The Next Bold Move

New Site!

2011-10-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

Please follow my journey on my new blog site at:
http://lisbethprifogle.com/
I will be updating it 2-3 times weekly so stay tuned!

As always, thank you for reading,
Lisbeth

30

2011-09-14T20:21:00.000-07:00

“How old are you, 19?” my retired Navy vet landlord asks from below the balcony that’s barely big enough for two lawn chairs and an ash tray.

I followed my boyfriend out of boredom more than wanting fresh air (because it’s not fresh – it’s smoky and gross) and because I love the face he makes when he gets annoyed that I’m following him around the house. In my defense, I only follow him when I’m mid conversation – even if I’m the only one really holding the conversation and he’s paying more attention to his damn smart phone than my ramblings.

“I wish,” I shout down to Dean who is sporting a flannel shirt. He always wears flannel, which always makes me think of the men in the small Midwest town I still call home. I hardly ever see men in flannel in San Diego; besides it being completely out of style it’s never really cold enough for it. I suppose the thread barren flannel with specks of paint and tiny tears is cool enough on this unseasonably cool San Diego day.

“She’s thirty,” Brent adds, “time to turn her in for a younger model.”

I smile and even though I’ve heard his joke a million times it always makes me smile. “I remember turning 19,” I say more to myself than Brent. “That was a fun year. I was a freshman in college and had everything to look forward to in life.” I sigh perhaps a bit overly dramatic.

“Really, you’d be 19 again?” Brent asks with a look of disbelief to clash with my nostalgic daydreaming.

“In a heartbeat. Being 30 already sucks.” I hadn’t looked forward to having my big day on a Monday, but tried to stay positive during my killer workout and on my way to work. After about an hour I got an email about a meeting in 30 minutes where we were told to go home because we lost funding (I’m a DoD contractor) and log it on our time sheets as vacation time (so much for going home or anywhere far for the holidays – sorry Mom). Trying to stay positive and enjoy the day with Brent who is currently out of work as well, I left not telling anyone it was my birthday.

After Brent finishes his cigarette he goes back in and Dean goes back to whatever it was he was doing in the garage below. I am left on the smoky porch to reflect on being 30.

It’s not like me to not want to celebrate a birthday. I feel like its god’s little holiday to you, a day when the whole world should revolve around you. I have a little birthday tradition that I have done since I was probably 16. I always take my journal and write an entry reflecting on everything that happened in the last year. It’s like an end of the year Time magazine about only me. I had the whole day to do this before going over to my old apartment to have dinner with Jill, Rachael and Jackson (Rach’s dog who really does deserve to be mentioned because he sang to me – well close enough), but I didn’t. The thought of reflecting on the past year and trying to look forward to the future while not knowing about what was going on with work was just unbearable. My year started in DC. I was assisting in a wall-to-wall inventory for the reserve unit I was in and had dinner with two very dear friends, one of which helped me survive the Marines. I can’t think of anything truly remarkable that happened in the 365 + days after that. I moved in with Brent, I suppose that’s something. I started my new career as a civilian – which clearly is going great! (Please note the sarcasm if you are one of my coworkers), I spent a week in the Colorado Rockies with people I had never met before we left the Red Lion hotel on an Outward Bound bus for a week in the wilderness, but will now forever be a part of my life in ways they probably will never even know. What else? I finished the Insanity work out program, followed by Asylum, followed by Insanity/Asylum hybrid, followed by death and I’m still recovering from that last phase. I was in a wedding in NYC and it always seems notable when I make it to the city. I retaught myself to sew – well sorta – I make awesome sock monkeys and super hero capes. When I think about it 29 will go down as a rather bland year. Nothing truly life altering happened – good or bad. I didn’t graduate from anything or make some big promotion. Is this life now? Just humdrum, ordinary daily life with everyone I know popping out babies? I can almost mark the years by things I miss nowadays rather than things I experience myself – my little sister’s senior state fair marching band competition, my nephews first words, a wedding here, a recital there. As I get older I feel the distance from my family a little more each year. I suppose the excitement of travel and school and this and that kept me preoccupied before and now my life has settled into a rather dull, but comfortable existence. I always get homesick this time of year when I can’t make it home for the annual Tecumseh Lodge Labor Day Powwow followed by the harvest and chilly Indiana fall days. We actually have retarded weather in that our summer doesn’t really start until mid-August. Oh don’t worry, this strange longing for harvest moons and Indian summers will pass in January when the Midwest is snowed in for days at a time and it’s still warm enough to go to the beach in the afternoon. I always get a phone call from my mother on my birthday going over the events of my birth and how much she misses me on this particular day of the year. I think I’m a little extra homesick on my birthday every year.

I remember my very dear friend, Deb, turning 30 a few years ago. We have been friends for about 8 years now so it seemed like quite the milestone in both of our lives. I called her to wish her a happy birthday and she said, “It’s weird, I’m ending a decade. I’m ending my twenties …” then went on to highlight all the things that had happened in the past ten years. We talked about our crazy adventures and she summed it up sounding more like Carrie’s narration at the end of a Sex in the City episode than our normal ramblings. A decade. No longer twenty something. Old. Responsible. Boring. That’s how I feel tonight and you know how I know I’m no longer twenty something – it doesn’t bother me a bit to be what I used to think would be life endingly boring. The past few days I’ve thought about the friends I’ve made in the past ten years, the celebrations, sorrows, the things I missed and the things I missed them for. Thirty, AKA: old enough to know better and no longer young enough to do it anyways. After worrying about jobs and finances the past few days I’m glad I took the time to sit here and think about all the places I’ve gone, people I’ve loved, things I miss and of course everything I have to look forward to in the next decade. Well, here’s to being 30 and knowing that if it’s off to this much of a rocky start things can only get better, right?

My Epic and Wanderlust Baby Brother

2011-08-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

“Libby, I have the most epic trip ever planned,” my little brother’s voice is excited in a way that I recognize from the person I used to be … once upon a time … when I believed in epic. It’s excited in that way of believing in the impossible that only kids and retards can believe because they haven’t been pushed over the edge by life yet. I can’t even remember the last time I believed in the possible, including figuring out how to copy and paste a document into MS Word without it reformatting itself to look like text from an extra terrestrial race trying to communicate with me, and my baby brother believes in epic? How dare he be so irresponsible and illogical to even think about going on a trip in times like these without a job lined up after the end of summer? Where are our parents? Are they trying a new parenting style of NOT showing my younger two siblings financial responsibility? Why isn’t my Dad there to gently nudge my brother into the military like he did when he threatened to kick me out of the house and told me I was worthless after I graduated college? Is this the new hip way to parent? (It would explain why America has such a huge credit card problem). How completely unfair that Kyle is allowed to dream when I was forced to be practical!

I should probably slow down and give a little exposition. Kyle’s my kid brother who just graduated with a Masters degree in Math. What do you do with a Masters in Applied Mathematics? Probably the same thing you do with a Masters in Fine Arts for creative writing – work for the man. Kyle is #4 of 5 kids. He is a fellow middle child although he was the baby for five years until Becca decided to pop up out of nowhere and steal his limelight. Three years after Becca graced us with her presence our oldest sister had her first born. Our families closeness, both in age and proximity, has merged the boundaries of nephew and brother so I suppose Kyle can call himself the greatly esteemed title of “Middle Child” as well, if he must. However, I would like to add that my mother had me with the expectation of having at least one more child, so I truly am in the middle, not a faux middle that had five years of being the center of everyone’s attention because he was supposed to be the last. You might think that my older brother, #2, could be considered a middle, but he was the first male heir so don’t even think about comparing the two. Brent is also the oldest boy child and just don’t get me started on the ego this entails upon them. Disclaimer: I’m sure all of these opinions on birth order will change if I ever have kids and I’m not saying our mother or any other mother favored one child over the other. If you have children or are thinking about having children consider this walking a mile in a middle child’s shoe, because our place in the family is something we are born into, a slave to our place in the world that we are taught from day one. I’m not trying to attack anyone’s parenting just ranting about the ways of the world. Nobody else in the family will ever know what it meant to just be the middle – not the first born, first male, last male or last born. Plain and simple, middle of the road me. Not helping matters, my mother always told me that I was acting like a middle child, which really was my only entitlement in the family so I had no other choice but to run with it – and I am a marathon runner after all, so I definitely ran with it. I’ll give Kyle a little slack because his fall from center stage was probably a steep one after being the baby for so long and I don’t think my mom ever really stopped babying him (he is kind of special needs in that he is missing the file cabinet labeled “common sense.” I think it just got thrown out to make room for quantum physics or how to play bizarre African musical instruments). I love my siblings and would be completely lost in this world if it weren’t for them. Each one has pushed me to be better, taught me to be tolerant, tested my patience and made me who I am today, but the pain and torture I endured growing up is something they will never understand (mostly because they were the ones administering it). I love Kyle in a very special way. As a middle child I try to reign in my quiet competitive and jealous nature, but as a big sister I want to warn him of all my mistakes. I don’t want to watch him join the Marines thinking he’ll prove something to the world only to realize that all he’s done is show the world how stubborn a human being can be (Kyle would never survive the Marines – Air Force maybe, but they’d eat him alive in day one of OCS). I want to protect him, but at the same time I know the best teacher in life is experience. He seems so naïve in the ways of the world, so sheltered from reality by choice as much as anything and I worry when he says things like “I have the most epic trip ever planned,” because I know he hasn’t thought it through other than drawing out a map of where to go. He graduated last spring and is in that weird phase that I’m not so sure we ever really evolve from – at least I know I haven’t. I love and worry about him in that way only an older sibling who has been knocked down and kicked around by the world more than once can worry. How he’s held onto his naivety this long I’ll never understand, but I think it probably has something to do with that missing file I mentioned.

“Ok, where are you going?” I ask, curious and pissed off at the world because I hit a pothole yesterday and am therefore carless and out $800 to get it back. I’m standing outside our office building in the late afternoon sun, waiting for my boyfriend to take me to the repair shop where I can take my little piggy bank labeled “AWESOMEST VACATION EVER FUND,” hammer it open and cry as I shove the pennies and bills over to the mechanics. I know they are just trying to make a living, but do they understand that they have just taken approximately 79.4% of my will to make it through the rest of the week away? It’s only Tuesday. I really want to call the mechanics mean names, but the fact that they have managed to fix my car in one day prevents me from doing anything but being grateful for having my bug back.

“It’s going to start in Argentina …” Kyle begins to tell me his agenda.

I must interject once more to state that my awesomest vacation ever fund was to go towards a trip to either Argentina or Chile. I’m not sure that I’ve mentioned this to Kyle per se, but it has been my next big vacation destination for the last two years. Two years I’ve been waiting to have both time and money to go and now he’s going to steal my thunder once again like one of my siblings always manages to do. I’ve been obsessed with going to Argentina ever since reading “The Motorcycle Diaries” while riding in a riverboat along the Amazon River two years ago. Seriously, why doesn’t the kid just rip out my beating heart and throw it down the garbage disposal?

“In the southernmost tip of Patagonia and I’m going to travel north to Alaska and then cross the Bering Strait by boat and go to Russia.” I don’t have the heart to tell him he’s on crack quite yet so I let him continue. “Then I’m going to work my way down through Russia, Japan down towards Australia and New Zealand then back over to Nepal and see K2 and all that. . .”

The casualness of his mentioning Nepal, my fantasy vacation that I don’t plan on executing until I’m about to die because the thought of going there someday is what keeps me moving forward in life. His blasé attitude towards this part of the journey just pisses me off. What is there not enough world for him to explore? Does he have to keep picking the places that I want to go? He can’t go to Thailand or do the whirlwind European tour like all the other cliché college grads do when trying to find themselves? Why Argentina, why Nepal, why not decide you’re going to be a writer while you’re at it. I mean if you’re going to steal someone’s identity go all the way. I manage to focus on my breathing and keep myself calm even though Kyle has just taken the remaining 20.6% of will I had left to make it the remaining three days until the weekend. Now how am I going to get myself up tomorrow morning? I consider drowning myself in the San Diego River that runs behind our office, but decide to just wait on Brent who always manages to cheer me up somehow. Maybe I can find .000001% of will left somewhere deep within and drag my sorry ass out of bed in the morning still.

“It’s already been done,” I tell him with some sick pleasure that I am ashamed to admit, but would be lying if I left out of this narrative. I enjoyed each word as they leaked from my mouth like frothy poison one by one crushing his dream. I know Kyle, I’ve known him since before he was born when I would whisper all the things we would do together into mom’s belly as she watched reruns of Cheers on hot summer nights. I know Kyle has a need to be the first to do something, probably from being the fourth to do everything else in life. “Some Iraq vet either from here or England came home and had PTSD so he started in South America, traveled by foot up to Alaska, crossed the Berring Strait on foot.” After the words come out of my mouth the sick pleasure immediately turns into guilt and shame. I’m a horrible and miserable person who apparently can’t stand for others to be happy – even my own family. Thank god Brent pulls up in his Jeep or the temptation to drown myself in the river might become too overwhelming to ignore.

“Wait, you can’t do that. You can’t cross it on foot,” Kyle interrupts, excited to find the flaw and therefore being potentially the first to make this journey again because my story is clearly a fake.

“Well, if you let me finish I would tell you that he swam where he couldn’t cross over the ice.”

“What are you serious?” his voice still doubts the legitimacy of my story, but he’s starting to realize he won’t be the first nor will he be the most extreme. He was going to cross via boat.

“He made it to Russia, but then he was deported.” I hope this detail will make him realize that he hasn’t thought through the logistics of travel visas yet. Kyle has traveled significantly as a student, but if he’s serious he needs to consider the million little details someone else has always taken care of for him, like visas. As an American I think we’ve gotten so used to open borders that we forget that other countries either want to keep us out or charge us good money to let us in and with good reason.

“Where was he deported to?” he asks (I told you he was missing a file). I can hear the skepticism in his voice still.

“The moon, obviously.” There’s a pause and I can tell I’ve confused him further with my sarcasm. “His home country, dork. Last I heard he’s still trying to get a visa to go to Russia and then he’s going to continue from where he left off travelling around the entire globe on foot.”

“What? Seriously.”

Again, I feel guilty that I didn’t let him indulge in his fantasy a little longer, but someone has to tell the kid the tooth fairy aint real and apparently our parents have given up on this case.

“Kyle, I’m not saying you can’t go, but you need to study those who have done it before so you can learn how they did it, what mistakes they made and all that. Besides how the hell are you going to pay for this?”

I can almost feel him perk up on the other end of the phone as I try to get my purse, computer and bag of empty food and water containers (I eat a lot throughout the day) into the Jeep. I lean over and give Brent a kiss as Kyle starts up again like someone pulled a cord coming out the back of his neck…and he’s off.

“Well, I’m going to have a camera crew and when it gets on YouTube people are going to start following it and eventually people will just start inviting me into their homes and helping me along the way.”

I’m trying to remember a time when I ever thought I could just fly to a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language, didn’t have a return flight home (which a lot of countries require in order to give you a travel visa or let you in), and actually believed that people would just welcome me into their home and pay my way to the next country on my itinerary. Right, I’ve never thought like that. I have been invited into people’s homes while traveling and I will forever be grateful for the kindness of strangers, but I have never went into a situation that I wasn’t able to get myself out of expecting kindness.

“Kyle that’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” I tell him free from any dream crushing guilt or jealousy because I know this trip is about as likely to happen as me jumping in the disgusting San Diego River (even to kill myself I wouldn’t get in that nasty water for risk of coming out radioactive with seven heads). “How are you going to pay for a camera crew or a flight to get down there?” The list of practical questions I could ask goes on forever, but I stop because I can barely hear over the engine of the Jeep and the radio and someone has walked in and stole his attention.

“No, it could work. If it went viral it could totally work, but hey Libby are you going to be around later?”

