That Barrel-Chested SOB

DAY FIFTY-THREE: The Pauper Times It Right

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.” - Albert Einstein

Time.  Friend or foe?  Hero or villain?  Protagonist or antagonist?

One of the reasons I quit my job was because I never felt like I had enough time to do the things that I wanted to do.  I was emotionally exhausted by the end of each work day (being a human chew toy will do that to a person.)  So my goal from the minute I walked into my second story apartment was to shut down.  Make an easy dinner.  Pour a glass bottle of wine.  Binge on 30 Rock reruns courtesy of our great, red friend.  There was never any time.  Or at least never the right kind of time.

And here I am, fifty-three days post-decision.  And time has become my mortal enemy in lieu of the barrel-chested companion my heart craved.  

Brought to you in RealD by Time.

Suddenly, there's simply too much of it.  It sits there mocking me for not getting things done.  The financially responsible side of me panics on a daily basis and spends most of the day applying for jobs.

The truth is, I can't say that last statement in earnest.  Yes, there's the panic that hits me in the midst of catching up on Homeland (a lunchtime respite) when my mind wanders into the regions of remembering that rent is due tomorrow while my plane ticket to London shouts insensitive slurs on my credit card bill.  My stomach both drops and jumps inside its connective tissues.  But that's not the whole truth.

Failing at finding a job is the easier option.  If I can't find a more interesting job that I at least somewhat enjoy, it's the easier pill to manage down.  Because it's really just something I want.  But to fail at writing.  To fail at the only thing that really feels like it matters in my life right now.  To fail at my passion.  It's not really something I feel like I can handle.

And so I wait.  I procrastinate.  Until the panic turns into fuel.  Until the rejections turn into some form of mental cocaine.  Until I simply can't handle it anymore.

Happy Halloween, everyone.  I'm not dressing up because right now, I can't think of anything scarier than exactly what I'm doing right now.

Except hillbillies.  Nothing scarier than hillbillies.

To A Poet

DAY FIFTY-ONE: The Pauper Returns

There's something about returning from vacation that is one of the most unsettling feelings you can experience.  We've all experienced it.  It's this hardened pit stuck in your core that slowly seeps its way into your esophagus until you feel like you might actually choke on your own anxiety.  You get to have the highest of highs; seeing beautiful sites, spending time with loved ones, and simply being away from the doldrums of responsibility.  But when you return, you are reminded of the every day.  The ordinary.  The doldrums of responsibility.

Because of this common feeling, I figured I had concocted a solution to the Back in Town Blues.  I quit my job, and then I bought a plane ticket out to London to see my family.  My thought process being, I'll come home from vacation and still be on vacation.  I don't have to drag myself into an office that fills my every essence with self-loathing.  Instead, I can still sleep in.  Still go take a random walk around town.  Still do whatever I want and ignore the doldrums.

But what I did not anticipate is that a more fearsome sense of anxiety lurked around the corner of my return.  A one-two punch to the gut that makes the hardened pit of returning to work life seem like a game of patty-cake with your two-year-old niece.

I'll begin with the first pang.  Imagine being surrounded by undying love and support for two weeks straight.  Not simply some tangential love that you know always exists, but actually feeling it, seeing it, and touching it.  Feeling the embrace of your parents that you haven't felt in close to a year.  The look in their eye when you say something that you know they are proud to hear.  A look and a feeling that can't be replicated via Skype, no matter how hard our scientists and engineers try to put our lives online.  Imagine all this love that you anticipate as you walk out of customs at Heathrow; the thrill of seeing your mother giddy as a, well, mother who hasn't seen her daughter in nearly a year.  And then contrast that with the feeling of walking out of customs at O'Hare International Airport 12 days later.  A long flight that you can still feel in your legs 3 hours later.  Your hair is greasy - not seeing a point in showering that morning.  And you walk out of customs to signs of fanfare for other passengers.  The same terminal you've greeted many a visitor in the past, but now you must make your own personal walk of shame to the taxi cab line because you are too exhausted to drag your stupid suitcase all the way to the train.  It's a feeling of emptiness.  Of loneliness.  Of realizing the best things in life are fleeting.

But even worse is the moment a newly unemployed young writer walks into her apartment and realizes there truly are no more excuses.  Vacation is over.  It's time to write.  And forcing yourself to get up every morning and maintaining this amorphous schedule is probably the scariest thing I've ever faced.  Scarier than Disney World's Alien Encounter ride at 10 years old.  Scarier than pulling the ripcord on Daredevil Dive.  Scarier than getting my heartbroken.  If I fuck this up, it's not because I'm not talented (I've finally convinced myself that isn't true).  No.  If I fuck this up, it's because I didn't try my damnedest.  Failure will only happen because of laziness or fear.  If I fuck this up, I have no one to blame but myself.

Dear reader, please excuse the ramblings.  I spent about 8 hours pondering what I wanted to write (and watching "The Way Way Back" and reading "Gone Girl", and staring out the window while listening to my ipod, but who's counting?)  But dear reader, one thing I highly recommend if you ever find yourself flying over top the snowy peaks of Greenland and Northern Canada, please do yourself a favor and put down the Candy Crush, pause "White House Down", and just take it in.  Preferably while listening to some Nordic band who really knows their lyrical way around snowy atmospheres.  My drink of choice: First Aid Kit.  It is breathtaking.

The Footnotes of Our Lives

DAY FORTY-TWO: The Pauper Makes a Footnote

There's a reason reality shows typically have some sort of writer credited.  It's because reality itself isn't all that interesting.  As I sit on my couch in my pajamas at 12:40 p.m. on a Thursday, I can tell you this statement is chock-full of truth.

