarming re-sale value. Everyone should get really teary eyed over their house; they should covet it and clean it and not foreclose on it even when that seems sensible. Obviously I’m feeling a bit scattered and emotional at the moment and I do believe that housing decisions should be made with the purest clarity of mind and the driest pragmatism. But after you’ve coolly and cleanly assessed your personal worth and your dividends and your credit score, you should probably gush a little bit. If you are using the words “starter house” and not gushing, you probably should stick to the emotionally stagnant world of renting.

A final thought on this topic and then I’ll leave it for the time being. I don’t think that I ever imagined that I would be old enough to buy a house. And believe me, I’m not old. I’m youthful and snooty bartenders in fancy restaurants card me to the point of rudeness. I suppose I’ve always thought of houses as a fixture of matriarchy – the family seat in the old South and all that nonsense. A home means legitimacy as an adult; it means buying a Christmas tree, cleaning out gutters and washing the windows. It means staying in one place for a long, long time.

It’s disconcerting to think that I might have my own family seat for my two-person-one-dog family. And by disconcerting I mean pleasant and absolutely terrifying.

If this was AIM I would know what to title this.

I realized last night that I never sign into AIM anymore. The revelation came to me while I was chatting with an old friend – an old friend who I used to communicate with daily via AIM – using gmail chat. There is nothing wrong with gmail chat, of course, and we were chatting away as cheerfully and easily as we used to, but there was something sad about leaving AIM and that little yellow man who symbolized it behind. Sure, I don’t miss that obnoxious “door opening” noise, but there are other things.

AIM was a big chunk of my social life as an adolescent and young adult, as I wager it was for most people in my age bracket. It started in middle school when everyone had AOL as their internet provider (dating myself, again) and we all indulged in shy chat-room romances and petty instant message flirting. Instant messaging was revolutionary and liberating – crushes were discussed with reckless abandon without the threat of voices cracking and parents overhearing.

I was a little late to the party, as I am to most things, because my parents had an old computer and an even older phone line. When I finally got my own computer (purple I-Mac that I think that I’ve discussed here before – screw you I-Pad!) AIM was the first thing that I downloaded. Later, in college, AIM became a virtual lifeline. Those were the early days of my cell phone hatred – the pre-texting days – and I left my AIM up constantly. Because I lived in a series of small rooms and apartments, having my AIM window perpetually open meant that I was perpetually within hearing range of the little burble that announced a new message. I would eat dinner, study and nap with one ear open to my main social outlet.

I guess that feeling of social connectedness is the reason that I feel so nostalgic for AIM. Those were the days of constant chatting and bitchin’ away messages. (Really, I was a pro at away messages. I had hundreds of them and I often processed new information through an away message filter: what a hilarious fact or quote, perhaps a good away message? This is a level of creative preoccupation that I wish I could claim now.)

The beauty of AIM, at least for the antisocial masses, was its indirect quality. You could type something that you were afraid to say aloud; you could send someone a message without having to put on shoes. As an added bonus, you could usually tell if someone was around their computer (I used to have an away message that read “Working on a good idle”) and you could prep your message accordingly.

Sometimes you miss the glory days of the internet and on those days you can’t help but think that the only answer is posting something un-clever and biting on the FB profiles of people who profess a love for the medium. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be posting “*Unlike!*” under the photos of my enemies until AIM becomes retro-cool.

Cleaning the fridge of your subconscious

To continue in my vein of discussing boring things, I would like to take this moment to leap up on my soap box and proclaim that I cleaned out my fridge. It wasn’t a real “cleaning” I suppose. It was more of a search for the thing that smelled foul and was ruining my (halfhearted) appreciation of the sunny day. If you were wondering, indeed, if you are the sort of person who likes to hear disgusting things and stares into the sink as you wash your hands to observe the discolored water running off them, then I’ll indulge your curiosity. There were several rotting items in the fridge to which the smell might be attributed, but far and away the most pungent was a Tupperware of black beans.

So I cleaned out the fridge. I like to chuck out the moldy stuff whenever I go grocery shopping, because it freaks me out to think of the old lettuce rubbing elbows with the new, but that is a pretty wasteful practice. Now if you have wandered into this virtual-saloon before you know that I am no eco-soldier, I’m just a person campaigning against a bunch of people that suck atrociously. Often, but certainly not exclusively, people who are very wasteful suck. This isn’t a connection to be made between their empathy for good old mother earth and their fellow man; it’s more a signal of the fact that a person who is wasteful probably A) doesn’t recognize the value of things, B) possesses a great personal ease that grates on the nerves of less fortunate hermit-types, and C) drives a shiny sand-colored SUV. All three of these things are suggestive of jackassery without taking into account any detriment to the environment.