I know this line. Kyle is notorious for “calling later” and never calling. Kyle is actually the hardest person on the planet to get a hold of including villages around the world without electricity or cell phones. You can call, text, write, but good luck getting a response because he’s lost his phone, the charger, broke his computer or had his hands ripped off by a llama at a petting zoo and hasn’t learned to write by using his feet yet. Have I mentioned how much I love my little brother yet? I think the depth of one’s love can be measured by amount of frustration that person causes. Simply put, if you didn’t love them it these things wouldn’t frustrate you or maybe you’d just lose interest in the person causing the stress, either way Kyle is impossible to reach and I’ve learned to just accept that part of our relationship.

“Ok, that’s fine, I have to pick up my car, but I’ll just be making dinner and hanging out after that.”

We say quick goodbyes and Brent drops me off to get my car. I watch the woman clean out my savings account with one quick swipe of plastic and life seems so drastically unfair. It was a fucking pot hole for the love of god! I manage to hold on to my dignity as I walk out the door happy that I had the money in the bank for a change and didn’t have to charge it to my credit card. I get in my car and, unlike the first time I tried to drive it off the lot at the dealership not knowing how to drive manual, I triumphantly pull out of the shop’s lot. I would like to write that I rolled my windows down and let the air blow through my hair as I tasted the freedom of mobility again, but the shop is less than a block from my apartment and the electronic passenger side window is running out of umph and any day now it’s going to go down and not go back up.

This pay check I should be able to buy some super glue and put the pieces of my little bank back together and set aside some money for my own trip again. I’ve got paperwork to send into the city to possibly get some of the money back from the damage incurred by their negligence on our roads. It’ll take time, but maybe it’ll be a little unexpected bonus down the road. Maybe I’ll never see that money again, what can you do? It seems like in the last six months every time I have a little money saved up something demands the funds – from car repairs (I had to replace the fuel filter this spring and some other major work), moving expenses, stupid California vehicle registration that was over $400. Some days I just can’t win for loosing. Usually those are the days I get a phone call from Kyle declaring an epic trip or idea for a business start up or how he’s going to colonize Mars or do whatever it is Kyle gets worked up to go do with all the greatest intentions. While part of me is bitter and jealous that I’ve lost the ability to believe these impossible things another part of me wants him to succeed and I swear I’d give him every cent if I had it. Unfortunately, we are the middles of five. Nothing has ever been handed to us on a silver platter. We are not hotel heiresses or the offspring of Hollywood stars. We have to work and sometimes work takes everything and leaves nothing for adventure or creativity.

In college I had a professor who taught a poem that was about lobsters. Or maybe the poem wasn’t about the lobsters but he just taught it using a lobster metaphor. I don’t remember but it was something along the lines of when you pull a lobster out of boiling water the others will pull it back down in the pot. This was a metaphor for minorities and I want to say it was written by an Asian American poet, but it’s been so many years I could be remembering the professor who was an Asian American writer. I suppose the poem could span human nature in general, not just minorities. That’s the goal in writing – to create a universal experience so why limit it to minorities? I think it’s a natural instinct to pull someone down when they are following through with something we lacked the audacity to follow through with. People become mean and bitter in life and want to take that anger out on someone trying to break the chains that hold us all down – not just blacks, women, Hispanics, etc. Then again, something I didn’t see in college but wonder now is maybe the lobster is trying to protect its mate from an unknown future. I want Kyle to succeed in life and we are taught from day one that success means a degree, 9-5 job, house, white picket fence, etc. etc. Am I pulling Kyle back into the pot so he can follow the path of least resistance? Am I bringing him down in order to justify my own failure? Or am I simply trying to protect him from failing and of course possibly succeeding where I have failed? I don’t know because it’s Kyle. He’s played student for long enough and it’s time to grow up now, but at the same time if he can figure out how to escape the cook, maybe he will knock over the pot and free us all. I want him to succeed, I do. I also want to save him from my own fate. Chaining my creative energies to a boring desk job all day long to pay the bills and lifestyle I’ve enslaved myself to.

Run Kyle. Run for your life. Go to Argentina. Get out. Go now. Don’t turn back. Save yourself. We’ll miss you, but bid you well. Don’t get used to making money. Don’t acquire a taste for things. These things will close the lid tight, let the steam build up and suffocate you before you even have a chance to boil. Who cares how you’ll pay your loans back … change your name … fake your death, just get out now while you can little brother. It’s too late for me, but go before the economy collapses and chaos forces us into a police state. Go now before life settles you and it’s too hard to plan these escapes around schedules and rents and weddings and births and deaths. Just go without me and maybe one day when I’m winning for a change, I’ll come join you.

Of course Kyle never called me back that night. I haven’t heard from him since then except for a Facebook comment on my post about how I feel claustrophobic in San Diego because I can’t go west or south and really who wants to travel north towards LA?

"I think the problem you are struggling with is not dissatisfaction with San Diego, I think you are struggling with Wanderlust. I can tell because you immediately thought of the Alchemist, and because I have the same affliction."

Oh Kyle, please don't lose your wonder or wanderlust and don't ever stop believing in the possibility of epic adventures no matter what happens. Don't let them tame you. And little brother, if you break free and can't risk coming back to the kitchen to knock the pot over and save the rest of us. . . Well, we'll make it through knowing you did it. Love you.

On Compromises and Moving Again

2011-07-21T07:02:00.000-07:00

Where to start ... it's been awhile. I moved recently. It made sense to move in with my boyfriend of over two years now, since I spent most of my time at his place anyways. Now, I'm not so sure. I'm a morning person - I get up at least two hours before needing to go somewhere and I write and I work out and I do all the things I'll never get to later in the day because people are up and in my business demanding this or that from me.  The mornings are the only time when I'm focused on something solely for me - not my boss, friend, neighbor, whoever, whatever else consumes my time, just me. The last seven months I have set my alarm for 0515 and done Insanity (a workout only for the insane). It's become such a part of my routine that I look forward to the 45-60 min of intense drills that leave me on the floor wanting to puke. It makes me feel elite, not everyone can or wants to put themselves through this type of personally driven hell, but my sisters and I do it daily. Very few mornings do I wake up not wanting to work out and those mornings usually end up being the most gruelling workouts after I make it through the warm up.

It's week one of being officially moved in to the new place. I try hard to make less noise than a god damn church mouse, but I'm not a god damn church mouse I'm a klutz who likes to listen to talk radio in the morning and bang cups and throw brushes. I tiptoe around the apartment taking 15-20 minutes longer so Brent can sleep in 'til whenever (he's unemployed at the moment - looking for anything in electronics and we're willing to move if you know of any opportunities). I dry my hair in the bathroom with no mirrors or even a place to plug it in (the cord barely extends from the nearest outlet on the other side of the door), I put make up on in the dark and try to float in and out of the bedroom (in case you don't know me - I don't float I clomp). I didn't think this would be as much of a problem, but when we talked about moving in he had a job and was up in the mornings as well. Of course, life changes plans.

Yesterday, while working out, I was on my pull up bar - the type that is placed in the door frame with no screws or attachments and the weight of pulling down holds the bar in place. For over a year, I've not had a problem with this bar, but in the move I forgot this little metal clip that didn't seem to matter in the engineering (says the writer who clearly knows her engineering principles because she read the DoD engineering basic principle guidebook). I can do a few pull ups on my own, not a lot but a few. During this particular work out I have to do over a hundred (I told you insane), so I use a chair to prop up my feet. To make it harder I place the chair in front of me so my feet are straight out, not below me. This technique gives me leverage, but doesn't allow me to lift myself up using my lower body. I did one, two, three and the bar started to give. I looked up to see it coming off the door frame. There was no time to react and before I knew it I was on the ground looking up with the bar in my hands thankful it didn't crash down and break my nose as well as my back. Sometimes I think there has to be a god and he has a sick sense of humor. I jumped up and changed work out videos. I still had time to squeeze in some Tae Bo (I've been a fan of Billy since I was 15 years old). If I couldn't do upper body out of fear of the stupid pull up bar, I could still do core work since I am going to a water park on Friday and want my abs in tip top shape. It starts with body twists.  Squat down so your knees are at a 90 degree angle and twists your torso from one side to the other so your upper body is adjacent to your lower body. Now, do this for about seven minutes. Twist, twist, twist, PULL! And the collateral damage of my accident on the pull up bar surfaces. My entire neck and upper body stiffens like a tree bracing for an earthquake. "Fuck!" I whispered so not to wake anyone. "Mother fucking fucker fuck," I whisper with an intensity to match the pain but as silent as this little church mouse I'm about to find and curb stomp. I don't care what my mother tried to teach me - the act of yelling expletives does indeed relieve pain (I'm sure if I looked long enough I could find a grad school thesis explaining how the act of yelling releases endorphins somewhere, but without evidence I can tell you it does). Armed with Tiger Balm and a chiropractors number I get ready for work.

I tried to explain this incident to a few of my coworkers and boss yesterday and they laughed, which was the reaction I was going for as I told it in my most dramatic/comedic tone. I went to the chiropractor and will go back in a day or two because it still hurts this morning, but is getting significantly better.

When I woke up this morning an unfamiliar dread creeped into my body. I sat up and stretched my neck from left to right - still sore. I'm full of nervous energy from not working out yesterday and after a day of absolutely no focus on anything because this energy and pain I'm tempted to try. Do I work out and risk hurting myself more but give myself the confidence to wear a bikini on Friday or do I go back to sleep which is probably the best for my body? Well, too late for sleep since I'm up now. I decide to take advantage of this time and energy and write. I get up, make some tea, and tiptoe into the bedroom.  I turn on the computer on and dim the monitor light, plug in headphones and start typing away.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Brent rolls over and lets out an exaggerated sigh. "Can't you use your fucking laptop."

"It's broke." I whisper, feeling bad, but not bad enough to stop. My laptop is broken and his doesn't have any of my documents on it and typing on a laptop while sitting in a lazy boy is not comfortable or condusive to focus and creativity.

Another long sigh and he puts on a pair of boxers and wonders out into the living room. I sit and think about it for a minute. I guess I could read and try to finish the book about a plague that wipes out 99% of humanity and is written about the survivors (appropriately called "Survivors" by Terry Nation).  I decide to give in and let him rest and shuffle out of the room to tell him. I assume he's smoking, but find him asleep on the couch.
I guess this is the moment when a good girlfriend would go wake up her honey and tell him she's going to rearrange her life to fit his unemployed life. A good girlfriend would probably cook him breakfast before she left for work too. A good girlfriend wouldn't be as loud as a fucking elephant in the morning, but I'm just not that person. I will never be quiet and sometimes a selfish act is justified. I turned the computer monitor down, I typed as quietly as I could. I've offered him my Brookstone sleep mask I use on long flights and told him to buy earplugs, but he seems to think I'll stop running into the weights at the foot of the bed or the dresser, the desk or the closet door less once I'm settled. I guess he thinks I'll devlop super powers that allow me to see in the dark and generate heat from the palms of my hands allowing me to dry my hair without a noise machine. More than that I think he believes he'll get used to it, maybe he will but until then I can't comprormise by going to work looking like a homeless person who bathed in the San Diego River behind the office. There is just no room for compromise on my part. I will get up in the mornings to write and work out and go to work and he is going to try to sleep, bitching and grumbling every morning when I wake him up.

I know this will work itself out eventually. I don't need a lecture on how love is patient and kind and relationships require compromise and all that crap. Right now I just need to bitch because I'm awake and I have nervous energy that I can't go sweat out. My attempt to write anything positive or work on the essay I want to submit to a local anthology with a deadline at the end of the month is a moot point. In the "Artist's Way," one of the first exercises she teaches is to write three pages of negative in the morning.  Dedicate three whole pages of a journal or MS word or wherever you write to just plain old bitching. I think this is the best writing exercise ever and I need to add it to my daily regiment again. The purpose of the exercise is to write out all your self doubt, anger, frustration so you get it out of the way on those three pages and can silence the vampires that keep you from your creative works. I guess this morning it is three public pages because I feel like I need to produce something and I don't have time to do three pages and then blog afterwards.

Earlier this week, I woke Brent up while trying to apply what little make up I wear, powder and mascara if I even remember it, without poking my eyeball out and when he woke up he told me my shirt looked like a maternity shirt. When I got mad he called me a bitch. Well, who isn't a bitch in the morning when getting ready in the above mentioned atmosphere and being told you look pregnant while trying to cater to his royal pain in the ass?!

I do love him and it makes sense to live here so when I get home we'll talk. I'll apologize with a velvet dagger, "I'm sorry but mornings are my time to do the things that I want to do without the rest of the world demanding my time, patience and attention. I'm trying to be quiet but I'm not going to change my routine..."  I'll explain how after nine hours of doing technical, logistical paperwork and sitting through meetings all day I come home to cook dinner (he does the dishes if I cook and I hate dishes more than I hate cooking) and it's already 8 pm. At that point I'm exhausted and just can't turn on the creative faucet and let it flow from me like the Amazon River. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that for you non-artists folks. My faucet is on in the morning and if I don't plug the sink it all goes down the drain completely waisted. Could I train myself to work the other way? Probably if a gun was held to my head, but a gun isn't held to my head. I'm not sure if I'll be able to start getting up at 0445 instead of 0530 to write for 45 minutes before working out once I'm settled in more, but I'd like to eventually. My body has always been in tune with the natural cycle of the sun/moon. When it's dark I sleep, when the sun rises I wake. It's strange in this world of artificial lighting, cities that never sleep, and demanding careers/life, but I am an old timer and my body really is in tune with this natural life cylce.

In a relationship there will always be compromise and someone will always feel like they are giving more than the other (maybe both parties feel this way), but some things just can't give. Maybe the answer will be to get a two bedroom once he's working again. It would be a new and nice concept to have a physical room to write. Maybe I'm dreaming too big for this economy, but it is that dream that is going to get me through this transition period. We'll work it out down the road with ear plugs, making room in the living room for my computer or something else, but I'm not going to compromise my writing any longer. Growing up, I compromised my creative ambitions to study math and science in order to get a good score on the SATS to get into a good college. In college, I took creative writing 101 with Barbara Bean on a whim. She gave me permission to study it, to be a writer. "You're really good at writing," she told me after workshopping one of my pieces, "why don't you major in it?" I didn't even know you could major in creative writing at that point, but so say we all - it was decided. I declared a major at the end of my freshman year. For three years everyone told me to pick something more useful, but Professor Bean believed in me and with that one little compliment I was able to tell them to fuck off and let me be. People always seem to know how you should live your life and no idea how they should live thier own. I suppose I do the same to my siblings, I think it's only natural. After college, I had to compromise my writing to pay the bills. Literally starving in NYC and sleeping on floors and couches, I gave up my dream of being a starving artists to join the Marine Corps (huge leap, I know - maybe this is proof that worm holes exist in the universe). In the Marine Corps, I gave up writing for mission accomplishment, but continued it "as a hobby," I would say to my commanding officers.

Now, I understand that the key to compromise is balance. I, Lisbeth Mae Prifogle, will give in, but to a point drawn either in the sand or with pixie stix wrappers down the center of a dorm room. I have to go to work to pay the bills - yes. I have to be quiet in the morning becuase I don't live alone - yes. I have to give up writing either as a hobby or in a vain attempt to be a "real" writer, whatever the hell that means - no. Plain and simply, no. The world can take, I can give but I won't give up writing ever again. Sigh, but now I have to go be a logistician ......

Confessions

2011-06-08T22:08:00.000-07:00

Wow, it’s been such a long time since I’ve written anything let alone an entry on here. No journaling, no faux attempts of working on my “manuscript,” no blogging, not even the start of something that I’ll never finish, but begin with full intentions of posting, submitting, doing something amazing with. I can’t say that I’ve had writers block – that would insinuate that at some point I tried to write, but couldn’t. I haven’t even tried, unless you count work. Wow, the mere fact that I just wrote that sentence implies that I actually tried to justify work writing as creative writing. That’s really just sad.

