Fear of writing

November’s approaching, which is National Novel Writing Month, known somewhat better (if at all) as NaNoWriMo. I’ve flirted with the idea twice only to give out either before or started or shortly after. The task is either too demanding or too daunting for me. The project’s key piece of advice before it begins and throughout the course of the month is to keep writing. Keep the proverbial pen to the page, keep producing text at a decent rate. If you stop, you get stuck.

That’s been the case with blogging. I stopped while I was working. Writing had become a chore at the end of the day, and a chore I didn’t want to entertain at that. Before a couple weeks ago, when I stopped writing, I managed to make up for that lost time or just call it a week off. This time, it piled up and became too daunting to make up for. It become easier to scrap the task entirely when it’s much too big.

As I wrote in my first post, the struggle is really to keep going, even if it takes one of these posts once in a while to do it. «»

A little uncertainty never hurt anyone except Schrödinger’s cat (maybe)

Life without a cell phone is not only possible but somewhat liberating. There are times when I’m walking by myself or stuck waiting for someone outside of a store–simple moments of downtime that would otherwise be filled with calling or texting someone in an attempt to be connected or be certain of what someone else is doing, where someone else is. Certain about the future, some might say.

Instead, those moments of downtime are mine again, spent waiting, thinking, or distracted with something not so external: my iPod or DS. One could argue that those distractions are just as guilty of disconnecting oneself from one’s immediate surroundings, but I would argue they’re fundamentally different from the grasping at familiar territory that the cell phone represents. This is probably an artificial distinction made only to argue my own electronic device guilt away, but it’s there nonetheless.

I revel in the fact that I find the cell phone an unnecessary affectation. I make use of others’ phones should the circumstances require it; after all, everyone else is operating on the premise that they have the possibility of direct communication with everyone they know and plan (or don’t plan) accordingly. But my personal life has been unaffected by my lack of a cell phone, and I don’t really have any desire to get one.

This sort of attitude has led me to be mildly irate with others when they enter their cell phone worlds, removing themselves from current surroundings to text or talk when other people are immediately there. Casual conversations in the car are the worst, since those not on the phone are now captive audience to one half of what is most likely a banal conversation better had at home in the company of no one else. That sort of space isn’t sacred, but there’s something intruding on the nature of that physical space in a way that’s unsettling. Better discussions of cell phone manners have been had elsewhere, and this notion of private and public space blending is a common thread in the recent writing on cell phones.

My thought is that the notions of connected and disconnected are very relative. «»

Friend of a friend

Being a friend of a friend is a particular relationship. One would think that there is this common bond (the mutual friend), but that’s not the case. If Person A is the mutual friend, then Person B has a bond with A and Person C has a bond with A, there are two bonds between Person B and Person C. The fact that there is a mutual friend ensures nothing substantive between the other two individuals, and this sort of relationship between two people who are meeting for the first time is repeatedly among the most shallow I’ve encountered, unfortunately.

Knowing only a handful of people when I moved here, this sort of interaction has happened a lot. It leads to broken and hollow conversations at times. That’s probably the case any time two people are meeting for the first time, but that banal conversation is immediately set against the backdrop of the more substantive conversations between people who are already friends. If it weren’t for this stark contrast, the interaction might be a lot more tolerable, but one wouldn’t even be meeting this friend of a friend anyway if that were the case. «»

In the kitchen

At where I work, there is a cafeteria. Three people run the cafeteria–basically the minimum number of people you can have for a smoothly-run kitchen. Someone to deal with the food, the dishes, the register, and the ability to switch out when one element cafeteria is being more demanding than the others. Since starting work a few weeks ago, I’ve gotten to know two of these three people as much as interaction at work will allow.

My second day, I had to walk behind the cafeteria to get to a room on the bottom floor, basically making my way through what my boss called the “catacombs.” In the tile hallway, there was a sign saying “wet floor” and below it a floor that was clearly freshly mopped. Having worked in a restaurant before, and having slipped multiple times (without ever falling down, knock on wood), I knew better than to just ignore this wet floor sign like most people do every time they see one. As I make my way slowly and steadily across, one of the kitchen staff says “be really careful, man.” On my way back through the same hallway, I said to him, “I used to work as a busboy, so I know how it goes.” He responded with something like, “Alright then, so you know.” It was the usual midday banter that takes place in the middle of the workday, everyone just wanting to interact with someone else in some meaningless way that can hopefully bring a smile to your face.