That being said, I like to throw things away. I find any kind of purging of possessions very cathartic, probably because I have mad hoarding tendencies. I hold onto shirts that don’t fit and have holes under the arms until throwing them away becomes a real production. I do this about twice a year with flannel pants. [Really, how can I have so many pairs? Between the free t-shirts (kept for sentimental value) and the pants, the drawer won’t close.] Some people get their jollies skydiving; I get mine from throwing away flannel pants that say “Sleepy head!” all over them.

(Speaking of flannel pants with things on them, I would like to pose a question. Why are people into the Tasmanian Devil character from Looney Tunes? He seems a frequent figure on flannel pants, the cheap kind that have a drawstring that will fuse into a solid-mass in the dryer and leave your pants knotted, forever, at an uncomfortable size. I’m not trying to showcase my provincial horizons, but my observations seem to suggest that the T.D. and that grumpy Martian are preferred by even the most hoodlum-y young adults. Is there some kind of inherent street-cred in Looney Tunes that I don’t know about?)

I’ve been thinking about cathartic things (like throwing pants away, if you lost my train of thought) a rather lot lately. 2010 has thus far been a somewhat gnarly year (with a few shining html-exceptions) for practically everyone that I know and we’ve been sharing notes on how to best cope. I do this – my rambling discussion with no hope of eventual gain – but not everyone has such a marvelously free and soothing hobby. And a person with no release can go a little crazy.

In short: We all have issues, but we don’t all have the extra flannel pants. This is potentially a problem.

blog ain't blog

Back in the job search saddle again. [An aside (already!): Speaking of saddles, I wish that I could get a job as a cow poke or a sheep herder or something low key (provided there isn’t a stampede or a blizzard) and reflective like that.] Don’t fear careful readers, I am still employed. I’m just exploring my options as I delicately explore the empty terrain of my wallet.

But this post isn’t about looking for jobs; it is about the things that we do to avoid looking for jobs. For me that includes the usual run of internet habits (instant messaging, looking at horses for sale on craigslist, blog reading), whining and recreational eating. But it also includes a giant time-suck that I don’t think that I have had occasion to mention yet on this here blogaroni. When I am procrastinating, I like to get on Etsy.com and search “prairie” without setting any parameters.

I could go on for hours about the sort of things that I consider buying in this procrasti-state but I don’t think you are interested in how I spent a few hours taking my dress measurements and wondering when one wears lace-and-calico arm sleeves. Instead I’ll just make this short and say that these fits of browsing assure me of several things.

First, they remind me how much I love the prairie, people of the prairie, and anything gingham. Secondly, they remind me that there are other people out there thinking about the prairie with a nostalgic glint in their eye and a sewing needle in their silly little hands. My new resolve is to meet these people. With any luck they won’t be some hardcore historical reenactors; they’ll just be a bunch of folks into drinking well water that comes in a bucket. And we’ll be best friends.

Prairie enthusiasts interested in forming a commune of houses that are not period-accurate but are crammed full of butter churns, enamel wash pans and tenement-style clotheslines can apply in the comment area below.

Lofty Aims (and not the messenger)

Today I was writing on the topic of romantic preoccupations and the way that they are used to shield us from actually getting any work done and I had a most unpleasant realization. I was typing cheerfully, tongue-in-cheek, brutalizing the foolish ideas that I held as a youngster about artistic work and it occurred to me that I had just finished a romantic shielding ritual of my own.

I was about to sit down at my computer (after several little procrastination techniques: g-chatting with the b.f., reading the news, orange juice) when I reached, almost subconsciously, to grab a book of essays that I had left on the table and quickly finished the one that I was reading. This was only a lapse of about 15 minutes but I find it very unnerving in hindsight and so will discuss the miniscule event at length. Here I am, writing about the way the way that I used to fixate on finished-product fantasies to avoid the terrible fear of getting started on anything, and I actually put off working on my essay by reading another essay – a finished essay by a skilled writer. That is a finished-product fixation if I’ve ever heard one.

So what is the point of this diatribe? Mostly I am writing it to blow off the steam accumulated as a resulting of finding that although I am writing about the foolish habits of myself in tones of haughty self realization, I am exhibiting the same unproductive behaviors. The problem with the finished-product fixation, of course, is that you never start anything and therefore you never realize the finished product that you have long fantasized about. It’s a technique for eluding the obnoxious parts of reality, the possibility of failure and ect.

I read an article on grit once (Is it a learned trait? All of the richest people in the world have grit in abundance!) and I’m pretty sure that I don’t have it. I’m an alright person; I have somewhat lofty aims and a good enough work ethic when I work for someone else but I’m not amazingly ambitious or driven. Because of this I have to be on my guard against unproductive habits like the finish-product fixation.

