Should I Stay or Should I Go

 Just going to think out loud a bit here. I can do that, it's my blog.

And I'll blog if I want to.
(Early 60s musical reference for you youngsters)

So this week I was the target of a potential poaching. That's right, someone tried to simmer me in a white wine sauce over low heat until I -

Oh, wait.

Not that kind of poaching. I am not a piece of salmon, silly.

Aside: I think that sauce has reduced
a tad too much. Time to deglaze.

Obviously I mean that someone tried to hire me away from my IRL job. This happens all the time, albeit not to me because I'm generally worthless. I find recruiters annoying, and when I was answering phones for my office, I routinely sent them straight to the voicemail of whoever they were calling. Yes, they're just doing their job. But to call a company's main number, sometimes five times a day, with the sole intention of offering its people different employment on company time? I'm not saying these are the same guys (and they're always guys) who carry roofies when they go out drinking, but...

If I've offended any overconfident d-bags,
I don't care. Come at me.

Anyway, I wasn't approached by some random corporate headhunter, but by my former boss. He hired me for my current job a few years back. He's an awesome person, and we clicked right from the start (unlike my previous boss, who literally threatened to beat me with a hammer when I made a mistake, but I digress...) 

When the pandemic hit right around this time last year, my company did a (fortunately limited) round of layoffs. Unfortunately, my boss was among the layees. It was pretty devastating, as he was universally beloved by everyone whose job wasn't deciding who to lay off. He landed on his feet, though, and now works for a competing firm.

Meanwhile, ol' Maxwell Edison
still has his job. (Late 60s musical reference.)

This week he dropped me the proverbial "There's a job here that you'd be perfect for" text. I don't know if there's actually a proverb that is in any way relevant to this event. It's just one of those hackneyed phrases: "the proverbial..." Frankly, it's overused and misused and I should be ashamed of myself for deploying it here. Bad blogger. Bad.

No lucrative book deal for you.

Anyway, he didn't actually offer me the job. But it is a pretty great job (I looked up the listing online), and I would be working for him, and he is the hiring manager.... 

Oh, and he threw in the "how much money would it take to sway your decision?" gambit, too.

Even I can sometimes connect dots when they're that obvious. 

I'm going to cut to the chase here: I respectfully declined.

Now might be a good time for that hammer, after all.

Why? Why did I turn down what seemed to be - hell, what undoubtedly was - a solid opportunity?

Self-sabotage is a reliable go-to answer for a question like that. At least for me it is; I have a long history of self-sabotage. It's kind of my brand.

But I don't think that's the case here.

It's not loyalty to my current company. It's a good place to work. It's not a great place to work. I've had maybe two great workplaces in my entire life, and one of them was a video store in the mid-80s. I realized long ago that nothing will ever top that, so I don't use it as a comparison criterion for selecting new jobs.

It's not salary and benefits. As I said, I undoubtedly could have negotiated a higher salary from my former boss than I currently get. My pay is sufficient, but my company is stingy with raises unless they accompany a promotion. My job has few opportunities for promotion - it's a nonzero number, for sure, but there just aren't many rungs on my career ladder. The company does offer an obscenely generous 401(k) and decent health insurance.

It's partly location. I know plenty of people who commute long distances every day. But for me, not sitting in traffic for two hours every day is a huge quality of life issue, and my current commute is relatively short and stress-free. The potential new job would have required me to drive downtown from my cozy suburb. For me, that's a nightmare scenario. Down the road I could see myself moving to the city, which would make a downtown commute a non-issue. But for various reasons that's not an option right now, and every time I tried to convince myself otherwise, my inner voice wisely told me to cut the crap and be realistic about my life.

My inner voice is much saner than I am
and is probably pissed that it didn't get the outer voice gig.

And it's partly stability. My shortest "real" job since graduating from college lasted two years. I didn't leave voluntarily - the company was operating under a bad business model that included flouting Department of Labor rules about exempt vs. non-exempt workers. I was laid off not long before the company collapsed. I would have stayed longer if I could, because I'm a creature of inertia.

The job my former boss dangled in front of me could have been great. I could have been happy and fulfilled at that company. I might never have regretted the decision to leave my current gig. But while there might have been good reasons to go to a new job, there just aren't that many good reasons to leave the job I have now. In the eternal battle between change and stay the same, my natural tendency, for better or for worse, has always been to set a high bar for change. 

