I haven’t posted on my blog in a while because I haven’t had the clarity of mind to sit down and write anything. My thoughts these days have taken on the disjointed quality of my outfits. Getting dressed in the morning or before I went out used to be a ritual of circumventing perfection. Now I’m so confused by the West Coast weather that I can’t quite bring myself to care if the outfits I’m wearing actually “work.” I have nightmarish flash-forwards of landing on a future episode of “What Not to Wear,” and all my friends are pinpointing this point in my life as the time I got so overwhelmed that I stopped caring about my appearance and simply forgot to resume caring.
It’s not just the weather that has me feeling discombobulated; it’s the drastic transition I’m in the midst of. I just moved to the Bay Area, finally ready to start my life over again. Although I’ve done a lot of writing over the past two years, I haven’t done much of anything else. I wasn’t sure which way my life should go. So I decided to take a faithful leap, and this is where I landed.
Since landing, I’ve been thinking about times in my life when I’ve made a major change like this and trying to remember if it was quite so hard as it is now. I remember when I moved to New York, fresh off the Amtrak train, getting hastily handed a set of keys by the roommate whose lease I was taking over as he rushed out the door, and dropping my suitcase in an empty bedroom as I waited for my mattress to arrive. But I don’t remember much else about what it was like when I first moved to New York, and my first month there was for the most part a blur.
“When you move to New York, all you need is a fork and a mattress,” my longtime New Yorker friend Chelsea told me. I arrived in Oakland much the same way I arrived in New York, with a couple of suitcase and a vague sense of optimism.
I don’t remember being this afraid, though, when I got to New York. My first couple of weeks here were wrought with fear. Since then, the fear and anxiety have mostly been relegated to the mornings, when I wake up with the whole day ahead of me to take on, one hurdle at a time. Or maybe all the hurdles at once.
What kind of mettle did I have as an eighteen year old when I headed off to college, or a twenty-two year old touching down in New York? I certainly had a lot less life experience, so why am I scared shitless now and have no memories of such nonstop panic in my earlier iterations?
What I have come to realize is that one of the great things about growing older is you are more invested in the things that matter. After my father passed away, the importance of family, friends, and having enough space in my head to write down my thoughts took on paramount importance. When I told people back East that I was moving out here, I was met with several rounds of “What a great adventure!” But I don’t want an adventure. I want a sense of stability and security and to be surrounded by people who love me.
So, in short, my paralyzing fear and constant striving for a new and full life has left me feeling a little inept at writing well and with focus. I want to have the clarity of mind I had before that enabled me to write something coherent in one full swoop. But everything’s changing, and I have to let it. My focus may go elsewhere for now, but I have to trust that this will all inform my writing, some day, hopefully not long from now.
I’m not going to say much of anything about the Hunger Games. It was pretty good, but I think it’s only a matter of time before Gary Ross gets slammed with criticism and a demand for a formal apology to the Association of People with Motion Sickness Disorders. Jesus Christ that movie was jumpy. I counted, and on average the camera stayed on one shot for no more than three seconds at a time, and quite often that shot ended when the camera was phsyically moved from Jennifer Lawrence’s face to, say, her hand clutching her mockingjay pin. I just wanted to scream WHO CARES WHAT’S IN HER HAND? WHY IS THE CAMERA JUMPING AROUND WHEN THEY’RE RIDING ON A FRIGGIN TRAIN?
But whatever, I took some Dramamine and got over it. The thing I was most looking forward to was seeing how badass Katniss looked shooting her bow and arrow on a scale of 1 to 10. I’ve always been a fan of the bow as a choice of weapon. It’s strategically a good idea. Why go running into the thick of things at the front lines, using up all your energy just to get sliced down once you get winded. No, it’s much smarter to chill out on the top of hill, eat a sandwich, and wait for your enemy to get close enough and then just pick them off with an arrow.
"You no like my shooting?"
It is one of my greatest desires to someday learn how to shoot a bow and arrow and to look awesome doing it. I tried once in gym class in high school. Turns out it’s a lot harder than it looks to not only make the arrow go more than twenty feet, but also just to keep it on the damn string long enough to shoot it. For some reason our school thought it was completely ok to have actual, lethal, arrows for us to practice with. They warned us to be careful because we could actually kill each other, in theory. But I guess they knew that t would take months of practice before we’d be able to shoot our arrows with enough force to kill. I probably could have hurt someone more effectively by chucking a ruler at them by the time we finished that segment.
But I digress. I would say Jennifer Lawrence was so-so on the intimidation scale with her weapon. She definitely looked more convincing than Keira Knightly did in King Arthur , even without all the tribal makeup. Keira did an interview when that movie came out and said she liked the part because apparently she had done research or something and women did fight in battle in the dark ages? Which I’m not sure is accurate? But I know if they did go to battle they probably wore more armor than this:
That's a flesh-wound waiting to happen.
But here are a few more people who outranked Jennifer in the baddassery department:
4. Hawkeye
King of the Deltoids!