Since then, I’ve really enjoyed their food. It’s cheap, it’s warm and it’s delicious. If it weren’t for the cafeteria, I wouldn’t be eating like I should. The woman who works downstairs picks the desserts, from what I gather, and I’ve gotten the dessert every day this week, much to my chagrin and her delight. Today I complimented the same individual with whom I had the earlier conversation, saying I’d never had a bad meal there since starting work and that today’s was especially good. He seemed to appreciate it, which brought a smile to my face.

This is such a stark contrast to the kitchen at where I worked just over a year ago, filled with bitter cooks who kept to themselves and never really talked to anyone unless they had to. At the time I thought to myself, why would anyone be so joyless in their job when it’s just as easy to be the least bit friendly and possibly improve everyone’s situation around them? I don’t have the answer to that, but I know that my thought wasn’t misguided.

My job is made just a little bit better by the hour I spend at lunch and the few moments during the day when I interact with the people who make it. «»

Sucked the writing out of me

This week I did not keep up with my writing. I worked, I came home, I did something entertaining, and I went to bed.

I don’t know how people are able to go to night school, and I have a new respect for full-time workers in their ambitious pursuit of life beyond that full-time work. This temporary assignment has consumed my life, and when I’m not working, I’m heading to bed, commuting or sleeping.

So the writing has suffered, and I’m debating taking next week off as far as blogging is concerned. I’ll be lucky to get a post out tomorrow. «»

Bail out

Every morning on the metro (this is not another metro post) there are inevitably two grey-haired men in suits who are talking about “the bailout.” Just barely audible over the sound of my iPod, I hear comments that begin with “Well, the thing is…” and “I can’t believe…” and someone else chiming in about how they want a bailout. There are people with flyers at the entrance to the station saying stuff about the bailout. The first morning I encountered these people, I heard one say, “It’s not what Roosevelt would do,” which took me a minute to digest.

Since most of the news in the past few months has been about the economy, I am now an amateur economist in the worst sense, dispensing what little common-sense knowledge I have combined with details I’ve cribbed from the This American Life episode “The Giant Pool of Money” and articles in the New York Times.

What’s most amazing about the situation is how everyone is utterly powerless in the face of it. Regulation has been lax over the past few years and the market is now reaping the consequences of living without a leash. The sort of circumstances that brought about the massive (and mostly artificial) increase in profits since 2000 are now causing a rapid correction, where all that money that came from nowhere is suddenly being lost. What Wall St. thought was worth so much–in this case, mortgage-backed securities–isn’t worth anything anymore, and the investments banks are choking themselves now that they’re at the end of that leash.

To what I am listening, vol. 9

Amanda Palmer, Who Killed Amanda Palmer

I’ve written about the Dresden Dolls before on this blog, and sure enough the album I mentioned then grew on me over time. In the lead-up to the release of the solo debut of Amanda Palmer (the singing and piano-playing half of the Dolls) I listened to a lot of No, Virginia… and proceeded to get excited for the solo record.

The album has not disappointed, and it might be the best record I’ve heard all year. Ben Folds has his touch as producer, with some polished strings here and there and the intro to “Ampersand” reminding me of how one of his songs might start, but that mix of polish with Palmer’s grit and brutal honesty at time in some of her lyrics makes for an amazing record.

The standout track and most addictive song on the record for me is “Runs in the Family” which could easily fit on a Dolls album in slightly different form, but is made particularly interesting with strings among the frenetic nature of the song. The video linked above is low-quality as far as the audio is concerned, and I’d seriously recommend finding another way to listen to the song in a more unadulterated form.

Once again, I know of nearly no one among my current circle of friends who I think would enjoy this album. Regardless, it’s brilliant and beautiful. «»

Pillaging the Past VII: Respawning

I start playing computer games when I was incredibly young, on a Tandy with two floppy drives, one of which was intended to load DOS and the other whatever program one wanted to run. I got my SNES at seven, ushering me into the world of video games, and I started playing modern PC games probably between eleven or twelve years old. Descent was my game of choice for the longest time, and it was its sequel, Descent II, that thrust me into the world of online gaming in 1998.

I’ve said this before, but there are moments that seem incredibly significant in retrospect that didn’t seem terribly important at the time. My entrance into online gaming culture is one such moment, as it led to IRC and eventually my internet literacy. At the time, I just wanted to play the game with someone online. Almost every day for probably five or six years, I spent time online in the culture of gaming, part of some non-cohesive community loosely strung together with the desire to play games, but really held together by the notion that the online world had something more to offer than the real world at that time. It was easier to interact in IRC and in a computer game than it was in high school. Dungeons & Dragons was the pre-internet version of that online gaming community, where one can submerge oneself in an alternate world that responds more immediately than the “real world,” where the ramifications are a lot less grave.