Believe me, as I get older and hypothetically closer to retirement, that bar only gets higher. 

Probably I've missed out on a good many opportunities as a result. That's something I can work on in my next incarnation (assuming I don't come back as a slug or a pampered housecat or something). But here, now, and on this plane of existence, I've decided to be happy with the size and shape of my world for now.

If that changes, you'll hear about it.

Feelings and Other Terrifying Things

I'm pretty stressed out right now.

It was this or a Twenty One Pilots video.
So obviously, this.

It's that whole Coronavirus thing. It's that whole Is the economy going to collapse? thing. It's that whole Precocious-Daughter's-education-on-hold thing. It's that whole "Our President is a not just a moron but an evil moron" thing.

Stress can be punctuated in many ways. Cool cool cool.

I recognize that I'm in good shape relative to many. PDaughter and I are both healthy. My job is in no danger (in fact, I work for an Essential Business, so I actually get to leave the house and go to work every morning, even under a shelter in place order). I'm sure PDaughter's university will get back to the business of educating minds and draining wallets as soon as it can.

And of course, there's an election in November.

Maybe his lizard overlords will claim him before then.

Here's something interesting: We all cope with fear and anxiety in our own way. From a behavioral standpoint, you have your busy-workers: the cookers, the cleaners, the crafters, the exercisers. Then there are the suppressors: those who sleep, who drink, who tune out and drop out. I've heard there are even some who cope by engaging with life normally and in moderation.

Like Rodents of Unusual Size, I don't think they exist.

They're out there, and they're kind of weird.

I tend to ping-pong between busying and suppressing, and somehow manage to be neither productive nor successfully benumbed. I pretty much suck at coping, behaviorally speaking.

Now, emotionally...of course, people process emotions in varying ways. Emotional regulation is an important life skill. It allows us to operate on a psychologically healthy wavelength under most circumstances (unless you're President Reptile Face up there). When we regulate our emotions, we can control, compartmentalize, express, empathize, forbear, respond...all those good human reactions to sensory input that keep us sane and whole.

Some people are programmed to auto-regulate. They tend to process emotions on a closed circuit, relying on internalized standards and checkpoints that are more or less independent of outward influences. They don't wear their heart on their sleeve, and they typically don't want or need to "talk it out" to come to terms with how they feel.

Sorta like this.

Other people are...not that. Other people (see how I'm cleverly throwing you off by talking about "other people"?) seek validation of what they're feeling. They want to compare their emotional state to something outside themselves, to get feedback, to be reassured that they're operating within normal parameters. It's not they can't regulate; they just do it on a more communal, open circuit. They're the proverbial open book when it comes to emotions.

...and sorta like this.

Hey, you guys! Neither type of emotional regulation is better than the other. They're just different. The important thing to remember is that different people have different needs when it comes to processing things like stress, fear, and worry. And many people who cohabitate are discovering that very thing, as the current pandemic has them spending more time together in closer quarters than they're used to.

If you take an inny-regulator and an outy-regulator, who normally have time and space and opportunity to handle what life throws at them in the way they're comfortable with, and squeeze them into one living space for basically 24 hours a day with no one else around to act as either a buffer or a sounding board...

It's less ugly when illustrated with cats.

So, Drunkards who live with other people, that may be why you and your loved one/roommate/parent/child are at each other's throats more than usual. Try to understand that you and they may operate on a different emotional wavelength, and try to be respectful of what they need, even if it's outside your normal mode of operation.

Another thought.

If you are physically separated from someone you love, you should also be aware of those differing approaches to coping with stress.

Because if you want to be reinforced and reassured by someone who can't actually give you a hug or hold your hand...you may get nothing from them at all.

They may be efficiently and rationally self-regulating in their corner of the world and not even realize that you're drowning in yours.

And if you're happier dealing with things by yourself...

...then I guess you're pretty fortunate right now.

Be well and be safe, Drunkards.

VOTE, Mofos.

As you might have heard, there's an election in four days.

I actually voted earlier this week. It's the first time I've ever voted early, partly because I like the tradition of voting on Election Day and partly because I can never get my shit together enough to get to the polls during early voting.

But this year, as (again) you might have heard, is different.