Jeremy Renner made a cameo appearance in Thor in his run-up to play Hawkeye in the Avengers. I don’t know who Hawkeye or Jeremy Renner is, but this man definitely has the shoulder definition to carry off the part. I’m starting to think that’s the secret to looking cool with a bow: deltoids.
3. Geena Davis
Geena Davis
Geena Davis is only outranked by the last two guys on this list because she never actually shot a bow and arrow in a movie. BUT, she did get into the Olympics for archery, which earns her a permanent spot on my list of favorite-people ever. Plus she kicked a lot of ass in The Long Kiss Goodnight alongside Samuel L. Jackson.
"What I'm saying is, back when we first met, you were all like "Oh phooey, I burned the darn muffins." Now, you go into a bar, ten minutes later, sailors come runnin' out. What up with that?" - Samuel L. Jackson, The Long Kiss Goodnight
2. Legolas
The man can walk on snow and shoot three arrows in one second. How did they shoot that scene where he rapid-fire shoots like that without making it look like claymation.
Peekaboo.
1. Gizmo
The most underrated archer of all-time, Gizmo lit fire to something that looked like a marshmallow and shot it at the spider gremlin in the air shaft in Gremlins 2: The New Batch. It doesn’t get anymore kick ass than that.
I am writing two books at once. And by “writing” I mean I am occasionally working on finishing the one I’ve been working on for three years while meanwhile have fits of inspiration about writing something entirely different and unrelated. This was not my intention. This was not in the plan. The plan was to finish the first book over a year ago, but I’ve had so much fear surrounding just writing a simple ending, not to mention living my life in general, that it just didn’t happen.
“Okay,” I promised myself last year, sometime around December/January. “I can do this. I can hold a job and write at the same time. I’ll do it. I’ll get it done. I’ll set a deadline. By March I will have finished my manuscript.” At the time, my manuscript was mere inches away from being completed, my snowflake outline plowed through and set aside. Yet here I am, in the tail end of March a whole year later, still pushing to finish that manuscript.
I let the fear get in the way and had no taskmaster but my pride, so I managed to push off completing this project for some time. I don’t think there is anything wrong with waiting to be inspired by your muse, but the problem is your muse is a fickle bitch and she might come up with another idea for you on which to focus your energy and attention on.
So, if I might take a moment to channel Mary Catherine Gallagher style, I would like to say: “Well, my feelings would be best expressed in a description of that scene in Bridesmaids where Maya Rudolph is running across the street in that priceless couture wedding dress, desperately in search of a bathroom to relieve herself of the poisoned food-toxins trying to evacuate her large colon. She doesn’t make it to the bathroom. She doesn’t even make it across the street. Instead she sits down in the middle of the road and says something to the effect of ‘It’s happening. It happened,’ and then waves the cars in the street around her with a defeated flap of her hand.
Ok, maybe that’s a bit of an extreme metaphor, but whatever. The point is you gotta go when you gotta go. And I’m not going to apologize for spoiling that scene for anyone who hasn’t seen Bridesmaids, because I really hate, nay, I abhor poop and barf jokes and I’m really mad a Judd Apatow for insisting the screenwriters put that in there to make the movie more guy friendly. Plus, that particular part of the scene where a woman poops in a $15,000 wedding dress scarred me to no end, and I wish I had been warned that that was how the scene ended. So there.
Ah Friday. Unfortunately it is not so sweet sans the punctuation mark of Downton Abbey at 9pm on Sunday nights, now is it? If you sense mocking in my tone, you are not mistaken. Because SOME of us had to work Sunday nights this winter, and then jam all of our Downton Season 2 into a 36 hour period when we just happened to wander over to PBS and realize there was a friggin deadline before they pulled it offline! What kind of crap is that?
Do not fret, my friends. For I was not at a complete loss. I did manage to jam all but episode 6 into that 36 hour period, and then afterwards rest of the time I put salve on the wound with other British shows which I have long been dependent upon. I would like to say, for the first time out loud (sort of) that I, Kerina Pharr, am an anglophile.
This is how it all started: Gosford Park is one of my favorite movies, and as the rest of you diehard Downton fans know, it was written by the same person who created Downton Abbey. That movie is friggin genius. Hard to follow, but genius. Acutally most movies and tv shows made in Britain are hard to follow the English have a tendency to mumble and not blow things up as much as Americans like to do in movies, but their genius and enjoyability lies in their underemotion and lack of a directorial equivalent to Michael Bay.
the best version of Being Human that everyone who gets BBC America should watch. P.S. If the dude who plays Mitchell asked me to be his vampire bride I would cross over to the dark side in a heartbeat.
So last year, after moving to my sleepy hometown hamlet tucked away in the Berkshires, I found myself with a tingling affinity for all things quaint and desperately wanting to watch something set in the English countryside. But the seeds of my addiction were really planted a few years ago when I stumbled on BBC America’s broadcast of one of my favorite shows of all time, Being Human. Not the shitty American version (WHY oh WHY must we remake a perfectly good English show just so American’s don’t have to strain to understand the British accents? The end results are never good). A love of sci-fi/fantasy was my gateway drug to all things deliciously British.
