It’s better than a mass e-mail

It’s surprising how quickly the days pass even though I don’t have a job. It makes me wonder, when I did work and when I eventually work again, how I ever got anything done.

I realized over the weekend that I am in fact no longer a spring chicken. This is a realization that I seem to be having more and more frequently, but now it’s gone beyond finding – and pulling mercilessly – unwanted wirey white hairs from my head.

I can see many of you rolling your eyes, but bear with me. This weekend I was again struck that I am getting older when my friends and I drank too much rum and then basically spent the entire next day in bed recovering. I guess we don’t bounce back like we used to. Then the realization resurfaced as our conversations tended at times toward wrinkles, home-buying and wedding and baby showers. Ahem. Choke.

Well, then in a context entirely unrelated (or least not intentionally), we got to talking about death. As my friend was discussing her thesis (not to be divulged or really butchered by my ignorance on these pages), we began discussing just what you should do, or perhaps what your loved ones should do, with your body once you die. I always thought cremation was a reasonable plan, considering it’s a total waste of space to bury bodies in the ground, we are running out of space, and I loathe cemeteries and don’t want people to associate my life with such wastelands.

But then, apparently cremation is bad for the environment, and something like a third of mercury emissions are from burning our dental fixtures in the cremation process. And my brother once explained something about how burning bodies sucks energy from the atmosphere and creates more negative energy or something like that that skimmed somewhere just over my head.

Enter promession. Developed by a Swedish biologist, apparently it’s a method of environmentally ethical body decomposition that involves freeze drying the body in liquid nitrogen, reducing it to a fine powder, removing all the artificial bits and then burying it in some kind of biodegradable casket. The idea is then the body will naturally become part of the earth, providing the proper nutrients for plant growth. I don’t know much about it – in fact those last sentences were the extent of it. But so far it sounds like a more reasonable alternative to burial, which seems antiquated and unreasonable, and cremation. I understand it’s still being developed, and from what I can see, it’s slow to make waves in the U.S., but count me as a believer.

Which kind of brings me to the question: Should I have a living will? Morbid, I know, but I wonder when one is supposed to deal with such matters. I don’t have any possessions to speak of, but should it be written somewhere who is in charge of my body and what I want done with it?

On a much lighter note, after much frustration on the job search front, I decided to dedicate some time each day to practicing Spanish. To this end, I went to the bookstore and bought a colorful children’s book that I could read and translate. It’s called El Capitan Calzoncillos. Already, I didn’t know that last word, but bought it anyway, only to discover calzoncillos means underwear. I am reading a book called “Capitan Underwear and the perverse plan of Professor Pipicaca.” I don’t think Pipicaca translates, or perhaps it translates quite clearly. So that partially explains the cartoon picture on the cover of a bald, pink child wearing nothing but tighty whities and a red cape. Awesome.

Oh, and the title of this post is a quote I heard on NPR this weekend that seemed somehow fitting, or at least funny enough to share. It’s from a Southern woman talking about the only circumstance in which it was acceptable for one to miss church: if you’vr got one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel.

I just realized I haven’t written anything all week. Maybe that’s because very little that is noteworthy has happened to me this week. Nonetheless, here are some mindless ramblings:

On the job front, I did send out emails to two newspaper editors, and heard back from one who said there may be an opening in a month or so, but don’t wait for it, because it might not happen, but if it does it would require me to use my brand spanking new Spanish speaking skills. I am not sure if that is promising or not. Plus, said newspaper is in my hometown, which brings me to question whether I could move back to a place I shunned and ran far, far away from the second I graduated high school. It’s debateable. I always said I would never move back there. But, as I get older, I realize more and more that the town doesn’t suck. In fact, there seem to be more young people there than I remembered from growing up, and something that in the right light mildly resembles a night life. I suppose I will take up this debate in full force if this position actually opens up. I guess in the meantime, I should be looking for work at more than two places.

I have also managed to articulate my immediate future into two potential paths:

Path A: Move to a random city – scratch that, tiny, one-horse town – somewhere in the country to get a job at a newspaper, likely covering the night cops beat or writing up the latest news from the town council hearings. The stories might be bird cage liner, but hey, I’d be cutting my teeth at a daily newspaper, earning journalistic credibility, proving my abilities to handle the rigors of daily deadlines. And there’s always the chance that I’d hit the story of the year, like how the town commissioner is embezzleing money from the library fund to pay for underage gay prostitutes. Or something. My point is, Plan A means choosing job over location, and remember I did just drop a boatload of cash to go back to get a master’s degree in hopes that I’d be better equipped for a daily.

