When Facebook is too exposed

Facebook status update that I'll post here instead because too many work colleagues have friended me:

"Ellen is sick of presenters who just read every word off the PowerPoint slide to you, but she is equally sick of immature colleagues who spend the whole meeting IM'ing each other about how boring the speaker is, rather than taking responsibility for the meeting's interestingness by asking some questions or prompting the speaker to move along, or by just leaving and going to do something more important."

Probably would have been too long for Facebook anyway.

Fear of Commitment

I have lost another personal trainer.

That's four, since April, three at this new gym alone. The first one explained why she was leaving, provided her contact details and has kept in touch, but the other three just vanished. You see them on a Wednesday morning, they say, "Now, do we need to schedule appointments for the next few weeks?", they send you off with homework for the weekend, and then Friday afternoon the call comes, "Hi, this is Sarah from X's Gym, Ryan has gone on to other adventures, so I'll be your new trainer. Looks like you've got an appointment scheduled on...Monday. I will meet you then, and am really looking forward to training with you!"

They must either get fired abruptly or quit in a huff. I'm thinking it's the latter. It can't be good business practice to go through them so rapidly - why does X's Gym not fire the manager who's pissing them off instead, and actually keep its investment in training so many new staff? And they don't seem to realize that training is a very personal experience - because the trainer pushes you to limits of pain and endurance and fear, and they're the ones there to reassure you and catch you if you fall, you end up quite bonded with these people, so for them just to vanish like that is actually quite upsetting.

And the same thing is happening at work. We're being restructured, and they have promised us that it's not about a reduction of headcount, but in the past few weeks three different colleagues have just disappeared. Two were asked to go; one resigned, after only being with us a very short time, for an opportunity he couldn't refuse. One of the ones asked to go had a office around the corner from mine. His name is still on the door, and it's a bit creepy when you walk past. Nobody else liked him much, he had the personality of a Mr. Rogers, and he talked seriously non-stop once he got your ear, but he had lived in Japan and Singapore for a long time and did some really interesting work at ad agencies there, and so if you asked him the right questions the long rambling stories would be really interesting. We'd been to lunch a few times and I was just about to start feeding him some strategic advice on how to improve his standing with his colleagues, and he vanished. I was away for two days and when I came back he was gone. And he hasn't got back in touch at all, even though he would perfectly well know my work email address. Probably humiliated. Or in financial and family panic.

Why does Corporate America treat human beings as disposable? Why doesn't it understand that you actually form relationships with people, and when they are severed like this, with no warning and no chance to say goodbye, it's actually quite damaging to the people who remain.

So, tomorrow I'm going to march up to the manager of all the trainers at X's Gym and demand from them a long-term commitment. I'm going to ask for a senior trainer, maybe him, who's not going to leave, because, I'm going to tell him, I'm not just some housewife coming in because she's bored, I really want to do this seriously and I need someone who can commit to do it with me and support me.

But that raises a question in itself. Am I ready to make a long-term commitment? There's still the restructure on. There's still an outside chance of a job offer in Milwaukee, and the reasonable girl in me knows that I would fit much better in a town of 1.5 million people. That is an hour and a half from Chicago, with 9.5 million people. But it's risky. My senior managers are encouraging me to stay, and see what happens. And hopefully I've impressed them all enough that they'll give me some seniorish job to do while I'm waiting, some way to have impact on how the whole thing turns out.

I am definitely holding back from bonding with this town. I haven't unpacked the boxes, yes, famously, but also I haven't started any clubs or joined any, I'm not making any sort of effort to extend social invitations to a wider circle at work. I haven't put the word out that I'm looking for a new boyfriend. I don't even venture too far from my usual paths to work, home, and grocery, to explore and get to know more of my town. I am waiting. I am holding back. Maybe I'm afraid of being abandoned again.

A new boyfriend would be nice - in fact, what I really want is to be married. To have someone who has stood up and said, in front of God and our relatives, that no matter what, even if all the people around you get summarily dismissed and walked to the door with their belongings and never write and never call, you will still have me around, we will go through it all together.

What will it take to get me to throw myself into living here, fully? The example of several dear friends, whose policy is "You shouldn't stop living in a place, just because it's possible you might leave it."? Or something as arbitrary and extra-curricular as demanding a better trainer relationship at the gym? If in order to get a long-term commitment from a serious trainer, I have to make one myself, could I do it, and could that be the thing that makes all the other commitments fall into place? It's a bit off to the side and out of left field. But, you know, these things always are.

mid-September

The last two weeks of September are working out to be the loveliest time of year in both of my homes.

Mid-September in Sydney is when spring gloriously arrives. The sky is just a ridiculous shade of crystal blue, the flowers bloom everywhere and scent the warm breeze blowing over the blue ocean on the sunny beaches. They picked September 15 as the first day of the Olympics when they were in Sydney, because of all this and because those two weeks are the weeks it's least likely to rain (I think they still had some rain, but the first week was glorious). And it's Finals season in all the Rugby codes - full of crescendoes of rivalry and conquest, and large tough footy players who are up for retirement from the code weeping like babies because it's their last home match, their last regular season match, their last Finals match, their last match ever.


Late September in Appleton all those trees that you've watched since March and it seemed like the world would never come back to life, the ones that sprang into that emerald green at last and brought hope back to the world, and gradually darkened into a spinach color and grew dusty when the weather grew hot and dry in August, they start to turn, and for some they go yellow and look like trees look in Australia when they're sick or dying, but many of the others burst into these ridiculous bright hues. There's a maple outside of the office at work that is still dark green at the bottom but the top is bright, bright red. A luscious red that's so rich and vivid that you can't even make the leaf shapes out any more, the dazzle of the color blurs them. Driving around town now you come upon whole vistas of trees that look like this - bright yellow, lovely pumpkin orange, and blazing, ridiculous red. It's still warm enough to be out - the natives are wearing t-shirts and shorts still - but soon the air will have that crisp feeling and people will be wearing sweaters and having to walk closer together to keep warm.