So it wasn’t very long until I found myself meandering around the British selections on Netflix to try to quell my undying anglophiliac thirst. On a semi-side note, listening to British people untie the knots of a murder mystery in the most calm of manners is probably the only tried-and-true remedy for insomnia. At least it works for me. Have you ever read Beatrix Potter to a small child? It has similar narcoleptic affects.
So, whether you’re in the need for the televised equivalent of Ambien or a pick-me-up while you wait for Season 3 (Shirley MacLaine!!), I’ve assembled a few shows for you to check out to tide you over, all of which are handily available for instant streaming of at least one season on Netflix! (Or as the Brits like to call it, one series. Pip, pip).
I hope they make a Downton reference at the London Olympics. Dame Maggie Smith should be the MC. That would be FLY, yo.
If you miss… Mr. Carson
"We never should have installed those bloody bells"
Carson is the beating, curmudgeonly heart of the Abbey. You’d be lying to yourself if you said you didn’t miss him muttering curses at the newfangled contraptions they drag into his pristine domain. Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby is this century’s answer to Mr. Carson, grumbling to himself as he waddles around fictional Midsomer county solving the murders and incestuous plots that occur at an alarming rate for what you thought was just the sleepy English countryside. White people problems.
You know that beneath that supposed camaraderie with the 99%, The Earl is secretly pissed that he has to bend over backwards every weekend to kiss the asses of the help and go running after them every time they leave their posts because of some baby mama drama. “SO UNGRATEFUL! I should have listened to Mother…she always said it was impossible to get good help.” That Earl is a serial killer waiting to happen. But you don’t have to wait til Season 3 to watch him suffocate people with a plastic bag if you watch Commander (Woopsie. Belated spoiler alert). As a bonus, there’s a something very Mrs. Hughes about the Commander, who is also a woman. If anyone were to uncover the murderous plots of her employer, it would be this lady.
"I have not smiled since 1899"
If you miss….The Ladies Crawley
Lady Mary wore that dress for like the ENTIRE season. Fashion faux pax, AMIRIGHTLADIES?
I’m pretty sure the Crawley daughters have more scandals between them than any twenty-first century melodrama could muster. It’s hard to top Turks who die post coitus, shotgun weddings with Irish rebel footmen, and desperate gerophiles/stage 5 clingers (seriously, Edith, you’re not THAT dowdy). But an affair with a married and dying patient, a 9/11 mystery, and an event planner lesbian fling with the girl from Fringe and you’ll come as close as you can get to charades of the girls of Downton. Ladies, my foot.
If you miss…O’Brien
Try…The Ruth Rendell Mysteries
"I'm just not that into you." - Colin Firth in 'Master of the Moor'
OK, admittedly this one is a bit of a stretch because it’s not a series, per se, but a bunch of separate episodes which are sometimes murder mysteries and sometimes just stories about creeps being creepy. But they all have the same uniting acidic/this-just-isn’-going-to-turn-out-well, it is? quality that makes me think that they were written by the real life O’Brien who used the pen name Ruth Rendell to get her jollies off. O’Brien clearly has a lot of rage to channel, and that would lend itself to an illustrious murder-mystery writing career, especially with the likes of Thomas chain smoking and shouting over her shoulder while she writes “Make Colin Firth GAY!!”
It’s not the kind of movie you can watch without paying close attention to, but it’s worth it for the greatness that is a good old English murder mystery, plus the all star cast, and of course, Dame Maggie Smith basically playing the exact same Dowager Countess role. Here’s a quick breakdown to prove that all your favorite character/types from Downton are present in Gosford Park, except played by more famous people:
Kristin Scott Thomas playing a sluttier, goldigger version of The Countess of Grantham, and Ryan Phillipe filling in the requisite annoying American role.
Michael Gambson playing an older, crustier version of the Earl of Grantham. Plus he has the dog from As Good As it Gets. Win/win.
Emily Watson taking on the O'Brien character, except she is also sluttier.
Clive Owen playing a more delicious version of the Bates: MAN WITH A PAST character
Dame Maggie Smith playing the old lady/displaced queen of the castle character like only she can, and Kelly Macdonald taking on the hapless newbie character that is most similar to Daisy
Is it just me, or are Disney Princesses having a moment? They are all over the place. First they got photo-shopped to look real, then the Honey-Badger dude sang that song “Bonjour!” from Beauty and the Beast. There were the hipster versions decked-out in gear from Urban Outfitters, then someone created historically accurate costumes. Some twisted sister even went so far as to create very depressing victims-of-vicious-crimes Disney Princesses.
And now SNL has chimed in, and what a chime it ‘twas. The Real Housewives of Disney was not far off the mark when it comes to their depiction, because, really, what the hell happened to those girls after their happily-ever-after weddings?