In the house where I live now, we started playing old games through the LAN, starting with Quake 2 and Tribes, probably moving to Unreal Tournament in the near future. It brings back memories of joining a game and feeling the adrenaline rush of running around and killing each other, where every moment hangs in the balance, every death is a setback and every kill is a personal victory. All those emotions are still there, that visceral connection that lies at the core of what “gaming” means.

But it’s different as an adult, and with people I know and live with. That community that I was a part of, without realizing it, was significant to me as a person, and that will never be replicated. «»

Yesterday’s jam

House is back on, much to my delight. The opening episode of the fifth season held up to closing episodes of the fourth, establishing an arc for the first few episodes of this season and making me immensely happy that the writers have maintained their character-centered attitude about the show.

The subplot, however, dealt with being a flunky, a lemming, a drudgeon, something I’ve somewhat grappled with in the period since taking my first temp assignment. My talents are wasted on work that could be done by other people. On the other side of that, since I have those talents, I’m more flexible in the position than they could have ever wanted, and for at least one supervisor in particular, I’m indispensable (not his words, but he’s expressed similar sentiments multiple times). The assignment is fleshing out my resume, putting money in my pocket and doing little else. Those two things are very important right now, and I’m grateful for the job–especially after applying to different places in varying degrees for about two months.

So how did the House episode address this? By covering all sides, vacillating on it, and offering no real answer. And that was more comforting than any rational train of thought I’d gone through about how and why I’m in the position I’m in now.

I also want to go to grad school now more than I ever have before. «»

Bar story

Here’s a stupid story from this past weekend.

Five of us went out to a bar here in Alexandria on Saturday to play pool, hang out and mostly get out of the house. It was kind of a dive, but I’m used to it and the place was pretty active. We played about four games while the bar waxed and waned with different characters shuffling in and out, mostly huddling around the bar, some messing with the crappy jukebox-computer-machine, a couple passive-aggressively hassling us for hogging the pool table. I played three games and did fairly well with the other half of my team each time. They were drinking, I was not, but it was a decent evening.

The time came for everyone else to settle their tabs, which was done when the bar was at its most crowded. It took ages to pay, during which I just sat against the wall near one end of the pool table in the center of the room. Around when everyone was finally done and we were about to head out, a large drunk woman who had been loud the entire evening staggered over to us. One person was in the bathroom and the other two saw her coming from a mile away and kind of backed off, knowing what was about to go down.

She comes up behind the other one of us left, puts her arm around him and leans her weight into him, slurring the words “You know you like girls with a little hip action.” My friend, slightly buzzed, a little bit bemused, and somewhat in shock, is silent as she repeats it. “You know you like girls with a little hip action.” She then proceeds to turn her back toward him, and start “dancing” against his leg, her drunkenness keeping any sort of inhibition out of this moment. I see this and decide to bail him out, saying, “Unfortunately he’s taken.” My friend picks up that line and runs with it. “Yeah. But he isn’t,” he says, gesturing towards me.

I’m seated with my right leg resting on my left knee, kind of slouched in a really crappy chair with a tale next to me that I’m resting against. She repeats her catchphrase, “You know you like girls with a little hip action,” attempts to sort of dance against me, failing since my legs aren’t in a position conducive to that. I see her beer sloshing and see a party foul in her future, when she realizes the same and decides to put the beer down on the table I’m leaning against.

My friends are together at the door, watching this all occur along with the rest of the bar. This particular woman had been yelling in this bizarre inebriated she-howl the entire night, irking the bartender and most of the customers while attracting attention to the fact that she was astoundingly drunk and capable of just about anything in her red-eyed, stumbling condition.

She reaches across me to put her beer down on the table and I’m trying to help her with it at this point while also not making the situation any worse than it is. As she maneuvers the glass down on the table and lets go, she seemingly lets go of the rest of the world and plants her head between my legs. As my friends tell it, my jaw dropped. She was either that drunkenly amorous or so exhausted that she decided on a nap at that point. I’m trying to pull her up without knocking her over, and just as quickly as this happens she gets back up and puts her attention elsewhere. Our friend is out of the bathroom, so we scamper off while a bouncer kind of follows behind the drunk woman, perhaps to keep her from harassing more customers. As soon as we’re through the door and bounding down the stairs, all of us burst out in laughter.

The night had been fairly mild up until that point, so I guess it was nice to end it with a bar story. «»