I’ve been begging my fingers to allow me to write, but you know how the words are. Fickle. They either don’t appear at all or they scuttle around like wild animals that are so fucking hard to catch. Books are like zoos. Let someone else do all the hard and dangerous work, make it look real pretty, feed those wild creatures, train them, and put them on display.

I’ll try not to knock on the glass, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.

A month of heavy boots has brought with it the scandalizing realization that I have allowed myself to fall so far into a nameless unhappiness that I’ve no sense of entry or exit. Having much to do with my new employment, I’m sure; I toyed seriously with the idea of quitting this weekend, but I’m still just not sure. I mean, in some hypothetical way, I realize that everyone has to start somewhere and that most new jobs come with a despondent feeling of not being able to keep pace. I’ve got my seasonal heavy boots, though, and this shit is difficult. As a rookie and an intern, I can’t shake the feeling that the things I’m learning are a hassle to teach and that they’re politely biding their time until the appointed day finally comes and they can take me into the office and dismiss me with a brutal, “… and while we assume you’re an intelligent individual, we just don’t think this job brings that out.” Or something.

This all sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s all I’ve got. In a day-to-day way, there’s not a whole lot of evidence of anyone around me ever having a hard time. And it’s like that everywhere, isn’t it? As the new person. If you’re new at the office, the store, or wherever; things are so relative and when everyone around you makes everything look so easy, you start to feel like maybe you missed a really essential limited-release OS update and now everyone else is optimal while you’re left with yesterday’s lag.

I know I’m not the only one who’s felt like this.
I know I’m not the only one in the office who’s felt like this.
But it sure feels like it.

What’s worse is that I don’t feel like I’m MAKING anything. Sure, I’m helping to create websites and products which aid in website development, but what’s the point? Everything we make will be moot or outdated in a few months, a few years at most, and then what? Then we re-make it? There’s an urgency in this industry that asks us to always out-do ourselves. To stay on top of what’s hot, what’s new, what’s what.

So on Friday, when I had decided to quit—had decided to give up gracefully my internship, take out a fat loan for school and take it easy for a while, I felt so justified. I said to myself, I said, “you’ll work at the Gothic; get a book or coffee shop job and just hush up.” And I would, I’m sure. I’m certainly not incapable. And, more importantly, I’m 22 years old.

For crying out loud, life is too short to fold fitted sheets or make toast or use spoons or napkins and it’s absolutely too short to waste toiling away in a career I have no passion for.

Life is too short.
Too short to do that.

With more time, I could volunteer at the Emily Griffith Opportunity School, like I wanted to. I could try to get my photography to a place where folks would pay me for it.

I guess?
I don’t know.

I do know that should I ever lose faith in myself I know well that I’ll find it again in the folks around me. I am a lucky girl. I am surrounded by support and loved by so many unconditional persons I feel myself unable to completely slip away into a pudding-fed hermit misery. Through the mouths of many folks, I was told that I shouldn’t stay anywhere if I find myself chronically unhappy and that I’m smart enough to find something else to occupy my hands and feed my bank account. No doubt.

So what’s to do?

Well, I thought about it.
I thought about it a whole lot.
And I’ve decided that, while I don’t particularly care for this job, this will my last week of having to work full time and maybe school will be the break I need between days. I’ll speak with my boss tomorrow about hours and expectations and see if I can’t calm my nervous heart that way.

Here goes nothing, amirite?

You’d think that working and learning have been around long enough that someone would have coined a word for that nauseatingly eager, stomach-plummeting feeling of, “Aawh, hell. I’ll never catch up.”

Maybe it’s just a string of incomprehensible expletives.
I’ll bet George Carlin has a bit on this. I should investigate.

I started my new job on Tuesday.
Four anxiety-ridden, horribly overwhelming days later and I am still not entirely sure that I’ll really get the hang of things in time for them to believe that I’m acceptably capable.

I wish I were more knowledgeable on this before now.
I can’t even sleep without dreaming about things I don’t yet understand.
Functions! Args! Objects! Sprites! Else! If!
< ? php _this_does_not_make_sense( $ someone_help_me, ‘ please!? ’ ) ; ? >

I’ll get it.
… I hope.

Listen.

Kurt Vonnegut said it best (and doesn’t he, always?) when he said, “the arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.” So, when your outlet for creating an adequate life-once-removed is renovated for revenue, how do you cope? Profit shouldn’t drive your dreams, lest it chauffeur them richly into death’s own obligation pit.

So what’s to do?

My photography has always just been that: mine. There are plenty of folks around town—people I’ve come to know well and even idolize—who do wonderful work for weddings and birthdays and friends and parties and couples and musicians alike and get paid for it and live well enough with their passions and their work existing as the same thing.
I want so badly to create for myself a similar dream-world, I’ve just yet to develop the sort of social skills required to do so.
Or something.