I think my own recent foray into all things fabled is probably tinting my perspective. I’ve been watching a lot of the two new shows Grimm and Once Upon a Time. Both are based on fairy tales, but Once Upon a Time is an ABC production and thus with a Disney twist to it.
Once Upon a Time
I know I’m probably about 15 years older than their target audience, but I actually find this show quite charming and well done. It really turns the theme of “happily ever after” on its head as all the characters from the Disney classics and other of our favorite stories have been ripped out of their magical homeland and into our shitty reality. Snow White is single and depressed, Prince Charming is going through divorce, Cinderella is sixteen (give or take) and pregnant, and Belle fell in love with the wrong beast and somehow ended up in a mental institution. Talk about Reality Bites.
This show might be a wee bit of a downer, but even as a girl, I was always so bummed at the end of Beauty in the Beast. Bell started off as an extremely intelligent, book-smart girl who ran around in a field of wildflowers crying out, “I want adventure in the great-wide somewhere!” Even the mini-me version of myself was like “HELL YEAH!” I sympathized with her itching urge to break free of her small town life (which is why I sympathized so much with the Bonjour video). Every time I busted the VHS tape out of that childproof plastic case I was inevitably disappointed that Belle decides her great “adventure” will be to shack up in a castle with some dude who was formerly so conceited and self-centered that a enchantress felt the need to punish him by forcing him to wear a Beast-suit until someone smart enough came along and rescued him from himself.
How long could a happily-ever-after like that last? I often find myself wondering how women are supposed to balance societal expectations concerning their careers, child-rearing, and beauty regimens. So it’s believable that without further ambitions, our beloved heroines would end up as disgruntled housewives. As a counter to this awesome video, I’ve come up with a few career/life paths for the Disney Princesses to follow that I hope would make my career counselor proud.
Belle and Beast from the Disney Princesses at Prom series. Click the pic to see all the Disney Princess renditions.
Belle – Belle and Beast (seriously, what was that dude’s name? He was cuter as Beast anyway, despite the horns) vow not to marry until gay marriage is legal in all 181 [check!] countries in the U.N. With the full support of her life partner Belle teaches abroad for a year in Taiwan, then follows that with a stint in the Peace Corps. She returns to France to write a best-selling novel based on her travel experiences, which she later makes into a movie. She writes the screenplay and directs the film herself with Beast serving as financial backer/executive producer and lead grip.
artist's rendition of a real life Jasmine
Jasmine – After marrying Aladdin, founds Three Wishes ®, an international nonprofit that provides large grants to artisans in third-world countries so that they can set up manufacturing companies in their hometowns. In later life becomes an U.S. Ambassador for Peace, specifically in the Middle East.
artist's rendition of Mulan in historically accurate dress
Mulan – Has herself cryogenically frozen until she can immigrate to present day America, where she enjoys an illustrious career as a high-ranking American military officer. At the age of sixty becomes the first female/non-white/non-American born American president. Responsible for drafting a 100 year peace treaty between China and the United States and fostering a political alliance between the two super-giant nations.
Artist's rendition of fighter Tiana
Tiana – strategically promotes her new restaurant/jazz club with larger-than-life billboards featuring her hunky husband Prince Naveen biting into one of her signature beignets. The business blows up overnight, allowing her to opening up a national chain of“Tiana’s.” Becomes the highest earning Black American female, goes on to be referred to as Oprah’s heir when she founds her own cooking/home-styling magazine and stars on her own daily cooking show.
Artist's rendition of hipster Mulan, Rapunzel, Anastasia and Aurora
Rapunzel and Cinderella – after suffering through messy divorces, the blonde princesses join forces and start a line of unique hair salons that allow their patrons to shop for shoes and other boutique clothes and accessories while they are getting their hair and nails done. Become Fortune 500 company owners within a year and two of the highest earning female CEO’s, just behind Tiana.
artist's rendition of Seven Deadly Sins Princesses. Snow White is Gluttony
Snow White – after marrying her prince, Snow goes to law school. Graduating top of her class at Enchanted Kingdom Law, Snow builds a stellar career as a District Attorney and tireless child advocate. When she finally retires, she adopts seven children from seven different foreign countries, giving each their own dwarf manny.
I just read a really great article on NPR about the tough road to publication and subsequent struggles for the author of one of my favorite Sci-Fi classics and childhood reads, A Wrinkle in Time. I can say for certain that this book and the rest in the series by Madeleine L’Engle was a huge initial influence in my writing as I consider my genres of choice science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction. No other books besides D’Aulerie’s Book of Greek Myths and Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale influenced me as much as this one.
But it’s kind of serendipitous that this article came out because I was just wondering the other day how the hell this book every got published. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to explain the premise of your science-fiction book to anyone, but when you start to describe it you end up sounding high.The conversation goes something like this:
“Wow you’re writing a book, that’s so cool! What’s it about?”
“Well it’s about this future society that’s secluded from the outside world, except the outside world no loner exists but they don’t know that. So these people have lost the ability to reproduce and now they rely on parasites to do it for them….hey wait, why are your eyes glazing over?”