So, if I visit one of my homes during the last weeks in September, I will miss the niceness of the other home at the same time of year.

Octoberfest

Today was Octoberfest, the very biggest deal in Appleton of the whole year. Here are some things I saw there.

• Down at the Laurence U. end of things, in the miles of white booths selling crafty things, there was one booth with Christmas decorations. Most of them were fabric snowmen wall hangings and Christmas tree ornaments, with lovingly embroidered faces, but they also had, at this same booth, strings of Christmas tree lights that were made out of spent shotgun shell casings.
• When I was watching Greg Waters & The Broad Street Boogie in Houdini Plaza, in the park next to the Art Center there, a little breeze blew through the trees and little yellow leaves started falling down around us. A young man in front of me looked up and beamed with smiles, and turned in a circle to watch them fall all around him. E'd out of his mind, probably, but still, it was lovely to see him enjoying the sight to much.
• When I was watching the 80's nostalgia band Johnny Wad, a line of geese flew overhead. Some other people in the crowd looked up at them and one guy pointed. Nothing fixes a time and place like a row of Canada geese flying south. This wasn't just any old rock concert, this was a rock concert in Wisconsin, in the fall.
• There's a spot just before the Performing Arts Center where you're on a little rise. The road dips down and then rises back up again, toward Badger Ave. and the final stage where Vic Ferrari was playing. From that rise, College Ave was just a mass of people, as far as they eye could see. My main experience of College Ave is walking up it on Sunday afternoon, with a bitter, howling wind, no people, the parking meters are free all day, and nothing is open. This was so the opposite of that that it hardly makes sense. There are only 72,000 people in the whole town. Where did all these folks come from?
• I did meet up with my friend (it took about 8 texts to finally get him on the right corner of the right street), and to celebrate the experience of being at Octoberfest we got a Tiger Paw at a booth that was selling them half-price. A Tiger Paw is a fried pastry that's seriously the size of a dinner plate, and about twice as thick, covered with sugar and cinnamon. I had about half of it, and it was actually amazing. Not too sweet, not too greasy. I'm glad we stopped and had the local experience - I think this is the ultimate thing to get at an Octoberfest food stand (besides a brat with sauerkraut of course, but I'd already had one of those).
• The guitarist and lead singer of the 80's nostalgia band, when they were playing "Another Brick in the Wall" (disturbing to hear a crowd of people shouting proudly along with him "We don't need no education"), he was using precisely my exact guitar - a Fender Standard Stratocaster with tobacco sunburst finish. It's like seeing your Mom suddenly be on the stage, such a familiar thing that I don't yet associate with stages and rock performances. I was having fun watching everyone play and picking out chord patters. It's time for me to be on stage and not in the audience. Soon, soon.
• And I definitely have to learn how to play "Pour Some Sugar On Me". I wonder if, when a woman's singing it instead of Joe Elliot from Def Leppard, if it would sound even dirtier?
  

Beauty and Pain

I've lived in the Western world for all my life now, so I've seen many depictions of beautiful women's bodies. I've been to the ballet, I've watched videos on MTV, I've seen countless movies and TV shows filmed via the Male Gaze. So I understanding the feeling that seeing a beautiful female body is generally assumed to invoke - the grace, the balance, the smooth feeling of harmony, the aesthetic calm grace of it.

Now that I am meeting with a trainer at the gym twice a week, and doing the hard work required to carve my own female body into a beautiful woman's body (long way to go, campers, don't get me wrong, but we're getting there), I understand the feelings from the other side, the feelings felt by the owner of the body, and it's just the opposite of the feelings that experiencing the body is supposed to invoke.

You have to heave your muscles around past the point where they comfortably want to go. You have to move your muscles when they are too tired to move. Those muscles can feel sharp pain, dull aching pain, a decentralized all over distressed nauseous pain through whole sections of the body. Two days later they seize up into painful rocks and you can't move properly or get up off your office chair and walk smoothly down the hall. All day after a workout I feel like I have a mineral imbalance of some sort. Like there's a big hole inside, or more like the inside of me is shot through with holes like the inside of a malted milk ball. (Or a Violet Crumble). There's lots of yelling and grunting and moaning during the periods of activity that cause all of this. Sweat, redness of face, lots of panting and gulping of water. Face screwed up into a grimace of bravery and effort so I can get to number 13, 14, 15.

It's kind of new to me, this level of athletic effort, this consistently, for this long a duration. I realize, I guess, that all beautiful women with beautiful bodies must do this much work all the time. But it's so disconnected, that to get that graceful lovely way that makes men sigh, you have to do such sharp, painful, jarring things. From the inside, the enjoyment of it has a completely different character than from the outside it's supposed to be like. I suppose everyone else in the world probably figures this out when they're seven or ten, but it's something I've just been thinking about now.

Two places in memory

Sometimes remembered places come into your mind for no reason.

1. Some shops in a downtown. In a building that was mostly glass, at the end of a mall, two or three stories. One of those sets of shops that are sandwiched in between other tall buildings in a downtown. I am pretty sure there was an aggressively fashionable surf-and-skate-wear shop that was pitched to much younger and cooler folks than me. I had lunch or a snack in a food court or fast food place within it, but it wasn't your usual mass fast food like McDonald's or KFC, it was like a juice shop or bagels or gourmet salads or something. The kind of place grumpy people went to grab lunch on their lunch hour, and the grumpy servers serve them the same things every day, and no one makes eye contact because it's just grabbing lunch on your lunch hour. I remember feeling vaguely uneasy, I think I had walked a long way to get to this place and it was just at the edge of my walkability - I needed to head back so my feet didn't wear out, and also I think I had to focus so as not to get lost.