Plan B: Scrap the newspaper deal and find a writing job in the city of my choice, preferably one where I have friends or the promise to make some. In this scenario, I have given up on the idea of earning stripes as a newspaperman and decided it’s important to report and write regardless of the venue. I mean, who really reads newspapers anyway (besides my fellow J-school grads)? Aren’t they a dying breed anyhow, and aren’t most papers laying off reporters? And isn’t now more feasable now to get good journalistic cred through online publications or magazines, rather than the traditional daily paper route? Plus, wouldn’t it be nice to be paid more than mere peanuts? I mean, writing is writing is writing. Right?

I think this is a debate that I have bothered you with on this blog before, and now I’m doing it all over again. Part of me thinks I will continue to question this throughout my career, but I hope to at least settle on some kind of a choice soon so I can shut up and get a damn job.

In other less self-absorbed news, a man who owned a restaurant down the street from my father’s house was found this week lying dead in the kitchen shot in the head. I know this happens every day all over the country, but I can’t stop thinking about it, mainly because of the proximity to my family and the connections he and his family have throughout the neighborhood. It really is shocking.

I finally did my taxes this weekend and learned what I feared, but thought might be the case. I owe the federal government $2,000.

No, that’s not a typo and as far as I know we didn’t make any mistakes. That’s two thousand dollars. What that is, friends, is highway robbery.

OK, that’s not true. It’s just how it is. See, I knew all year as I freelanced that I should be setting aside money for taxes, but I didn’t. Instead I went to Central America for two months. And this morning I wrote two checks, one to the feds and one to the state, for nearly $2,000. Now the balance in my checking account is uncomfortably low and my savings account is nonexistent.

I realize around this time of year that my case is far from unusual. But as a friend of mine suffering similar financial woes put it, we had already mentally spent the little money we had. I had already started planning my next trip in a couple months, this time maybe to Mexico?

Instead, I am sitting in front of my computer, wearing all of my clothes and wrapped in a blanket, in the part of the apartment without heat – which is pretty much all of it except for one room closed off to contain the warmth generated from a demonically possessed gas heater. We’re eating eggs and beans nearly every meal. I spent the afternoon scheming ways to make money, combing the job sites and subsequently getting disappointed at the prospects, and checking and rechecking my bank balance online just to see if a miracle had happened. Plus, one of my travel buddies is back in Roatan (after a while in Costa Rica), working to become a dive master, drinking endless Port Royals, sitting in hammocks and generally making my sub-freezing, penniless existence in upstate New York pale in comparison.

I can’t help but think I am living a version of the time our parents always talked about while we rolled our eyes. Something about living in squalor to follow a dream or struggling to make ends meet on the road to happiness or up hill both ways in the snow and whatnot. Am I going to one day lean back in my chair, my eyes glazed over, and reminisce about these tough times and how we cut corners but built character?

Perhaps I am being a bit melodramatic. In a few days, I am sure the shock will wear off and I’ll be borrowing the car to go to Target. In fact, I’ve already booked a bus ticket to visit friends in New York this weekend.

Yesterday was this blog’s one year anniversary. Or would you call it a first birthday? I’m not sure, and to tell you the truth, I am not sure that means a thing, except perhaps just that I have been sharing my mindless drivel with the online world – that is, all three readers to stop by here – for a full year. Again, am I proud or embarrassed? Anyway, I thought at least it should just be pointed out. Cheers to “it’s better than a mass email”.

Also of note is my recent realization of how much I have moved around in the last year and a half. Last September I left a cushy job and comfortable life to move alone to Chicago. Then six months later after surviving a Chicago winter, I moved to Prague. After three months there and a long weekend back in my studio apartment in Chicago, I moved to Washington, DC for the summer. September (and graduating) brought me back to Chicago, but to a different tiny studio a stone’s throw from my previous one. In January, I left again for two months in Central America, one month of that spent living with a family in Copan Ruinas, only to return knowing I needed to move yet again, this time out of Chicago and to upstate New York. In two months or less, I’ll move again to some as of yet undisclosed location. Recounting all of this makes my head spin. I’m exhausted.

It’s been a few days since I have written, and after you hear what I have been doing (a typical day’s schedule to follow), you will understand my void of any insight, and perhaps wish I hadn’t taken the time to write this.

