on new year's eve, i arrived to the gym for my 12th visit to earn a $20 discount on my membership from the insurance that costs me hundreds and the lights were out, they closed early for the holiday
today, i realize it's the 29th, cutting it too close for the 4 more visits i need
both months, full of sickness and being out of town, i feel justified
but the $40 extra that costs me is, at this moment, more than my net worth
a silly detail in the grand scheme of my many months of unemployment, i know, but it makes me want to cry
and last week i sat in an office collecting primary data for a pro bono project knowing that i will probably have to borrow money from my parents again to buy groceries
WHEN is this going to be OVER?
posted by renee 5:33 PM
Friday, January 07, 2011
earth made of soil growing grass feeding
inhabitants of all persuasions each with a piece the great answer a puzzle unsolvable with so many untapped knowers tilling and becoming soil rich with ideas to feed us all silently
posted by renee 2:54 PM
Sunday, January 31, 2010
disclaimer: this is merely feverish venting and not to be taken as evidence of emotional instability
it appears to me that the first step toward gainful employment is to learn how to be fake. if i was an employer, and someone came into an interview with me prepared with perfect, succinct, canned answers to every anticipated question, and not a trace of personality or passion or thoughtfulness, i would be suspicious. i would wonder what type of a human being lived in all the empty space between those rehearsed responses. a gossip? someone who does the bare minimum, who doesn't think outside the box? someone who would be lazy / creative / whiny / eager / quick / inept / unreliable as an employee? or, if we stretch to imagine it is relevant, in their personal life? i would want to hire someone who is a good friend. someone who is fully engaged and motivated to ever improve themselves both personally and professionally. someone who is humble and teachable, but who is brave enough to speak when they have something legitimate to add to a conversation. someone with a quick mind, who has already identified her natural strengths and hones them while simultaneously pursuing opportunities to learn new skills. I would want to hire a life-long learner. someone satisfied in the moment with making the best possible contribution, but who never becomes complacent.
unfortunately, i am not an employer. and i get feedback about taking a more "formalized approach to interviewing" from people I thought I was just having a conversation with, and i know that is correct advice. if i am going to ever convince someone to hire me, i have to get better at those canned answers to anticipated standard interview questions. it is just an oral exam that does not adequately test your true knowledge. but it kills me that i can't just be myself. i do not want to learn how to be a perfect little robot interviewer. i want to be a full representation of a person. especially in situations where i know that the person i am would be great at the job in question. i want to be able to show up for a meeting with a person, as a person, and to figure out if i'm the best candidate for the job by way of questions with answers that matter, and an honest and fair evaluation of who i really am.
i just don't understand why seeming like a real person is a drawback. and today it all feels really unfair.
posted by renee 11:09 AM
Monday, January 18, 2010
it is time to begin this discipline again i have started to sense a certain amount of losing myself in the absence of chronicling the little thoughts for which this digital journal has been my canvas
my growing unfamiliarity with myself is a combination of things, i think as my poor exhausted brain has finally grown out of most of its crazy spinning i am no longer gripped by the "analysis paralysis" that caused so much trouble and stress in my adolescence but i am still not used to floating through life without prodding out the significance of every little moment and when things happen that should be significant in continuing to inform my paradigm i am suspicious that i am missing them it leaves me feeling generally somewhat clouded i also wonder if fundamental things have changed in me and gone unnoticed if my lack of analysis is something beyond maturity if it is more like complacency or defeat
or it might be less esoteric it might be more about the tension between my interests i have found music to be more compelling as a part of my life than i ever would have predicted it is my favorite passtime, my deepest connection to myself and often to others, and many days, it is my saving grace in the past year, even the past 3 months, i have had opportunities start to present themselves that i find thrilling
i want this life.
i want to know the most amazing, creative people in this world i want to collaborate with people that take seriously my art and their own and the process of melding two expressions of soul this seems to be happening. and what could happen if i accepted this as my life? and what could happen if stupid stupid money overrode the possibility of fully engaging in musical opportunities?