Recently, someone asked me why a Marine with a MFA in writing was doing logistics for the DoD. I replied, “paying the bills.” Really that’s what I’m doing. It’s not the work that bothers me and it’s certainly not the people I work for that’s bothering me. It’s one of the best DoD contract companies to work for and for the first time in my working life I can say I like, respect and enjoy working for my supervisor and coworkers (and no I’m not just writing this because someone from work might read this. I really do mean it – great company and great people). What is it? What the hell is bothering me? Well, on the list of a thousand reasons a writer writes there is a bullet point with “to figure things out” written next to it. So, hopefully I can figure it out and if not hopefully someone out there who is wiser than me can fill me in on the secrets of life.

What the fuck am I doing? I asked myself this after finishing undergrad as I moved to New York, New York. I think I've asked myself the same question 14,418,534,600,000 (the national debt at the time I wrote this). When I moved to NYC I didn't really have any plans except living the poor poet’s existence that I had sung along to with Rent so many times. I would get there and live the romanticized life of a writer with a family of poor, creative friends living off their art instead of money, food or water. I was enrolled in a graduate summer course at NYU for book/magazine publishing because I was sure that was the best way to launch my writing career. After sitting through seminars and talking to book editors and freelance magazine writers I realized I don’t read magazines and I never finish any of the books I start reading so really what could I contribute to this field? I spent the first month so homesick I was physically ill at night and after class willed myself to sleep 10+ hours. Sleep has always been my way of coping with transitions. The first month I lived in Aberdeen,

Scotland

I was homesick and lost and slept as soon as I got home after class just to pass the time for the first month as well. No matter how many times I sleep away the strangeness of a transition period, I never seem to realize that in the blink of an eye the adventure will be ending with sleepless nights that I hope will never end. Some people just never learn.

I stayed in New York after the class was over. I applied to clothing stores and lit agencies, but my heart wasn’t in it. I knew it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing with my life. Every time I went in for an interview I had that sinking feeling in the bottom of your gut like when you know you’re walking down the wrong street of a foreign city, but you keep going so you don’t have to admit you’re lost. As soon as I'd leave the interview I'd exhale and like when you finally admit to yourself you're lost, I'd get that feeling like you swallowed the dog piece from the Monopoly set. I couldn't find a job, but I don't think I'd hire me either. So, I did what any self pitying college graduate would do. I moved back home and decided I was going to be a Marine.

I remember the exact moment when I knew this was my fate. I met with the officer recruiter and had all the information I needed to make my decision. Before driving back home I stopped by the coffee shop, MT Cup, on Ball State’s campus. I wrote in my Lord of the Rings themed journal, “I’m going to be a fucking Marine if it kills me.” I so badly wanted this to be what I was meant to do in the world that I trained nonstop for six months straight. I was so physically fit that after the first work out at Officer Candidate School (OCS) I was disappointed that it was so easy. Every morning I ran three miles as fast as I could down empty, gravel roads, only to have to turn around and run back at a more moderate pace. I decided I wasn’t going to OCS until I got a perfect Physical Fitness Test (PFT) which required a 70 second flex arm hang, 100 crunches in 2 minutes and 3 miles under 21 minutes (for women, 18 for men). The first time I ran three miles under 21 was on Thanksgiving. It was rainy and cold and I did it. After that it was a matter of doing it for an official time, which I did - more than once. For the few months before I left Indianapolis that didn’t even cover my expenses, but gave me time to run 6 miles and then lift weights at the recruiter’s office. Every day – rain, shine, snow, sleet, wind, hail – every fucking day I trained. I can look myself in the eye and say that I have never worked so hard for anything in my entire life. Now I wonder why? I could have worked half as hard and still made it through OCS, of course I didn't know that. I built the Marine Corps up on a pedestal so high that I'll admit now, I was disappointed. I was so sure that this is what my purpose in life that when I finally realized it wasn't I don't think I ever really recovered. I naively believed that I would make a good Marine officer, that I could make decisions that could cost men and women their lives, that I would at some point stop second guessing every decision I made down to what to eat for breakfast, that the women were treated as equals. There are some things you just can’t prepare for in life. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to share with you how hard being a woman and a Marine officer was, but it was so hard in ways that I never expected. Eventually the system wore me down. I still wonder if I made the right decision to get out, but I suppose if I stayed in I’d be debating whether or not I had made the right decision to stay in that long.

So, why am I writing this? One of my writing mentors would ask me this and tell me to figure it out and then revise the piece and just say it. Most of the time she's right, but this is just a blog and I'm just exploring my thoughts. Truth is why do we do anything? Why post confessions that I don’t find my job fulfilling on a public forum where any of my coworkers can get on and read? I don’t know. Maybe I want to get a lecture from my older brother. Today, as I was leaving the office, my boss asked why I have been leaving earlier the last couple days and if it was because I was coming in earlier? I said I was just exhausted. Truth is I have slowly left a little earlier each day and the last two days I have lost my keys, forgot my purse, or had some sort of mini-crisis in the morning making me 5 minutes later than usual. Am I subconsciously trying to get myself fired? Would that be the end of the world? Well, considering my boyfriend just put in his 3 week notice and in the headlines today a SWAT team busted some man’s door down looking for his ex-wife because she was delinquent in paying her student loans … yes it might be the end of the world. Then again I’m just “paying the bills.”

Is there more to life? I have slowly watched more and more of the amazing writers I went to school with announce a variety of publications and I’m so happy and proud of them. But, I can’t help but be a little jealous too. Not that their work is being published, but that they are doing what we all said we would do – write. I want to buy every magazine they are in, every book they put out, be supportive but instead I’ve blocked some of them on my Facebook newsfeed. I hate Facebook. Why the hell would anyone think it’s a good idea to create a forum where you can openly stalk ex’s and high school classmates with the sole intention of hopefully reassuring yourself that you are happier with your life than they are with theirs. Clearly you’re not if you need that type of validation, but we all do it. I find myself wanting to block my writer friends because it is simply too depressing to be reminded that I am failing to do what it is that I always wanted to do, but it’s not their fault – it’s mine. I take sole responsibility for my misery and I’m beginning to hate myself.

I don’t sleep my depression away anymore, probably because I’ve lived here for five years so it’s not a scary, new place where I’m isolated because I have no friends. Nope, I have friends, know what’s going on where and when. It's self inflicted isolation. Instead of going to sleep immediately after getting home to avoid facing life, I read the news. I listen to talk radio 24/7. I engross myself with the sensationalism of current affairs to distance myself from my own life. I watch zombie movies. I read post-apocalyptic graphic novels. I live in a world that I’m waiting to end. I wait for the next plague, the New World Order, the sun to die, nuclear war, anything so my dissatisfaction with life won’t matter anymore. Nobody will notice that I have given up on the hopeless dream of becoming a writer if there’s an economic collapse and no food at the grocery stores. If the world ends then literature won’t matter and neither will the potential memoirs of a random girl who was pretty, wore a uniform and spent time overseas. All the mistakes I made as a leader will be overshadowed by the bigger failures of bigger leaders. I pray that the world will end so my life will have the most basic purpose of all – survive.

If Bernadette were to read this she’d ask me again - what are you trying to say? I think I figured it out through writing. This is a confession. A confession that I’m a writer who doesn’t have writers block, just excuses – I’m tired, it was a long day at work and I don’t have the energy, I have to work out in the morning, I don’t have anything to say, I never wanted to be a writer anyways. Confessions of dissatisfaction at work, but hopes I don’t lose my job if I post this because work will always work, but I believe in the company and enjoy working with my coworkers. I need to post this. I need to admit to fellow Antiochians and my mentors that I have failed post-graduation and I need their encouragement. I need to change my life or my attitude and if I write this confession out for anyone to read I’m more likely to hold myself accountable for my actions or lack thereof. I'm writing this in hopes to remind myself that every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.

Thinking of you friend.

2010-12-28T11:33:00.000-08:00

The first time I went to a Vedanta temple with my friend Laura I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had to been to various church services, but before that day I had never even heard of Vedanta. We navigated through the surface streets of LA, neither sure where the hell we were going. Without GPS and smart phones we would have never made it to the small side street that wound up to a little patch of heaven in the middle of the busy metropolis. We parked and got out of the car, amazed by how quiet it was. You couldn’t hear the busy freeways, the honking car or sirens. We walked up to the temple on the path where her grandparents and parents had once walked and into the modest building. The ceremony had already begun and we took our place in one of the back rows. There were four other people in the pews, which were actual chairs, and those practicing the ceremony in the front of the room. I didn’t understand what they were chanting or what the ceremony meant, but I never understood Catholic Mass either. I sat and enjoyed the tranquility and watched those around me in a calm, peace with their heads bowed and their eyes closed. I decided to follow suit. I can meditate; I thought and tried to quiet my mind. Of course when you try to do a simple task it makes it nearly impossible. At first my head itched, then something outside caught my attention, a bird? A flash of light? Who knows? Then the compulsive thought, “am I doing this right? What am I supposed to be concentrating on? What are they saying?” Sometimes at the beginning of an acupuncture treatment the same thought runs on repeat through my mind. I try to remind myself that there is no right or wrong way to meditate or relax, but I can’t when I’m supposed to, maybe my mind is broken and I simply can’t be at peace on command. I’m at peace when I run or work out, during a long, familiar drive and when I’m writing, but not when I’m sitting still.

Walking back to my car that day Laura said, “I hate meditating like that. I always feel like I’m doing it wrong.” I laughed and told her I felt the exact same way.

I feel the same about grieving as I do meditating. I can’t seem to do it when it’s appropriate and I always feel like I’m doing it wrong. I must have been sick the day they taught us appropriate grieving techniques in elementary school. I haven’t lost a grandparent, parent, sibling or close friend. I see bad or horrible things on the news and I feel distant from the emotions I am supposed to be feeling. I let myself believe that nobody I love can ever die because that’s just cruel and unfair and life is already hard enough so god wouldn’t even dare taking someone away from me. I realize this is unrealistic and even childish, but if you could have held onto the belief that Santa is real for just a little bit longer, or that your babies could believe just one more year, wouldn’t you? I let myself indulge in this fantasy, because like Santa and the Easter Bunny, once I know I’ll never be able to go back.

I remember the day our friend Florian passed. She was my mother’s dear friend and I don’t think my mom thought it would upset me when she told me. I was living in New York and going to a summer graduate program at NYU. I think I had run out of money by then, or maybe it was the last week of my 30 day metrocard before I had to start walking to and from class – from Union Square to the Brooklyn Bridge. I remember I was alone when Mom called, and probably running late. My mother called and there was something in her tone that gave it away before she said the words aloud. There was the initial shock that I didn’t snap out of until one of my roommates asked if I was okay. “No,” was all I could get out before I ran out of the conference room where we had classes. I walked down to Battery City Park. I cried as crowds of people walked by, not a single one looking or asking if I was okay. I remember it was a cold June day and it was starting to rain. I was glad that this kept people out of the park. It was a weekday and people were scarcely scattered about the park I stood and stared at the Statue of Liberty, then wrote in my journal for a bit. There was a Mexican man and his son taking pictures and the father interrupted my journaling to ask if I could take a picture of both of them. He then explained how they had travelled all the way from Mexico City just to see the Statue of Liberty. I thought this was a strange pilgrimage since they weren’t American, but then I remembered all the castles and landmarks I visited in Scotland when I lived there. My eyes were probably red and my cheeks stained with tears, but this man just rambled on and on about their journey to get there. I listened, because that’s what I do when strangers want to tell me their story (and they always seem to seek me out for this task). I smiled, glad that they had made it and it meant so much to them to see Lady Liberty even though I just wanted to sit on a bench and pour my heart out in the blank pages of my journal. I was glad when they left without asking me to dinner or trying to hit on me, the man simply wanted to share their moment of joy and triumph with someone and I just happened to be the someone who was around. He wanted someone to know what that moment meant to him and I was able to hide my moment of sorrow behind his excitement.

I think about this day from time to time when something reminds me of Florian. I feel selfish for not thinking of my mother, when it was her close friend who passed. She talks about her often and I know she misses her. I feel ashamed that I didn’t try to contact her husband and children with condolences. I can remember being upset that I wasn’t living at home and couldn’t drive out to Oklahoma with my family to go to the funeral. This was the first of many events I have been too far away to attend. I wonder if someday I’ll regret living so far away. It will be seven years this summer and I still wonder if I grieved properly. Maybe I should have checked on my mother that afternoon.

Today, I opened up my email to the subject line, “Funeral.” My parents have been active members of the Tecumseh Lodge since I can remember. We have danced at the Tecumseh Labor Day Powwow every year for the last 20+ years. I get emails about member’s failing health, births, deaths, graduations and every other triumph and trial of life that they want to share with the lodge. I haven’t lived at home for ten years, and don’t always get home for the Labor Day powwow let alone for the lodge socials and other dances. I don’t usually recognize the names in the emails and delete them without reading the details, but this morning the name for the funeral notice was Jim Deer. I’m trying to remember if I saw Jim when I was home this past September for the 50th anniversary of the Labor Day powwow. Did I talk to him? Did he eat with our family over the weekend? Was he even there? As we always say, “if I knew that would be the last time …”

I didn’t know Jim any better than I knew Florian, but they both influenced my life more than they will ever know. I was extremely shy growing up, but at every dance Jim came over to our camp and asked me how I was doing and what I was learning in school. Jim lost his son after he left for the military. During off hours he was playing football with some of the guys and broke his neck. Growing up, I can remember wondering why Jim always looked a little sadder than everyone else. He lost his wife and adopted son far earlier than is fair in life, as well. Jim was a veteran and I remember watching him dance around the arena with the other veterans during the memorial songs. During Officer Candidate School (OCS), when I didn’t think I could push myself one more step, I thought of Jim and the other Veterans that I had watched through the years and kept going for them. During the Veteran’s song they danced through the arena with a humble pride, grace and unexplainable sorrow that I never quite understood until I went to war. My dad sang with Jim on the drum and I know he’ll be singing his favorite songs in heaven today and Jim will finally be at peace with his wife and sons.

I think today I will take my journal to the Vedanta temple here in San Diego. Instead of trying to sit still and meditating, wondering if I’m doing it wrong, I will take my journal and meditate my way and think of those I’ve lost and those I’m fortunate enough to still have here. Like we always do, I’ll swear I’ll try to call those I don’t see or talk to daily a little more often, even though I know I probably won’t.

Today, I miss my friends, but instead of wishing I had spent more time with them while they were here or wondering when was the last time we spoke, I will be grateful that they were part of my life at all. I’ll remind myself that grieving is like meditating, there is no right or wrong way to do it. I’ll listen for the songs from heaven, because I know Jim and Florian will be singing joyfully for us to hear and know they are doing alright.

Decisions

2010-12-06T07:57:00.000-08:00

I wanted to post an update and thank everyone for their warm thoughts and comments. I decided to drop back to the Inactive Ready Reserve (IRR) and hopefully I won't be pulled back to deploy. If I do get called back I'll go and lead Marines to the best of my ability because it is my duty. I feel like I made the right choice. I didn't do anything to get out of the deployment, they simply gave me a choice and I hope it all works out. There is still a chance that I will have to go, but that was the best I could do to keep it my choice. Now I sit and wait.

