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During the first year of my MFA, when we’d all returned from our month of winter break, the professor who was my favorite at the time asked us if we’d gotten any writing done.
I said, “Yeah, if blogging counts.” It was facetious. Of course blogging counts. Teehee! A joke! I had done lots of blogging! Lots of Twittering and lots of Tumblring and lots of blogging and lots of reading others personal narratives via blog.
He returned, dead seriously, “No. No, it doesn’t.”
And at the time I couldn’t even really respond because that idea flabbergasted me SO MUCH. The idea that, somehow, because the writing was going on the internet by my own hand instead of into a folder on my hard drive to be theoretically published by some authority figure was absolutely FLABBERGASTING. FLABBERGASTING. Do you understand how significant the feeling of flabbergast is? IT IS UNBELIEVABLE.
And I sort of gaped and said nothing. But I got home and RANTED to my poor girlfriend and yelled at him through the miles that divided us. This guy had spent his formative years as a ROCK CRITIC!! And then became a genre writer! IF anybody should understand why playing writing police is bullshit, it should have been him. But instead he was an ass. FUCK YOU, DUDE, FUCK YOU A LOT.
One of my other professors later went on a rant about how “THEY” — this large and unidentified entity that included what seemed liked all media producers — didn’t want you to read or write. They wanted you to “watch movies and buy things and BLOG about it”.
I have literally never heard the word “blog” spit with more venom ever. No one will EVER yell “blog” with that much hate in their throat. I think I got some on me, actually. And it super a lot pissed me off. Like A LOT A LOT. Because you know what? Fuck you. Writing is writing. Writers have different processes and different kinds of writing has different processes but they are all WRITING and fuck you if you’re going to belittle one in order to raise up another.
ALSO, it’s not like book publishing and writing are fucking noble-ass pursuits! PEOPLE WANT YOU TO READ AND TELL PEOPLE ABOUT IT TOO SO THAT THEY CAN SELL MORE BOOKS. This is not a complicated idea. People make things and then sell them because they want to make money. If they didn’t, they’d put everything ON THE INTERNET FOR FREE. (People should be paid for their creative products. I am not arguing otherwise at all.)
I blog because I love writing. I love it. I like talking about myself and I like talking about dumb shit and serious shit. I LOVE THE INTERNET. I love the sense of community that comes from blogging. And fuck those guys and anyone else that doesn’t get it.
Anyway, I’m not mad. (LOL I AM REALLY NOT OKAY) But I saw someone having a crisis about whether they should keep blogging the other day because it wasn’t “real writing” and I got super bummed out because there are so many of us who have had to absorb that bullshit from other people and just laugh it off and pretend to be unmoved by our belittling.
Blogging matters, man. It’s instant, constant, and current. It’s often genuine and funny and honest. It fosters community and interaction and idiocy and genius and creativity. It keeps a whole lot of people WRITING. If I didn’t blog, I wouldn’t write nearly as much as I do now, I would’ve missed out on fiction ideas that came from the process of blogging. Blogging is writing and it matters and it’s awesome. THE END.
This isn’t a very thoughtul blog but I believe in it. BLOGGING MATTERS. And stuff. Also, if you have the desire to cry today, DO I HAVE A RECIPE FOR YOU.
Man, just put these sad ladies and their pianos on loop and you will cry and cry. You will be SO SAD. Can’t spell piano without PAIN.
okay, so, after an influx of new followers to my tumblr, i got a bunch of nice and not nice anon messages. and this kiiiiind of sounds terrible but someone finally asked me about my skiiiiiin! in the fat chick bingo of my life, “you have such beautiful skin” has been the center square since BIRTH. it’s not quite as good as it looks in pictures and i DO break out (much more frequently as an adult than i did in my youth) but yes, it is clear and i am super grateful that i haven’t had to spend years fighting it like my sister and my bff and stuff.