7 a.m. – wake up. Look, I might not have much to do, but that does not equal a cure for insomnia. And I did watch three recorded episodes of The OC last night (I couldn’t stop!), and my mind was swimming with the drama that is the lives of Ryan and Marissa, et. al. So I’m up, and I decide to read for a bit, wondering why I fancy myself a writer but have yet to come up with phrases and analogies mere fractions as funny or clever as this author.

8:30 a.m. – cereal and coffee while watching the Today Show. I marvel again at the tragedy that is Anne Curry’s hair, and then remember my conversation with my step-mother a couple days ago: Me: What’s with Anne Curry’s hair? It’s looks horrid! Step-mother: She cut it off and gave it to Locks of Love. Me: Oh. Oops. So that’s why she’s been growing it out so long, which is kind of unheard of when it comes to TV anchor women. Well, I’m an ass. Today, it was on to hard-hitting coverage such as how Al tried (and didn’t quite make it) to lose 20 pounds and a mock quiz show featuring a 10-year-old who has already published a book on presidential trivia and plans to run for the slot in 20 years. Hey, I may be an underachiever, but at least I’m not a social outcast.

9:30 – 12:30 p.m. – work, also known as putting in a few calls and emails, and spending the remaining 2 hours and 45 minutes organizing and renaming the 900 photos from our trip while listening to bachata on my computer. For three days I’ve been trying to pare down and arrange the photos for an online scrapbook, but I’ve only managed to narrow them down to 450, and it’s going to take awhile to do captions for all of those. I also took time – about a half hour – to craft a five-line email in Spanish to my friend. It’s getting harder and harder.

12:30 – lunch break. I made grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches, with my new favorite food: avocados.

1:30 – 2 – unexpected nap on chair after reading roughly four and a half pages of aforementioned book.

2:15 – back to work. I come to the decision that this freelance assignment due Friday is just not going to happen, what with my sources not telepathically sensing I need to contact them and thus preemptively calling me with the proper answers, kindly saving me from exerting any minute effort on the story. So I email my editor to tell him I need more time and that so many folks are declining to comment, and just as I hit send, two sources finally call me back. Shit. Now it looks like I’ll have to file after all.

4:30 – I realize at this point that I am still in my pajama pants, with no plans to don jeans and leave the house. I also begin to feel my eyeballs drying out from staring at the computer screen tiled with 900 images of me, my friends, tropical trees, horses, sunsets and random strangers who we’ve coaxed to give the requisite thumbs-up pose for each shot. I think my muscles are also starting to atrophy, so I decide it’s time to revisit the gym I just joined. Something tells me it’s geared to a more life-seasoned crowd, as it’s called Forever Young and has an aerobic class called Silver Sneakers, but I’m not daunted. I can stationary bike next to grandma without hesitation. In fact, upon my arrival, I am surprised at the unexpected amount of 20-something jocks (one in particular who looks like he overstayed his welcome at the Fake n Bake by about 18 hours and smells overwhelmingly of vanilla and something close to bananas).

7 – dinner of enchiladas, another variation on my Central American culinary theme, which I have yet to tire from. While eating, we watch a downloaded copy of 8 Simple Rules, the show that should have gone off the air the second John Ritter died, but instead limps on with only sporadically funny moments overpowered by dead father coping family themes. This particular episode was just weeks after his death, which they wrote into the show, and the daughters grapple with returning to school and struggling with the guilt of feeling an ounce of happiness or normalcy in a time when they should be mourning their father. All of a sudden, as I am sucking down a third enchilada, I am catapulted back to the fall of seventh grade when I returned to school motherless, greeted by oh-poor-you eyes and too-eager smiles from teachers and peers when really I just wanted to pretend it was just another middle school days, and oh my gah I can’t believe she wore that, and isn’t he so cute, and similar teenage dribble drabble. All of a sudden, I felt a lump in my throat, and it was clearly time to get up and do the dishes. Add that to the list of TV shows that hit too close to home and I can therefore no longer watch.

9 – finally the moment I’ve been waiting all week for: the newest episode of The OC. I wonder how Marissa will get along now that she and Ryan broke up, and what is happening with Mrs. Cooper-Nickle and Summer’s dad?! And of course, I won’t miss a chance to hear my BF mockingly quip in a high-pitched and comically timed voice “Biotch!” or “Oh snap!”