Now, I realize that I’m a measly 22 years old and that, a good majority of the time, I’m not even certain what I think in relation to how I feel. But, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few years, it’s that there’s a certain percentage of people that, should you point a camera at ‘em, magically flash-evolve into a creature whose most admirable quality is a sense of stolid embarrassment. It’s as though my camera is an oncoming train and they’ve become too horror-struck to save their own lives and instead just stand there and wait for death. Ugh.

I also know that should these petrified people desire “professional” pictures of themselves, that one ought to be very prepared in the ways of improve and props; kites, fake flowers, a toy ball— really anything to play with is essential. There’s nothing worse than having someone pay you to take a good picture—or, worse, plural: pictures—of them, but refuse to loosen up and allow you any sort of creative license.

I mean, fuck.

I am here to shake my head, punch buttons on my camera, eyeball perfect strangers, ask odd questions, demonstrate silly postures, pose and touch people I’ve just met, and wait, wait, wait for light. I know it’s a sill thing to wait for, but I need you fucking people to just be patient and wait with me. I need you to relax, breathe a little and just pretend like you like each other. Get close. Laugh a little.

Here comes the cluetrain!
Don’t be a dick. Try to understand.

You give me hope. Always. Not only do I know that I can always rely on you to understand exactly where I’m coming from, but you’re living proof that beautiful, smart, compassionate, independent, dream-driven women exist– hell, CAN exist– in our contemporary world of blah and ick. Thank you for always giving me someone to look up to. You’re like my best friend and older sister, except you live too far away for me to hug you all the times I’d like/need to.

I love you.

There are times when I am momentarily—many, many moments, mind you—drawn to someone who exists not as a stranger, but as a memory. A memory of a former ally who gets along well enough without me now, eats away at the earth to create her own personal path but who, also, at one time, shared a friendship with me and whom I adored and cherished—or, rather, should have adored and cherished more, more, more.

In-between our more recent neglects in communication, she took the time to write for me a short, thoughtful letter which I still read from time to time when I find myself heavy or blue or down and depressed. I’ve since received hate mail, friendship resignations, self-righteous apologies, acted ugly, and made mistakes—but it’s so nice to be able to read and remember that someone, somewhere, thinks I’m pretty good people.

I do hope it’s okay to post this, and I’ll leave it anonymous, but seriously:
So. Much. Love.

I’m not sure of the purpose of this, I only know that once in a great while nostalgia sweeps in and I’m forced to look back. Inevitably, when this happens, I think of the strange fixture you have been in my life for the past 6 or so years.

Ever since we met, you have always been the standard I could never reach. I looked up to you, adored you, always wanted to be you in even the smallest way. I never truly felt part of your inner circle, and maybe I never was, but the fact that your life was always at arms length to mine served to color you as this quirky, beautiful, fearless girl. You were everything I wasn’t and, I won’t lie, sometimes I hated you for it.

I have no idea what impact I have had on your life, whether insignificant or monumental it doesn’t diminish the magnitude of how you have impacted mine. Even now, when my jealousy and self-loathing have pushed you out of my life, you still give me courage when I think I have none left. You seemed to know exactly who you were, and exactly what you wanted, and exactly how to get it, and even how to attract good things into your life that you never planned. In a word, you were effortless. I realize, now, that I have always idealized you, and that no one can ever be as perfect as I made you out to be. I consider myself an observant person, but it is only recently that I have been able to take off the blinders and see you more clearly. Flawed, yes, but still wonderful.

If I ever said a bad word about you, know that it was only because I wished you would let me in, and when you didn’t, I was cowardly enough to try to break you down to make myself feel a little less small.

Sometimes I wonder if you ever really considered me a good friend. I think it is my greatest fear that I have meant nothing to you in the scheme of things. I’m not telling you this so that you can lavish me with assurances of my importance to you, I’m telling you because I want you to understand the ripples you’ve left in my life. I want you to know that I still think you are a delightfully eccentric, breath taking, and courageous girl. Thank you, for everything.

Anxious to retell of the feeling I had when I was, for so many moments, the driving force having much to do with what happens when metal meets muscle, I found an audience uninterested; unmoved by the nighttime theophany I so carelessly struck down with my unbelieving vehicle.
Exaggerations.
Melodrama.
Blah Blah Blah.

Well, whether animal or apparition, the mangy stolid wraith broke my headlights and left reminding tufts of hair and blood within my grill.

What now?

Whatever metaphor I forcefully struck; whatever dumb idea with glossy eyes; whatever thick creature of a notion did not die but rather dissipated meagerly, meek that evening. Left me no creature to comfort or confront.

What’s this mean?

They drove a day’s worth to dive into Denver; brought with them empty stomachs, road weary arms and tired eyes. There ain’t no rest for the wicked, though:

big hugs,
      beer chugs,
                 get—
                 ready?
                 set,
                     go!

drunken debauchery means loosing friends.
drunken debauchery means loosing sleep.

“…the whole damn complicated situation would have been avoided if I’d only shut the window.”