I felt compelled to get my ballot cast before November 8th. You know how sometimes a random irrational thought will become lodged in your brain crannies, and not only will it not leave but it actually begins to interfere with the other, rational thoughts in your head until it drowns them out and takes control?

That's been happening to me.

Maybe it's just me. But still.

Several days ago, I became obsessed with the thought that I might get hit by a bus or a bunch of motorcyclists or a fucking a-hole Tesla driver and not be able to cast my critical vote next Tuesday.

On Tuesday of this week (I think it was Tuesday, it might have been Wednesday, don't judge I'm a working single mom I'm lucky I even know it's an election year), I found a blissfully sleepy early voting location just a couple of blocks from my home and voted. You guys, this location had a bell for first-time voters to ring as they left the building. How effing awesome is that?

Anyway, I showed my ID (a whole nother topic), was escorted to a voting machine by a very sweet and helpful older lady, and fucking voted, all in a five-minute span.

I felt INCREDIBLE.

Because I actually parked in the wrong place, it took me longer to walk to the early voting building than it took me to vote.

I'm a middle-aged female type, yet I had no problem with the touch-screen computerized voting machine, nor did the older lady who explained in great detail how it operated, nor did the young Latina woman who was there when I arrived or the white dude who came in shortly before I left.

Pretty sure there was no fraud or other shenanigans happening at my polling place due to evil, evil machines and/or opposition operatives.

I got my coveted "I Voted" sticker, which I affixed to my chin and then took a selfie for my IRL Facebook page (find me, you guys, it's not hard). And then I went home. Democracy: Accomplished.

My election anxiety has decreased substantially since then, you guys.

Because...

What if  I had a heart attack prior to November 8 and didn't get to vote?

What if space aliens landed and convinced me to vote for Trump prior to November 8?

What if I suffered a traumatic head injury and decided I was a lifelong Republican prior to November 8?

What if Hillary Clinton admitted to being...I don't know...a baby-killing racist homophobic Klan member just a few hours before the polls closed?

I'm just glad I already discharged my democratic duty to VOTE, you guys.

If you haven't already, Drunkards, be sure to VOTE.

Your particular choices are less important than that you chose to participate. I promise.

Vote, Godammit.

Have a share in the credit/blame for what happens November 8th.

Be that brave.

Thanks, America.

Dream Symbolism for the Extremely Dense

As I grow older, my dreams seem to be dropping all attempts at nuance or complex symbolism in favor of slapping me in the face with the Trout of Obviousness.

It's the one on the right.

Last night, following a bout of imsomnia likely brought on by hours of anxiously waiting to hear that Precocious Daughter had landed safely in New York (she did, after a 90-minute delay), I was delivered a whopping Captain Obvious-fueled dream about my life. Freud would have seen interpreting this dream as an affront to his professional dignity.

"I can't even with this dream. smh. lol" is I believe what
he would have said.

So, I dreamed I repeatedly jumped or fell from a crumbling structure and plunged into deep water, struggling - but always managing - to swim to the surface before I drowned.

Sometimes I was foiling a crime. Sometimes I had sidekicks. There was a sighting of the late Omar Sharif. But that was the scene that played out in my sleeping brain, with minor variations for dramatic effect, over and over until my alarm went off.

My subconscious is being unsubtle. Presumably it's had enough of my nonsense and is reduced to screaming "YOU GOT THIS! GEEZ!!!" from inside my head.

Perhaps you agree with my subconscious on this. I am sounding like a broken record these days.

This one. It's probably a disco record, and it's
endlessly skipping on the Bee-Gees singing
"Ah-ah-ah-ah, st--Ah-ah-ah-ah, st--"

Jumping, crumbling, plunging, struggling, surviving. What does it mean?

Sometimes you gotta hit in me in the head with the message. Or with a door.

Here's another part of my dream: I was invited to a party on a boat. There were two access points: One led to people talking and laughing, the other would allow me to explore a different, but empty, part of the boat. I took the latter. But it turns out that what I thought were two entrances to the same boat were actually two separate boats, and the one I was on came loose from its moorings and started to drift. When I drifted into view of the party boat, my boat capsized, and the people just laughed at me and went back to their party.

I woke up before I could discover whether I survived that misadventure.

But I'm pretty sure I know the answer.