And to close, something entertaining, because I’m sure no one clicked on this link in hopes of seeing my personal procrastinator demons laid bare. My main squeeze and I hung up a clothesline in our kitchen because we want to feel like a early 20th century immigrant couple living in a tenement apartment. Lofty aims, indeed.

I use so many hyphens when I'm sleepy

Writing from the perch of sleeplessness at 5:30 on a Sunday morning, I am appalled at my lack of interesting commentary. If I ever had this scenario outlined to me (as people are apt to outline blogging scenarios in casual conversation) I would have assumed that I had a juicy, nerve-wracking reason for being awake at such an hour and would be thus amply supplied with blogging materials. Unfortunately, I just cannot sleep.

This is shocking to peeps of my acquaintance, surely, because I have never been one to have trouble sleeping. Usually I am far too fond of sleeping. Not that I am one of those marathon sleepers (I’m usually up around 9 on the weekends), but rather one of those people who is irreparably bitchy when I don’t get the daily recommended dosage of snoozes. But getting that sleep was never a problem for me before approx. 1.5 years ago, after which the cycle of job searching and (ironically) the subsequent employment encouraged my natural anxiousness to encroach upon my scheduled sleep-time.

And so I am awake. And I am thinking about Gossip Girl. And that’s rather depressing.

Why is a rational person like me thinking about Gossip Girl? It so happens that just before going to sleep last night I watched an episode of the show. (It was my first, but maybe a season finale? I don’t know; I streamed it online.) I watched the show out of a morbid curiosity provoked by my mother discussing over dinner how scary (actual death-scary, not just this-is-our-culture-scary) teen vampire shows can be.

As she spoke it occurred to me that I had never seen any of these supposedly over-sexed teen dramas. In the three years since I’ve had a TV, I have rarely had occasion to regret my sparse and selective internet streaming habits…except when I realize that I am missing something excruciatingly bad.

I hate to miss bad things: I relish bad movies, bad TV programs, bad haircuts, bad tattoos, and especially bad personal anecdotes. In light of this, I decided that I needed to investigate this new generation of crap TV. And because I am about 2 years behind the cultural learning curve, I decided to watch Gossip Girl.

With the exception of the voice-over, the show didn’t differ from the teen dramas of my youth enough to scandalize me. The conflicts and goals were fairly similar (poetic break-down of social castes, overemphasis on graduation as an epic event, sexual fraternization between shockingly attractive teenagers who are hella, hella, hella in love). But there was one similarity that I was surprised to see made the cut: parental subplots.

If I may wax indignant on the subject of hour-long teen dramas, I must say that this is their most abhorrent feature. While I am trying to focus on the boyfriend stealing and substance abuse of these rich and attractive teens, the action keeps being interrupted by the romantic and financial intrigues of their rich and far-less attractive parents. Is this done to fill in the hour? Or do people actually enjoy these plodding subplots about the parents of adolescent lovers becoming lovers (substitute becoming an alcoholic, going bankrupt, or getting the capital ‘D,’ Divorce) themselves?

Come on, the CW, I don’t care about these people. They aren’t in high school and thus their lives aren’t relevant to mine.

Woe is capitalism

I have become (quite freakishly) a consumer. And I tell you, becoming a consumer after years of skimping and hating consumers is a lot more stressful than becoming a consumer directly after entering adulthood as a natural result of a soulless capitalistic upbringing and the miracle of credit cards. It's more stressful because years of hating consumers now translates into years of mislead poverty and a desire to buy satchels that you imagine Sylvia Plath would buy.

I cannot help myself. I suppose it is disgusting (and probably just plain wrong) to imply that I am flush with dollars, but by my own very diminished standards am well set. Thus are the compensations for selling your soul to corporate America for the bounty of a cubicle and a salary. (To be clear, I am still most securely in the lower middle class bracket, it just so happens that I was whatever half of lower middle class is before.)

I conferred with my domestic-pal about this in a worried way. When we first started hanging around I was very broke, and dressed for most dates in my best (only) black sweater and the cloth Mary-Janes that I purchased online and realized too late smelled like the sweatshop they undoubtedly hailed from. I was concerned that he might think that I was being corrupted by relative success, and that maybe he liked when I only had 5 main shirts to rotate through.

Though he has assured me otherwise, I still worry about myself as a consumer. People might think that I am trying to be "fancy" a lifelong fear of mine.

Also I worry that I am mercenary for being so concerned over money. Last time I checked, mercenaries went out of style with pirates (aka whenever kiddies started loving whatever it is they love now).