goblinbox

In which I just checked my voice mail.

I have an interview tomorrow afternoon for a helpdesk position at a “medical facility” (probably a clinic, but maybe a hospital, I don’t know because an outsourced IT company is actually doing the hiring). The pay range is $10-$14 an hour, DOE, which is about right for Walla Walla. The two guys I’ve emailed with so far, though, seem like really great people.

The job posting suggested that people without degrees or certifications need not apply, but I applied anyway and they called me back because YOU DON’T GET COMPUTER SCIENCE DEGREES FOR TEN DOLLARS AN HOUR, not even with a high unemployment rate. Plus I also said I was studying for my CCNA, which is true in the sense that I looked at the books the other day, and false in the sense that I haven’t really studied in weeks because that shit is boring. I love networking, but they’ve somehow managed to jargonize and sterilize the material to such an extent that I can barely stay awake the length of a chapter.

It’s amazing. Really. Because I’ll read pretty much anything. I’ve read the back of my shampoo bottle at least two hundred times just because it’s there: THAT’S how boring the CCNA manual is.

But tomorrow’s helpdesk interview is not all that’s happening this week on the job front. Oh, no, it isn’t. A famous tea company also received an application from yours truly last week, and they’ve just called and left a voice mail asking if I can come in for an interview.

They’re in Tigard. Tigard, Oregon. Tigard, Oregon, the suburb of Portland. I haven’t called them back yet because my brain is broken. Sure, I could borrow my brother’s truck and zip over to PDX, crash the night at 80′s, and then pop over to Tigard and say hi to these lovely tea folks… but what if? What if what if what if? What if they actually hire me?

Li’l thought experiment here: could I actually manage a move to PDX? I don’t own a car, so I suppose I could just grab a Greyhound out there, crash with various friends, and take public transportation to work while looking for a roommate on the bulletin board at the local Whole Foods. I guess the dog could stay here with G’ma? (INSERT GUILT TRIP HERE OH GOD I LOVE YOU BINDU.) I could come back and get the rest of my shit later, once I make friends with people who have cars. Not that I have that much shit. Hell, I don’t even own dishes. Actually, I really don’t own enough shit to set up house. I have no furniture. No pots and pans. I’d probably need to rent a furnished room.

To take TriMet from, for example, 80′s house to the tea store in Tigard, though? SIXTY-SEVEN MINUTES, and it costs nearly five bucks. To be at work by 8, one would have to leave at 6:30, which means one would have to get up at… YE GODS. Early, yes, but not impossible.

I’d need enough money to survive until my first paycheck. I probably don’t have that, not since I’d be eating out and taking the bus for two to four weeks. Probably no way to borrow, either, since all my relatives are also broke.

So, um, yeah. It’s a definite maybe. Whatever that means.

Gawd. Should I call back? Or just pretend I never got the message? ARGH.

In which I flail around a bit more because apparently I’m a bit of a moron.

When you’re fourteen, you go to high school. That’s just what you do; everybody knows this. When you’re eighteen, you go to college. After college, you go to work and strive to pay off your student loans.

Eventually, you meet someone and form an alliance that involves bodily fluids at the least, and generally laundry and motor vehicle titles as well.

If you’re a breeder, you then proceed to breed. The expectation is so pervasive that you probably take a few stabs at it even if you don’t really want to. It’s just what you do.

After that it’s less clear what’s supposed to happen, or when, until the age of 65, at which point you’re supposed to be able to stop working. Beyond accumulating objects and thickening dramatically about the middle, there really isn’t a very clear action plan for people between, say, 30 and 65.

Hi! My name is Mush, I’m 41, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing!

I’m freaking out because I’m divorced with debt and no assets, and I have no job, no savings, no retirement fund, no car, no belongings, and no health insurance. A quick look at my UI paperwork confirms that I am mere months away from becoming a financial burden on my family/society. I have a lot of debt. I have no great skills or talents beyond a quick mind and a decent singing voice, and neither of those things have ever particularly made me much money.

I guess I’m supposed to be working a day job, engaging in hobbies on the side, and saving money for my old age. Sadly, I am not particularly good at this, and require many and varied vacations to keep me sane.

I am of a generation that thinks it should be happy more than responsible.

