Ran into tech and SF fashion blogger extraordinaire, Kristin Philipkoski who I met last summer at a Go Fug Yourself event! We chatted, I admitted my crush on DR and fingers crossed she passes on my sentiments to him post book signing. They’re friends you see…
Set off for the ferry, snapped Niner Red and Gold pics on the way, got wine from Jeff at The Wine Merchant and settled in on the 8:10. Wrote this entire post on my iPhone with WordPress mobile app, uploading pics and all. I am such an SF girl.
I have been searching for the right analogy to describe the contradiction displayed when a person runs for and becomes elected to public office with the stated intention of dismantling the regulations and institutions that make up the government itself (think Ronald Reagan, at times Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Scott Walker, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, the entire Tea Party, Libertarians…) I will of course report it here first because I think we are in dire need of a way to explain why that is so incredibly destructive to the people who are simply not getting that they are actually tearing themselves and their communities down in the process.
As I am going through this creative process, I am paying even closer attention than I normally do to the way writers use analogy and metaphor to express concepts and ideas, a skill I have retapped from when I was teaching. And I guess because I am so tuned in, I was profoundly affected by the way writer and blogger John Scalzi used an Ursula Le Guin story to frame his very concise description of the way adults failed to protect children in the Penn State child molestation scandal. The story describes a utopia where everyone is perfectly happy and well cared for, with the exception of one child that is kept in a miserable and disgusting solitary confinement. Each citizen is ultimately told of the child and then must make the decision whether or not to accept that their seemingly perfect existence requires the constant suffering of an innocent child. Obviously, this means that everyone who has been living there knows and has done nothing to protect the child.
This powerful and simple metaphor should give every single person who reads about the adults’ lack of action in protecting the children that were sexually abused by Jerry Sandusky the clarity to understand that all of these adults willfully chose to let a child suffer to protect their utopia that was Penn State. And yes, that includes the man at the top himself, Joe Paterno. Few things in life are black and white, almost none. The one exception: there is nothing defensible about doing the least to protect a child from being raped by an adult. Not. One. Thing.
Oh how I loathe a 28 day break in posts, because there have been some good stories to share, many were actually promised, but somewhere along the last four weeks of non-posting I allowed myself to succumb to a dip in confidence, mainly related to the onslaught of my new job, even though it is of the Dream variety. My boss asked me, “Do you feel like you’re trying to drink from a fire hose?” Yep, and there’s days I feel like a drowned rat.
Writing works on several levels for me; it is a place to express these normal human lapses, and I can often write myself out of them like a neat trick of self-therapy. Other times I am able to express more confidence here than I might in the real world, the bonus being the written confidence translates into daily life. If I write that I am a brilliant, good-doing, nine-minute mile running, stylish, man-magnet with impossibly long and shiny hair, two handsome Goldens, a tight circle of fantastic friends and family who enjoys both bacon and whisky, than who is not to cheer me on? Well sometimes there is the exhausting, devious shrew who lives in my head negating all the awesome, and before I know it, 28 days of no posts have gone by. She is beyond bothersome.
Before I let another day go by, I wanted said shrew to hear me loud and clear that I am on to her, and that because I remembered I am actually way beyond competent, quite awesome in fact, I can get my writing posted and shared thereby shutting her down for a long succession of 28-day stints. Since I also know I can’t get it all done tonight, I am going to make my partial subject list here, semi-breaking a good rule of thumb to never save it for later, but considering I have just gotten my professional mojo back, I am granting myself an exception.
My list that mostly means something to me, but is totally filled with good writerly intentions is:
Chick runners rule. Also, I am having a training plateau. But I get why. Need to fix.
Tough Mudder life lessons.
Love Songs to Me.
Beavis and Butt-head have returned, thank you Great Cornholio.
In a familiar refrain, I have been exclaiming that I have way too busy to get any writing done, due to new job, new schedules, new adjustments, new newness. And although there is more than a seed of truth to this point, it is being wildly distracted by the blossoms of exasperation, because they are so much more attractive than the roots of discipline. But also, hello, I am a human being. Totally allowed to be overwhelmed.
Skipping past the point that I intend to write about the incredible awesomeness and fun that was the Tough Mudder 2011, I am going to instead wax on about life and death and Steve Jobs and Andy Rooney. Yes, in fact, these two seemingly disparate men have much in common, if only to me.