But what I really noticed on remembering this funny random place I went to once was that when I was there it seemed like a place in an exotic foreign land, some strange big city far away where I didn't feel at home, and would probably never go back again. But in fact, I think it was in San Francisco. Not an exotic foreign land any more, not a big strange city that I'll never go back to. If I wanted to, I could hop a plane first thing tomorrow morning and nearly be there in time to have an intimidating and overpriced gourmet salad or bagel with all the grumpy working people, tomorrow.

2. The smell of an Old El Paso Salsa bottle being rinsed out in my sink for some reason brought back the low end of Glebe Point Road, the section near the tappas place and the bus stops, where it comes up on Broadway. Glebe also seemed a bit exotic to me, because it was on the opposite side of Sydney Uni to where I lived. I did manage to hang out at that end of Glebe Pt Rd quite a bit in that year before I moved - some dinners with the group that went to Belvoir St plays, when the Belvoir St Theatre was being renovated and they were held in the Seymour Centre. A couple of auxiliary Philorum events. One lovely afternoon coming back from a Book Club meeting, when I took myself out for coffee and shopping - I think that was the day I bought all those Haruki Murakami books, they had them buy-one-get-one-free and I got six altogether.

There was a Mexican place that opened up down there, a very American style Mexican place. I loved it, the neighbors I took to it loved it so much we went three or four times before I left. But my colleague who had married a girl from Mexico hated it so much he was actually quite nasty - "If you could call that food" he wrote in his IM message to me the next morning at work. It was all kind of oversized and deep-fried with cheese on everything. American style. But the flavors were really good, I thought. And the rooms were lovely - two adjoined rooms that had been the front rooms of two terraces, with all the wood trim painted white and very homey and inviting windows looking outside to the road. And somehow the smell of grocery store salsa brought back, via that restaurant, the whole end of the road, and then more particularly an occasion of walking away from an auxiliary Philorum event and John B. going to the bus stop and everyone looking at him like sheep, craving more attention, craving an invitation to go where he was going, and the group eventually walking to Central, but me, the yuppie, catching a cab. It was black night, with the red lights of the stoplight on the corner, and the street signs and a sense of movement from the cars and busses and cabs, like when you expose a nighttime city photo for a long time and the traffic all becomes just long stripes of light. That's my sense of that particular stretch of Glebe Point Road.

The Sisters Concoct a Business Plan

B: I was driving to work this morning, convinced I was going to lose my job and my house. Dumb NPR.

E: Yeah.

B: But then I remembered, our parents own their house outright. And they have a yard, big enough for a chicken.

E: Exactly! And a sheep, so we could get the wool and make fabric to quilt and yarn to knit things out of.

B: And the sheep could mow the lawn. So, we could set up a stand on the corner and sell those, eggs instead of [I forget what she actually said, let's say it was "matchsticks"].

E: You've been watching Baby Boom too much. Or a goat! Goats eat grass. Oh, but they don't grow wool - unless you get a fancy alpaca goat, and we could make incredibly premium fancy sweaters.

B: And then sell them at affordable prices!

E: Exactly.

[Then there was a side conversation about how both of us seem to be getting allergic to both dairy products and soy.]

B: Maybe it's something that just switches up.

E: You're going to go back to milk on your cereal? I mean, you just want your cereal to be moistened, it doesn't have to be milk. Why does it even have to be milk-like?

B: [pause]

E: I mean, I've never tried the cornflakes and beer...

B: I was going to say.

E: A rock and roll breakfast. I remember this quote from David Lee Roth that has haunted me, from an article in Rolling Stone back when I was in high school, or maybe college. He said, "Rock and roll isn't just something you listen to, man. It's a lifestyle! It even determines what you eat for breakfast." But he didn't say what that was, and it's always haunted me, what is it? Maybe cornflakes and beer.

B: Anything. Jack Daniels.

E: That really would be rock and roll.

B: And Jack Daniels goes will all the breakfast foods, you can put it in your coffee...

E: That's right, it's sweet, isn't it? You could make Jack Daniels-flavored cream and inject it in a donut.

B: [laughs]

E: It would work! It would be like those chocolates with liqueur-flavored centers, but it would be Jack Daniels-flavored cream in a donut.

B: [laughs a bit more]

E: You could call it...[pauses for effect] Kripsy Fuckin' Kreme!

B: [laughs hard] There's our new business plan!

E: It's the kind of breakfast you have at three in the afternoon.

B: We wouldn't even open until three in the afternoon. [gets laughing hysterically] What was it again?

E: Krispy Fuckin' Kreme!

B: "The kind of breakfast you have at three in the afternoon." Ha, ha, ha, ha! [laughing hysterically]


We think it's a good business plan for these troubled times, because, as my sister said, "They drink when they're happy, they drink when they're sad."

Two things wrong with Corporate America

1. It is infantilizing.

I was sending emails to my old colleagues in Australia, and was remembering the programs that they undertook and managed, and the way they acted in meetings. And was thinking that, compared to them, all of us at my office are like incompetent, incoherent children. I guess I was also thinking about the prospect of the Global Ministry of Excellence and Supremacy that they're talking about establishing, and remembering trying to teach a bunch of drones in San Jose about the requirements of the field, and how we all seemed so much smarter than anyone working in the US. I picture how things would go if the Ministry of Excellence and Etc. tried to establish policies and push around the marketing folks I worked with in Sydney, and it would be exactly the same.