I Breathed. It Got Better. Lesson: Breathe.

So I had some kind of psychotic break last night.

In the future we'll have a much more enlightened attitude
toward such things, I'm sure.

Long story short: Precocious Daughter does not want to live with her dad instead of me. She never said she did; that was the voices in my head doing a really good PDaughter impression. Or maybe not so good, but under the influence of stress, exhaustion, and vodka, I was easily taken in.

Sorry to freak you out. Thanks as always for having my back and being generous with kind words and good thoughts. We are all fine here.

If you're on my Facebook page*, you know that I also got hit in the head with a door last night.

It was an awesome night, you guys.

I have a lingering headache, but I don't think I was beaned hard enough to be concussed. The important thing is that my spouse was able to repair the door. Seriously, it is. What I do not need right now is anything that will delay listing and showing my house, such as a fallen door with a headprint on it.

At this point the door and I are calling it a draw.

Believe it or not, between the drama and the head injuries, this was actually a fantastically productive weekend. PDaughter and I got our bedrooms cleaned out and ready to show. We moved furniture, we cleaned carpets, we installed new blinds on the windows, we scrubbed baseboards and swept away cobwebs.

I'm freaking exhausted.

Not as cute, but definitely as tired.

We rented a carpet cleaner! I've never done that before. In the past I've always a) hired a carpet cleaning service or b) let the carpets stay dirty. But today PDaughter and I headed to Home Depot and rented a Rug Doctor Pro carpet-cleaning machine thingy.

Does anyone else remember this jingle, or am I just old?

Two important facts about carpet-cleaning machines:

1) It is incredibly satisfying to watch ages of accumulated filth being sucked out of your carpets, and to actually smell and feel the new cleanliness of said carpets when you're done.

2) Holy crap, every muscle in your body will ache when you're done hauling this thing across your floors for an hour.

Since we still had some time left on the rental, I decided to clean a couple of area rugs, as well. I did this on our back patio, where it was about 98 degrees today. When I was done I had almost-heatstroke to go with my almost-concussion and definite-B.O. Plus a couple of sparkly-clean area rugs.

So to recap:

• PDaughter and I will be living together.

• Our house will be listed in a matter of days.

• Carpet shampoo smells like a spring garden and/or unicorn farts.

• I'm not allowed to touch the doors to the laundry until the house sells.

And I love my readers.


*Like Christopher Waldrop, who finally liked me on FB this week! Squeeeeeee!

The Story of My Week

It's been a tough week, Drunkards.

I took Robin Williams' death very hard. Am taking it very hard. Like many millions of people, I loved him for his brilliant comedic mind, his generosity, and the joie de vivre he exuded, which turned out to be a much more limited resource than any of us knew. I'm haunted by the thought that this gifted person, with the love and support of so many, still found it more desirable to die alone, and by his own hand, than to live with his demons.

I want to see his death as a cautionary tale, a plea for the rest of us to stay strong and seek help. But the blackest parts of my mind want to dangle it in front of me like a carrot on a stick instead. "With all he had, he couldn't find peace in life," my own demons whisper. "What chance do you have?"

I know they're just heckling me, as they've done for years. My demons are assholes. They know they'll never actually prevail, but for them that just means they can mess with me indefinitely.

And this week my resistance is low. Drummer Boy is away, trying to get closure on some personal matters. I miss him, which is a fairly absurd concept in the age of social media, but there you go. And of course the demons are weighing in on this, too. "He's not coming back. He's coming back, but he's changed his mind about you. He's had time to think about your nonsense, and guess what he's decided?"

My hormones aren't helping. It's PMS week, and they're out of control. I've been yelling at a lot of cars in traffic this week. Everybody seems to drive much worse when I have PMS. How do they know? Bastards.

I'm also doing myself no favors. I let myself run out of Prozac just as the hormones started to put on their monthly show. I can go two, maybe three days without my happy pills before I start to spiral. I ended up missing five days. I've been back on them for two days, and it takes about two days for them to regain control of the crazy train. Today, about mid-morning, I could actually feel sanity returning. It's a very distinct feeling. Which itself is a fairly crazy thing to say. But I'm sure some of you understand, and the rest of you are fortunate to not have to understand.

So it's been a conspiracy of circumstances working to disrupt my equilibrium. And it's done a good job. I've been pretty messed up this week.