OKAY SO. anon asked what my ~skin care regimen~ is like. and let’s get real. it’s not a regimen. it’s not even regular. i’m an irregular showerer! there are days i don’t leave the house! and i sometimes forget to brush my teeth. i’m gross. let’s establish.
my skin is dry verging on “normal” verging on oily. it is really temperamental when it comes to weather changes. if the air is dry, my skin turns to paper. if the air is damp, it turns into a paula deen recipe. in general, i have dryish cheeks and forehead and a slightly oily upside-down t-zone. but that changes all the time and i generally do not change my skin care products to match because it’ll just change again. my face is like midwestern weather: if it’s being an ass, wait five minutes and it’ll change. that said!
step one: i get some of this soap shit near my person. basis cleaner clean or clinique beauty bar in EXTRA MILD. i have the MOST SENSITIVE SKIN IN THE WORLD. i am allergic to everything (all neutrogena products, most cover girl, lots of eye make-up, almost all traditional deodorant/antiperspirant) and even food allergies manifest on my skin (this is such a common experience that i actually blogged about it once)Â so i have to be SO CAREFUL about what touches my face. we keep the basis in our shower and the clinique in the cupboard, so the basis only gets used once every other day, really. one out of four face washes. i soap up my hands and smooth the soapy shit over my dry face. no water on my face! because i am lazy. sometimes i use a washcloth instead of my hands if i feel flaky.
step two: get water all over the bathroom trying to splash my face clean. this is why i usually wash my face topless.
step three: dry gently. the single greatest realization about my face was to use a towel that was not the bathroom hand towel. why this took me, like, 24 years to realize is honestly baffling. that hand towel is filthy! and i was just rubbin’ it up and all over my face like it was nothing. i keep a separate towel in the cupboard that i use to dry my moony face for a couple days before i swap it out for a clean one.
step four: maybe apply some of that clinique acne solutions gunk if i am broken out or feel like beasts from the deep are emerging. maybe apply some all about eyes if i want my eyes to look dewey or if my eye area feels REALLY DRY or if i am going to wear eye make-up later which is pretty rare.
step five: squirt some of the jojoba oil into my palm, spread it around between my two hands and gently massage my face all over. up to my hairline and down my neck, sometimes into the boobal region if i got a lot of oil. then i rub the excess into my cuticles/hands and then wash them because i touch my hair too much to leave oil all over my fingers.
step six: there isn’t one.
i only started using jojoba oil in june when i moved to kansas city because i had never lived in high humidity before and my skin was FREAKING OUT. my body skin was like, “feels good, man” and my face was like, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?!” and putting on lotion was like rubbing olive oil on a stick of butter. jojoba was like a magical revelation of face care. and i do not want to go back to lotion. nevah evah.
SO YEAH THAT IS IT. and sometimes i go days without actually doing this stuff because, i repeat, i’m unemployed and kiiiiiiiiiiind of gross. ALSO, i never ever ever use ANY foundation type make-up on my skin-skin because i hate the way it feels. except on halloween, but that’s it. i am actually that pale in real life. naturally.
Yesterday was Halloween! And I stayed home and read stuff on the internet in between answering the door and giving small children candy.
But before that, I went to an empty lot near my house, bought some large squash from a stranger, then came back to my house and hacked it apart before sticking a lit candle in it and putting it on my front porch.
Halloween is the BEST and SO WEIRD.
 The pumpkin patch my mom and I went to kiiiiiiind of sucks. At least compared to the one the gf and I went to in… 2009, I think? We tried to take my mother to that one this year but she was extremely resistant and grumpy. GOD FORBID WE DO COOL STUFF, MOM, JEEZ.
 But we went to her crappy pumpkin patch on the day of Halloween, so at least they were cheapish? And the dude was real helpful AND the strange lady working in the booth gave us an additional 10% off and was like, “Come back for a Christmas tree… With or without your mom… I’ll give you 10% off then too.” WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE. Thanks, nice lady, but we have a fake tree.
So I came home and mutilated my pumpkin with a knife and spoons and screwdrivers and an x-acto knife. I am not very artistic, so I honestly don’t know what I was thinking trying to do that whole layered carving thing, but I stuck it out.
The pumpkins were kind of old and dry inside (though the flesh was extra damp, wtf.) and mine had a bunch of sprouts in it!
 So I hacked at mine — a moon with a bat and a cemetery and a house on a hill — and then I started to carve… sky, I guess, over the house, and realized that I was going to have to do the entire front of the pumpkin like a frame or what I had done would make no sense, so I had to take the skin off the entire front of my pumpkin… around what I had already carved. UGH SO DUMB. And then it looked bad so I painted it black.