If explaining the plot of your book to your friends and loved ones is this hard, I can’t imagine how hard it must be to pitch a science fiction book to a publisher. And according to NPR, it was:
L’Engle’s granddaughter, Charlotte Jones Voiklis, describes the publishers’ befuddlement to All Things Considered host Melissa Block: “Was it for adults, was it for children? What is this, science fiction? Oh, I know what science fiction is, but there aren’t female protagonists in science fiction. Are you sure you want to talk about good and evil — isn’t that a little bit philosophical? Can’t you just cut that part out?”
Despite considerable misgivings, Farrar, Straus and Giroux bought the book. They sent it to an outside reader, who called it “the worst book I have ever read.” The book’s editor admitted it was “distinctly odd” but conceded: “I for one believe that the capabilities of young readers are greatly underestimated.”
His faith in young readers paid off. There are currently 10 million copies of the book in print.
And even though it was so uber successful that it went on to influence generations of readers, it still got a lot of flack. “Critics have attacked its theological themes, some calling it blasphemous, others complaining it’s too religious for a children’s book.”
I just want to say thank you, Ms. L’Engle for weathering the storm and putting this book out in the world. And thank you for not underestimating the intelligence of your readers — by doing so you encouraged them to move beyond conventional boundaries. Your work was a huge inspiration to me and set a standard for all other science fiction writers.
Struggling financially is a very particular type of hardship that is equally beneficial and treacherous to the human spirit. If you happen to find yourself unemployed at any given time, you will need to master the dual art and a science of personal spending. The science part is all about budgets and living within your means, which is an inherently foreign concept to most Americans. The art is learning how to thrive even when you are significantly depleted of the building blocks of the American ego – “dollar dollar bills, y’all.”
I should have written this blog at some point last year when I was actually unemployed, or when the unemployment rate wasn’t slowly creeping downward for the first time in four years. But whatever; this still needs to be said. A few people have surfaced in my life that are new to this unemployment gig and I thought I’d put my personal experience and wisdom out there for them from someone who was professionally unemployed.
"The Price is WRONG, bitch!"
#1 Enjoy it while it lasts (the first two weeks, that is)
When I first got laid off, I freaked out. Then I took a breath, and then I got REALLY, REALLY EXCITED when I realized that for the first time since I graduated that I actually could take a break reminiscent of the summer vacations of my youth. And so I went along my merry way, imagining how much fun I was going to have sleeping in, watching The Price is Right, window shopping all day and doing basically whatever the hell I wanted, until someone who had been unemployed for the long-term said to me, “Enjoy it while you can. The first two weeks are the best.”
I took a moment to pause from my funemployment-induced glee to stop and consider what he was saying. Wait, what do you mean it’s not going to be like a non-stop summer vacation? How could it possibly not be the awesomest thing ever? I’m getting paid to basically do whatever the hell I want.
Turns out he was right. The first two weeks were the best, and everything after that was so soaked in doubt and heavily tainted with the sense of inferiority that comes with not having a job in this hyper-capitalist society. Plus there’s only so much Price is Right you can watch. Do not despair, however, just read on
If you are too depressed to put on actual pants, Pajama Pants are an alternative for the truly desperate.
#2 Put on some pants
This is a big one. While it is tempting to lounge around your house all day in pajamas (why not? They’re comfortable!), if you do it too many days in a row you will inevitably end up feeling like, a) an invalid, or, b) a homeless person. Pajamas should be reserved for sleeping, lounging around when you’re sick, and the first few days after a nasty break-up. Do not trick yourself into think it is OK not to get dressed and act like a real person just because you have no job. It is amazing the amount of confidence and competence you can glean from wearing a pair of pants that provide some sort of barrier from a windchill.
Plus, you need to go out into the world. This is important. As much as you thought your coworkers were soulless assholes whose solitary purpose was to piss you off, they did do something for you: they provided you with a sense of community. Even if they were backstabbing bitches who tried to get you fired or take the credit for your hard work, like it or not, they were your community. As social creatures we all need a sense of community to feel human and complete. So if you don’t put on pants, you’ll be less likely to run errands or go to the coffee shop and interact with actual human beings outside of your Neflix queue
#3 Learn to Be Cheap
I am constantly trying to unlearn the attitudes I adopted towards my personal finances while living in New York. There is something they pump into the air in that city that convinces tourists from Japan to buy the crappy three-inch $14.99 replicas of the staute of liberty from the bodegas in Times Square, and unfortunately, it has the same effect on the locals. It’s like how they dehydrate the air in the casinos in Vegas so you can drink and drink and never pass out, yet your judgment is impaired enough to keep you gambling.
Anyway, I really had to force myself to examine my budget, not once, not twice, but multiple times as I tried to get a grasp of this concept of money and personal wealth. I am and intuitive person, and while this helps me be creative and relate to people, it does jack shit when it comes to managing my finances. I really have no concept of the value of money, so much so that up until last year I never kept cash in my wallet because if I knew it was there I would spend it and come home with absolutely no idea what I had spent it on.