It’s been decided: twins are born without mouths. Digestive systems and excrement orifices are all omitted, too. Liver waste is secreted through the pores; the smells create conversational indications: “Yes. I think we should go to Target!”
smells! no sign language
here

folks, we use our hands for
    finding that natural beauty
    so we can dig it out and break it
         down
             into something
                           useful

Smells like pipe bomb: gun powder and broken glass.
No, but it feels like broken glass.

Stuck in my fingers, the palm of my hand, and the crease in my wrist. Let’s collect it and find a restaurant with outside seating. Someone needs a tummy full of broken beer bottles and BBs.
I’m kidding.
No, r’lyeh.
Here.
This leather piece around your wrist is to remind you to not forget to move to Denver. There are tiny hieroglyphics there, too, should you forget to remember not to forget.
Click the hyperlink.
Or haunted hyperlink?

Ecstatic disaster ensued:
Singing IT’S A BRAND NEW DAY, bible lecture, then—boom! HOW I HESITATED NOW I WONDER WHY the goddamn deer ran across when it knew I couldn’t stop. Bursting though too late, making reckless haste towards the other side of the road; to greener pastures, or maybe the truth weeds, no matter. YEAH, THE MOON WAS HIGH and there was NO REMORSE. I just… sat there. GONNA SHOCK THE WORLD, GONNA to rock the boat. Smelled like blood and lord was there reason, but it’s the fur that made the light bulb snowfall so goddamn funny.

Jokes. Inside jokes.
GO AHEAD AND LAUGH, YEAH, I’M A FUNNY GUY.
Rick’d ‘im.

Them? They left me for thunder storms and lightning bugs.
Me? I hugged one of my favorite hip-hop artists.

In other news: Get over it already, for crying out loud.

1. I miss you.
2. It makes me so sad.
3. I want to punch you in the teeth.

My memories make for me melodramatic memories; and so when I say I miss you I mean more that I miss your distant eyes and the easy way you kept company on summer nights: a little drunk, a little lost, but always, always honest. Had you (and you have, haven’t you?) a massive maw to match your pupils, you’d rightly gnash me up—take me up in your prehensile jaws, built strong through preposterous plots and grind me to teeny bits for the sake of making me a stronger, better person.

SPIT. You are so young yet.
SPIT. He doesn’t deserve you.
SPIT. You don’t deserve him.
SPIT. Love, love, love you fool!

And, oh, I tell you, I wanted to! I did. But moods shift in moments and my heart just wasn’t in it. Not for a moment. I know what you’d tell me, what you always tell me; so amorous in your advice:

Take what you want, baby. Take it before they take it away.

But I’m so sober, still. So over-anxious. The capacity of my chest organs seems faulty, as though I’ll never take in enough breath to breathe any life into this heart of mine. I’ll keep a curtain drawn to let the morning sun in, but the daytime and my dualities are strange bedfellows anymore. This life of mine is my own fault.

The understanding is there, but not the confidence.

Everything is beautiful, but everything is also terrible. My heart knows. Your heart knows. And all I can do is laugh laugh laugh. Things are going to be okay.

Does being alone have much to do with personal growth: it does, it does.

Today is beautiful and I am, as punishment for my scholarly procrastination, trapped inside. To make matters worse, my desk is stationed, rather unfortunately so, directly at the front of the office. It’s a very high-traffic area, if one my consider an office full of three entire people capable of the sort of movement that could classify as “high-traffic”, and since I’m out in the open and lacking a door everyone that walks by can see the entirety of my work space and me sitting there doing, well, whatever it is to do there.

Regrettably, I have this permanent look of indolence going on, even if I’m doing something presumably important. I have an uncontrollable habit of sitting cross-legged, and my posture is just such and my head hangs just so languorously from my neck that I look eternally on the verge of falling asleep as I stare at my computer screen.

For whatever reason I feel compelled to make sure everyone knows I’m actually working, regardless if I’m up to my elbows in work or sitting on my hands waiting for my next assignment. When someone walks across the room I have a repertoire of banal “work” actions to go through:

1) I look seriously at my notebook to my right, lick my finger and flip through a page or two, pretending to be so engrossed as to not even notice that someone is walking by.

2) I roll back my chair so I am in full sight, stretch my arms up and moan in an exasperated sort of way, and give a weak smile of commiseration to whoever happens to be looking.

3) I sip coffee from my coffee thermos but make sure to never take my eyes off the computer screen. Sometimes I do this and my thermos is empty, or worse; full of cold coffee. In these instances I sigh loudly and slam my cup down as if incensed by something I am reading.

4) I stare at the wall and rub my temples. For effect, sometimes I close my eyes and slowly shake my head.

I share these so you too may benefit from my stockpile of office tableau. Even when I’m busy beyond belief, I manage to do at least one of those things a day. It’s a little ridiculous.

Also, here’s a small list of things that piss me off:

• Mimicking me in conversation.
• Typing in a way that is not synonymous with how one actually TALKS in a textual conversation. i.e. not using contractions, etc.
• Ellipsis abuse.
• Using my words exactly to remind me of/make a point; whether it’s in an argument, to use as proof of listening, etc. Learn to paraphrase, you lazy sons of bitches.