I've spent a lot of time in the last two days thinking. Thinking about my time in Iraq. Thinking about active duty. Thinking about why I joined the Marine Corps to begin with and why I went back to the reserves when I missed it. I thought about how bad some of the leadership in my prior command was and I thought about how great a few individual leaders in that command were. I sat in my office watching at the Marines and Sailors coming in and out of the office cheerfully working. I finally concluded that they deserved better. They deserve someone who's heart is in the fight. Not someone who got out for a lot of different reasons and went back to see if she made the right decision. Over the last six months, I got my answer. I put the uniform back on, this time with Captain bars. I had a better attitude, had a lot of fun and became a better Marine and leader. However, the truth remains the same - the Marine Corps will never change. The faces of the young, gung ho Marines evolve, but the Marine Corps doesn't. I can go back in six months or a year. I have two years on the IRR. There is a strong chance that I will have to deploy during that time or I can start drilling with the reserves again. As a Gunny keeps reminding me, I serve at the pleasure of the President so I am never really free. I kind of like that fact. I'm part of something for the rest of my life no matter what. A commitment I can't break, divorce or run from. I like to think that when I'm 90 and aliens invade earth I'll be pulled back to kick alien ass or that someday I'll really get to be a space Marine (although I can't figure out why Marines are always featured in sci-fi movies when there really isn't much water for amphibious tactics in space). I go back to my other job today with a heavy heart. "I did the best I could with what I had," I tell myself. "It was the right decision for you, today." Still, I wonder if I did the right thing.

Life

2010-12-05T06:28:00.001-08:00

The funny thing about life is it’s hardly funny at all. You have to look for the humor. You have to learn to laugh at the things that aren’t funny because it’s never fair, it’s never logical and it’s never easy.

I have a choice. I can leave. I spend at least five minutes of everyday dreaming recklessly leaving without any intentions to actually do so. Or I can stay. I have been trying to redefine my comfort zone lately so staying would give me that opportunity. Think about it I’m told and then I leave the office with a heavy heart and mind and sit down in my own office to make a decision. I write out a list of pros/cons because that is how we’re told to make a good decision. The funny thing is I’ve made these lists before and I’m sure I’ll make them again, but I never go with the logical choice of the one that has the most bullet points under its header. Sometimes I flip a coin and other times I just blurt out what I want to do while trying to feign ponderance so it appears that I have made a logical, sound decision. In reality, it’s much easier. I listen to myself. We always know what we want to do, it’s just a matter of figuring out if we can or should do it. It’s not always plausible, but where there’s a will there’s a way. Usually financing needs to be taken into account, family and friends, jobs, responsibilities. We can never just get up and leave because of all the things we are attached to like our comfort zone, which is called that for a reason.

My list goes something like this:

Pros:

-Money (tax free, that might give away what this decision is)

-Pride and honor

-Adventure

-Time to take online classes and enough time to earn another degree? Do I really need another piece of paper saying I had the patience to do so?

-Vacation at the end – I could go back to the jungle

Cons:

-400 days away

-Just started a new job in October, don’t want to be gone for a year

-400 days … didn’t you read that!?!

-Wearing a uniform for 400 days.

-Hair product build up and breakage from pulling hair back (yes this is something to take into consideration)

-Pride – I signed a contract and still feel an obligation to fill it even if I don’t believe in most of the circumstances.

-Four hundred fucking days!

I want to stay. I want my relationship to work and I want to go home in March to see Les Miserables with my sisters and mother. I want go somewhere over Memorial Day – maybe camping at the Grand Canyon? I want to celebrate the Fourth of July, I want to learn my job and do well at it, I want I want I want. At the same time, I signed a contract. I have an obligation to fill. I need the money. I need I should I could. So, what do I do? There’s also the risk that if my status changes I could get called back for an even longer or worse deployment. It’s a gamble either way and as we all know, in gambling the house always wins. What do I do? Will the US still be standing in a year? Can I afford to leave for an entire year? Can I afford not to? Fuck. I hate this. I hate trying to make a logical decision based on a system that isn’t rational. This is Russian roulette and I have to decide take my turn now or wait until later to see if time runs out before my number comes up again. How do you laugh at that? How do you laugh when the big guy in the sky is saying fuck you? You say, “Wow, big news and I haven’t even had coffee yet,” followed by nervous laughter because you know it’s your turn to draw the proverbial short stick. You go home and tell your boyfriend the news and wait for his response. You make jokes that god hates you and blame some made up deity for your problems because that’s easier than the reality that it’s all random. You hide the fact that you don’t want to go now or later because it makes you look like a bad Marine. You cry when nobody is looking and throw yourself a pity party because nobody else will. If someone catches you, you tell them we don’t sustainably grow chocolate and you’re really upset that we won’t have any of this delectable treat in twenty years. You scream obscenities to nobody as you drive home furiously. Finally you pray, you pray and you hope more than anything in the world that you were wrong about all your conclusions of god. You hope he/she/it/they are good, kind and reasonable and they’ll help you out just this once.

A therapist once told me I can’t second-guess myself. I just have to make a decision to the best of my ability at the time and live with it. No need for regret, I made the best decision with the information and tools that I had at the time. I can’t change what has been done. She agreed and told me nobody is perfect and I would have to learn to live with this fact.

Today I’ll make a decision. I won’t second-guess myself no matter how many Marines tell me to go or not to go. When other officers say, “I hate to see officers leave, especially when they have so much potential,” I’ll say thanks, but it’s my decision and it’s what’s right for me. This is my decision to make with the information I have today, not all the what ifs of tomorrow or the next day or the next ten years. I will not let pride get in the way of what I want in life. I will not let false promises fool me this time around. I will not feel bad for making a decision that is best for me, not the Marine Corps. Yes, today I will make a decision and I will pray to every idea of god, fate, randomosity in the world that this will remain my decision to make, because we all know with the Marines they make it look like your decision, but really they do what they want.

Bring on the Apocalypse

2010-09-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

I recently became obsessed with the apocalypse. It's been something I've been interested in at other times in life. I have always loved end of the world (especially Kevin Costner post apocalyptic flicks) and zombie movies (I'm very anxiously awaiting Resident Evil 4), but recently with the economy in the dumps, questionable wars raging on, and my own life situation (soon to be unemployed again), the obsession of movies has turned into an obsession of awaiting. I've started to dive into all the books I should have, but never read before, 1984, Blindness, Brave New World, The Postman, World War Z, to name a few currently sitting on my "to read" shelf. I am catching up on all the post apocalyptic movies I somehow missed. The difference now is I watch, read and study these circumstances to mentally prepare myself. Of course people think I'm crazy. A "doomsdayer," a "gloom and doomer" so I've been called. Is this what modern technology and society has done to us? Killed the basic instinct for survival. Is fight or flight instinct now sit and die? During the Great Depression 90% of Americans were self sufficient. I don't even think 9% of Americans could become self sufficient in a time of crisis today. I'm sorry, but if Paris Hilton had to fend for herself to get food, shelter and water my money is that she would sit on the side of the road and give up along with a lot of other people. So, am I really that far off the scale of normality to prepare myself for such incidences? Yes, a zombie or vampire virus released to the public to spread world wide is unlikely, but what can we learn from these movies? The modern day warrior plays video games and watches movies to prepare for war, is it so weird to read 1984 and take into account that we have the technology and in most cases have already been set up for a Big Brother take over? There are now video cameras at most traffic intersections and as we transfer over to e-books are we creating the power to erase and alter history?

Sure I might be taking things to the extreme when I daydream about building a bomb shelter in the middle of the desert, but if there was an earthquake in California that disrupted the flow of food to our local grocery store is it a bad idea to have a week or more rations of food in the garage? With Russia burning down and 1/3 of the world's wheat crop destroyed, is it wrong to prepare for food shortages mentally and physically?

Yes, it's a bit ridiculous to take notes while watching movies about alien invasions, but do you really think it's out of the realm of possibilities? We live in a society that lives preparing for a hypothetical future on paper. We plan our retirements in Florida and how to make money off fake economic systems all the while paying for insurance on our cars, houses, property - life itself. Now, do I really sound that ridiculous preparing for an earthquake or nuclear war by storing food in the garage (which, unfortunately, I haven't had the time or money to do) opposed to investing money in a fiat money system with nothing but bank statements to back it up? Maybe the apocalypse isn't going to be one huge event of massive death and destruction with a few survivors left to struggle and find one another and create a new world from the ashes. What if the apocalypse is a slow take over of our mind and will to survive against all odds without our laptops, IRAs, automatic driving cars, wireless internet and Facebook. What if we are in the apocalypse now? What if this was the beginning and in another ten years we will find ourselves roaming the roads of what was once called America trying to find food so we won't have to eat one another. Of course on the flip side what if the economy picks up and in another ten years we have regular shuttles for vacations on the moon?

Maybe I'm just daydreaming about the end because then interviews, careers, retirement, loan payment plans, housing markets and all of the other things that bogs down our life in adulthood wouldn't matter anymore. Maybe it is a bit fucked up that instead of looking and applying for work I'm sitting here daydreaming about the end of the world. If the world does end tomorrow then none of this bull shit that gets in the way of, but is essentially what makes up life, would also cease to exist. Then again, "On a long enough time line the survival rate of everything drops to zero." (Chuck P.). Maybe we shouldn't sit around and wait for Superman or a global leader to come rescue us and start preparing ourselves. If the apocalypse was tomorrow how long would you survive? 2012 is right around the corner after all.

Well, in case the world doesn't end I should probably work on life plans again.

2010-06-20T09:48:00.001-07:00

MFA Senior Reading at Antioch University from Lisbeth Prifogle on Vimeo.

On Quitting

2010-04-03T18:02:00.000-07:00

"Don't do that you'll regret it," my mom says over the phone.
"No, actually I won't," I tell her in regards to the latest bad idea I have. "At this point I regret not quitting a year ago. At this point the only thing I am loosing is my time."

We're talking about school. Again.
"You're so close, Libby. Just finish it."
"Fine, if I get everything done on time I'll do it, obviously. If I don't get everything done I'm done. I can't do this any longer."

I've been working on my MFA for almost three years. It's a two-year program, but between a deployment to Iraq and time in Peru I had to extend two semesters. I'm exhausted and for two semesters I have grown to hate, despise, loathe and whatever other verb you want to add, reading. I want to burn every stupid book I own. Now, I'm starting to resent writing. I try to sit down and do work, but it makes me angry. I'm pissed off I haven't graduated yet, I'm mad that I don't really have much of a manuscript, just lots of pieces that don't quite connect. I'm tired and frustrated that I spend everyday of my life so worried about all the work I have to for this program that I can't ever get anything done. It's a vicious cycle and I fear that school might stop me from writing altogether. I have done exactly what I was trying not to do - force myself to write. I went into the Marines because I didn't want to write for a living. I believe any creative outlet done for money looses its value to the creator. Apparently, doing it for professors and deadlines ruins it too. The funny thing is I never studied writing with the goal of publication or a career. I write for the same reason I play the piano when nobody is around to hear - I enjoy the act. If someone came to me and asked to publish the crap I'm throwing together as my final manuscript would I object? Of course not, but I also don't need a book to validate what the value writing is and has been for me.

What am I trying to say? I had a professor ask me after every piece I sent to her, "What are you trying to say? Figure that out and say it." It was the most important lesson I have learned in the many years I've spent studying writing. What I'm declaring right here, right now to whomever comes upon this post is this - if I don't finish the things I need to finish by the deadlines of this semester I'm done. I'm not going to regret not finishing this even though I'm so close. In many ways I think it will free me. I spend time at school and online talking about writing with very competitive, adult writers and it has stripped the joy out of the task. In June - one way or another - I'm going to be done with school. Do not call, write or try to convince me otherwise. I'm telling you, not asking for encouragement, this is over.

In the last week people have tried to encourage me. It's useless. Mark Twain once said, "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do." Well, I'm in school for writing and I no longer write. I think twenty years from now I'll be more disappointed that I did not have the courage to follow my heart so I could continue doing what I love rather than focusing on getting a piece of paper that I don't need in order to write. Off and on for the last ten years I have been in school for writing asking permission from professors, administrators, financial aid directors to write. I don't need permission to write. I need freedom to write. We teach our children to follow their dreams and not to quit what they have started, but what happens when one is in the way of the other?

"Do one thing everyday that scares you." -Eleanor Roosevelt

2010-03-22T23:37:00.000-07:00

I tried my first acupuncture session last week. Western medicine can't seem to figure out why my body is acting the way it's acting so I'm trying alternatives. Besides having an elementary-school-girl crush on my doctor, I like it. I can't really feel any immediate miracles, but I like the philosophy of treating the entire body, not just fixing the symptoms. I think Americans can learn something from this philosophy since we seem to be in the business of throwing money at the symptoms and hoping the problem will fix itself in the long run.

I tried hypnotherapy this week as well. A friend of mine has a practice and I decided I had put off supporting her business long enough. I told my boyfriend, "It was awesome and you're probably going to say it's all in my head." Many of my friends and family seem to think I'm a hypochondriac and my problems are psycho-sematic. Well, if I am than hypnotherapy was created for me. "Because it IS all in your head," I told him. It was an interesting and positive experience that will hopefully help me start writing again and end the horrible nightmares I've been living with for ten years. Some say we only use 10% of our brain potential. If you're skeptical of this statistic try looking at it from another angle, what if we have 90% of brain potential TO use? What could you accomplish then? I'm not sure where that myth/fact comes from, but I think the average person is capable of so much more than they realize. If it takes hypnosis to reach my potential I'm willing to try.

Why am I doing all of this? Why not. Somewhere on the road to adulthood I am afraid I lost the fearless spirit of my youth. Isn't this the sad truth in life? Instead of jumping in my car for spontaneous road trips, I curl up on the couch to watch a movie with the man I love. Some nights this seems like a fair trade-off, other times I want to grab that man and take him on a road trip to anywhere. I used to live by the quote "Do one thing everyday that scares you." Stepping outside my comfort zone was the only way to grow. I still believe that, but now I find my comfort zone, well, comforting. At what point do we trade the care free days of our youth in to worry about careers, and loans and all the things we swore we'd never worry about? Was it a day? A moment in time? Can it be stopped if we traveled through time and tell a younger version of ourselves not to fall for it? We all swear we will be the one to stay young forever and then it passes through us like a gentle, fall breeze and we become mature enough to know better. Maybe it's my health problems, maybe it's the relationship I'm in, maybe it's the fact that I have been stable for more than six months. I don't know why but lately I feel like I gave up the exciting freedom of my youth and I'm not sure for what? I suppose I'm happy and this seems to be the natural progression of life. It's in my nature to fight - even if it's myself I'm fighting. The weird part is I am happy. A different kind of happy, but happy.

But, happy or not, I'm challenging myself to do something that scares me everyday! Tomorrow I'll stand in front of Marines and teach a class about writing and even though this is the third class and I spent three hours preparing my class it still scares the hell out of me!

Sunday Paper

2010-03-07T14:52:00.000-08:00

I started getting the local newspaper about a month ago. It was late one night when I ran to the grocery store for one thing. I don't remember what it was, but I remember seeing chocolate and deciding that was an acceptable buy and before I knew it my arms were full of crap. I seem to remember buying toilet paper, so maybe that was what I had actually gone to the store for. Anyways, I was tired and in a fury to get out of there and into bed when a man politely asked me something. Now, it is important to note that I'm a sucker. I'm the person at the mall who gets stopped for jewelry cleaning, mineral make-up, fancy hair straighteners, dead sea scrubs, etc. They must love seeing a single woman walking in a complete daze (just for verification I probably look stoned, but I do not do drugs). They grab my arm, wave their hand in front of me, call me beautiful, something that triggers me out of the perpetual daydream I live in. Here's the product and here's the sales pitch. I've gotten better at saying, "No" and being unemployed definitely helps the impulse to buy, but on this particular night when this nice gentleman asked me, "Would you like to save ten dollars on your groceries?" I didn't have the energy left to say no to his pitch. Now, for the first time in my life I get the daily paper.