To help you become as cheap as I now am, I have made a list of things that should be considered luxuries to the unemployed person. You really have to wrap your mind around the fact that you can’t really afford these things on a regular basis if you have any hope of living hand-to-mouth or making the kind of life changes and sacrifices that often come with joblessness. Here is your list of new luxuries:
Starbucks Lattes or any other coffee you don’t make yourself
Shopping for any clothes other than socks
Gifts (make ‘em wait til Christmas)
Organic food (I know, but the shit is expensive!)
Alcohol (a great chance to experiment with sobriety)
Books (Amazon.com is an addiction. I speak from experience. Go to the library!)
Cigaettes (a great chance to experiment with not smelling like ass)
Mani/pedis or any other beauty product/regiment that costs more than $5
Going to the Movies
This list is not as big of a downer as it seems. Since being forced to be more thoughtful about my spending, I have come to realize why the show “Extreme Couponing” exists. You get a similar thrill out of getting a great deal than you do from picking up that to-die-for dress you’ve been lusting after at Antrhopologie.
#4 Don’t go back to School
Speaking of being thoughtful about your spending, please avoid this trap. Ok, maybe you shouldn’t listen to me considering I haven’t gone to graduate’s school, but I don’t intend to unless I can really afford it (i.e. get an amazing grant) or I am more than 95% certain of the career path I want to take and know for sure that the only way to get there is with a master’s degree.
School is expensive. In my opinon, it is way too expensive. Education is important, but the higher education industry has taken advantage of the perceived value of education which the baby boomer generation has instilled in its children, who are eager to please their helicopter parents. I will say right here and right now that I predict that the education industry is going to collapse the same way the housing industry did. Schools are overpricing their product and eventually, just like the homeowners who defaulted on their loans, the people who take out these loans aren’t going to be able to pay them.
There are alternatives to enrolling full time in graduate school, like internships, on-the-job experience, or my favorite, taking continuing education classes that will get you the skills you need to get your foot in the door.
#5 Don’t listen to anyone who hasn’t job-hunted since 2008
For that matter, don’t listen to anyone who has never gone been unemployed for more than three months. They won’t understand the depths of despair that come with being, what seems to them, on an endless vacation. It is murder out there. Employers are so flooded with job applications they can’t even sift through the majority of them I have applied to at least two jobs which I heard back from a year, a whole friggin year, later. One of them said no and the other one said “sorry, we’re still reviewing your application.” Do you see now how hard it is?
When you explain to people who haven’t been unemployed that you are job-hunting, they are likely to say stuff like, “Just go out there and apply for jobs!” “Network!” “Really focus!” “Go back to school!” I will tell you right now that you can do all these things and still not find a job. That’s because these people have no idea how hard it is right now to find a job regardless of your experience, skills, qualifications, or bull-dogish tenacity.
Take it from someone who spent a long period of time wading around in the pool of the 9% unemployed: the water is cold, dark, and the life rafts are few and far between. It’s not a reflection of you, it’s a reflection of the times, and those who have not suffered through the jobless ranks simply do not know what they are talking about. Don’t listen to them.
#6 Work Outside Your “Type”
sidenote: doesn't it gross you out when people date someone who could be their brother sister?
Working is a lot like dating. When you first get a new job or new boyfriend, you’re initially excited as everything is new and unexpected. They are both potentially long-term commitments that will dictate the major course of your life, regardless of how long you stick with them. Eventually the monotony sets in for both, and you are no longer charmed by the nuances of this exciting new person/job in your life, you are tortured by them.
Sometimes we limit ourselves to a certain type of guy. My friend Ann Arbor will only date men who are over six feet tall, for example. But when we limit our choices based on preconceived notions, we don’t always allow ourselves to grow in different areas, or learn about strengths and weaknesses we didn’t know we had . For example, the job I am working right now is not my dream job, but it has taught me a few things: 1) My empathy and desire to please make me kick-ass at customer service 2) everyone should be forced to work in the service industry so that they learn to have compassion people who do these necessary jobs, and 3) My brain no longer has the capacity to be sharp and functional after 10pm.
My generation has a particularly bad rap (justified or not) for feeling entitled to work only kick-ass jobs that look good on paper. But when you’re unemployed for a long time, you have to be flexible about what work you’re willing to do or you will starve to death when your unemployment eventually runs out. There is no job beneath you, just skills you have yet to master. After all, you don’t have to marry the job, just date it for a while
#7 Read Some Self-Help Books
About halfway through serving my time in the unemployment line, I had a moment of desperation that led me to type into google: “What Should I Do With My Life.” This led me to a gem of a book that was actually titled that by Po Bronson. The book really heartened me and broke down this idea I had that everyone else who every lived was catapaulting themselves to career super-stardom.