Right now, I’m having a crisis. I’m wondering if I should move so that I can find a day job… except that I don’t really want to move. Hell, I don’t even really want a day job – I want income. I have friends who fill my head with talk about doing music for a living. I have the idea that maybe I’m not finding a day job because it’s time for me to make money some other way. I have years and years of exposure to alternative ways of thinking that tell me sometimes it’s important to follow happiness rather than logic. I also live in a culture full of self-indulgent fuck-ups, so I have to consider that maybe the happiness-before-all-else approach lacks depth and creates debt. I also have a heart full of doubts about the kind of person I actually am because it seems to me that if I were the kind of person who lived in the city and gigged a lot, I’d already be doing that and clearly I’m not. I haven’t lived in a city for a looooong time. Honesty compels me to admit that I want to think of myself as a city girl, but I am not, in actual point of fact, able to call myself a city girl. Anyway, blah blah blah, I need to figure out if I’m going to stay here or go somewhere else, and to that end here are some bullet points, because who doesn’t love bullet points?

I should stay here because:

• I can afford to pay off my debt and travel. Well, when I have a job, that is.
• I’m in a good band, with good gigs lined up. I’m gaining recognition.
• I have friends, family, community.
• As the childless spinster in the family, it’s basically my duty to be here for G’ma.
• There’s no good reason to throw out the life I just spent the last three years building.

I should move away because:

• There’s no work here.
• There is greater chance of doing more music in a major metro area.
• Challenge. Pace. Exposure. Art! Culture!
• The life I’ve built here is common and can be duplicated pretty much anywhere, really.

I think that I don’t want to move away, but I can’t tell if I sincerely don’t want to move away or if I’ve convinced myself of the overwhelming difficulty of doing so and/or the likelihood of my failing to accomplish anything but abject poverty and fatigue.

In other words, am I failing to appreciate what I’ve got here? Am I romanticizing city life?

Yes, and yes. I’m playing four blues festivals this summer, and I’m meeting lots of great players as I get around more. I can get any old job if I have to, and it’s not like I’ve ever really been career-oriented anyway – if I was, I’d have a better skill set by now.

In the city I’d be bitching about loneliness, commute times, and constant poverty. Cities are fun when you vacation there; when you live there it’s high rent, late busses, and so much social churn that it takes a great deal of time and effort to meet the right people. You’re working 40 hours a week just to cover rent and utilities and your fucking debt settlement program, and you find that every week you’re a little more tired and a little less likely to go out and meet musicians. (When I lived in San Francisco, everyone I did meet, on those rare occasions when I had the energy to go out, was just trying to save up enough money to move away.) If you lack discipline, you end up buying all that cute shit you see all over the place to pad your nest with, and you never take another vacation again. Five years later, you still have no equity, no savings, and you could have stayed in your grandmother’s attic for $150 a month and at least gotten to play some blues festivals. Your boyfriend is still a stoner because all of your boyfriends are stoners, you’re like a goddamned stoner magnet, and don’t forget that wherever you go there you are.

Or maybe not. Maybe you move to the city, get a job, meet awesome people, and have a gig in a couple of months. Maybe you’re so engaged and challenged and invigorated that you don’t actually just hole up in your apartment when you’re not doing your day job, maybe you finally blossom because you have access to the things you need. Maybe you finally meet a nice vegetarian Hindu boy, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Maybe it’s rural and small town living that makes you so weird, and your gut desire to get back into the city is a real impulse and not a daydream and it’s just a goddamned shame that it’s taken you this long to even be able to seriously consider it.

Being alone means that nothing keeps me anywhere; I could try anything I wanted.

Of course, there’s the question of where. Portland? Seattle? Chicago? DC? New York? And the question of how much: I don’t have any savings right now. I could probably move to Portland on a couple hundred bucks. New York would require, what, fifteen hundred minimum? Not to mention that not all cities are created equal; after you’ve been to Chicago and New York, most left coast cities barely qualify for the description.

Except I don’t think I want to move. I want to go on an extended vacation, but I can’t afford to because I don’t have a goddamned job.

And then there are the things I know about myself: I’m not particularly driven. When I have the time, space, and resources to do stuff, I don’t do it. One can only blame lack of stimulation so much before she has to admit she’s fucking lazy by nature. Right now I’m not getting my CCNA and I’m not working out and I’m not playing guitar and I’m not writing and I’m not meditating. I didn’t do those things when I was a housewife, I didn’t do those things the last time I was unemployed and had free time, and why would I be any different somewhere else?

But there’s no work here and I need a job! I have bills to pay!

Gawd! I am having such a hard time figuring out what I want to do, and where I want to do it. I couldn’t possibly waffle any more than I am. Why do I have to be such a fucking Libra all the time?!

In which I bought treeware.

For my birthday, I quit smoking.

On my lunch hour, instead of smoking I went into the bookstore and bought myself The Eyre Affair, a book I’ve been meaning to read since it came out eight years ago.

I mean, what the hell, right? It is my birthday, after all, and at least in this format G’ma can read it when I’m done.

