Quiet.

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

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

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

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.

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."

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

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.