Today, at the end of the day, right when I was about to meet my now former boss and now former colleagues for drinks overdue by two weeks, yet also, exactly on time, I read on my iPhone that Steve Jobs had passed away. I was overcome with a small chill, evident by the goosebumps all over my arms. Here was a personal, visceral reaction to hearing about the death of a man I did not know, yet by merely holding a device in my hands that he had designed and had so altered my life by enabling me to communicate with my piece of the world, I felt I did know, and as a result, felt a pang of grief at the loss. I realized that he was only 56 years old, only two years older than my ex-husband, who I have only recently really paid attention to the 14 year age difference between us as being something of a challenge (among many other things) between us. When I looked at Jobs’ death in terms of the age perspective to that of my ex, it was a dose of mortality that I have not experienced since my friend Jake died when I was 25. And when you’re 25, you still don’t believe death is real. At 40, I am totally accepting of the fact that not one of us gets out alive.
:-( sad Mac
As I rode home on the ferry tonight, with a warm whisky buzz, I remembered that I had started to pull a bunch of Jobs’ quotes right after he announced he was stepping down from his post as Apple CEO in late August. (As a reminder, that was only on August 24th). I had a lot on my mind as I was just back from a trip to San Diego where I spent much lovely, fun and at times, intense quality time with some favorite people, ran a half marathon, all while fielding the job offer which has now become my dream job. I was inspired and grounded by the Jobs’ wisdom, much of it from the now famous 2005 Stanford commencement speech, and also, wanted to share it with friends finding themselves at their own personal crossroads. Quite obviously, in the intervening seven weeks, I have not done a lot of writing and so have not shared the quotes. As I looked over them tonight, the goosebumps came back. Here’s a goodie:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
I got home, hugged the doggies, changed into p-jams, and heated some green chile stew. I ate in front of the TV remembering that I had DVR’d the Andy Rooney farewell from 60 Minutes this past Sunday night and now seemed the perfect time to bask in some cranky, curmudgeonly, old man Rooney-isms. Within moments however, I was tearing up, realizing that Rooney, at age 92 was very near death himself. Even though at his awesomely superlative age and it seemed more normal that Death would be hanging around trying to catch a late train, I realized I felt angry and sad that Death comes earlier for some and later for others. Jobs was only 56; that was right around the same age Rooney was when he got hired by 60 Minutes to do his now famous segments, which he has been doing for the last THIRTY THREE YEARS. What might Jobs have designed for us with 33 more years? At least, according to his own estimation, death brings new life and his passing has now made room for that very invention we cannot yet imagine.
I am going to leave you with Andy’s final sign off. From a middle aged iconoclast to an elderly one, these two men have given us to the tools to express, in person or by proxy, how we feel about life. And finally, because within the first 10 seconds he mentions his high school English teacher for noting he was a good writer and so he had the confidence to become one, it warms my heart and inspires my soul and validates all of my career choices and my constant, near incessant badgering of my friends that all of us can and should be what we dream the biggest dream of ourselves to be, so, I remind all of my loved ones, go do it now.
23, that’s twenty-three days have passed since my last post, because I have had a LOT going on, not the least of which was negotiating a new job salary, accepting new job, giving notice at present job, and going out from present job with a massive coordinating project but also regular busy stuff like hosting out-of-towners, celebrating several birthdays, recovering from hangovers, buying kombucha on sale, getting sore hamstring fixed, growing out my hair, babysitting my nephew, intervening on my dad’s insistence at dressing like a slob, fighting with the hummingbird feeder not feeding, cooking vats of marinara, shamelessly flirting, going to a Giants game, writing handfuls of thank you notes (which, how good are thank you notes? I <3 writing them… ), making parking maps for the new housemates at the casita, running, jumping rope, doing push-ups and oh, I don’t know, sleeping?
And yeah, the Tough Mudder is on Saturday. I am saying it now: I am walking AROUND the the Funky Monkey.
New crack, I mean nectar. Filled on 8/3/11, evening. Stay tuned for rapid abuse, I mean feeding.
There is an oily colander in my sink. My favorite sports bras are buried under an Everest of dirty laundry. Foxtails litter the entryway, just waiting to poke into the paws of my dogs. Why you ask, would one nearly OCD neat-freak be living in such squalor?
I have been without an internet connection at home since Monday. Life has ceased to be normal.
Have you ever had your internet connection interrupted without warning? Yeah, it’s a NIGHTMARE. I love my iPhone more than most sentient beings and it can do alotta lot of webbie stuff, but really, NO INTERNET CONNECTION?!?!! I am SO behind on SO much stuff, and have turned so morose I am just leaving a path of messy destruction in my wake.
I am simultaneously stamping my feet and shaking my fist in frustration, mostly because the person on whom I have to rely to get the connection back is, shall we say, ill-equipped to just fix it! My dear sweet landlord, OG Hippie Extraordinaire, really seriously does not use a computer, let alone know how to trouble shoot a wireless connection install. And the dude who lived in another unit who did run the matrix for the rest of us unceremoniously moved out on Monday (!) and took the wi-fi with him. I hate him almost more than that time he smashed my front door in with his fist in a blind rage. (Yeah, he was all kinds of awesome.)