Then, still wanting something – namely nicotine, which I was not having – I went into Starbucks for a hot chocolate. And they gave it to me for free, since it’s my birthday! Cool, huh?

In other super awesome news, dad’s taking me (and my brother) out for a birthday dinner to T. Mac’s after work tonight. How lucky am I?

In which I tell you about my recent TOTALLY ACCIDENTAL hard left.

While I don’t have a 5-year plan [I'm sure my toilet training was as flawed as anyone's, but I have managed to avoid being completely anal], I do have a half-assed 2-year plan. Half-assed because it involves nothing more epic than getting out of debt and maybe becoming a flight attendant for cheap airfare – it’s not like it’s the most coherent 2-year Plan ever, I admit – but it did pretty much involve me being totally. fucking. single.

For at least a couple more years.

Not that I was planning to be celibate or anything, but after the marriage I have just had it with the entire concept of coupledom. The idea that it could ever be even remotely attractive to get into a situation in which another human being could have any reason to feel like it might be okay to just to call me and ask what I’m doing, let alone possibly have even mild expectations of any kind whatsoever regarding my time, inclination, affection, or fealty… well, it just made me freakin’ gag.

I’d decided that the trade-off wasn’t worth it. I’d rather be alone and give up the benefits – hah! cuddling? nagging? someone to take out the garbage? – of ‘being with’ someone in order to maintain the things I require: freedom, privacy, and total fucking autonomy… because I’m more than willing to get my own needs met but I’ll kill myself trying to meet someone else’s when they don’t mesh with what I have to give. Sure, such a situation means you gotta do everything yourself and you miss out on a few nice things, but those nice things aren’t nice enough to make it worth it. I play well alone, so fuck letting anyone think they deserve any part of me I don’t wanna give for free.

Because, you see, the truth is that I? Am an idiot. The Ex never asked me to quit gigging or doing shows or going to satsang, but I did. At first because I simply chose him above all else, and later because it seemed to make him sad if I was away all the time and I felt like I’d committed to taking him into account, but the end result was that I starved and became a creature that neither of us liked to be around… Of course there’s more to it than that – don’t even get me started on the fucking laundry baskets – but the point is that regardless of how it ended up that way, I put another’s needs first and suffered hideous consequences… and decided therefore to NOT DO IT AGAIN. At least not for a long while.

Yeah. Um.

Well, shit.

It seems I’ve met the male version of me. Dude talks as fast as I do, thinks as fast as I do, does pretty much the same thing for a living that I do, cracks me up, gets my jokes, likes the movies I like, makes perfect cocktails, swears like a longshoreman, makes love like a raunchy angel, and manages to be gender-balanced in a mirror of the way I like to think that I myself am: he’s butch without being a neanderthal and nurturing without being creepily sackless. In short, heart and groin and brain seem to all be functioning in tandem. Holy shit.

The conversations we’ve been having to a one possess for me a certain otherworldly quality, because he is pretty much always in the midst of saying something I’ve never heard an actual man say before. It’s like every imaginary guy I’ve ever controlled in my head has accidentally escaped into the real world and turned into a single person while still following the script I use in my fantasy life. It’s freaky, and not just in its own right but because of the timing, too: I keep telling him he’s a bitch for being early (“I was going to be jaded for another two years”), and he tells me to fuck off because I’m late (and since he’s 3 years older I do have to give him that one).

It makes me snot up when he says shit like, “You’re hungry? I’ll go make you some food,” and he, like me, has had such stellar taste in the past he’d never even had a decent back rub until a few days ago. We’re like rescues, cowering and abjectly grateful for even the most basic kindnesses. We’re dorking out on merely being nice to each other and if I wasn’t one of us I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near us with the way we’re lettin’ our dork flags fly. And I feel… (five points to whomever nails the lyrical reference in this sentence) like someone owes me, after the shamefully basic shit I didn’t get (I have never understood why people treat their lovers worse than they do strangers), and an offer to simply do something nice for me makes my brain stall out for 12 seconds.

So, yeah. Okay. Perhaps, on reflection, it isn’t the institution of couplehood itself so much as my inability to choose well, or maybe its just an issue of simple timing, but I find myself gacked out because I DIDN’T WANT TO DO THIS YET but it’s so easy when you’re not forcing a square peg into a round hole: I have never once edited a single thing that’s come out of my mouth with this man, NOT ONCE. And considering how fast we talk we’ve already covered three months’ worth of material and I have yet to self-edit. Humor, God, sex, past damage, personal growth, responsibility, pet peeves, embarrassing truths, secret aches: not a single thing even made him blink let alone slide off into an other topic because he simply didn’t grok what the fuck I was saying.