But I'm back on my meds, the PMS will sort itself out in a few days, Drummer Boy will be home soon, and my personal demons will get bored with harassing me and go harass gun nuts on Twitter, which is more fun for everyone.

Robin Williams is still gone. And that's still very difficult for me.

Life is full of stories. Sometimes there aren't enough happy endings to go around.

A Question, Part II

I should preface this post by repeating that yesterday's post really, really wasn't inspired by a particular event. Everything is cool.

Crazy cool, Daddy-O.

It actually was inspired by a post on a Facebook page I follow. Someone asked the question, "Is it worse to be physically abused or emotionally abused?" And there followed a flood of comments from people who had been subjected to one or the other, or in a surprising number of cases, both. And heartbreakingly, from people dealing with abuse right now, today. It just got me thinking, that's all.

It got me thinking about why people would be abusive toward someone with whom they're romantically involved. And why the victims put up with it, and how the abuse sometimes becomes mutual as a defense mechanism.

And it got me thinking about relationships in general, and how the definition of "normal" becomes established very early on and rarely changes.

I find "delicate" to be much better, actually.

I have my own track record of giving and receiving emotional abuse, and it seems many of you do, as well. It often takes the form of what Riley's Mom called "passive-aggressive nonsense" and goes no further, but that still counts. Based on your responses, and responses to the Facebook post that triggered this discussion, emotional abuse in all its forms is something that's not only widespread but also fairly easy to admit and talk about. I don't know if that's a good thing - because it's not locked up behind a door of shame - or a bad thing - because it's so common and accepted that it's like admitting you've watched porn or eaten an entire package of Oreos at a sitting.

Just your average human weakness.

I suppose I've been on the receiving end of physical abuse, as well, but I'm keeping that one locked behind the door for now.

Anyway, the FB post and my own ruminations happened to coincide with something that happened between Drummer Boy and me. We hit a rough patch - I won't go into details; if you're a regular reader you've gotten veiled and very incomplete hints of it recently - and we talked it out. Which doesn't sound like a big deal, unless you understand that "talking it out" has never been part of my arsenal of coping mechanisms.

I grew up terrified of conflict and disapproval, and I carried that emotional disability right into my marriage. I've promised not to go into detail about the demise of my marriage in this blog, and I'm going to honor that promise. But in a chat with DB about working out our issues, I said something that I now realize represents a huge a-ha moment for me. What I said was this:

Love isn't enough. [Spouse] and I had all the love in the world, but we had a terrible relationship almost from the start, and we never tried to work on it until it was too late.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but...the Beatles were wrong.

Guys, I'm really, really sorry.

Love is not all you need. I realize that the logically and statistically correct version - "Love is a necessary but not sufficient condition" - lacks the anthemic punch of the original. But since those guys had five divorces and a slew of marital difficulties amongst them, I daresay they might even agree.

You can love someone and still abuse them. You can love someone and still accept their abuse. You can love someone but be completely unwilling/unable to forge a happy, healthy relationship with them. Because we convince ourselves that love is enough, or because we believe we deserve bad things (like abuse) as the cost of having good things (like a romantic companion).

And it turns out there are as many stories out there as there are people. It would be impractical - and, frankly, exhausting - to judge everybody's story, which means it's not really feasible to judge anybody's. And it just feels better to me to know that we're all doing the best we can to be happy, and that none of us is really succeeding 100%, and nobody should be feel ashamed of that fact.

All we can do is try to do better.

Right?

Ghosts? Rollercoasters? Nothing. This? SCARY.

This post is a little different from my usual fare.

Here's a picture of a squirrel hitting the bottle
so you'll know it's still me.

It's just that I had a bit of a revelation, and rather than quietly contemplate it, I thought I'd broadcast my inner thoughts to the Internet. Because that's what exhibitionists bloggers do.

I've realized that I'm afraid of anger. I actively fear that emotion. Oh, I'm not afraid of being angry - there's an actual term  for that, by the way (it's called angrophobia), and that's not what I'm talking about. I may not enjoy getting angry, and I frequently regret it when I do. But a long time ago I accepted, if not embraced, that I have a temper and often fail to keep it. Also, I have a hard time expressing anger appropriately, because I'm a chick with issues.