I don't watch the news. I used to listen to NPR in my car on my way to and from work and in my office. Usually by the time I got home I had every news story at least twice. I never read the paper. On occasion a headline will show up when I open my Internet browser and I click to read, but lets be honest when it comes to news I'm generally apathetic and lazy. Now, I get the paper. At first it was exciting. I had something waiting for me outside the door every morning. In a waking dream I crept down the stairs in slippered feet to a freshly printed bundle just waiting for my eyes. I even read it for a few weeks. I was up to date in current affairs. I could follow what was going on in the ridiculous world of politics. I followed the horrifying story of a local high school runner who went missing. Maybe this was what ended it all? Chelsea King was a high school senior, cross-country runner, honors student, probably counting down the days until she graduated and left for college. She went for a run and never came home. A few days later they found her body, a true tragedy for San Diego or anywhere for that matter and an awakening for me. Sometimes I carry a knife when I run. If I get a creepy feeling or think the sun might beat me on a run. It's not convenient, but the thought of getting mawed by a mountain lion isn't very convenient either. Now, I have Chelsea to think of when I run on long, empty trails alone. The thought "that could have been me," has crossed my mind more than once in the last week. The thought, "If this is was anyone but a young, beautiful, white girl from a moderately wealthy family, bound for success would it be the headline for a week?" has also crossed my mind, but this should not take away the fact that it is a tragedy and it easily could have been me. When I train I run trails just a few miles from the same area. When I run I zone out and more than once have almost stepped on rattle snakes or have had mountain bikers sneak up on me.

Well, it's Sunday and they have a suspect in custody who was a convicted and registered sex offender. People are questioning the safety of their children and the effectiveness of sex-offender laws, but life moves on. Above the headline "The Chelsea King Case: It can and does, happen here," there is a picture of two local police officers saluting a motorcade of police cars on the way to a memorial service for a local sheriff's deputy who was killed trying to intercept a driver going the wrong way on the interstate. In the section Our Region there is a picture of three scuba divers looking for clues to another case of a different local girl who went missing over a year ago. "Pond yields no new clues in Amber Dubois case," the headline reads and along the side is a column reading "Missing kids is a sad fact of life in county."

I flip through the headlines reading the first couple paragraphs and not really finishing any article. By the end of it I'm depressed and scared and remembering why I don't pay attention to the world around me. Ignorance is bliss.

Am I better off jumping straight to the comics? Am I better off skipping the story about what's going to happen in Iraq now that elections are over and the US had pulled most of the troops out. Do I want to know about a female Navy Commander who was relieved of duty because of her language and maltreatment to her crew. Never mind the fact that five other Navy Commanders have already been relieved of duty this year, this is another strike against women in the military. Way to go, ma'am! Thanks, really appreciate it. I scan for uplifting stories, but like everyone else my eyes are drawn to the tragedies and tyrannies. Eventually I make it to the Sunday comics and my world somehow seems balanced again. It's only $10/month to get the Union Tribune, but is it worth it? Am I single-handedly saving the art of printed news or am I just killing trees daily? Should I call and cancel my subscription and just go back to my bubble of news that only pertains to me? Decisions, decisions. Maybe I should keep my subscription until the introductory deal runs out (6 month subscription at $10/month), but I'm on such a tight budget. Am I in a better mood when I don't get worked up over a headline about an event in the wold I have no control over?! Does any of this matter anyways? The world is doomed! Do I want to know that the apocalypse and end of mankind is scheduled for tomorrow! Perhaps the paper is bad for my health, but then I get to Garfield. Maybe it's because he's from Muncie, Indiana and my mom once drove us to Jim Davis' house in a very stalkeresque manner to show us how close fame and fortune was. Maybe it's the juxtaposition of Garfield's pessimism and Odie's blissful happiness that seems to mock me the debate of whether or not to keep my subscription to the paper I don't really read. Then again, what else would I be doing on a rainy Sunday afternoon?

NOTE: I recycle the paper.

A day of days

2010-03-02T13:57:00.001-08:00

It's been a long week without any real accomplishments. Why does it feel like life is just that - day after day with nothing to show for it. My mom used to have a picture in her sewing room that had a very frazzled woman that said,"The hurrier I go the behinder I get." Maybe I'm rushing too much or maybe I just don't have any concentration. Like now I'll start this and think I need to call the doctor to schedule an appointment. Then after I get up I'll see the pile of laundry on the bed and I"ll think I really need to put my clothes away. After that I'll come back to the kitchen table and see the newspaper I didn't read this morning and think I should read about the missing girl in Poway. I used to run in that alone in that same area where she was running alone. That could have been me. And so it goes, if you give a Libby a cookie ... Today however was one of those days that topped all the other one of those days. I overslept after a bout of insomnia last night. I am going to teach a creative writing class at the Wounded Warrior Battalion and was supposed to start today. Well, I wouldn't have been that late except for the long line at the gate to the Naval Hospital. Of course I chose the slower moving line of traffic and of course when it was my turn to show my ID I was conveniently selected as the random vehicle inspection of the day or hour or however they randomly choose it. I pulled aside wondering if I had anything suspicious in my car (like the K-Bar I keep under the passenger seat just in case). I tried to find my registration frustrated because I was already late and as I pulled out junk from the glove compartment I realized how many parking tickets I have received in the last six months and haven't paid for. I finally found my registration, but the overweight and hideously ugly Navy MP needed proof of insurance as well. "I can bring it up on my phone and show you an electronic copy," I offered as a much more fit and attractive female cop walked up talking about her husband. I searched for the needed document some more even though I know it's not in my car. "I'm sorry I don't have it," I finally surrender to the fat MP.
"I'm sorry you can't come on base."
Fuck
"It's up to you if you want to give her a ticket or just give her a warning," Pudgy was now telling the cop.
"No, that's okay she looks like she's already having a rough enough day," the cop who suddenly looked like an angel sent from the heaven's said to the nasty, overweight, ugly pig woman who is a disgrace to the uniform.
Disgusted Pudgy told me to park up by Balboa park in some public parking lot and go in the back gate. I did as I was told, thankful not to have a ticket on top of being inconvenienced and late. I walked in the back gate and up to the Wounded Warrior barracks. We had decided on a time late last week and even though my little intro and talk with the Marines at their Friday formation generated some interest in a writing class I wasn't sure if it was enough time to add to their schedule. So later than ever, now frazzled and flustered I stood in the lobby waiting for the section leaders to explain to me why the class had to be postponed for a week.
"We can find some Marines if you want to start today, ma'am," a tall, handsome sergeant tells me.
"No, that's okay we can start it next week," I tell him a bit relieved.
"We emailed you last night to tell you they had a financial seminar that was mandatory to attend today," the other sergeant tells me.
"Really, it's fine, but I did not get an email."
They assure me they sent it and don't see that I'm more concerned about future correspondence than the debauchery of my day. I left defeated with the intentions of crawling back into bed and starting this damn day over again. Of course that didn't happen and after running errands and getting a little control over my life I'm finally sitting down for the first time all day. Sigh. I'm sure tomorrow won't disappoint me as another chain of events that are unplanned and inconvenient, but hey what can you do? You can look life in the eyes and growl, "YOU will not defeat me. Not today anyways!" And so it goes, a day of days.

Quiet.

2010-02-21T17:59:00.001-08:00

Sunday again. I have a Sunday check in with a group of writers from school and every Sunday we give a brief recap of our week. The intentions are to keep us honest and on track with our schoolwork and writing and I suppose life in general. Every Sunday I log onto the site, sigh and think to myself Sunday already?! Where does the time go? Seriously? The apartment has been so quiet all weekend. Brent is at work and my roommate is at her boyfriend's apartment and I'm left sitting in a cold, quiet living room alone. It's days like these that are both wonderful and disconcerting. I have learned to enjoy my solitude and rather enjoy stealing quiet hours from life, but after a while you begin to question the choices you've made that have led you to this cold, quiet living room. So much of our lives are dedicated to distracting ourselves from ourselves, but every once in awhile it's good to sit back and reflect. Only problem is too much reflection will make you start questioning and second guessing yourself. Which is what I'm doing right now. Sigh and sigh again. Oh Sundays you delight and frighten me. I'm off to the theater. I was able to get my hands on a $10 ticket to see Duncan Sheik's new musical "The Whisper House." It is wonderful and tonight is the last showing. Maybe that will distract me for awhile. I fear I'm getting restless.

PS. Starting today I will be updating my blog every Sunday. This is my new commitment to myself and my writing. Have to have something to keep you on track even if it's a make-believe deadline and promise you make to yourself. . . Until next week, Love Libby.

Mirrors

2010-02-04T15:21:00.000-08:00

I’m in a coffee shop with my roommate. We’ve been here the better part of the afternoon – Jill job-searching, me writing. I try to concentrate, but I can’t help but listen to the conversations around me. A man walked in earlier and asked if he could wash the windows. He does not look homeless and in this economy it is hard to assume anything about anyone. While he does not look homeless he does not look like a businessman either. His face has wrinkles set deep in the pale skin. His hair is thin on top. He is dressed in blue sweat pants and a brown long sleeve work shirt. His beard is trimmed and maybe I shouldn’t assume anyone who walks into a business asking to wash windows is homeless. Maybe I shouldn’t assume that if you don’t have a home you don’t shower or wear clean clothes.

About half an hour ago a young woman walked in and sat at the table on the other side of the room, but directly in front of me. I tend to stare at people when I think. It’s not something I do consciously, but something I am conscious that I do. She was dressed in jeans and a frilly, silk dress shirt. She had a name brand purse, but did looked very self-conscious holding it. She looked like she was waiting for someone. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, played with her phone, looked out the window longing not to be alone.

For a good half hour I didn’t really notice her except when I looked up from my computer screen to give my eyes a break, but the window washer came into the main room to perform his janitorial duties. I watch as he tries to make small talk with this woman. He does not seem to be creepy or inappropriate, but I watch as she wiggles in her seat even more uncomfortable. I do not know what they are saying because I am wearing headphones, but her body language makes it very clear that she does not want to be talking to this man.

It makes me think of all the times on city buses or trains, walking to the store or just sitting at the park that strangers have made small talk to me. I wonder if I look this self-conscious waiting for someone or purposefully being alone. Do I act like men who are making a living doing something I seem think I’m too good for are lepers? I can’t say, but I hope this isn’t the world’s way of letting me look in a mirror. I like to think that I am comfortable with myself when I’m alone. I find people at the least entertaining no matter what their circumstance so I hope not to judge when a stranger tries to hold an appropriate conversation. I find sometimes life’s lessons are taught through strange encounters with people who have a seemingly low-impact on your life.

An Asian woman is now sitting at the table. She is working on her computer much more attentive than I and maybe life is again providing me with a mirror showing me that I’ve gotten off track again. I should not be staring at the other patrons at the coffee shop I should be working on my final project for school.

The man has finished cleaning the front windows and has done a stellar job. I get back to work occasionally staring dreamily at the sky.

What Ifs and Standing Still

2010-01-26T11:11:00.000-08:00

I woke up at 10:30 today. I had a minor procedure done last week so I'm letting my body rest and recover and apparently that requires 10 hours of sleep (I wish I was kidding, but I'm not. My body is requiring around 10 hours of sleep right now and who am I to tell it no?). I was up late last night job searching/applying to fill the weekly requirements to receive my unemployment check. In the last year I have applied to at least one (usually more) jobs a week and not received any word back. Now, it could be the bad economy. It could also be that a majority of the jobs are hourly-wage jobs that don't require a degree or experience and I'm sure the managers look at my resume and assume I'm looking for work until something better comes along. I can't say that I blame for not wanting to hire me. I also apply for jobs within education which I have experience in, prior to the MC, but no college credits towards and who would want to hire a bad-ass, haji*-killing, Marine who would probably bring big guns to show and tell and gory war stories? I have recently given up on the idea of not going back into what I used to do because I hated my actual job in the Marines. Times are hard and my experience in the last four years is in supply and logistics so the last few months I have applied to supply/logistics management positions. I digress, this is not about my excuses for still being unemployed, but there are plenty of people who will read this and argue there are plenty of jobs out there if I just try harder. This intro is my way of saying there really aren’t and it is as much the struggle to find a job as it is the struggle to figure out what I want to do.

So, I look for jobs with no luck and a crappy attitude. I do my schoolwork, but not diligently and usually at last minute (I find my creativity fairy only visits the week before a project is due). I talk to my sister and my friend Deb, who might as well be my sister, daily. I fart around until something is due or a wave of creativity overwhelms me and I can't escape it. Like most of my life I get by on bare minimum. Recently, I recalled a conversation with my friend Bruce, who also manages to skate by doing bare minimum (or at least he did in high school and college, I can't speak for him now). He once asked me (forgive me Bruce if you read this I’m just paraphrasing), "Do you ever wonder what would happen if you actually tried? We go to a high ranked, private school and put minimal effort into our studies and still get good grades. Do you ever wonder what you could do if you actually tried? What could you achieve then?" Now, Bruce wasn't trying to spark inspiration in me, or at least I don't think he was. He was simply stating a rhetorical question for the both of us. I did wonder from time to time and I did try my best in the classes I cared about - mostly writing. Funny, how someone can make a comment or statement not trying to change your life, inspire or judge you and yet some years later you still ask yourself the in efforts to both inspire and judge yourself. Bruce was right, what would happen if I tried harder? What would be the cost? What would be the reward? The reason I went to a small, private school was as much the social life as the lectures. I was not in a sorority, nor did I party much. On the Friday or Saturday nights that my friends and I weren't studying we were at plays, museums, swing dances or sitting around having conversations about music, trips to Africa, semesters in New York, what great things we were going to do for the world when we finally graduated, etc. I cherish those nights and to this day I think I grew as much as a person as I did intellectually over those four years because of those late night conversations and friendships. So, would I do it differently if I went back now? Probably not. Do I wish I had put more effort into my master's program? Only the night before a project is due and I have more work than I have time. But, I always manage to get things done on time and I find when I spread the work out over time I’m working last minute trying to perfect it anyways. Would it be better if I had spent less time thinking about it and more time doing it? Doubtful.

I've been unemployed for a while. I don't really wish I had tried harder to get a high paying job right after getting off of active duty or networking or staying in the reserves. Like the late night conversations with my friends in college, I cherish my experiences in Peru, Panama and other adventures this time has afforded me. American's are workaholics who dream of one day retiring. I'd rather spread out the adventures and traveling throughout my youth so I can enjoy it rather than wait until my retirement investments give me a nice cushion to lay my head while I do the things I always wanted to do. I back this statement up with a conversation overheard at a wine bar on Sunday. A man was talking about how he used to live and travel through Europe and how he wanted to take his wife someday. All I could think was what if that someday never comes? What if you die of a heart attack tomorrow? What if this, that and the other? But I did not feel it was my place to tell this stranger, "You have to make that someday today, otherwise it will never happen." The more of the conversation I heard, the more I realized they were very well off as a byproduct of being successful workaholics. If work is what makes you tick, then I won't judge, but I will ask, do you ever wonder what would happen if you took more vacations? Took time to enjoy the sunset and smell of rain? If someone was to tell you the exact date you were going to die would you look at things differently? After all, Americans also think we are going to live forever, we are invincible to heart disease, cancer, car accidents, natural disasters. These things won’t happen to us so we can plan for elaborate retirements.