Time in a lifespan is relative.  It's why I can remember at four-years-old a terrifying nightmare my brother told me he had about a monkey popping a balloon and screaming at him, but I can't remember what I had for lunch one week ago today.

Though if routine has anything to say about it, odds are on the turkey sandwich's side.

Our lives are marked by moments, footnotes, and events.  It's only in retrospect that we can differentiate.  A first kiss to a 14-year-old girl on the bleachers during a football game can seem like a monumental event.  But twelve years later, after hundreds of other kisses - some meaningful, some regretful, some forgotten - that kiss loses its impact.

Is there any way that we can determine the significance of an event in the moment?  For an alcoholic, an event can be as simple as that first lonely swig of the bottle, and the comforting warmth the liquor can bring.  But it can also be an intervention, trip to the hospital, or horrific car accident that can symbolize an important life event.  Or perhaps none of these amount to much beyond extraneous bills and continuing down the path of destruction.  The thing is, we will never be able to tell in the moment what a moment means to us.

I've been going on and on about this monumental decision I made.  Whether stating it in blog form or blathering to my family at a recent wedding, I've been describing this event as the turning point in my life.  But there's no way of knowing this to be true.  On the one hand, this could be my break from the monotony of a thankless office job, and I can figure out my true calling.  On the other hand, this could be the moment my development became arrested, and I meander through life working odd jobs just to pay the bills, but never amount to much more than a common prole.

You often hear success stories where people make a pivotal decision to pursue their dreams.  I heard that Halle Berry was homeless, that J.K. Rowling took her child and escaped an abusive husband in the middle of the night, or that Elizabeth Berkley actually threw crystals on the stairwell of her rival to ensure a starring part in a Las Vegas showgirl revue.

That last one was possibly a fictionalized account.

You hear these stories, and it simply seems like some sort of footnote on that person's life.  Like it wasn't much of a struggle because, hey, look where they are now!  It's often read as such a small moment building toward the final outcome.  But I've started to imagine what those moments must have felt like.  Those decisions people are forced to make in order to make their lives better, or at least tolerable.  And even if it winds up as a footnote in an interview or on a Wikipedia entry, it meant something much larger to the person who lived that life.

But for right now, my monumental decision has passed.  I'm out of work, and I can't change that decision.  Right now, I'm just experiencing the doldrum of the day in and day out.  Attending comedy classes and rehearsals at night, but spending the majority of my days either reading about screenwriting, writing, or watching episodes of 30 Rock for inspiration.  It's not much of an interesting life at the moment, but hopefully it will go down in my history books as a little footnote on the path to greatness.

Surrogate City

DAY THIRTY-FOUR: The Pauper Says Goodbye

Family is a fluid term.  Yes, the images conjured that immediately leap to mind with the word are often the mother, father, offspring and perhaps a cute little furry creature in the corner.  We all have this family.  It's a blood relation formed the moment of conception.  But through our lives, we formulate new families as we branch on our own.

Sometimes, when your immediate family, say, moves to another country, or you move to another city; its the blood bonds that keep you together.  But their absence means that you need to supplement your familial belonging with something new.  For twenty-somethings branching into their own lives, this often means a circle of friends.  Classmates (at a school of improv), or your job.

Today I said goodbye to one of my families.

For most people, work is what we do day-to-day to receive a paycheck to support ourselves.  We do the daily grind of nine to five not necessarily out of passion for the job at hand, but because the compensation is what we need to do the things that supplement our lives.  But when you are at this supplementary life situation, you don't realize that the day-to-day drudgery actually fills most of your life.  It's simply what you do.  It's not until you leave your post that you realize you've actually formed a family with your co-workers.  You see these people more often than your biological family, your friends, or your sweet as hell kitty that nestles on your chest the moment you lay down for a binge session of "Breaking Bad" on Netflix.

But your work family is your family.  It's the people you see for an average of 40 hours a week.  Compare that to anyone else in your life.  Even a roommate can come up short.

Today I said goodbye to my work family of over two years of my life.  I've done this multiple times.  But today was different.  Today was a family I deserted for selfish reasons.  A family who loved me enough to throw me a surprise party in the conference room and share their feelings on why they would miss me, but how excited they were to see me pursuing my dreams.  These are people I have clocked in just under 5,000 hours of my life with.

The thing about work families is that most of us spend our time with them doing something we find necessary to live our "outside lives."  But we spend so much time with them during this time that we often forget to seek them out during our "off" work periods.  That doesn't diminish the relationship, but rather takes it for granted.  Like a couple hitting their seven year itch, our work families are always simply there.  So even when you've prepared for months to say goodbye, you never really realize it until the week beyond "vacation time" has passed.

Where does this leave you?

As someone who has spent most of her life moving around and adopting new families, you would think this comes easy.  A natural acceptance of life much like gaining weight and getting UTIs.  But it doesn't get easier.  It simply gets different.

It's hard right now.  And it will be hard to ensure this family lasts in my life.  But what I know right now is this: I rode my bike home from Second City tonight and saw a Skid Steer (a construction vehicle that caused the accident of a major case of ours.)  And I cried.  Why did an industrial piece of machinery force emotions out of me reminiscent of Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment"?  Because I knew I would never have to care about that piece of machinery again.

And the emotions I felt at that moment proved in me that the difficulty in saying goodbye to one family I've cherished will pale in comparison to the happiness I will feel in my new adventure.

But from the cheap seats, I say, "Goodbye my loves.  I hope we can do lunch.  And maybe we can grab a beer."