 But it turned out pretty okay! And some people told my gf they liked it as she was handing out candy. I WIN HALLOWEEN.
 And here’s my ~autumnal vibrations~ playlist for this year.
 I’m officially in Christmas mode now (November 1st, yessssssssssssss.) AND I made it all the way through Halloween without seeing a Christmas commercial, so I feel really good about this holiday season. GONNA MAKE IT A GOOD ONE. Like I say every year. And then 90% of my holiday seasons blow. Gonna make it a concerted effort?!
So I have allergies now?
Or at least I spend a large portion of my days sneezing VIOLENTLY. Which wouldn’t be that bad except because the combination of being a powerful, multi-sneezer and having semi-chronic UTIs makes me feel like I have to pee CONSTANTLY, so I probably go to the bathroom 1000 times a day? Which is really annoying even if my bathroom is only like fifteen feet from my desk. I don’t know what I did to piss my bladder off in 2005 (probably the college binge drinking?) but I AM SORRY NOW, PLEASE FORGIVE ME. (I have ALWAYS been an intense sneezer. Even when I was little and used to wander around the house sticking a piece of straw broken from a broom up my nose and intentionally sneezing — I DON’T KNOW OKAY, my parents should have probably stopped me instead of just laughing about it and using it as a hilarious anecdote at parties, but I imagine it’s kind of like having a chronically masturbating teenager in the house, you just hope for the best and tell them to contain it to the bedroom.)
But yeah, allergies are SO DUMB. Prior to my 20th birthday, I had almost no allergies. My skin REALLY HATES GRASS (so I had to wear tights a lot as a kid, so awful, even in 100 degree weather, TIGHTS) but other than that, nothing. Then the day before my 20th birthday I ingested a 32 ounce strawberry something-or-other from the Juice It Up next to my college dorm and broke out in hives from the top of my tits to my hair. ALL OVER MY FACE. So great. Such a great allergy for an adult whose favorite fruit is strawberries to develop.
But I still eat strawberries! Because it’s not a deathly allergy and I love them. Then I developed an allergy to flour weevils. Which shouldn’t be that big of a deal except they seem DRAWN TO ME. And now seasonal allergies. Sneezing! Watery eyes! Itchy throat! Congestion! I am a fucking walking allergy commercial over here. AND IT IS SO FUN AND SO GREAT, I AM SO GLAD THIS HAS HAPPENED TO ME.
So I’ve been taking drugs, except it’s one of the crappy kinds that you don’t have to go to the pharmacist to get (we only shop at night, generally, when the pharmacist is tucked safe in their bed at home!) so it only works if I stand on my left foot and stroke a rare rodent with my right hand and also if I punch myself in the face and just stay asleep while the sun is up. Except now my new allergy friends are coming at night too.
The human body is just the BEST.
So I have been complaining about developing allergies as an adult because SERIOUSLY, how dumb is that?! And my dad was all dad-like and said, “Well, that happens. A lot. Adult allergies are like adult acne.”
And man, I am vain, but I am PRETTY SURE I’d take adult acne over this sneezing and misery shit. I am already real zitty!
But I figure this will only get worse and I will probably develop a cornucopia of miserable allergies before my death. The list grows by the day! Strawberries and some lactose items and LOTS of cosmetic type things. I’m sure, like… chocolate and CHRISTMAS and lard and joy and the internet and smog and HAPPINESS can’t be far behind.
Also, though my goals were lofty, I baaaaaaasically failed at getting my shit together this week. Well, I found a couple things to apply to! But, turns out, my biggest allergy is responsibility!
(j/k future employers, I am actually the most responsible person I know! and not, like, compared to irresponsible people! all the people I know are real responsible too. and I still win!)
Today I am going to ~get real~ and talk about my feelings. I like personal blogs, this is a personal blog, I am a person, the website is my name, and I want to talk about some SHIT, okay?!
My girlfriend and I have been home from Kansas City for about a month. And it has been an excruciatingly hard month for both of us. She is readjusting to a killer commute and a rough office environment and I am unemployed and mooching off of her and generally feeling like a massive, tragic pile of crap.