For the record I was not at the wine bar alone, I had met a friend there. Later another friend joined us after getting off work at her second job. She told us about the trip to Disney Land with kids from either the hospital she works at or the non-profit her mom runs for kids with cancer (I can't recall who sponsored the trip). She smiled as she told us about hitting every major ride and how exhausted she was from pushing a wheelchair around. This friend is a wonderful person with lots of energy and a very positive attitude, but listening to her talk about all the things she had crammed in her weekend and how she had to work in the morning I realized something else about Americans. We aren't only workaholics, we're stillaphobics. We live in a society where we can't stand to be still. Funny, we medicate our children for something that Darwin would probably see as natural evolution from this lifestyle. We can't sit down to talk to our loved ones on the phone - we have to call them while we are at the grocery store or driving home from work. When was the last time you had coffee with a friend where you actually sat down – not grabbed it on the go saying, “Here I’ll walk a couple blocks with you then I have to go.”? We can't stand waiting in lines or having dinner without the nightly news on, multitask, multitask, multitask. Honestly, when was the last time you had an entire afternoon off to do nothing, alone? When was the last time you sat down on a rainy afternoon and read a book? I have had an entire year of this, more or less. There have been plenty of days when I wished I had a job and thought another minute of quiet time might drive me off the edge, but again I cherish this time with myself. People, including my roommate, have told me, "I'd go crazy without a job." And yes, sometimes I felt like I was going crazy. Like a child in time-out or an inmate in solitary confinement, there’s a chance you might go crazy. However, you might discover something about yourself or at the least learn to appreciate the stillness, which is not really still at all. When my friend was talking about how much she had to do this week, which was like every week, I realized she couldn't sit still if she wanted to. Between her fulltime job and her second job, diner parties, volunteer work, and everything else, there simply was not room for standing still.

I have another friend who is still an active duty Marine. She is also a great person filled with lots of energy. When she moved to her latest duty station she started a Masters program, kung fu classes, continued refereeing softball leagues on top of all the extracurricular activities the Marine Corps requires (like duty). Both of these women are single and childless, which is how they have so much time and energy**. They are both happy and do great at whatever they try, not because they are naturals at it, but because they put so much energy into it. I love them and their friendship, but as I listen to their active lives I realize I used to fill my time with a million and one things to do. I used to think of sleep as a chore, not a necessity. I used to be a quietaphobic, a caffeine addict, an ADHD adult who fed off of filling my days with things to keep me busy, busy, busy. I don’t know why. Nothing was missing in my life. I do not want children and I was happy with that lifestyle. I grew up in a family where it was expected that you take dance classes, play volleyball, march in the band, piano lessons, travel to Powwows, hold a part time job, and more and more and more. I loved it and I think I’m a better person for it, but things are different now. I have finally learned to enjoy my quiet time rather than try to fill it with learning something new or perfecting something old. I don’t dread Sunday evenings because there is nothing to do. I can do nothing (although I am still very ADHD so this is a challenge in itself). I can meditate without thinking of all the things I could be doing or rather should be doing, as I used to think. This year has been hard economically, but to try to take something positive out of those struggles I have learned how to be still.

All this being said, I enjoy learning something new. I love to run 6, 7, 8 miles a day. I like my active lifestyle. All I’m saying is now I enjoy taking my time, standing still while the world turns, journaling about the sound of thunderstorms and pitter-patter of rain. I have learned that taking time for myself is as necessary as filling my calendar with things to distract myself from myself. So, Bruce, what would have happened if I had tried harder? Maybe I could have saved the world. All I know is right now, as I write this, I’m happy standing still.

*1. Yes I did just footnote my blog and 2. I do not use the term "haji" unless mocking those who do. It is a derogatory term some American Servicemembers call Iraqi's in order to dehumanize the men and women we have been trained to see as our enemy.

** This is not passing judgment on single, childless women or saying that they fill their time with extracurricular activities to fill their lives because they are single and childless. There are plenty of women in this world of childbearing age who are happy being single with no desire to have children.

Facebook Facade

2010-01-19T01:11:00.000-08:00

I'm working away at my last semester of school. I seriously doubt it will be my last semester ever, but for my MFA this is it. By working away I really mean procrastinating and farting around when I should be diligently working. The problem is I don't know if I even want to finish anymore.

During some of this 'farting around' time I find myself Facebook stalking friends and more often acquaintances. People I met at work or a bar once upon a time. The young woman who took over my job when I left the Marine Corps. A woman I met during my travels. Midshipmen who I trained at Quantico who are now officers in the fleet. The funny thing about Facebook pictures is nobody posts pictures of themselves on a bad day or mundane day. It's more like a place to brag about what you are doing or where you were. It's a memorial of how fun your life was at some point and how you have it all put together. Naturally, I get jealous when I see people who have traveled more than I have (which is most people). I am conceited when I see that someone from high school has gained weight. I feel free when I look at old classmates families. More often than any of that I look through the pictures of people laughing, smiling, traveling, at job promotions, family pics, kissing couples, babies crying and I ask myself is this what I am supposed to want? What is wrong with me that I don't want to get married to a nice man with a good career, work on my own career, have children, move into a bigger house, take vacations to fancy resorts, blah blah blah. It sounds nice. It really does and part of me is incredibly jealous of the people who live this happy dream because it is what they want. I click through more pictures wondering if they are really happy or live the life that was expected of them and are therefore happy because they fulfilled their end of the contract.

I look through pictures of Marines and Sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan and ask myself should I still be there? Did I quit? Is this what I was meant to do? Like most things in my life I got bored, now I wonder if I gave up to easily? Did I quit before the big pay off? Why couldn't I adjust to the military lifestyle? Why couldn't I just give up some of my innate stubbornness and force myself to conform for 8 hours a day?

I skip to the page of another "Friend" and another and another. I look at their happy profiles and ask myself what do you want, Libby? What do you want to do with your life now? I don't know. I simply do not know. Is it really as simple as people seem to make it on their profiles. Is my world full of random Facebook acquaintances who are really happy with their life? Am I just the odd man out who can't differentiate between what I want, what I'm supposed to want, what I'm expected to do, what I'm meant to do and what I'm doing. Shouldn't these things all line up?

I haven't had a job for a year now. Unemployment isn't going to last forever and the job search has been fruitless. What happens when the stimulus extensions run out? What happens in June when I won't be able to use school as an excuse for my immature aspirations. I emailed some people about going to Afghanistan. If I follow through with that it will postpone figuring things out for at least another 8 months plus post-deployment vacation time. Then what?

And in the meantime I post pictures from birthday parties, road trips, sunsets, finishing lines, dinner parties, etc. I wonder if someone I met once at some point in time is looking through my photos with the absurd belief that I have it all figured out and they're wrong. Is this what Facebook has done to our culture - created an emotional masquerade hiding our insecurities and failures as well as our greatest ambitions and hopes? Is it uniting us or creating acyberworld for us to hide?

Five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes.

2009-12-31T21:26:00.000-08:00

Like Christmas I'm not a big fan of New Year's Eve. I don't get the purpose of going out getting drunk and kissing whoever is around (although this year I am happy to be kissing a very special somebody). Sure it's only once a year and it's a big deal because it's the end of a decade (although wouldn't next year be the end of the decade?) and all that, but is tomorrow any different because you write down a different date? It's not the celebration of the New Year that bothers me so much as people's idea that somehow because it is a new year tomorrow everything is going to be different. I'm pretty sure that as rational adults we all realize there is no such thing as Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Bogey Man, Superman, etc. So why do we believe in the New Year Fairy? Some magical entity that will sprinkle glittery dust on our lives and poof everything is all right. It sounds nice and I'd like to believe this, but I simply cannot. I do not make new years resolutions to loose weight, quite bad habits, go for some goal that I've thought about for months, but did not have the ambition to go after. I do not need a special day of the year to get drunk and party only to sleep all day tomorrow, wake up hungover and realize that I'm not going to do any of these things just because it is a new year. The only tradition I can appreciate on New Years Eve is reflection and therefore instead of making a list of things that I can change in my life on ANY given day I will reflect on the past year of my life.

A year ago I was leaving the Marine Corps. My office was packed. My apartment was packed. My life was packed in neat boxes locked up in a storage unit right outside of base. I left for Central and South Florida on January 1st then ventured on to Peru. I saw the Everglades, the rainforest, The Amazon, Machu Picchu, cloud forest, the Panama Canal, and much more. I came back and traveled around California tasting wine and visiting friends and family. I spent a week packing up my dear friend, Beth, in Yuma and helped her leave the Marine Corps. I went to Salvation Mountain in the middle of the desert. I ran more miles than I want to add up. I competed in and finished the NYC marathon. I fell in love. I laughed until I cried. I cried until I laughed. I held my newest nephew (2 weeks old at the time). I hugged my oldest nephew. I saw friends I haven't seen in 5 years and picked up exactly where we left off. I lost friends, made new friends, published essays, wrote more essays, finished a semester of school, drank Guinness on a one-to-one ratio to miles I ran. I stressed about money. I spent money frivolously. I slept more than I have since I was a kid. I slept on more couches than I did beds. I mad mistakes. I said I was sorry. I finished goals. I abandoned some dreams. I missed someone so much it hurts to think about now. I loved someone so much I can't even write the words to express it. I traveled to another hemisphere and I found my way home. I learned things about myself I never expected. I found out things about myself I hate and still try to forgive. It was one hell of a year.

In the musical Rent there is a song titled "Seasons of Love." In this song the cast sing about how you measure the life in a year. They sing that there are five-hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes in a year. In the novel and movie, Fight Club, the narrator says, "This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time." A couple years ago I saw the writer of Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk, and asked him why he writes. He told me, "I'm going to die. My friends are going to die, but in my stories they live on." He is right and everyday we add to our own stories no matter what four numbers are at the end of the date. So, I don't hope that 2010 will be any better than 2009 (a pretty fucking phenomenal year). I hope that that my health remains, that I get to see my family more often and most importantly that I have the courage to make my dreams and goals happen on any day of the year rather than waiting another 525,600 minutes to make resolutions. On one final note of 2009, in honor of the late Kurt Vonnegut I hope in 2010 anyone who reads this will take this advice: "And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'if this isn't nice, I don't know what is.' " Why not wait until the end of next year to realize everything you want, need or have is all within your grasp.

2010 you have some high expectations to live up to my friend. . . I only hope I find it in myself to make it all happen! To infinity and beyond. . .

"Things Will Work Out."

2009-12-05T23:03:00.001-08:00

Whenever someone has a rough day, or is waiting for good or bad news or for any other reason someone might suffer anxiety we are conditioned to say "Things will work out." So I'm holding my breath trying to wait until Monday, or such and such are back in their office after a holiday break and a lot of other reasons my life is basically on hold and everyone says to me, "It'll all work out." What if it doesn't? What if things are out of our control and there is nothing we can do about it? What do you say when all that is left is to admit defeat? Sometimes it doesn't just conveniently work out ... oh wait, for those with good attitudes who work hard everything will unfold like the Full House Christmas special. Bust out the hot cocoa, friends and relax knowing it will work out. For those of us who apparently have sinned in a former life I ask you when do you admit defeat? At what point do people stop telling you it will work out and to get over it and move on? How long should one hold their breath in hopes that there's an off chance that things might actually go well for you for once? I'm running out of oxygen. I don't know how much more longer I can hold my breath. I'm drowning and what if things simply don't work out? Then what?

Final Thoughts on Action Vs Attitude

2009-12-04T13:08:00.000-08:00

Buddha was correct. Life is suffering. How we handle the suffering through our actions, not our attitudes is what will change the world. In my adult lifetime I have watched one leader’s incompetency lead the American people to hold their breath in hope for for the next leader. Obama was elected on the campaign slogan of “Hope.” Now, America has taken that hope and turned it into the attitude that Obama can change the world. Some people are pleased with his actions some are not, but the common people are not stepping up to the plate to do anything about it either way. My generation is known for their apathy. We have taken the tradition of letting the government take care of things and as long as we vote we have done our part. Our apathy is forcing us to give up basic civil rights like health care and the freedom to assemble. Our laziness is letting this happen. Someday when we have given up all the freedoms that our country was founded on we will line up along Main Street and point our fingers at the government once again. This time we will blame the new leaders for riding on our wave of hope and destroying us. None of us will see that it was our lazy attitude, our lackadaisical approach to politics, our inability to not eat McDonalds and buy crap at Wal-Mart just to buy crap at Wal-Mart that forced our government to change our health care, bail out the common man, take away our constitutional freedoms because we did not want the responsibility that came with these freedoms. The world is changing and rather than be blindly be a part of it I recommend you educate yourself, fight for our freedoms, take on the responsibility that they entail and have hope in yourself rather than someone else to do your part in making the world a better place.

The Last Living Optimist.

2009-12-04T11:22:00.000-08:00

Life is suffering.

Buddha

This morning I woke up and checked my email like I do every morning. There was an email from my older brother, who rarely emails me, with the subject “reminder.” I was curious what I had apparently forgotten and opened it up to this message:

Be the change you want to see in the world.-Gandhi

Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path…and leave a trail.-Thoreau

If you wake up convinced your going to have a bad day…you’ll never disappoint yourself. Just a reminder as we go into the holiday season. You can’t change what the world throws at you; you can only change your attitude. Some people will have things much easier than you, other will have it much worse…but ultimately you are accountable for how you rise up and face each challenge despite how it ranks in the grand scheme of things.

Its how normal everyday people can go charging into the face of danger and staggering adversity with a smile, and how a one person moves a mountain and triumphs against all odds. Are they just that much more gifted, lucky, blessed?

It is attitude, and that’s one thing you have 100% control over. So take a deep breath, and no matter how much it hurts the muscles, force a smile and give thanks for the ability that even though we can’t necessarily control our own destiny; we can control how we feel about it.

Now, I normally hate forwards of this nature anyways, but this particular message on this particular day particularly pissed me off.

First off – Consumerism. I hate the holiday season. It brings out the best in some people and the worst in all people. Everyone rushes to the stores to fight over cheap plastic toys made in China and dipped in lead paint. Too often I see people who are living outside of their means and trying to keep up with the Joneses by buying crap that they don’t need, don’t want and are purchasing merely because it is marketed so that they think the ignorant consumer thinks he/she is getting a good deal. And we wonder how we wound up in such an economic crisis?! It is disgusting. I work my ass off to pay off my school loans while these same slobbering pigs take out multiple credit cards to buy shit at Wal-Mart and then claim bankruptcy and America will bail them out because they are the hard workers that live on Main Street. Maybe there’s something to the work ethic of those who made it to Wall Street and manage to keep themselves out of the crazy credit card debt that seems to plague Main Street.

Secondly, I can’t afford to go home for the holidays. Now, this doesn’t mean I’d travel if I could afford it because traveling over the holidays is about as enjoyable as getting a Brazilian bikini wax. We live in a society where people are self absorbed. We don’t help the old lady get down the cramped airplane aisle, we push her out of the way while cussing her out for being slow. I have people I spend my holidays with even though I’d rather sit at home alone watching movies that represent the wonderful human spirit that we celebrate this time of year. I think Wall-E is appropriate.

Thirdly, I’m not religious. The holidays hold no value to me whatsoever except a day off work. Only I no longer work so it’s a day like any other day with no significance at all.

Fourth, Gluttony. I try to eat healthy. However, I eat an apple a day to feed my stomach as much as I do to feed my absolute fear of gaining weight. I wouldn’t call 911 on me for any eating disorders yet, but the holiday smorgasbords of sugar and fat give me panic attacks like they give Uncle Lardo heart failure.

So back to my big brother’s email. Fuck holiday spirit. If we all had holiday spirit would we need to forward emails about keeping basic manners during this time of year in the first place?

Now, on to attitude. I try to look for the silver lining in life. I really do try. I think it’s my genuine effort to find the silver lining that in the end fails me. The world loves to squish the dreams of the few true optimists there are left.

Oh attitude. Like in Luke’s email you decide how your day is going to go when you wake up. I woke up yesterday excited to start the day. I had finally finished my thesis paper for grad school and was getting ready to start my final semester. It’s a two year program and it’s already taken me two and a half years to get this far because of a deployment to Iraq and trip to South America. I was excited to prepare for my last semester that starts in a week. However, life has that funny way of ruining your day. For the last two and a half years of my life every single semester starts like this:

Registrar’s office: Dear MFA student, you are not registered or enrolled in classes because you haven’t paid.