And now I know I am on the other side of it, and I am one of the Yank Incompetent Naifs. And why? It must have something to do with the fact that none us are allowed to do anything, not have an idea, not spend a dollar on something, not launch a program, not work with a designer, nothing, without about 7 layers of approval in all directions. Today I noticed on one of my websites, just a little thing, but that in one of the drop-down menus there's a link to a feedback area called "Web-Site Feedback" but when you get there it's called "Website Feedback". I should have caught that in the design, but was too busy putting out fires and calming people down and developing impressive (fake, lies) presentations for senior management to manage my "internal PR". And today, when I noticed this, did I send the change through? Sigh, no. Even if my IT guy felt like making the change, it would have to go through three levels of Change Control, and then sent to Offshore, and then back to implement on the Dev server, and then code review and testing, and then an email to me for approval, and then another, redundant email asking me to approve publication (part of their brilliant new system of streamlining the change process by me now having to send two "okay to publish" approvals for every change), and god knows how long it would take and how much shepherding. For fuck sake. So I just left it, an imperfection, a blot on the site, a little detail that my detail-oriented self didn't notice at the appropriate time and is just too fucking hard to fix.

I think all the layers of permission-getting and bureaucracy makes us like children. And then when we suddenly get global responsibility, because we work in North America and it, for a little while longer anyway, still runs the world, we blink in the bright light and do our little naif best and wonder why all the foreigners who talk funny are mad at us all the time?

2. Last week, and then the Friday before that, in conversations about our coming restructure and how angsty it's making me, I burst into tears on three different male colleagues. And not only did not one of them grab me and give me a big reassuring hug, not one of them even reached over to touch me in any way. Then this week (when I was feeling better about the restructure), a colleague who is my electric guitar mentor asked me, "How's it going, are you practicing?" And I reached out my hand to his so he could tell I was practicing so much I was getting callouses. And he reacted like my little hand was radioactive. I finally got him to touch the very tips of my fingers, but there was some awkward palm-up, palm-down adjusting until he worked out what I wanted him to do.

Men in corporate America are afraid of even touching at all their female colleagues. This is fucked up. I know they're all married (well, in fact, one of them is not), and I know I'm single and therefore a terrifying threat, but people should be allowed to touch each other in non-sexual ways, when there's a simple human call for it. Crying women should be hugged, even if they are work colleagues. At my last work, there was plenty of physical contact across reporting lines - the boss used to stop by and rub the shoulders of everyone there. Mainly the very handsome Italian guy, which made us wonder certain things about the boss, but all that aside - he wasn't afraid to introduce some human contact into the workplace, and it made us all work better, I think. Rather than feeling like we were going through our workdays in plastic bubbles or cones of hygiene. During all those stressful times.

Corporate America has gone too far. People in American corporate offices should be allowed to touch each other. And crying women should be hugged, and beginning guitar students should be allowed to demonstrate their new callouses, their newly developing shredder fingers, to their guitar mentors.

3. Oh, yeah, and the whole credit crisis thing. So, that's three things wrong with Corporate America.

Litany

What do you see?

White screen, bluish wallpaper image, green lights from the mouse. The rest of the room is dark - I didn't turn the light on when I came in. Ghostly fingers typing. A yellow glow to my right from the hallway light. Some headphones sitting on the book The Artist's Way, sitting on the laptop keyboard. A yellow guitar pick.

What do you hear?

Rattling keyboard keys, and something small and metallic going around in the dryer. The dryer's hum. The computer fan, faintly, off to the left. Really nothing else at all. I turned off the TV a few minutes ago.

What do you smell?

I don't hardly ever remember to smell things. Yesterday this computer area, the carpet here, smelled like dirty clothes and summer feet. Today it seems better so maybe that was actually me. Something smells hot - maybe the computer or the dryer. Maybe a little dusty.

What do you taste?

Grapes. I've done quite well - I bought them before my guests arrived, washed them off and just put them in a big bowl to hang out in the fridge. I thought they'd be shriveled and dry or wet and brown in no time, but they're hanging in there, I have a few each night after dinner instead of Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies. (The background thing, the secret fact about my otherwise posh and together self, is that I have run out out of money for the month, I anticipate overdrawing my checking account by at least $300 plus all sorts of fees for doing so, the credit card is just precisely balanced to cover the bills that should automatically hit it through the end of the month, I might be able to use that $20 gift certificate credit card for gas if I run out, I will be scrounging my cupboards for lunch. This has happened before. It's only eight days, so I'm sure I will manage. In fact I have $350 Aussie dollars that I could ATM back here to cover overages, but it cost me $50 in fees to get it there in the first place. I will start paying down debt next month, I swear. As soon as the table is refinished, and I have an amp. And if my parents come visit, after the holiday expenditure. But seriously, after that. Thousands of dollars a month. I need a bit more buffer than this, especially in these difficult and uncertain times.)

(That's a secret though, so please pretend that you don't know, don't loan me any money, just let me cover everything graciously. It's only eight days! Don't ask me to pitch in for someone's birthday or go out to a fancy dinner, but don't make a big deal about it either, please, I will be posh and rich again soon enough.)

What do you touch?

Keyboard, smooth and responsive - typing fast always makes me feel really smart and competent. The fingers on my left hand are a bit numb and getting callouses from guitar practice, which I have diligently been doing for a half hour every day, at least. My feet feel the carpet. My back feels stiff, from gym this morning, lots of lat pull-downs and rows and pull-ups and that kind of thing. Back day. My legs don't hurt but will when I stand up. I can feel grapes in my stomach too - there's something wrong with it and I hope it's just an enzyme imbalance of some sort, not the old demons back again, but they do recur at age 40-ish, so maybe. If it is that, I will handle it. But my arthritis in my fingers turned out not to be arthritis, and my vision turned out to be just drug-store-correctable vision, and my teeth were fine, so perhaps my belly is fine too. Just stress, and sleep deprivation, and too much eggs, and too much soy milk. No problem cutting those out of the diet for a week or so because I can't get groceries, right? Silver lining city.

What are you going to do?

That is the question that's off limits, you. That is why we're doing this exercise instead.