But afraid of my own anger? Nah. I own that shit.

I'm just scared witless of other people's anger. As an abstract emotion, it makes me quiver like a flavored gelatin dessert.

You know the one.

And it's not that I have a problem with someone being angry at me. Or rather, I do, but maybe not for the reason you'd think.

Anger very often expresses disapproval or censure, and current psychology says that those are the things most of us are really afraid of. Personally, I reject that idea. I mean, disapproval and censure aren't great things. But I can handle them. I totally understand how someone could be pissed off at the things I say or do.

I can be sort of infuriating.

It's the anger itself that gets to me. I can't deal with the dark intensity of that particular emotion. Not even when it's not directed specifically at me. Especially then, in fact. When someone gets mad at me, and either yells at me or gives me the silent treatment, it makes me feel as if I'm falling to my death, but at least there's an outcropping of context for me to hold on to. Whether it's justified or not, the anger has some real or perceived connection to me, and I can look at it and decide how to react.

But when someone is simply angry around me, I lose it. I don't know what to do with someone else's anger. I reflexively believe it's my fault. Therefore, it's my responsibility to fix the problem/and or soothe away the anger. And if I can't do it (how could I?), then I take the blame for that, as well.

It makes me feel terrible, partly because it's an irrational feeling. But it's like burning yourself on the stove: If it hurts enough, you start to be scared of the stove. The stove didn't set out to hurt you, and it's not as if the stove is an inherently scary thing. But you still involuntarily shudder when you think about it.

That face doesn't doesn't help.

And I know that it's a problem with boundaries. I know that people around me have every right to feel angry, and that it doesn't necessarily reflect on me, and their anger is not a burden I have to shoulder every time I see it in front of me. There's a line between empathizing with other people and blindly internalizing their every emotion, no matter how negative.

I don't know where to draw that line. I don't even have the emotional canvas to draw the line on. On which to draw the line. Whatever. I don't even have an easel to hold that canvas.



Or the studio space to house the easel to...
You get the idea.

So I find the idea of anger kind of terrifying. And, as many of us do when we find something terrifying, I tend to avoid it. Which means I end up unable to communicate with, and subsequently withdrawing from, people I care about.

And that makes me angry.

Which at least I can handle. But it's a zero-sum game.

Now I'm angry and scared and sad.

No wonder people get pissed off at me.

If I Twitch My Nose, Will You Disappear?

So there's this person who works with me as my page admin and right-hand girl. Her name is Tabitha.

Personality-wise, she's sort of a cross between Jessica Rabbit and Cousin Serena from "Bewitched." With a healthy dash of Regan from The Exorcist thrown in.



Picture that, if you will.

I pretty much hate her.

You know the commercials for Cheez-Its, with the immature cheese? That's Tabitha.

She has a foul mouth, a bad temper, a crapload of uncontrolled insecurities, and she likes to take over my blog and my Facebook page and write inappropriate things when I'm not looking.

For some reason her behavior is worse when I've been drinking.

So I've decided to teach her a lesson. I've stopped drinking.

Stop the presses.

That'll show her.

I wonder how long it will take to show her?

Stupid Tabitha.

It's so hard to find good help.

Am I Blue?

Skipping today's A to Z Swearing Challenge entry. I'll make it up tomorrow.

AND BY THE WAY WHY DID NO ONE NOTICE THAT I MISSED THE LETTER T?

Sad T is sad.
And also pities the fool.

Sheesh.

Anyway, in lieu of alphabetical foul language, here's a public service announcement.

If you're feeling like crap because you came home from work and found that your estranged spouse had been poring over old photos of happier times all day and was feeling nostalgic and sad and wanting to make everything all right by simply waving a magic wand over all the terrible things that had happened, and you couldn't find the words to express how completely impossible that is because even at this point you can't find it in your heart to hurt him as badly as it would hurt him to make a clean break of it, even though that makes you feel weak and selfish and feeling that way all the time is part of what you're trying to get away from in the first place...

Breathe.

...then I'd like to suggest that an evening of helping your kid paint her bedroom while listening to Fitz & the Tantrums and Green Day is an excellent antidote to sensations of helpless anger and emotional exhaustion.

The scientific term for this therapeutic effect is
"nyuk nyuk nyuk."

And if you only get one wall done in an evening...that's just three more sessions of therapy still ahead.