Libby to Registrar’s office: Dear school, I can’t pay until you send the VA my registration information so I can get GI Bill money to pay my tuition.

Every semester. So, I have learned to anticipate this. The school has not. Just over a week before classes start I find myself in the same conundrum only this time it is the Post 9/11 GI Bill. In the school’s defense the VA has had a plethora of problems since it was activated the new bill last fall. So, it might not be the school or my fault, but fault of the VA. But this is silly, pointing the finger gets us nothing in life except the culprit of the stinky fart. This morning I decided to move on in life. I am not holding my breath that things will or won’t work out. I don’t care. I could finish my degree for the prestige that having a masters degree would get me, but if I don’t I still have the tools if not the qualifying documentation. In short I am completely defeated today. Things are out of my power to change so fuck it. I just don’t care anymore. I will move forward expecting my day to progressively get worse. And so fate has killed the last living optimist.

I grew up in a world of rainbows and butterflies. My parents looked on the brighter side of life, even if the brighter side was a bit abstract. When things went to hell my dad would always say, “Everyday we take a bite out of life’s shit sandwich. Some days it’s a little bite and some days it’s the whole damn sandwich.” Truer words had never been spoken until my sister recently informed me that we are the people lined up at the all you can eat shit buffet.

I can’t recall a particular event that led the rest of my family to believe that life is suffering and changing your attitude only prolongs the suffering until the day you realize it really is just suffering and you have been living a facade. However, until now I kept on believing things would indeed one day get better. I went through the Marine Corps with this blind hope. I took on each school and duty station with the sincere belief that things would work out now. They had to, there’s no way things could possibly get worse! Unfortunately I left the Marine Corps with no respect for most of the men and women I served alongside with and a lot of respect for the few honest men and women who put up with the bull shit so they can proudly wear the uniform.

Each unit I went my fellow servicemen got progressively more self-centered, more vindictive and all in all simply bad people. I left because I wanted to hold onto what little hope I still had in the human race. To me a group of men and women who take the same oath to defend our constitution should work together, but 99% of them waged war within the unit rather than our perceived enemy. And even more unfortunate 99% of them teamed together to wage war against those who didn’t drink their kool-aid brewed of discontent.

I left and yet things aren’t getting any better. I watch war unfold on CNN with the constant fear that I will be called back. I will honor my commitment to the Corps and proudly serve against my reservations I now have about the wars if this happens. I try to have a good attitude. I try to believe in the good of the human race, but apathy, laziness, incompetency of my fellow Americans make this hard. I watch as the government slowly seizes our constitutional rights and nobody does anything about it because it is easier not to fight. I try to look on the bright side of life because going through life knowing things will get worse with no hope at all will make you bitter and jaded – like my older sister. However, it was recently (just this morning) I realized why I am the last living optimist and my sister was the second to last. It has nothing to do with the events of your life or the attitude you take. It has to do with where your path is to begin with.

Like my experiences in the Marine Corps I go through life with the absolute blind faith that things could be better. I have spent my whole life thinking that my actions could lead me to this better world where I could live a better life. People with better attitudes just think their mindset can lead them down a sunnier path. I think it’s the path itself that is in the wrong location. My path is stuck in monsoon season. No matter how sunshiny I go through life it will always rain. My only hope is to change my path altogether. This is going to be difficult. Everyone else lives in normal clients where they get rainstorms only on occasion and can make it through holding onto the hope that there might be a rainbow afterwards if they hold their heads up high. They don’t have the difficult challenge of moving their path.

I can change my attitude but it would merely be a temporary fix. The fact that after year after year of living in a monsoon I still dumbly believe that it can get better makes me the last living optimist. Unfortunately, lately it seems my monsoon is teaming up with tsunami’s and I can’t even see the path anymore. My optimism isn’t lost, it’s drowning. But I have a responsibility. I have to find a way to move my path and lead others to do the same. Live by example. Changing my attitude would do little compared to changing my actions. So I move on from Antioch and the VA defeated, but this is just one battle. There are many more to fight. To loose. To win. Instead of going into this holiday season with the perceived good attitude full of holiday cheer I will live the whole year looking for opportunities to help those in need. I will not wait to celebrate the birth of Christ to pass on good will towards men. I will carry it throughout the year. On days that I am down I will look towards the realists, not the optimists to help pull me out of the flood and I will do my duty to the world as the last living optimists to believe this world can be better and it will take more than merely a good attitude to make that happen.

That time of year again.

2009-12-02T05:20:00.001-08:00

I’ve been talking to my older sister on the phone recently and both of us have been suffering from unexplainable depression and anxiety. I think it’s not as unexplainable as it is just that time of year again. I could include statistics about seasonal depression, but that’s boring. Truth is Christmas and all the holiday cheer is the most paralyzing depressive time of the year. I realize that this makes me about as weird as aliens from Mars, but it’s true. Take into account the factors:

Winter – I don’t mind the cold air. Cold air has a way of waking you up and making you feel more alive. What I do mind is the short days. Whoever created daylight savings enjoys watching people suffer. It makes the transition of the shorter days even more intense and miserable. Indiana never recognized daylight savings time until a few years ago, so I can speak from the unique perspective of both sides. When you don’t practice daylight savings time the shortening of days seems much more natural – trust me.

Christmas – Sure, with thanks to marketing it has lost all religious values, but if you don’t believe in Santa or Jesus is there really a reason to celebrate other than good deals at the mall? Seriously. If you are an unemployed atheist how much fun can the Christmas spirit really be?!

New Years – I have personal reasons to hate New Years Eve that I won’t go into detail about on here, but think about it – New Years. It’s the whole glass empty/full conundrum. For me the glass is always empty on New Year’s Eve. Sure you can look at it with all the hope and promise of what next year might bring, but I see the all the failure, disappointment and disillusionment of last year. I am a firm believer that you make your own destiny, but at the same time that destiny is limited by the powers that be. Some people are handed a short straw at birth and no many how many new years and resolutions and dreams and wishes pass – some things are just not meant to be. So, New Years to me represents all the disappointments of the year that passed and putting all my faith and hope into another 365 days seems unreasonable and (in words of my high school band director, Dave Humbert) about as intelligent as running your car into a tree, putting the car in reverse, backing up, putting it back in drive and hitting the tree over and over and over again.

Then the new year hits. . . all the merry merry joy and there are no more significant holidays for awhile (even counting Valentines day - you have to wait 2 months). There is always Groundhog’s Day (my personal favorite holiday) in which all our faith in weather is put into a rodent. This day is more religiously enlightening to me than Christmas.

So, ’tis the mother fucking season for depression, anxiety attacks, not to mention the alcohol consumption increase due to family gatherings (my family excluded in this holiday tradition). Cheers to fighting people at the mall for a spot in line for the hot holiday item. Accidents on black ice and white snow that turns into black slush in the colder parts of the country.

Thank you Jesus for being born, cheers to the Christians who spread across the world like the black plague telling of your goodness in the form of rape, murder, torture and terrorism, and a special cheers to my big sister Megan who is the only pessimist who thinks the world is shittier than I do. Merry Christmas and a shitty new year!

The New America

2009-11-21T20:46:00.001-08:00

As I was leaving the house yesterday Jerry Springer happened to be on television even though nobody was watching. I stopped long enough to catch the topic. There was a stripper dancing scantily clad as the woman being interviewed was bragging that she was a single mom, a student and a stripper. Later when I was logging on to facebook there was an animation of two dancing women with an advertisement “Obama is sending Mom’s back to school.” Within the same week California college students protested the raise in tuition prices. This is the same time that the new government health care bill is being beaten to death in DC. What the hell happened to America?
A few weeks ago I was in New York City. I used to live in NYC so I was there to visit and run the marathon, not necessarily to sight-see. Still it is impossible to go somewhere and not sight-see some, if nothing else you see your favorite places. The one place that I love seeing over and over again is the Statue of Liberty. It represents the dreams that America was built on:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door

We all have stories of how our ancestors struggled – whether it was the Native Americans we stole land from and spread disease to or how our parents or great great great great grandparents crossed a sea, fled a country, did whatever so WE could have a better life. My generation is reigned by apathy. We don’t vote. We don’t care that our freedoms and rights are being taken away in between lines of bills and acts that we don’t read through because we’re too busy playing video games or drinking beer and watching football. We feel entitled to free educations and healthcare because we’ve never had to work for anything. Technology is making life easier and kids fatter. It’s sad. Really I watch knowing there is little I can do because I am part of this generation. Why stand against the current when you know nobody else will stand with you? Why wage war when you know it’s a battle you can’t win? These days we praise women for getting knocked up and trying to raise their kid on their own, but nobody praises me for being responsible and NOT getting knocked up. Nobody gives me a break on my school loans because I only have a couple thousand dollars in credit card debt. I don’t get bailed out because I didn’t buy a house I couldn’t afford. In the animal kingdom the weakest of a group gets weeded out by natural consequences, yet we continue to bail people out. Now, we have a culture of American’s who take and take and take and expect more from the government. The few who live responsible lives are being punished for others irresponsibility. It’s not going to end with government health care these programs perpetuate the program. I’m being punished for living a healthy lifestyle because I don’t weigh three times my proper body weight. It’s like feeding a tape worm. The problem is only going to keep growing.

When did the American dream go from “land of opportunity for those who are willing to work for it” to “land of entitlement for those who are willing to give up freedom for government payouts.” Since when did we stop dreaming for a better life and just expect it. When did we stop working towards a better life and start sitting on the couch waiting for a government representative to stop by and hand it to us on a silver platter? Seriously America. Probably those who are reading this are still part of the America that works hard for what they have, so it’s time that those of you who work for what you have to stand up and fight for your rights. Fight for your freedoms. Fight for a reward for living as an upstanding citizen rather than being punished for it. If you don’t stand up for it nobody will and if you don’t exercise your freedoms and rights they will be taken away.

Warm house on a cold Indiana night

2009-11-16T21:56:00.000-08:00

I’m home. Not the place I currently live, but home. My parents house. Unfortunately, not the house I grew up in, but the house that is now called “home.” These visits start out very exciting, go through a period of relaxation and then mixed anxiety and guilt about having to leave again. I love it and I hate it. I know if I stayed I’d go insane, but at the same time it’s so hard to leave and the guilt of missing everyone. Really you just can’t win. I forgot what cold is like. It’s only November, but I think these nights are the coldest of the whole year, because they seem so sudden and out of place. The temperatures have been warm enough lately to not feel like winter, but there is a looming chill in the air reminding you it’s coming. The leaves have almost all fallen off except for a few stubborn pieces. The farmers took down the last bit of corn this week so the fields are bare. That was the last event of fall. Now, the wind blows over the land with nothing to slow it down. The temperature dropped a few more degrees, the air is a little damp and the clouds are gloomy and overcast. I will go back to San Diego in a few days where it will remain sunny all year, even on the chillier days, but For now I’m enjoying my parent’s warm house on a cold Indiana night thankful for heat and thick blankets, hot coffee and good conversation, school days and hectic nights. It’s nice to be with a family again, even though like the corn I know I’ll be gone soon enough.

Battlestar Galactica: An Essay on Obsessions

2009-10-13T13:41:00.000-07:00

I woke up at 9 today. Earlier than days I spend the night at my boyfriend’s house, but much later than I used to sleep. I used to be a morning person, but Brent work’s second and third shift and I don’t work so my schedule now mimics his. We stay up until 3 or 4 AM and sleep until noon. I would say 9 was early, but I fell asleep around 10 last night after sleeping until noon. So, needless to say I have hibernated the last 24 hours – sleeping more hours than I was actually awake. I go through periods of hibernating and periods of sleeplessness. This usually coincides with my mood: When I’m depressed I sleep, when I’m in the middle of a project I don’t sleep until it’s done, telling myself you can sleep when you’re dead! The only person in the world who truly gets this is my older sister. She is also the only other person in the world who loves sleeping more than I do. “Megan-Van-Winkle,” she calls herself saying, “I could sleep for twenty lifetimes.”

After sleeping almost 11 hours straight I called her to brag, “I slept so much yesterday!” I also called because she is the only other person who would get why I have slept so much. You see I recently finished something I have been obsessed with for a month or more. It can happen with epic novels or a project or school (I know graduation should be a happy time in life, but I get really sad after I graduate). In this case it was Battlestar Galactica (The newer series that came out in the last ten years). I have obsessed over the series. Postponing runs for days on end, putting off schoolwork, neglecting basic needs like showering and eating. My excuse to myself was the irrational thought that if I did these other things the human race could be wiped out while I was gone. Clearly, my watching affected the outcome of the battles. I finally finished it over the weekend. Brent was disappointed over the ending, but I think I was more upset over the fact that it was over. Finished. Done. No more. The end. What now? It’s like having a close friend move away – you can visit them by watching an episode, but they are gone. I felt the same way when I finished reading Lord of the Rings, when I finished watching the first three seasons of Lost while I was in Iraq and every time I finish rereading The Alchemist. It’s over. It’s done. It’s time to move on. But how?

My older sister, Megan, of course, understood this immediately. She compared it to her obsession with the Twilight series and American Idol last season. “It’s like you are lost and don’t know what to do with your time now,” she says from across the country. She suggests books to read or a new TV series to watch, but I do not want suggestions I want to mourn this end. Yes it was just a TV show, but to someone with a super-over-active-imagination it is so much more – it was my dream-world, my escape, to me it was as real as Santa Claus is to children.

Megan suggests a book, but I tell her, “No I don’t feel like an uplifting book right now.” She suggests I watch Glee, but I don’t have cable, any kind of reception or the internet so I have no way of watching it (except at a coffee-shop with free wi-fi).

She suggests another book, but at my disinterest says, “I know what you are going through. I’ll start ten books after an obsession ends and not finish a single one of them. It’s not like they are bad, they’re just not whatever I was obsessing over. And then there’s the fear of starting an obsession knowing it is going to end.”

Is it so hard to believe? Does someone who breaks up or looses someone close to them not hesitate to form relationships with people afterwards? Is it so hard to believe that after one obsession ends I would hesitate to start the process over knowing the inevitable outcome?

I tend to not finish books a lot for this reason. It can be an incredible book or a horrible book that is entertaining and either way I’ll set it down and never finish the damn thing. Sometimes it is because something shiny distracts me. More often it is because I don’t want it to end. If you never watch the season finale, or read that final chapter then it is always there to finish someday. Ironically, Admiral Adama discusses this reasoning in one of the episodes. He gives President Roslin a book to read during her cancer treatments and tells her he’s never read past a certain part. He doesn’t want it to end so he just rereads the same part over and over again. For people like us curiosity would kill much more than just a stupid cat.

If you are one of those people who likes to finish things with a clean cut end, then you will probably find us as strange as we find you. Brent doesn’t get this about me. He gave me a book to read in June and I have about a 100 pages left to read. I got distracted with school and then started a Robert Heinlein book then got distracted from it and now I can’t seem to remember where I was in either book. I tried to explain that the best books I don’t want to end and therefore don’t finish them, but he gave me his, “you’re on crack and I can’t believe you’re my girlfriend” look and we let it drop. I want to finish the book he gave me, I do! Yet, I don’t know if I can.

It’s hard for me to accept when something is over. It’s no different than school, or holidays, or a relationship. I get sad and depressed and don’t know what to do to fill the free time I now have. There is a void in my day that I now have to fill with something else. Is it that hard to believe when we live in a society that is constantly engaged and entertained? Kids don’t get the full effect of road trips when they can watch movies on portable DVD players. The Xbox generation doesn’t have to deal with the tedious boredom that is inevitable in life, but they also don’t get to think of creative ways to entertain themselves with imaginary worlds and people. Is it so hard to believe that after watching a television series that consumed three hours plus of my day that I would be disappointed that it’s over and disappointed that now I have to find something to do in that time. Eventually I will find a job and a new obsession to fill that time. Scrapbooking, writing, reading, running, something to fill the long hours of the day. Now, it is time to say goodbye to the Battlestar crew and move on with my life.