There are other addicts living at the casita besides me and with their help I realized my own demons. Who are these drug addled beasts having loud fights outside my window, screeching and squawking trying to hoard their stash? My hummingbirds of course. Those brilliant, whimsical, magic, beautiful little feather helicopters are feeding through 12 ounces of nectar in less than a week, and only increasing their consumption! I have become the nectar pusher of Christmas Tree Hill.
I got a very funny phone call from my landlord at lunch, telling me with great excitement that he got a “booster!” (huh?) and that all will be fine, so please pop by this evening with my laptop and all will be connected. I don’t even want to get my hopes up. I really need that fix and I don’t think he’s as good a dealer as I am to the hummingbirds. We shall see. I may even start cleaning the mess.
With less than seven weeks to go to the AFC Half, I am well aware that I am under-trained at this point, yet my stubborn resistance to get my workouts higher on my priority list is all vintage procrastination. I really do place much of the blame this time on the Boredom Factor, but even that just gets to be a really lame excuse when there is a goal to be attained. At least now that I let myself admit how much the work situation has affected me, I can move past it. And there is no better way to do that than to run.
In a moment of to-do list drafting I came upon a wonderful Lewis Carroll quote from Through The Looking-Glass. It is from the Red Queen to Alice as they are playing chess. I will not go further into English teacher context shrouded quote explication mode, but since it is important to me to know something about the context of a quote before applying it to my life, I can affirm that my small amount of research allowed me to keep this one around for enjoyment and inspiration. It goes like this:
Now, here you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must at least run twice as fast as that!
I feel totally validated by the notion that when we are stuck, we are also running. But it is running in place, running in fear of change, in that hamster wheel that just keeps spinning, but going nowhere. I liken this to my Boredom Factor and that I got stuck because I got lulled into being complacent through a false sense of security. Obviously I am dealing with some business-related factors that I must wait out, but big picture, this is not the right place for me to be working or perhaps even living. So, guess what? Time to run FASTER, twice as fast in fact! I need to meet or exceed my time goal in the half-marathon in August and I need to way exceed even my greatest imagination of the perfect job that aligns my talent and skill. It is out there, and I am coming to get it, and soon. For all the naysayers and the haste makes wasters out there, yes, I agree with you on rushing-is-bad theory, but that’s not what I am doing. This increase in speed is actually an increase in awareness AND action, and that is what I have been lacking.
Here is a hamster who speeds himself up fast enough to get flipped out of his wheel. Don’t go and over-think it my human friends, yes, he goes back for more, because he is a hamster with a brain the size of pea. But see that speeding it up definitely does work to gain some perspective. (Also, how great is this video?)
A few years ago I dipped my toe into blogging and made huge mistakes, mainly in the tone of my writing. I treated the posts as if they were journal entries, which if anyone ever read my journals, would be convinced that I was an emotionally intense maniac that better not miss a dose of her meds. (This reminds me to add “burn journals” to my will… ) I remember that my good friend posted a comment noting that I seemed really raw, and that struck a chord with me. An out of tune, face-wincing squelch which meant that that much unfiltered emotion, in this case sheer rage, was not appropriate. A few months later (this was the summer of 2007) I was invited to join Facebook via a project I was working on coordinating college students and I quickly learned that too much raw emotion in a very public forum was never a good thing. I closed down the blog and began to pay very close attention to my intention and my tone.
The past few weeks I have been BORED TO THE POINT OF ANGER, mostly due to my aforementioned situation at work. I have tried to channel it into running and hiking, which does actually help. I have been out and about on dinners and drinks and happy hours and baseball games and hosting out-of-towners. I got some new clothes. My bra size is now 32DD (wtf?) and there have been no surgeries nor weight gains. I have embarked on a much needed organization project, purging files both paper and electronic, which is satisfying, but holy hell is it tedious. (Photos are next, will that be more fun?) So it is not like I have been not enjoying life, my peeps, and all that important stuff since the work slowdown.
But… the boredom has creeped the past few days. And the weather sucks. (Rained ALL DAY, here instead of my home state which is heartbreakingly parched.) The boredom has infected my extra-curricular life with lethargy. When I get home I have no energy. I feel despondent. I shut down. I turn off. I don’t run. And then, I don’t write for fear of spewing.