The bottoms of my feet are a pretty shade of blue, because I always paint barefoot. It's a very peaceful color. I may spend the rest of the evening staring at my feet.

And drinking. But I guess at this point that goes without saying.

Also, I have to think of a swear word that begins with W. Is "whyioughta" a word? It should be.

A Girl Walks into a Bar - And, Damn, It Hurt

Today's A to Z Swear Challenge word is only marginally a swear, but it's a very cool word nonetheless, and since hardly anyone knows what it means, you can use it any way you wish and who will know the difference? The word is...opisthosomal.

Way fun to say, too.
 

Opisthosomal means of or pertaining to the ass-end of something. And that is such a perfect segue into today's post. I'm feeling pretty opisthosomal today myself.

Would you like to hear about it?

Of course you would.

Because for all that I love to write about religion and politics and candy bars, I know that the posts my Drunkards really enjoy are the ones about me falling on my opisthosoma.

Segue achieved.

You people love to read about me getting kicked out of my own child's birthday party, or being drunk and lost in the woods, or ripping my pants open because of my industrial-strength thighs. And clearly I have a talent for doing these things. We are a match made in dysfunctional Heaven. I love you all.

OK, so last night I went out. Which was pretty awesome. I went to see a local band at a little neighborhood bar across town.  I was wearing a cute outfit and a new pair of shoes that are so adorable that - literally - strangers were approaching me to compliment them. I was among friends. I had vodka. I got to hear some incredibly talented musicians play, and I got to hug them. Win.

And then I had a meltdown.

Because...sure, why not?

It's OK, honey. It's what everyone was expecting.

I mean, I just lost my shit. Quietly, I'll say that. I didn't make a scene. I'm good at crying silently, from years of practice. Still, it ended up cutting the evening short, and I believe it monumentally exasperated the friend I was with. I mean, like I-super-need-to-make-amends-but-I'm-not-sure-that's-possible-at-this-point exasperated.

It's a cumulative thing.

But that's my problem. And I'm going to take the Scarlett O'Hara approach to solving it.

Back to the meltdown.

Here's the thing. I am not a social butterfly. Socializing is hard for me. Really, really hard. I'm very shy, and I have this deep-seated self-loathing thing going on that creates a massive force-field of inferiority when I have to interact with people and convince them I'm OK to talk to. It's freaking exhausting. I can just barely manage it in a familiar setting with people I know well. Put in me a noisy, crowded place surrounded by mostly strangers, and I start to...well, we'll just say I start to freak out a little.

But that's not what brought on the meltdown.

Here's another thing. When I'm drinking and I'm doing something freaking exhausting, I get - anyone? anyone? - that's right, I get drunk and tired. And then I get cranky. I'm not a good person when I'm drunk, tired, and cranky. The scientific explanation is that the containment field around my insecurities breaks down, releasing toxic waves of sulking and bitterness. Also, the filters that help me keep my many neuroses to myself go on the fritz.



I work something like this.



But that's not what caused the meltdown, either. This is a terribly petty thing to admit, but I was really bummed out by a fantastic piece of news I got earlier in the day. My buddy Jen over at Jeneral Insanity (which you should totally read because she's awesome) posted on her Facebook page that the Bloggess had just become a follower of her blog.

And while I'm really, truly happy that Jen got that recognition from maybe the best-known chick blogger on the planet - and I completely understand how stoked anyone would feel to know Jenny Lawson had read and enjoyed her writing - it made me nearly sick with jealousy. Because I'm a petty, selfish, insecure person, and it made me feel as if my nerdiest friend had gotten an invitation to hang out with the cool kids and left me in the dust.

I'm not supposed to feel that way. I know that every blogger is talented and dedicated, and that we're all a stroke of luck away from becoming Internet-famous. And we all need to support and promote each other, because that's what artists do. I mean, Stephen Stills must have felt like shit when he failed his audition for the Monkees and then recommended his buddy Peter Tork try out, too, and then Peter aced it and became a huge star. It didn't mean Stephen Stills wasn't talented - last I heard, he ended up with an OK career in his own right. But that's why you stand with your friends and celebrate with them when the breaks go the right way and commiserate when they don't.

Some people just wear the shirt better.