If you are not quite as obsessive as my family's personalities tend to lean towards, than you probably don’t get it, but that’s why I’ve been on the phone with Megan for three hours today ... trying to find something new to obsess over.

Restless

2009-09-28T03:25:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday night - or rather Monday morning. It's past 3 and I can't sleep. I fell asleep watching a movie earlier so naturally I'm awake now, while the rest of the world is sleeping. It's annoying, but at the same time I kind of like the fact that everyone I know is safe in bed. I don't have to worry about going to street fairs or dinners. I can sit here and be alone and not worry about my phone ringing or people texting me to ask what I'm doing. Nobody is worrying about the fact that I don't want to be social. I don't want to go out with my friends or go to the stupid street fair. I don't want to do anything. Yet, I am restless. I have been for a few days. I can't sit still when I am at the bar. I can't sit still when I'm watching a movie. In fact the only time my body isn't twitching is when I'm asleep and lately I seem to only be able to sleep in spurts. Naps here or there. Not at night. Not when normal people with normal jobs sleep. Maybe 3 or 4 hours, but then I wake up from a bad dream. I woke up earlier tonight and even though I can't remember my dream, I know I died in it. I remember that much of the dream and my physical reaction - racing heart beat, out of breath, adrenaline rush - let me know that something bad happened and I died before I woke up. This is all I dream about anymore.

Last night, while my friends were out at the bar drinking, I went for a walk. I was waiting for my boyfriend to come home from work and we had decided earlier that we would stay in and watch movies instead of going out. It wasn't late - around 8 or 9 PM, but I couldn't sit still in the apartment so I went for a walk. I called a couple people I haven't talked to in awhile and left messages when they didn't pick up. Then I paid attention to my surroundings because we don't live in the nicest area of San Diego. While walking a homeless man came from the other direction and asked for sixty cents. I don't usually have cash on me so I apologized, "Sorry, I don't have any change." Then I remembered that I did have a few dollars in my wallet that I forgot about. "Wait, I have a dollar." I gave it to the man, not out of pity or self righteousness, but because it could happen to me one day. It could happen to anyone really. We get our degrees, our jobs, our houses, etc. but there's no guarantee that it can't all vanish over night. There's no guarantee that I will never need to ask for help for a stranger. Hell, as many times as I've been stranded on the side of the road it's my karmic duty to help this man out. I give him the dollar and his whole face lights up.

"Thank you so much," he tells me. "You didn't have to you know."

I just smile.

"You are really pretty," he says. "I'm not trying to hit on you, I just mean you are a really beautiful woman."

I say thanks, and smile bashfully. I don't know why I don't keep walking, but his body language stops me. He keeps a safe distance from me and for whatever reason I feel safe standing in front of a busy restaurant. He can't stand still either and moves from left to right, messes with his hat, plays with his backpack.

Randy, as I soon learned, talked my ear off for about 45 minutes. He told me about all the famous people he met in Santa Monica. How he met Sean Penn and his brother, Chris, in the hospital and how upset he was when Chris died not too long after that. "He was such a nice guy," he told me, "but he drank himself to death." He cried when he told me his mother had recently passed away and that he had started drinking again because of her death. He told me how he caught his wife cheating and asked if he was right in beating the man - almost to death. He told me how he spent a year in prison for battery charges that were originally attempted murder of this guy. He sang his favorite Guns N' Roses song and told me how he met Axl Rose and that they used to go grocery shopping together. He told me all this and more. He asked me what to do about the married woman who managed the laundry mat and helps him out from time to time. He recently decided he was in love with her. He asked me if I had a boyfriend and if I was in love with him. Eventually he ran out of things to talk about and walked away as abruptly as he had walked up to me. I walked back home unsure what to make of it all, but laughing because it was the most interesting conversations I had had in weeks.

Plans changed when Brent got home from work and we ended up going out after all. After preparing myself to stay in for the night it was a hard adjustment to put myself into a social mood. Yes, they are all my friends at the bar I always go to, but this is just how it is for shy people. Sometimes you just have to prepare yourself to be social. There was karaoke and lots of drunk strangers trickling in from the street fair and as I looked around, generally annoyed by the crowd, I realized that maybe Randy needed the sixty cents, but I was the one who needed the chat with a complete stranger. Brent asked me what was wrong and I assured him it was nothing I was just in a quiet mood, but really I was and still am just completely restless.

Focus

2009-09-16T13:01:00.001-07:00

I feel very focused today, which seems odd considering I haven't felt focused for the last few months. I also feel very energetic today, which is also odd considering I was out late drinking. So, what am I going to do with all this energy and focus? So far nothing. It's already 1 in the afternoon and I have only been up for an hour. The funny thing about focus and energy is it can be wasted if you don't have anything to focus on. As I write this I'm coming up with a list of things I need to do and yet none of them are things I want to do today. This is ridiculous and I know that, but that's the thing about growing up - you realize there are things you need to do, want to do or will put off until the end of the world. Running for example: I don't need to go running as much as I need to work on school projects, but I like running more and I do need to go for a training run today, so I will probably run. But how long can I put off the things I really need to do by doing things I need to do less, but enjoy more? As long as I can I suppose.

Now all of this makes very little sense even to me which goes back to the beginning ... I am very focused with nothing interesting enough to keep me focused for very long. Sigh, it's going to be a long afternoon.

Unemployment

2009-09-15T08:30:00.000-07:00

I still wake up every morning at a normal hour. Sometimes to run. Sometimes because I can't sleep in - I've always been an early bird. Lately I don't even want to get out of bed. Really there is no point to it. This extended vacation has given me an opportunity to reexamine my life.

I know if I get up right now and run, the chemical changes in my body and brain will elevate my mood as if I took an antidepressant. My energy will soar throughout the rest of the day thanks to these chemical changes. I will be upbeat and pleasant to my friends. I will smile at strangers in the store. If I don't, I will sit here for an hour looking at random jobs online and slip into a trance of guilt and pity. After looking at jobs and concluding that I have no applicable skills, I will move on to the few things I have tried to write in the last few weeks. This will push me further into a trance of loathing and pity. Around noon I will completely give up.

The world - 1 Libby - 0.

So what do I do? Do I give up now because I know it will inevitably happen? Or do I go for a run and wait for the serotonin and adrenaline levels to keep me upbeat the rest of the day and push hitting rock bottom until later? It's going to happen. It's just damage control at this point.

....

I went running. Like I said I would, I feel better. I watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica, which made me miss the military and daydream about an incident that would almost wipe out the entire human race. As one of the few survivors I would rise up from the ashes and be the hero in our questionable future. After I'm done daydreaming I will work on an essay that is going to be the narration of a YouTube video for a project I'm helping with (I'll post more later). I'll go over to a friend's house tonight for homemade pasta and meatballs. I'll push the negative feelings out of my head a little longer and live in the moment for the rest of the day. I'll forget all the self-imposed pressure to do something grand and exalting with my life. I'll keep the sweat pants in the bottom of the laundry basket for the day that I do call it quits. Not today. Today is going to be a good day.

Birthday Blues

2009-09-10T16:36:00.000-07:00

I love birthdays. It's your own, individually wrapped, national holiday. OK so you're not a dead President and nobody takes off work to celebrate with you (unless it's on a weekend or they are just awesome). But birthdays should be celebrated big and loud and wonderfully no matter how old or young you are.

Today is not my birthday. It's two stupid days before it. It's as about as significant as the day before Christmas Eve. I did the same thing I do everyday. Got up, went for a run, came home, took a nap, showered and all by noon. I don't have much money as a consequence of being unemployed and on unemployment (which barely covers the bills, but DOES cover the bills), but I do have time.

Time is a tricky gift. When you don't have enough of it you'd do just about anything to get more of it. When you have too much of it you'd do just about anything to fill it. On any given day I spend too much time looking in a mirror - a luxury I hardly indulged in when I had to go to work everyday and wear a uniform. Today I spent a long time doing my hair and make-up (only to take a second nap and ruining my efforts). I wasn't planning on going anywhere, but I knew that if I tried to write today I would end up drowning in a pool of self loathing. I know myself well enough to know that when this swan dive took place I would start picking myself apart starting with my imaginary weight problem, moving on to my weird eyebrows, then the fact that I don't have any clothes because I sold, donated or shipped them home and on and on and on. To combat this I spent a little extra time on my hair and make-up so when the breakdown over a blank computer screen pushed me to the edge I'd look in the mirror and at least feel pretty before my evil twin took over my thoughts.

I'm supposed to go hang out with friends this evening and at least my hair and make-up is somewhat done (as done as it's going to get anyways). I haven't written a thing other than this post and I successfully avoided a complete breakdown by not opening a blank Word document on my computer. Instead I took a second nap, talked to my Pops, sorted a stack of papers on the table and wrote this post. Tomorrow is my Birthday Eve, which is as every bit as fun and exciting as Christmas Eve. I will again try to avoid self loathing thoughts of all of the million and one things I have not done with my life, because they are not nearly as important as the million and one things I have done with my life. I turn 28 again this year (had a problem with math last year) and I will spend the day with wonderful friends and an amazing boyfriend and put off all feelings of failure and self-hate until Monday (Sunday is a day of rest after all). On Monday I will have to do my hair and make-up only to sit at the table by myself. I will have survived one of the hardest days of the year - the day before the day before your birthday when it's too early to celebrate, but not too early to think about your life. I will muster the strength to take on the second hardest day of the year - the day after my birthday. The day after the celebration and excitement. It's the day of letting go and acceptance. On Monday, after I run, shower and nap, I will have to look in the mirror, as naked as the day I was born, and accept myself and my life for exactly what it is and not what I want it to be. Then I will have to dig down deep and find the courage to change it and make it the life I want it to be before next year's birthday.

Remembering to laugh

2009-08-29T19:21:00.000-07:00

It's a Saturday night. It's a little past 7 PM and nothing exceptional is going on, nothing particular happened today except when I walked to the a 7/11 a block from the apartment and bought a soda. I mention this because at the same 7/11 I bought a movie that I watched on one of my trips to Florida and have thought about many times since. I was particularly excited to pick up a used copy for $6.99 at a place I least expected - isn't that how it goes in life? The movie was "Sunshine," a sci-fi film about the sun dying and earth possibly going extinct if a team of scientist fails their mission, etc. etc. It is a phenomenal film that I highly suggest (and I know Lucas would back me up on this :) ) anyone who enjoys an end-of-human-civilization-on-earth type movie.

I bring this all up because I have had a rough couple of days and in an odd scene during the first few minutes of the film I found a weird sensation of peace. My days have not been rough in any other sense of the word than trouble finding peace, happiness, general contentness with my life the last couple days, no months, no a lot longer than that. I have no job, no structure, no purpose to my days. It's just been the past couple days/nights that I have had dreams that I am killed - a slit throat, tortured to death by being water boarded, bit by a rattlesnake in the middle of a desert, etc. My friends have no sympathy of my long, unproductive days because they work everyday. They come home to deal with the day to day chores, go to bed, get up and do it all over again tomorrow. They also do not see or understand my envy that they have figured out what they are supposed to do, or at least what they need to do right now. I can't figure out what to do for more than five minutes of my day other than to run and they all have jobs, careers or school that consume most of their days. I don't understand why anyone would envy me - I have 24 hours in a day to think, which can be as bad as torture by water boarding some days.

Anyways, in the first five minutes of the show a fight breaks out and a member of the crew talks to the ships shrink, "It's the time. Sixteen months you can get used to anything, you just loose track. . . From now on I'm not going to loose track again." The shrink makes him go to the "Earth room" a simulated reality where three people are standing on a ledge while waves crash up against the railing (presumably a viewing point for Niagara Falls or something similar). Why do I bring this up? Because the crew member was right - sixteen months and you can get used to anything and forget things that are important. You don't have to be in space. You don't have to be away from civilization or confined to a limited space. We all loose track of time. It's how we survive our days. More important, in that simulated reality of the crashing waves in a two dimensional movie I realized that I forgot how to forget time and reality. I forgot how to laugh at the simple pleasures in life and therefore I forgot how to live at all. I somehow got so lost in my real time that I forgot what is important - the lack of time.

How is it that children have a wonderful way of loosing themselves in a magical world with no restriction of time or reality, but adults are so constrained by it? What happens in between? Where does that lackadaisical appreciation for the absolute, most simple things in life go? Did we loose track of time or did we loose track of life? When did I forget the simple joy of laughing at a crashing wave splashing me with water or jumping in a pool on a 100 degree day or feeling the sunshine sneak through the window and warm up my skin while I take a nap on a lazy afternoon? When did I forget how to laugh at nothing at all? When did I complicate my own life by worrying about how I spend my days rather than just spending them? I don't know? I fear it's too late to stop worrying now. Is this what it means to be a grown-up? To forget the simple days. I fear, as I fear the end of Earth as I watch the Sun die in the movie, that maybe it's too late. I'll turn 28 in two weeks and all I want to do is go back to a time when I could sit in our 'circle yard' the with our border collie, Sam, and watch the clouds for what seemed like eternal summer afternoons. Now, I realize how delicately numbered each one was.

Maybe there is a reason I enjoy watching the human race struggle for survival in movies. Maybe I'm struggling for my own survival or survival of what is, no was, important once upon a time.

The movie is "Sunshine" directed by Danny Boyle. It is a wonderful film that will take you far from your own reality if even for a few, precious hours.

I guess after rereading this all I'm wondering is why I can't just be happy with what I have the way I was when I was a kid? What in the hell has changed?

Me. I changed. Now how the fuck do I change back? I'll start with remembering how to laugh.

The Last Few Months

2009-08-29T05:55:00.000-07:00

Hello again! My apologies that I haven't updated my blog in sometime. I had some technical difficulties and considering I can barely manage to open Word and my email most days you can imagine the frustration I had trying to fix my blog. Lots has gone on since my last post and I have done some writing so I will try to post some of them and catch everyone up on where I've gone and what I've done this summer. Right now I'm enjoying the heat wave in San Diego and trying my best to stay cool (but nobody has air conditioning in their houses/apts so we have been escaping to such fine establishments that do have AC like the Ould Sod or movie theaters to enjoy some relief). I have done plenty of traveling to/from and around Southern California, but right now San Diego is home. I enjoyed housesitting a mile from Venice Beach in LA earlier this summer, traveled to wine country up north for a bit, went to the desert east of here more than once (a reminder that this heat wave is nothing compared to the good 'ol desert). I am still unemployed and trying to figure out my next bold move. In the meantime during a moment of temporary insanity, I signed up for the New York City Marathon and will be running 26.2 miles around my favorite city in 63 days (not that I'm counting). I will not be doing this alone. I somehow convinced my friend/roommate, Jill, to sign up and run the race with me (apparently insanity likes company). I have rediscovered my love for running this summer and find that waking up and running anywhere from 5 - 15 miles has given my life some structure.
In other news I will be promoted to Captain on September 1st. This sounds strange to most people because I left active duty in February, but I am still in the IRR for a few more years so I can volunteer or be voluntold during this time and promotions still run for us in this limbo status.
Also I have had two essays published this summer! They can be viewed at The Sylvan Echo
and The Splinter Generation. Please check out both sites as they have published some very talented new and established writers.
Well, it is 0615 on a Saturday and Jill and I have made plans to go for a run before the heat index becomes unbearable. I was just told it was breakfast and Mimosas after the run - not going to argue with that. Please be sure to check the site as I will be updating with adventures from this summer and adventures yet to be. As always thanks for reading. Cheers!