Long story short is that I feel feakin’ fantastic, and if I felt any less so I’d probably be freakin’ the fuck out.

And the hand-shaped bruise on my hip is pretty hawt, too. Heh.

In which I think aloud, as it were. Even though it’s actually typing. (Writing. Whatever.)

Let me admit first that I’ve never had a five-year plan. I’m the kind of creature who takes things as they come, and at any job interview where I’ve been asked, “Where do you see yourself in five years, Michelle?” I’ve always answered, “I really have no idea. I never think that far ahead.”

(I manage to get hired anyway because in spite of my blatantly wrong interview answers I give fantastic interview, you SO would not believe how articulate and friendly I can be under fire.) (Actually, I often answer interview questions totally wrong, like, “I know what I’m supposed to say here, but you seem like you’d appreciate honesty more” so blah blah blah. That way they know I know how to play the game but am choosing not to.) (Or something. ) (It works for me more often than not, at any rate.) (Moving on.)

So we’ve established that I don’t have any idea what I’ll be doing in five years. I’m more attached to a state of change than one of stability, and if I’m brutally honest, I am – or at least have been – more afraid to make statements that would later prove to make a liar of me than to have no plan at all.

So while I’ve never had a five year plan, I do have a new two year plan! This is a work in progress, of course, and these are just the basics I’ve been tossing around, but hey: it’s something. Read the rest of this entry »

In which I feel utterly fantastic, now that I’m doing something.

When I got home from work yesterday Bghead was on the porch with his laptop saying, “I just read your blog! We’re going to lose you?!” When I told Truck and Bowling Jesus that I’d decided to move to Washington, Truck said, “Good. I’m not surprised. It sucks for me, though.” When we were playing cards last night, Baby Girl said, “I’m happy for you, but I hate you. Now I’m going to have to be friends with some bimbo or something.”

My desire to move west has morphed overnight into a burning need to leave. I want out. Pronto. I’ve developed a sudden and wicked case of I Hate Fairfield Syndrome: the weather disgusts me, the bugs annoy me, it’s boring, and it’s ugly. The whole state is run down, flat, empty, and looks poor. Driving the jeep earlier today I realized that the only time Iowa really charms me is when the weather is acting like it would somewhere else.

I’ll miss my friends, of course, but the details of Iowa living have suddenly become things I desperately need a break from. I want good food, good coffee, clothes that I didn’t buy at Walmart, and the option of hanging out outdoors for more than three months out of the year without suffering from exposure. I want access to jazz instead of nothing but classic fucking rock. It’s totally backwards here, in the inbred redneck sense of the word, and aren’t I actually somewhat hipper than this? At least a little?

I can always come back when I re-remember that people in “the real world” are actually shallow, venial, soulless automatons with whom it is nearly impossible to form real, meaningful relationships. There may be nothing to do here, but the folks in this town are deep, bitches, and no doubt about it. Even our sloppy drunken rampages revolve around personal growth and deep communication. It’s awesome.

But I’ve had a surfeit of it. I’m so ready for some natural beauty! Mountains. Water that isn’t stagnant. Air that smells clean! PINE FORESTS. OCEAN. I’m about to give myself apoplexy just thinking about being somewhere else. I suddenly loathe humidity, and the summer storms this year aren’t charming – they’re just pissing me off.

In other news, my mom invited me to stop at her place in Wyoming on my way through. (She and her husband moved there a few years ago from Portland.) Then she said, “Get this far and you will be in good hands, and before the winter is over you could even get walls in the area you would be living in downstairs. Besides, {your step dad} mentioned last evening that if you got this far you could probably get a job here as they are always, and I mean always looking for computer people.”

The woman is trying to get me to move to Wyoming! WYOMING! What the hell kind of mom would do that to a daughter?

Since I’m totally into the letting the Universe decide, though, I’m going to apply for one of those jobs. And if I get it, I’ll live in Wyoming for awhile. In my mother’s basement. That’ll teach her. Heh.

In which I’ve made a decision.

House hunting has not gone well. I don’t think there’s a single 4- or 5-bedroom house for rent in the entire county, and even if there is it won’t be in the right school district.

I’ve received no follow-up offer from my ex-employer, and none of the other local jobs I’ve applied for in the past couple of months have gotten me even so much as a nibble. In fact, the only interest I’ve gotten in the past six months has been from out-of-town jobs.

Yesterday I secretly decided that I would move to Washington state at the end of September, if only I can somehow afford to get there.

Within an hour of making this tentative decision, my boss offered me more work. Right out of the blue. There was no effort on my part at all – he and I were chatting and he said he’d give me more hours if I needed them. I’ve asked for more hours before and never got them and suddenly, there they are.