am i brave enough to choose it
when it happens, the tap opens to my well of creativity the depth is terrifying and the discipline required to fully open the floodgates the sacrifices required
there are songs in there i want to get out
i hope i am willing to do this
i am sure that it is worth it
posted by renee 3:50 PM
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
the way i imagine it happened
somewhere, a man woke up it was a sunday and the street was quiet he stared at the ceiling the fan wobbled, and went click click click click he closed his eyes again and listened drumming one finger on his chest with the beat his mind otherwise blank
after some time mechanically he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up just like every day the thought came and flitted away leaving nothing in the kitchen, he poured cheerios into a styrofoam bowl and skim milk heart healthy irony the thought came and flitted away
he stooped on the couch, tall, spine too lazy for good posture and ate his breakfast with a plastic spoon eyes lingering mostly on the silent dark television the fan going click click click click from the bedroom and his big toe tapping out the beat
he poured the last of the milk down the drain picked up a stray cheerio from the floor filled his trash can with the waste of morning
teeth were brushed to the rhythm of the fan old magazines on the nightstand straightened into a neat pile and with an empty backpack and the garbage he locked his deadbolt and slid the key back under the door
outside, it was september there was no one out on his street despite the invitation of sunshine to enjoy the last lingering strains of summer
he started to walk
the ATM at the gas station three blocks later told him his balance $957.80. it was dissatisfying to find that after a stack of withdrawn twenties there was still a balance a loose end
the clerk was talking on the phone to her boyfriend or something, probably and ignoring him so he started putting twenty dollar bills in the change machine until it ran out of ones and quarters
his backpack was heavy now and he walked and walked feeling the weight of it on his stooping shoulders lazy spine and stepping to the rhythm of the fan it bothered him that he forgot to turn it off and he thought of the $17.80 in the bank account but there was nothing to be done about it
i am not sure if the man ate lunch but i've been wondering it bothers me but there is nothing to be done about it
it was late afternoon by now his feet were tired, the curve of his spine was deep with the weight of the quarters the street was still quiet or maybe it wasn't. maybe he was just deaf to it. but finally he arrived to the place he had decided on weeks ago
he did not stand still looking over the cement barrier through the chain link he did not ponder his mind was blank the plan was non-negotiable now, in the late september sunday afternoon he did not stand still
he climbed and as an afterthought dropped his heavy backpack to the ground
the top of the chain link fence was not sturdy he had to catch his balance three times but got over safely ironically, the thought came and his feet reached the cement wall
and he didn't dive he didn't close his eyes and hop or step his inner ear just disconnected he turned off the ability to balance without waiting, his long body tipped away from the bridge
i think time slowed down then and everything was suddenly vibrant he could hear the sounds of the busy roads above and below him colors were brighter than he'd ever seen them he felt exhilarated and then nothing
people ran to look at his brain in bloody bits his lazy spine mangled by the car that hit him when he landed tires squealing jaws dropped
and there were children looking men and women looking before the police came and shooed everyone away
someone had to clean up the mess the waste of the afternoon after pictures were taken hose it all down he thought of that part it was the only thing that made him feel a little guilty
and the thing that bothers me most even more than the looking more than the conversations that so desperately shifted to other topics to put smiles in front of brains horrified but suddenly grateful to be in one piece
the thing that bothers me is not knowing if he ate lunch did the growl of hunger follow him? did he think "why bother?" or did he go through the motions of his last day figuring that self denial was beside the point
i don't even wonder about his reasons he wanted to make an impact to be seen seen in pieces he wanted us to understand that we, too, are made of pieces and that, in the ways we are pieces of each other there is a terrible black nothingness that provokes not anger, not desperation, not intensity but more of itself, growing to swallow up parts of us and all of him
and all the looking had something to do with acknowledging our, collective, culpability it was an apology a recognition
sir, i am sorry. i am so sorry.
posted by renee 9:44 AM
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Between March 2008 and March 2009
in airplanes, assorted rental cars, and a big blue van that's cheating death
I visited: Spokane, Seattle, Portland, the Oregon coast, Vancouver, Chicago (twice), Thunder Bay, several "Up North"s, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Detroit, NYC, Danbury, CT, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, San Jose, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Lincoln (like six times), Clive, IA, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Austin
squinting into austin springtime with fear of sunburn occasionally rising to the surface of my consciousness increasing demands on all five senses are sufficient to overwhelm the always otherwise picking apart i do, of things
instead i find a challenge in sorting through the music (see: humanity) pouring out over every doorstep on sixth street and attempting to identify the who where why of my fellow wanderers each conversation is as if with some strange species from an alternate universe and i soak it up with no mental filter (crazy, mister, you are just crazy) this strange mecca, or non-mecca a cartoon version of its own self filled with two dimensional people mouths moving jerkily weighing nothing
trudging through the tundra after my ill advised toosoon northern migration should feel familiar
but the approach to the same old door is as surreal as the rest of it for its filled-out-ness its picked-apart-ness its understand-able-ness
reminds me of the time i cried after airplane wheels touched ground in america when i realized that i could understand all the words echoing off terminal walls plastered in ads in english
the most dangerous time is the collision of reality and its exceptions for the way you relearn what it feels like to understand and what pieces you remember and forget
i want to remember fireworks on a river, reflected on glass buildings behind a band with a too-appropriate name twinkling and roaring and the odyssey toward it, droves of locals, tour hard musicians, hipsters with cash
i want to remember crazy pachyderm rv breakfast and the strange non-allure of hare krishna despite the beauty of the prophet
i want to remember opening the door to my mother's kitchen to see nine of my musical comrades camped out on the living room floor as if it wasn't an oxymoron
i wouldn't mind forgetting the large and sweaty flannel shirted fan of echo and the bunnymen although, i would remember how he laughed and how the people around me laughed when i told him he shouldn't sing along and he knew it was true
somehow i managed to avoid sunburn but the rest of it, a pile of stones to be turned over picked apart is going to take awhile to work back into this place i so far call "reality"
posted by renee 11:01 PM