Unencumbered

Tonight I was coming home from my second-ever guitar lesson (more talking than guitar, but we should have expected that, right - the philosopher signs up for guitar lessons) and I realized I didn't have any beer left so I stopped off at the grocery store. I had the Fender in the back seat fastened into the seat belt, which is how I usually transport it around town. If I could buy a guitar baby seat for it, I would. But this works for transport, and when I get to where I'm going, usually I put the guitar in the boot. However, I was just going to pop into the grocery store for long enough to buy beer, and didn't want to make a big deal of putting the guitar in the boot and then getting it back out again for the ride home, and Appleton is known for its low crime rate, and so despite the suspicious looking guy sitting waiting in his red SUV in the facing row of parking spaces, because Appleton despite its low crime rate has a high rate of suspicious looking guys, I decided to not only leave the guitar fully visible in the back seat but also left my red bag in the front passenger seat and took only my wallet in.

(At my old grocery story in Surry Hills I would not have done this - it was known for having junkies haunting the car park, at all times of day or night, and I'm sure none of them would have hesitated even one second to break my window to get the guitar, or my bag, either one of them or both, even in broad daylight, and I'm not sure any of the other junkies would have given a shit enough to have interfered and stopped them, even in broad daylight. We had to stop the tradition of leaving some change in the cup holder of the car for crossing the bridge and paying M2 tolls, upon moving to Surry Hills, because all the roving junkies would probably have smashed the window without hesitation to get a few cents, even though to repair a broken window cost about $269, and you didn't claim it on your insurance because it was less than your deductible and you wanted to keep your no-claim bonus, so for every opportunistic junkie it was $269 out of pocket to Windscreens O'Brien. This only happened once, there was a night that someone came and smashed the passenger side window of every car parked on our street, one after the other, but we learned that it was possible, and never left anything valuable in the car again, and never left any change visible in the drink holder up the front.)

When I got the beer, and also a cheap Aussie Red that I've now had two glasses of, I got a plastic bag rather than paper, and then put my wallet in it so I only carried out the beer and the bag with the wine and wallet inside.

And felt a tremendous liberation. Usually I have a purse, or a heavy bag for work, plus computer, and sometimes insulated lunch bag, and today also guitar. Walking around with nothing in my hands, nothing on my shoulder, nothing, just me, it was incredibly liberating.

I should go somewhere with no purse. I should pick an outfit with pockets and just walk out my door and feel the freedom of being an individual human being, unencumbered, walking through and around and here and there on the earth. Just me, my own body, carrying nothing, responsible for nothing, and moving freely.

If mirrors had time travel devices built into them

One day I will be old.

I'm old now, but one day I will be really old. As old as this lady in the left-turn lane facing my lane, pulled out just a little bit too far because old people lose reaction time and spatial coordination. Her mouth is a blank line, her face is a yellowed hatchet, her hair is wiry and grey and done. One day I'll be as old as her. My hair will be as grey as hers.

Will I wear it long, like the long-grey-haired knitting ladies? Maybe if your hair goes grey, it's best to cut it really short, short and very chic, a very chic urban geometric sort of cut. And then I won't look quite so old as the hatchet-faced lady whose car is a bit too far out in my lane so I have to swing around it slightly to drive past, or like the knitting ladies - they are like younger women startled by oldness, still wearing their hair in their young-girl styles, chin length and held back by barrettes, but now suddenly and surprisingly grey, or maybe it has turned grey suddenly since the last time they looked in a mirror and they haven't had time to notice yet and make adjustements. I don't want to be grey like the knitting ladies, and I don't want to be old like the lady in the car making a left-hand turn, a bit too eagerly.

I want to be chic, and maybe my hatchet wrinkled face will look like I smoked too much, even though I didn't, or like I tanned too much on expensive beaches or went to the tanning salon, even though I did neither. Or ate only greens and protein during my 30's, my 40's, my 50's - how many e's do you get before you are truly old-old? Maybe I will look rich and tanned and healthy and debauched. Rather than just old. Rather than just like an old woman.

One day, though. I will be. What will you see when you look at me then?

Has Mercury gone retrograde again?

Last night I was IM'ing with my cousin and after a long series of rambling posts from me, although the little icon said she was writing things, she didn't reply. I gave it five minutes - thought maybe her phone had rung or something - and then wrote "Are you still there, chica?" Turns out she had been replying but the replies weren't appearing on my screen. So she just called me and we talked on the phone - the old-fashioned way.

Tonight I was on the old-fashioned phone with my sister and similarly, I was saying something and she was very quiet, so I waited for a reply and finally said, "You there?" and she wasn't. I hung up and tried to redial but couldn't get a dial tone, then could but the phone wouldn't dial. I think it was probably a battery thing, but she said her phone had packed it in at the other end as well.

When we worked out about the IM thing, I told my cousin it reminded me of being at slumber parties, where I was always, always the last one asleep. Every time, I'd be in the middle of some long, rambling story and finally realized that no one was listening to me because everyone else had fallen asleep.

chucking a sickie

My angsty work situation has been making me feel both wound up in a firily outspoken panic and like I have a big hollow dark place inside where the job I loved used to be. Everyone else is stressed too, and reacting in different ways, so meetings have been a bit emotionally taxing. Morale is down, so productivity is falling as well. I've been having trouble concentrating and getting things done. And yesterday really did feel like I couldn't do it any more, and so stayed home today and just did the barest minimum. (Probably about three hours in total, including two conference calls, so that's pretty lots for what is technically a sick day, right?) I did in fact feel like I was getting a cold when I got up, in fact kept turning the alarm off so would have been massively late anyway. I think it was the right thing to do.

I talked to my sister this evening and she gave me some ways to feel better - first, do some lateral-thinking type research about what other jobs are out there ("What are they up to at NASA?...") so I realize I have options. Then, make sure I realize that they don't have power over me, and try not to react to things out of job-fear. Then, just do my job, even if I don't care about it. The things will get done, and that will make me feel more in control. Plus, I've been noticing that I am happier when I'm actually doing my job rather than worrying and strategizing and politicking and trying to find information. Just lay l0w for a while and get on with things.