With the hope that it does help to be vulnerable to avoid getting unintentionally wounded later on, I decided to force myself to write this terse admission by staying very disciplined emotionally. Being vulnerable and open has backfired on me in the past, very recently in fact, and I have to fight off the torrent of self-directed criticism when I have felt rejected. But, my brain knows that this will actually work to heal my heart on the other side of the current frustrations. I will have to get through today and likely tomorrow too though, feeling inept.
My training malaise is still hanging tight, so I intend to find a way to channel my growing rage at the Congressman Anthony Weiner sex scandal to get my ass in gear. For those of you who are blissfully unaware of the latest bad behavior by a member of the US Congress, here’s a quick summary in my own words. Democrat Anthony Weiner of New York sent a picture of his erect penis bulging through his boxer briefs to a 21-year old college student who followed him on Twitter. He mistakenly sent it over his public timeline rather than as a direct message and in the time between his realization of what he did and deleting it, some crazed troll who watches the accounts of politicians which they oppose had nabbed the photo and sent it to troll-overlord Andrew Breitbart, a far right-wing gadfly who roots out left-wing mistakes and hypocrisies and then publicizes them (way to use your power for good and not evil, shithead). When confronted by the media after the Brietbart exposé, Weiner lied his ass off for TEN DAYS that he’d been hacked, etc., etc., etc. This past Monday, he held a press conference and confessed that yes, he had in fact sent the picture and even worse, weirder and MORE DISGUSTING, confessed that he has been doing this for years with at least a half dozen women. Oh, but don’t worry, I am really sorry, my wife loves me and we’re going to stay together and I plan on not resigning my seat in Congress, because I didn’t do anything illegal, just completely objectionable and possibly deviant.
Are you puking yet?
Get ready to: the media just outed the news that his wife Huma Abedin, the smart, talented, glamorous and powerhouse right-hand woman to Hillary Clinton, is pregnant.
Go ahead. Puke now. Aim your projectile vomit at the media for not staying the hell out of that very personal piece of business. I have been close to where Ms. Abedin is now and I cannot even imagine what it must be like to have the entire world know about the avalanche of cursed circumstance that has come down upon you. She should call up Sandra Bullock or Maria Shriver or the ghost of Elizabeth Edwards. Even though I didn’t agree with Hillary’s decision to stay with Bill, perhaps her counsel will offer some latent projection and she will tell her to get out.
I find myself particularly enraged with this whole mess for a number of reasons, even though I also agreed with many of the sentiments that Maureen Dowd brought up in her Op-Ed on this very topic. I want to be clear that I am not a prude nor a moralizer. I am a realist and a feminist and a mature adult. So while I understand that human beings are extraordinary at making terrible decisions that complicate their lives when if they had paused for thought for maybe 10 more seconds beforehand all would be averted, I will NEVER understand the bald-faced lying when they get caught as a result of their impulses! (Made the bad decisions, but I personally have not lied in regards to the consequences of said bad decisions. I have however, denied myself the self-respect to express true feelings in the vain hope I was not hurting another. Lessons learned, will never do again.)
Much is being made of whether or not he should resign, a charge for the “not” being led loudly by Rachel Maddow, mostly with the partisan angle that Republican Senator David Vitter was caught being a client of a madam in DC and patronized brothels in Louisiana for years (prostitution is illegal remember?), but no one, Republican or Democrat got any traction with calls for resignation, not to mention he sold his candidacy on family values and he was reelected. She is right. But for me, I still think Weiner needs to step down, because of the lying, and ironically, that we know now the personal info about his wife’s pregnancy. My thoughts on this were crystallized in this brilliant post from New Yorker writer Amy Davidson. She argues that his inability to understand that his actions, while not illegal like Vitter’s, do not properly estimate levels of risk, and isn’t that what a politician is elected to do? She writes,
That is why it is, sad to say, a matter of legitimate interest that Weiner’s wife was pregnant when he sent those tweets. It widens our sense of just how careless he is with the lives of others, particularly those of people who are more vulnerable than he is. That is good to know about a politician; it is distinct from the question of whether someone who lies to his wife will lie to the public and, I’d argue, is more important.
So, if he lies to his wife, the thinking goes, he is going to lie to his constituents. Funny, he was a co-sponsor on the legislation that I support and have been to Capitol Hill twice to lobby for. Was he just lying to us too? Imagine if the media spent the same amount of time, energy and resources to rooting out the near daily corruption scandals and collusions between our elected officials and the lobbyists and corporations who care only about money and not people? Imagine if we were not hearing about the sad and personal circumstances that Ms. Abedin now faces, but rather how if we just raised the income limit on Social Security from $106,000 to oh I don’t know, $200K, it would be funded for like another 100 years. Did you even know about the limit??
But you know all about Weiner’s peen. It’s gonna take a lot of miles for me to forget about it.