So, there’s my sign, folks. I know spontaneous fucking support when I see it.

Grandma’s already offered me a spare room; all I’d need would be enough money for a tune-up and gas and motels for the three-day drive out there. Once I arrived, she’d probably feed me for a couple of weeks while I got myself employed at some trendy bistro or at the local ISP or something. Hell, I could start a computer business on the side by simply printing up some posters and business cards, ’cause it’s not like I’m not totally fucking qualified to install NIC cards and remove spyware and set up wireless LANs.

Walla Walla is another small town, true, but I love it and it’s only four hours from Portland so I could go spend weekends at my brother’s for excitement. It’s a college town. The coffee is way better. The weather is awesome. After I saved some money I could easily move back to Portland, if I wanted to.

I’d see aunts and uncles and cousins more frequently. (Sure, they’ll all insist on calling me ‘Shelly,’ but whatever. Family is always a trial.) I have the feeling I’d have more of a bug up my ass about being an actual productive member of society while living with a woman who was still bowling league, volunteering at the museum, and taking underwater aerobics into her late 70′s.

It feels good. I like it. I’m gonna do it.

Update: Now my mom’s gone and said she’d lend me a credit card to use for travel! I’ve been struggling here, but now that I’ve decided to leave I’m getting all the help I could possibly want. Wow.

Just… wow.

Next week I’ll pay off the loan I took to fix the jeep. The week after that I’ll give notice at work, and get the rest of my shit from the farm. The week after that I’ll go to grandma’s birthday – the plane ticket my aunt bought me is non-refundable so I might as well use it. The week after that I’ll come back, get the jeep tuned, and load up what little I will have decided to keep, and… leave.

I’ll probably spend a lazy week or so at my mom’s in Wyoming, and arrive back in Walla Walla on or very near my birthday, which I will choose to view as auspicious. I’ll job hunt, and live in my favorite house in the whole wide world as Halloween draws near, and watch the leaves change. I’ll be ‘home’ for the holidays.

Maybe Grandma and I will even make cranberry cordial together, like we did years ago.

In which things appear to be taking off but maybe it’s just an illusion.

First off, I have to say I’ve just about had it with the fucking humidity. I am not at all enamored with being sticky and damp all the time! I do not enjoy damp sheets! GAH! It’s like living in a giant armpit.

I did six loads of laundry this weekend. (Go me.) I still have nothing to wear.

ShadowGrl and I drove all over town this weekend looking for a house to rent. They’re all for sale, not for rent. The papers list only 1- or 2-bedroom apartments. (We did pick up a hula hoop, a badminton set, and boxed Go game for free, though, so it wasn’t a total wash.)

After house hunting we returned to my place, where my housemates were vibing badly and ShadowGrl’s ex was hanging out, so every room I entered featured people having intense conversations that stopped abruptly. After being unable to find a safe place to sit and read, I announced I was going to the little bar. While I was there, the two people I spoke with were also distraught: one’s wife had left him ten days prior; the other had cheated on her boyfriend and was waiting to be dumped.

The entire evening was emotionally exhausting. Normally I’m good with that kind of stress, but with The Curse and all, I mostly just felt kicked in the chest because everyone I spoke with was in some kind of pain.

Monday I only worked for a couple of hours because The Curse had me feeling retarded. (At least it’s been pain-free so far this time. Bonus.) Monday night I hung out with Baby Girl so we could catch up on gossip; there’s a house across the street from her place that may be available to rent. Shadow and I will have to go see it this afternoon. It would be perfect, but it’s on the market so its rentability isn’t known.

My ex-employer has practically offered me a part-time job, but they’re arguing price like I’m asking for something impossible. They seem to be grumbling about paying me the rate I was making when I left, and they also want me to be a contractor… Companies are shifting the burden of bookkeeping off to their employees by calling them contractors when they’re not, and there’s no benefit to it. Sure, they don’t have to pay unemployment or offer insurance, but contractors charge more than employees do so it ends up being the same in the end.

Plus if you’re not really a contractor and you don’t have anything to write off, you end up paying a higher tax rate. Then there’s that damn Schedule C, which is a total pain in the arse. Having been a genuine contractor in the past, I know for a fact that I don’t want to be filing as a business next April.

So, as Vuboq has pointed out, perhaps the universe is giving me my answer: it’s time to bail. I mean, I have very nearly found a house, and I’ve very nearly found a second job, but both are iffy at best and I guess I need to really want to be here to be able to find the energy to make anything work out… And since my housemates have formally asked me to move out, I can’t do nothing like I usually do.

I’m entirely too Libra for this shit.