And I should keep in mind the things outside work that are actually more important to me and closer to the core of my identity. The guitar playing (first lesson tomorrow!). Rock and roll generally. The narrative project - haven't even thought a thought about that for weeks now. Scrabbling some poems together so I can go to the poetry group. And trying to establish a Philorum, even if it turns out to be for a short while.

I should keep in my mind images of:
- Downtown College Ave with the brick buildings and twinkly blue lights
- My lovely Fender with the tobacco sunburst finish
- My nice red couch and living room furniture, and the Mission style bungalow that I will one day put it in
- The barns all around here, and how short a distance you have to drive to be amongst them and see them
- All the things there are to write - not just this blog, other things

How many years should you wait to see if what you're doing is what you want to do?

Given my current work dilemma, I'm reflecting on the experiment of giving yourself a year and seeing if you still feel the same way. I first made this experiment on the second or third trip back to Denver, post-relationship-apocalypse. It was the first trip, ever, in which I thought, "Yeah, I could live here again," and when I got back to Sydney I thought, "Yeah, I could see moving away from here." There was a separate Sydney experiment, starting at the time of my return from that trip home, when I reflected on the fact that I didn't have any super-close friends, no one I talked to every day about what I was doing, no one who had my back if I needed anything (remember the moving experience? I still didn't have one of those by then). So, I thought, I'll give myself a year, and if things haven't got any better, I will think about moving back.

I remember talking to another Yank friend, over pizza and red wine, at about this time, and she wisely pointed out that if I started saving some money, it could be for either a house deposit or to fund a move back home.

The move back home opportunity came sooner than I could save the money to fund it, and in fact it was sponsored by my current employer, so I didn't need to save that much after all.

Now I've been here nearly a year, don't have the boxes unpacked, and don't have a good friend who cares what I do every day and who has my back if I needed anything. I probably have much less of that than I did in Sydney. And now my job is being taken away, the job that was such a good fit for me - my boss has been gone since July 1, and now the job itself is being restructured in a way that makes it a less good fit.

So, should I stay or should I go? My first instinct was to go, and I've already put inquiries out about Plan B, which would be in Milwaukee, which would in every way be a better place for me to live - 1.5 million people in the greater metro area, as opposed to 150,000 here, and a quick train ride to the center of Chicago rather that a difficult 4 hour drive. Lots more folks, probably lots more counterculture, a great museum, lots of live music, a groovy downtown, a higher percentage chance that there might be someone interesting and single. Not so rural, not so "great place to raise a family", not so much drive your kids to baseball practice after work, perhaps a bit more go after work for a drink.

But, you know, risk and insecurity, and moving hassles, and do you think the prospect of having to unpack my kitchen and organize all my books myself might just do me in, bring on a thoroughgoing nervous breakdown? What if I have to live in a smaller place, or can only afford someplace a ways out of town? What if I have to drive back and forth to Appleton all the time and put that many more miles on my car? I would have to find a new doctor, dentist, eye doctor, guitar teacher, and venue for leftist discussion groups. One good thing is I can take my gym and my chemist with me, since they are national chains. Insurance, phone service, cable, internet. Could I bear it? Would it break me for good?

So, I had the fleeting thought, maybe I could do my new improved restructured job here, and give it a year, and see if I'm happy at the end of that year.

But how many more years do I have? Can I afford to spend many more of them seeing if unsatisfactory lives become satisfactory?

I don't really know what I want, but I wish I could get it sooner and stop wasting all this fucking time trying to make decisions about what I want.

Pyjama Saturday

Today I slept until 2:30 in the afternoon. That's 9 1/2 hours later than I usually wake up - more than a whole night's sleep. I didn't even roll over much before waking up. And I dreamed lots of dreams.

For my day, I did laundry, practiced the songs I know on the guitar (the ADE songs - Louie Louie, Wild Thing and Blitzkrieg Bop - and the new GCD7 one, I Fought The Law), and then knitted on my Bonnie scarf. I watched 4 or 5 episodes of Weeds but feel like waiting before I watch the last one, because that's it for my DVDs, Season 4 is only available on Showtime which doesn't come in properly on my TV. I am between books to read. I also did the dishes. But for my meals, had a bowl of cereal for whatever the first meal was, at 3pm, and a frozen black-bean and corn chip casserole and Tofutti ice cream bar for dinner.

I am so behind at work it would take weeks to get everything done. I have still not finished my taxes. I have still not unpacked all the boxes. I'm supposed to do a run to Rice Lake with my cousin next weekend to pick up some furniture, and I have not done any planning. I don't know how much money I have because I haven't checked my accounts since I got paid last. I don't have an amp yet. I have not talked to anyone but my already committed family about why they should vote for Barack Obama, and there's less than 60 days until the election.

Because of all the uncertainly around me, I'm finding it hard to do any of these things, or any other thing for that matter. Work is restructuring, and I got the broad outlines on Friday, and I think I prefer Plan B, about which I've already made some inquiries, but there's not enough information to make a decision, and there may not be before a decision has to be made. Was moving here a mistake in the first place? I miss Sydney sometimes, and I definitely miss my old job, I knew even when I left it that it was the best job I ever had or would have, and I would never find one as fun and challenging or such a good fit. I had my crap days, sure, and the boss could be impossible in his way, but when I talk to him on the phone now I ache with missingness. So. Maybe not a mistake, but certainly some goodness left behind.