In the gap between jobs, one subject that you should definitely ponder is your relationship to work and jobs. In general, I think Americans have a pretty fucked up idea about what work should be. A lot of people spend too much energy getting caught up in office politics or achieving professional milestones that, frankly, don’t matter. When you die you can’t take your money or your job title with you, though you will be forever linked to this world through the people you’ve loved and left behind, and the mark you left on society. So now that you have the time, why not take the opportunity to soul-search and pinpoint the job or field you might actually have influence in, and better yet, might give you the work-life balance everyone else is at a loss to find?
Here are a few of the self-helpy career books I loved:
What Should I Do With My Life by Po Bronson
I Could Do Anything I Wanted If I Only Knew What It Was by Barbara Smith
Do What You Are by Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger (this one is fun because it will help you kill time by taking personality tests)
#8 Insist on being paid in actual dollars
This is a big one. This ideology can work against you if you can’t find a job and fall into the “working for experience” trap. The truth of the matter is the shitty economy has been hard on workers and employers alike. Employers need workers and have had to without paid employees because of financial restraints. Laws were passed in New York after the financial crash restricting employees from taking on unpaid interns to do the work that people were doing full-time. People can smell the sweet stench of desperation that is exuded only by the unemployed and dying-to-work and try to get you to work for them for “experience” instead of pay. However, these opportunities will not pay your rent, and unless the economy takes a drastic turn for the better, they may not even help you land your next job too much.
So unless you are fresh out of college and living off a fairly large trust-fund, or you are switching careers and desperate for on-the-job training, you should insist on being paid. If you’ve been in the work force at all, you have valuable experience that you should be paid to use to help benefit someone else’s company or endeavor. Regardless of how much you believe in their cause or their project, don’t let anyone take advantage of your financial hardship for their economic gain: it’s not fair.
If you do find yourself tempted by a real cool internship/work-for-free scenario, make sure you put a time limit on it. You should be up front and tell your pseudo-employer how long you are willing to work for free before you expect to get paid. I recommend going no longer than three months. If you wait any longer, you will likely end up disappointed, without that full-time job they promised you all along, and seriously set back in your search for a paying position.
#9 Cross something off your bucket list
Why not? Unless the next item on your list is “buy a jumbo jet.” If it is, skip that one and go to the next one that won’t cost you money, but will take up some time. Time is commodity, perhaps more so than money. And regardless of how guilty society will make you feel for not having more of that other commodity, money, you are rich with free time, something the employed wish they had. Go chase down a dream or a spare desire or two.
Regretsy: I turned five marked-up drafts into a fun photo shoot! How's that for DIY?
Submitting your writing is kind of like applying to all the best colleges and then waiting on pins and needles for six or more weeks til a fat envelope lands in your mailbox. Except this time there is no such thing as a “safety” but there is a good chance you’re not going to get accepted anywhere and wind up working at Dunkin’ Donuts. Not that there’s anything wrong with Dunkin’ Donuts…
There is a small corner in hell reserved for the living. It is populated only by the tortured souls of people trying to become writers, plummeting down to the depths of the underworld by the grief that comes with the editing, submitting, and ultimately, the rejection process.
The floor is lined with clumps of torn-out hair, crumpled pages, and the stains of tears. The room remains dirty until the housekeeper imps pass through and clean it all up, feeding on the mess and living off the self-scorn and debris.
If you hadn’t guessed, I’m in the middle of submitting, once again. This experience is nerve-wracking and gut-wrenching, especially if you’re not 100% confident that your stories are kick-ass and definitely going to be published or gain you entrance into the workshop you’re dying to be accepted to. I am happy with what I’ve written, but finding a home for it, or trusting it to be my entry-ticket into events is a lot harder.
Do you remember what it was like applying to college? Me neither; it’s all a stress-filled blur I’ve mostly blocked out. But I have a feeling that submitting your writing is kind of like applying to all the best schools and waiting on pins and needles for six or more weeks til a fat envelope lands in your mailbox. Except this time there is no such thing as a “safety,” but there is a good chance you’re not going to get accepted anywhere and wind up working at Dunkin’ Donuts. Not that there’s anything wrong with Dunkin’ Donuts…
The Editor-At-Large: Indiana playing the part of the draft-eating imp!
I think I’ve been avoiding my writing career for about a year now. About this time last year I was submitting a second short story for publication numerous times and had received no good news about it being accepted. I was already discouraged, then an untimely visit to a well-known MFA program landed me in the office of a grade-A Debbie Downer. Her advice was not so much advice as it was encouragement to give up all together.
The professional writers aren’t much help in times like these, either. I can’t tell you how sick I am of reading self-help books for writers. They either give you hollowed-out pep-talks that they’ve plagiarized from weight-loss manuals, or they say something incredibly discouraging that makes you not even want to bother.
The one thing I really don’t like about writers is that their ability to pick-up on nuances coupled wit their endless desire to be thought of as witty and smarter than the average bear can make them extremely discouraging. We are the critics of the world, the cobras waiting to strike; quick to notice mistakes and point out the likelihood that someone who thinks they’re hot shit is mistaken. You have to be careful who you listen to, otherwise you can get really off-track.