But that deal bothered me more than I wanted to admit. And it didn't help that whenever I watch a band play, I feel a twinge of that same jealousy - because besides a writer, the only thing I ever really wanted to was be was a singer. I love music, but deep inside me is a tiny little bitch who constantly reminds me that the real reason I listen to music is because I can't make it myself.

But even that didn't bring on the meltdown.

What brought on the meltdown - aided and abetted by the perfect storm of all of the aforementioned psychic quirks, of course - was Those Girls.

You know exactly who I'm talking about. They're always in bars and clubs and at concerts and sporting events and other social venues. They're pretty, and they're dressed in their best look-at-me clothes, and they have a few drinks and laugh and flirt and start dancing. And you wonder what they do in their daily nine-to-five lives, because surely they can't have some boring office job all week and then show up here looking just this side of slutty and acting as if the world is their party. Can they?

And they stand where everyone can see them, and laugh too loudly and drink too much and move around like cats in heat. And everybody watches them, and all the guys smile indulgently if they say or do something foolish, because acting like a fool is OK when you're one of Those Girls.

If you're not one of them, you know that you can't get away with acting like that. Those Girls are cute and irresistible, no matter what they do. But if you're not one of Those Girls, you're invisible. And if you're not one of Those Girls and have the temerity to adopt their ways, you're laughable.

I could never get away with this, is what I'm saying.

I am neither outgoing enough nor attractive enough to be one of Those Girls. Which ordinarily doesn't bother me one bit.

But last night I was drunk and tired and feeling insecure and jealous and shy, and Those Girls - who they were and who I knew I wasn't - pushed me over the brink. I ended up in tears. And I ruined a perfectly lovely evening out for completely irrational reasons.

Which is what a meltdown is, after all.

Spock understands.

 So yeah.

Other than that, I had a great time.

I believe Mrs. Lincoln said the same thing once.

Too Small to Fail

Kathryn Stockett's manuscript for The Help was turned down by 60 agents before finally being accepted. Not 60 publishing houses or 60 editors, who considered the book for publication but decided to pass. Sixty literary agents refused to even submit it to a publisher on her behalf because it would tarnish their reputation to represent such an awful, terrible story.

That's like being told by eHarmony that you're too horrible a person to even take their compatibility test.

There's someone for everyone.
Just kidding.

Of course, The Help went on to become a huge best-seller and a critically acclaimed movie. And 60 snotty literary agents probably flagellate themselves with their Kindles every time they're reminded of that fact.

Kathryn Stockett never gave up, not even when she sailed past the number of rejections where most reasonable people would agree she had given it her best shot.

The moral of the story is...I haven't failed nearly enough to be successful yet. I may think I'm struggling to find an audience for my writing, but I ain't seen nothing yet. In fact, the number of setbacks and disappointments I've experienced is at this point an insult to writers who actually have the balls and the tenacity to keep going in the face of failure.

How many young idealists have been ruined by that wrinkly green bastard?

I've spent my life desperately afraid to fail. To the point that I adopted Yoda's philosophy as my own: to avoid the inherent risk of "do or do not," I banished "try." I don't think that's what he meant, but I took the idea and ran with it. Ran right the hell away from the opportunities that come with trying.

I can't tell you how frustrated and upset and sad I get when I write something that I think is especially good, that I think will tickle people and inspire them to comment and share, and it sinks without a trace. I can't tell you how many times I've decided to shut down this blog after noticing yet again how few hits it receives relative to other writers' sites. Hell, my own Beloved Spouse doesn't read it; why should I be surprised when no one else does?

But I keep writing and posting, because I enjoy it. And because I know that at least a few other souls read it and (say they) enjoy it, and that makes me feel really good. What I don't acknowledge as readily is that I need the low readership numbers and the blinding indifference to my passion. I need them to stack up and stare me in the face. I hate them, but I need them.

Like vegetables.

I have to continue to fail. Maybe for the rest of my life. As much as being rejected or flat-out ignored is painful, it's not as bad as the knowledge that fear ruled me all my life. That would suck as an epitaph: Never tried, never failed.

This one is much more awesome.

If I'm going to die unsung, let me at least be an unsung writer. That means I've got to fail at it. Which means I've got to keep trying.

Goddamn, that sucks.

But hey, if you're going to succeed at anything, why not at failing?

You've got to start somewhere.