And I don't know if I want the job my job is going to evolve into because what I wanted was my job that I had when I got here, with that boss and that set of responsibilities. I was working really hard all year to put things in place to correct some old mistakes, build some new systems, shore up the foundation so that next year I could start to take it to the level where it should all be. I had two associate brand managers who cared about those websites and the projects we wanted to enact. Now both of them have been transitioned to new roles, and the new ones don't care yet, aren't yet up to speed about where we are much less where we should take things. There is not enough internet expertise in the organization, and I don't know how they expect to do anything world-class in the new structure.

So I feel disgruntled. Unmotivated. Tired. A little trapped. Not quite in despair, I guess I know better than to despair. But certainly not excited to exist, just this very weekend. Why did all the things I liked and was perfectly happy with get taken away from me? Why do all the new things I newly like seem so far away?

American Vistas

When we took off from Denver's airport yesterday afternoon, going directly to the east, the air was clear, and as we climbed you could see the patchwork of green and brown squares that is the agricultural land that stretches from Denver to the Nebraska border, close enough to see the farm houses on each square but high enough to see the earth curve away at the horizon. Struck by how big this country is, I wanted to volunteer for Barack Obama right then.

On the way into Milwaukee, the pilot told us we had started our descent just as we passed over Madison - I could look down and see the Capitol, and the convention center on the lake shore designed by Frank Lloyd Wright but not built until just recently, and I found State Street stretching away on the diagonal. We flew past Milwaukee a fair way, out over the waters of Lake Michigan. I could see the waves in an even but also random pattern. There were white splashes every now and again, even though we were still up quite high I could see them, and I thought they might be flying fish but then realized they were just the larger waves breaking at the top. As we wheeled in a turn to head back to the runway, the sun was setting, so there was a wide orange strip on the water, and a few white sail boats still out sailing. Milwaukee is a very beautiful city when approached over the water at just this time of night.

Hospital Sitting

So, Mom had her hip replaced on Friday, and I was there all weekend and did four days of sitting in the hospital, the first morning with all of us loved ones waiting for her to come out of surgery, and the next 3 1/2 days waiting for her to be ready enough to come home.

Hospitals are hard places to be, especially the surgery waiting room because you're with a whole room full of little groups of people who are worried and scared, and sitting quietly to pass the very slow-passing time, trying not to think of anything, not of what might happen because you don't want to call it up to mind, and not that everything will be alright because you don't want to call down the evil eye or a gypsy curse on yourself. That's the hardest.

Then coming and going in the lobby is hard, and up and down the elevators, because people are coming in to see someone and you catch their eye and smile but they might be coming in for something bad, or be worried or in pain, and you don't want to intrude on that private, awful thing, and it's not like you don't have your own hard thing to deal with, anyway. Fortunately, the orthopedic ward was right above the floor with the new babies, so most of the people in the elevator were really happy. And the orthopedic ward is pretty happy too - everyone's there to get repairs, usually they are planned enhancements to the capital infrastructure of their bodies, they are not there through catastrophe or illness or a situation of hopelessness. But still.

Mom came out of surgery really well. She was talking, pretty cheerful, and really hilarious. She'd lean back and close her eyes, but every time there was anything funny to say, she'd open her eyes and say it. I have always thought that my sister and I got our sense of humor from the dry folks on my Dad's side, but it must come down from Mom as well - if, while coming out from general anesthesia, your true nature is revealed, my Mom is really funny. I wish I'd been writing everything down, but again, I'm sure she wouldn't want it all recorded for posterity, it's a private moment for family only.

Over the long term, though, Mom doesn't deal well with pain medication, and that makes it hard. The first day or two she was mostly sleepy and slow, and a bit sluggish. Her blood pressure and blood oxygen were both low so they kept giving her fluids and a tube in the nose. She did eat a bit, I think, that day. But we had a long way to go. On Day 3, my sister stayed with her while Dad and I drove across town just in advance of an angry black thunderstorm, to fulfill a social obligation on behalf of the family, and while my sister was there Mom got a bit weird, started saying things that didn't make any sense and saw Dad sitting beside her bed when he wasn't there. Then Mom got really itchy, all over, and it was all we could do to stop her from scratching at her incision and making skin abrasions. We all stayed until 8pm that night to make sure she got sorted out - three different people came by to check her medications, and finally they gave her some Benadryl and she went to sleep. The TV was all hurricane Gustav and the postponed Republican Convention, on CNN endlessly.

I should give a shout out to the hospital. She was there for both shoulder replacements (11 and 7 years ago, respectively), and as my sister put it, the place had much more of a bus station atmosphere that time. It was sort of grimy and neglected, and the staff was grumpy, and there was a horrible incident where someone came and just tossed a breakfast tray at my broken-winged mother, full of packets of milk, juice, jello, all sealed with foil or in plastic, and she couldn't open any of it with one arm and no one came to help. When Dad arrived, a little bit late because he was resting and also I remember he had a phone call from one of his sisters that the other sister was unwell back in his home town, she was sitting there in tears. This memory haunted me this whole time, but when you have a hip done you can use both arms, so she could feed herself and change the TV channel and talk on the phone and things just fine. But beyond that, the staff was all really, really nice. We found a set of bullet points in one of the folders they gave her that outlined their service commitment ("Isn't it a shame they have to write this down?" she remarked), that included things like, "We promise to look you in the eye and introduce ourself by name. We will explain all procedures and ask if you have questions. We will treat you with respect." They absolutely did - before we even found the rulebook, Mom had mentioned that they all seemed to have had Happiness Training since the last time she was there. Everyone looked her in the eye when they came in, told her their name, listened, explained everything thoroughly, and said if she needed anything at all not to hesitate to call. From the surgeon's PA to the internist to the guy who cleared away the lunch tray to the Transport Agent who came to wheel her downstairs when she was ready to go home. And they'd instituted valet parking out front, on weekdays, and a Room Service menu. Yes, when you were ready to eat, you perused the menu bound in red leather, with a variety of tasty offerings (e.g. from simple "Gelatin" to huevos rancheros for breakfast), then dialled the Room Service extention, where a polite male voice said "All of our agents are busy. Your call is important to us, please hold the line." Her call was important to them? It's a hospital cafeteria. Imagine it. Anyway, then within an absolutely maximum of 45 minutes, and usually more like 10, a friendly and respectful person came, looked her in the eye, introduced themself, dropped off a beautiful tray of still hot and fairly delicious food (she didn't like most of it because her stomach was affected by the Percoset, but what I tried was pretty good), and told her if there was anything else at all they could do for her, to please not hesitate to get in touch. So, I think someone in Hotel Management had crossed over and started working in the hospital system, and asked themselves, why not treat the hospital patients as well as you treat guests in a fancy hotel? (The rooms certainly cost more per night, after all.) And I am sure it will make a big difference in people's recovery and overall attitude about their health. So, thanks, on behalf of my Mom.