I liked Kansas City. A lot. And I really, until the last three weeks, enjoyed my internship immensely. It’s more complicated than the following sentences, but: I was good at my job. I enjoyed it. And then that was taken away from me very suddenly and very… unfairly isn’t the right word. Unexpectedly. Shockingly. Unbearably. And it made our last weeks there just unbearable. Really and truly stressful in a way that moving those 1600 miles had not even come close to being. And it sucked. And getting the hell out of Kansas City felt SO GOOD. But I left happy. I mean that. And I can remember the good parts of my job. And I’d do it again if they asked it of me. And/or something similar. I don’t know if I could stay there for more than a year or maybe I could. No, I definitely could. I could stay there forever. Maybe? I don’t know. What do I honestly know from second to second?
But I was so glad to be home. I am so fucking glad to be home. I missed my family SO MUCH. And my animals. And Disneyland. And my incredible friends. And California. I adapted to KC and I liked it, but I can’t imagine it ever feeling like home. Or maybe I could?
But having my feet swept out from me before the end of the internship has left me inconsolable in a lot of ways. The internship fell together so easily, so simply, and everyone spent so much time assuring and reassuring me that it was meant to be (because I am, like all creatives, eternally my own worst critic) and that I deserved it. And I left feeling a lot like I really hadn’t deserved it and a lot like I’d failed, even if failing isn’t why I left. Even if no one ever used the word failure. Even if my co-workers threw me a wonderful going away party and gave me cards and food and gifts and sent me away feeling warm and fuzzy and appreciated. And even if coming home is what was best for both me and my girlfriend.
I have anxiety. I AM SURE THIS IS SHOCKING AS SHIT TO EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, NO REALLY. And I experience immense, heart-heavy periods of depression when I feel like things are out of my control, when I feel I’ve failed. And the last month has just been that. A train wreck of misery and sadness and bad hygiene and being broke and frustrated and embarrassed and disappointed. I have taken it out on my girlfriend and my family and I’ve tried to hide from every single human being on Earth.
I haven’t looked for jobs because my blood pressure spikes when I think about going back to work, when I think about interviewing, when I remember how fucking awful it was the LAST TIME I was looking for work. People were constantly telling me I was overeducated and inexperienced and now I have an additional degree (a terminal Master’s!) and very little additional experience! And when they weren’t saying that, they were questioning why I would want to work so far away from where I live (I LIVE IN A SUBURB, THESE ARE MY ONLY CHOICES) or looking at my fat body and thinking that meant anything about how good I would be at a job or who I was at a person or better yet, telling me how I wasn’t the right representation of their office. THIS WHOLE PROCESS JUST SOUNDS GREAT, SO GREAT. I CANNOT WAIT.
And my girlfriend has been wonderfully patient and kind and takes incredible care of me. But I have to get a job. I want to work! I want to contribute to my household and to the world at large! I want to be upstanding! I am able to work! I am a capable, intelligent, competent person! I can work! I should do it!
But I fight with looking every day and every night and I hate myself more every week and the anxiety gets WORSE AND WORSE and I have more nightmares where my internship manager tells me how much she regrets hiring me and where I lose a house I don’t even own in real life and where planes crash and I fight with my friends and things break and I can’t pull myself together to handle any of it.
And I know writing this out won’t solve it. I’ve been talking this stuff out with the girlfriend for weeks and it has done little to ease the aches and pains and agonies and tensions in my brain, but it’s down anyway now and it’s loose in the world.
This week I am going to try to take hold of myself and apply for jobs. I’m going to work at that proactive thing. I’m going to shake myself out of this bullshit. Because that’s something I know I can do. Because I’ve done it before.
So check in with me in a week and it’ll either be resume sendin’, application fillin’ superchamp Ash. Or I’ll be in bed passed out in the fetal position surrounded by garbage and dog hair with a pizza box from Mamma’s Brick Oven Pizza between my knees and a 22 of Wyder’s Pear Cider clutched in my fat fist as I cry into a wad of filthy paper towels while watching Drake & Josh. Only two options.
Or I’m going to knock over some sort of financial institution and head straight to Vegas. Three options.
Also, I groomed my eyebrows today (pluck pluck pluck) and didn’t overtweeze for the first time in maybe my whole life. NEW CAREER PATH?! j/k j/k I would rather touch someone else’s poop than the meaty end of their freshly plucked eyebrow hair.
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