Now that I’ve worked up the courage to submit again, what has been buoying my heavy hopes are the few stories from brave writers who are willing to share their swings-and-misses. It’s hard to find other writers who are willing to talk about the deep pits of despair they wallowed in after receiving rejection letter number umpteen thousand. And who can blame them? Nobody wants to remember the times they doubted, they feared, they almost derailed and hopped on the next train to a career as a tax auditor. (Not that there’s anything wrong with being an auditor, but it is the exact opposite of what I would be most happy doing).
When I’m feeling blue about how long this process is taking, I think of someone named Sarah who responded in the comments to one of my favorite online advice columns, Dear Sugar. The article was advising someone who had yet to be published, and this anonymous Sarah shared one of the most humbly amusing and heartening anecdotes from a professional writer that she met that I often think of when I’m straining at any point in the writing/editing/submitting process:
“I had the privilege of talking to an award winning southern author at a conference and I asked him about his “first” novel. “What did you do with it?” I asked. “I shot it,” he said. He literally took a double barrel shotgun and blew the stuffing out of his first novel’s only manuscript. And the second one. Because they were so bad and so unsellable and they had cost him so much effort and pain. But if he hadn’t gotten through those (and a lot of short story writing) he wouldn’t have become the writer who wrote a book that actually deserved an award. (Note that getting an award and deserving it aren’t always the same.)” – Sarah
I love this anecdote. It makes me laugh long enough to pick myself off the floor, where I threw down in a temper tantrum and took the photos that are peppering this blog post, and drag my ass back to my rolling chair.
It’s a wake up call not only to other aspiring writers, but to those would-be critics, suggesting that they should be a little more sensitive when they bash other people’s art. Look, if you have an opinion, you shouldn’t feel the need to censor it. This is something I struggle with a lot as a writer, because I have something to say but often don’t feel I have the right to say it (I know, I know, don’t go there: can of worms).
But you should think twice before you shit on someone else’s art. You know why? Because there’s a 99% chance someone put a lot of hard work into that art, even if they didn’t execute it so well. And they’re trying to express themselves, or something true to the universal nature of life, which is a lot more than can be said for most schleps [sp?], who just hit the snooze, go to work, watch tv and go back into a deeper state of coma they are living in, then repeat. It’s way harder to try and make your own job than it is just to show up at it.
That’s why I really don’t blame the front mant for Bon Iver for losing his shit when that dude from Hipster Runoff called his music “dying indie rock.” Homeboy has a hit record, a grammy nomination, and he still can’t get no love; he’s got this half-rate hack over here shitting on the [seven] years of hard work he did just to get to this point of national acclaim. And for what? So Hipster Runoff can look smart to his friends? Foul on the play!
Anyway, my point is that writing or making any kind of art is hard. Becoming known for writing is even harder. Not just because it’s hard to get a friggin break, but because it’s a process. But all jokes aside, my good friend Somerville reminded me of a universal truth not too long ago when I was moaning about not having achieved one of the milestones I had assumed I would have blown past by now. “Sometimes it’s easy to forget that it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.”
And with trying to become a writer, you have to hit all those speed bumps of rejection while you’re on that journey, learning all the way or you might never get better or hone your craft. You can’t just get acclaim and praise nonstop from the get-go, or you might never actually have the chance to develop and mature as an artist. At least this is what I tell myself.
Here is a poem my Dad wrote. In honor of his birthday, I thought I would share it with you. Hope you don’t mind, Dad! But the world needs to know your awesomeness. I love you.
“Jasmine-scented, at a garden-dance The looping lights across the shadowy garden”
First in the silent office, he brings the lights
Half on, and spies a glossy magazine
Perfect teeth, perfect hair
Perfect almond eyes and unfettered glancing
From what drowsy hamlets do they hail
What modest homes, what flawed parentage?
They have risen in the world, have they not?
Far, far beyond this ecclesiastical hermitage
This one’s eyes, once-brown, now blue
All the world’s a stage
He rode with some, the same cranky buses
Watched them, smooth heads down, spare
divinity an hour
This one tall, willowy, brings a catch to the throat
The straight hair brown, the crescent eyes teal
Jasmine-scented, at a garden-dance
The looping lights across the shadowy garden
Night and a gibbous moon, white light
The heat still rising from the grass
A heartfelt tune, and the scent of gardenia in the air
All, all things, shall soon come to pass
A vagrant thought of thrushes, finches, jays;
The same meadows they frequent, the same mown earth,
The same boughs
And when spring surges through the valley
They’re here. These birds have flown
Silvering shadowy roofs and trees,
Strive in vain to beat back the night
Whose forces rove in power
First light, and only crows on the road
And here in this sprawling white space
Only desks massed high with brown folders
Tawdry bric-a-brac on the walls
The imperial hum of the disk drive
And a waste of beige carpet stretching into the darkness of the far office
Another day.