I sat with her on my own the next day, while my sister and my Dad went and got the house ready for her arrival. She sat up and had lunch with me, but kept drifting off between bites, and once she started trying to explain something, "They have to...the art, for the kids...the kids from Katrina...they have to get..." she started waving her hand in a circle like she was groping for the words, "I might have dreamed this, but...they have to get for the kids..." I wanted to be able to reach inside her head and watch like a movie the thing she was dreaming about, and make it something real out here in the world so I could make a plan and go fix it, and then assure her it was all taken care of. I hated that I couldn't ease her worry, and I wonder if I should look for something nice to do for the kids affected by Hurricane Katrina anyway.

Once her systems got back on track, sitting alone with her was like what it must be to have a newborn baby. She'd finally get settled, breathe heavily, throw her head back in sleep, but then five minutes later the eyes would open again, and she'd have to use the restroom (a huge production with slippers, walker, slow shuffling painful steps, and the rest, and back again), or she'd be too cold, or too hot, or want a drink which had snuck just out of reach when the last nurse who'd come in to check her vitals moved the table out of the way. I didn't mind. But you can't read, while you're looking after an animal like this, whether Mom with a new hip or newborn baby. You can't sustain any concentration, you can't embark on any projects at all. You life to serve. You are happy to do it, you love her more than anything, you would do a million times more than that, but still. They are whole days passed in love and selflessness, and I admire and am amazed by the people who do it for a living every day.

Sin and Reason

One problem with being an atheist is that you don't get to sin. It's not that you do stuff but it's not a sin because you don't believe in sin, you actually don't do the things that most religions consider a sin because you can understand the perfectly sensible reasons for not doing them.

Most of my friends who grew up Catholic go through a sinful phase, and I think it's because when they realize the nuns and priests have been lying to them, they wonder if everything was a lie, and they start experimenting. Bondage, three-somes, group orgies, multiple wives, and who can imagine what else. For us sensible atheists (and especially for those of us who grew up Protestant, and then among those especially all of us who grew up in that purely theoretical and extremely low-commitment denomination Episcopalian (US version of Anglican)), there's no sin, we are ruled only by common sense and scientific fact, and so we don't do all those experimental things because we know in advance the very good reasons why not to. Makes the Catholics exasperating. "No, the Hell bit was a lie, and it's okay to masturbate or be a homosexual, but that bit about three-somes and orgies and multiple wives being a bad idea, that was all actually true."

bullet points of overwhelm

• There is actually a fair bit of heavy shit going on in my life just at the moment.
• Mom got her hip replaced last Friday, which is the biggest thing.  She's doing quite well and is expected to come home tomorrow.  I changed my plane to be here for one more day to help Dad get her settled in, but am still full of worry and guilt that I can't be here for the six weeks until she gets fully better, staying with them every day, running out to the store to get things, cooking meals and helping her get around.  But I'm glad I'm staying the extra day to get her settled in.
• Hospitals are hard places to hang around in.  There's so much emotion - the most in the Surgery Waiting Room, a million little groups of family members, sitting, waiting, hoping for the best, trying not to think about what might happen.  But then also on the 2nd floor, one floor down from the orthopedic floor where Mom is, are all the new babies.  You see people arriving and getting security stickers, you see people leaving and putting impossibly small babies in authorized car carriers and taking them home.  You see people with faces drawn with worry, you see people who give gracious, friendly smiles.  Hospitals are full of emotion, and each morning as we head down there, actually it's when I walk in, I have to gird myself for one more day around it.
• My sister showed me the first two episodes of a show called Freaks and Geeks, by the guys who did 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up and all sorts of wonderful finger-on-the-zeitgeist movies, and it's set exactly precisely when I was at High School.  And they absolutely nailed everything about it - the clothes, the music, the language, but also the preoccupations, the period in history, the way parents and teachers and guidance counsellors all talked.  I winced and had to look away many times because it was just too perfect.  And who wants to vividly relive their High School years?  Seriously?  But it's a wonderful show, and I fully intend to watch the rest of them.
• Today we skived off hospital duty and met a friend of my sister's at the Mercury Cafe.  It said on the menu that the original one was started in 1975, and then "after moving to a few locations around Denver," they came to the current location in 1990.  I went to one of the "few locations around Denver", it was the key venue for punk bands, back in the day.  It was somewhere up off Colfax, in the neighborhood of Wax Trax which I'm not sure is there any more (how long has it been since music has been recorded on wax?), it was all black on the inside, there was a nice bar, I think they had nice breakfasts there even back then, but I went to see the Dead Kennedys, I think it was, in probably 1980 or 1982ish, a bit late for the peak but still, enough in the midst of it that it was still cool, and still pretty relevant - although I was there with people who had moved to their New Romantic phases, with slicked back hair and long wool overcoats, very Brian Ferry, and I remember Robert saying, dismissively, "These people are all dressed like it's still 1977."  The Mercury Cafe now is in a building that stands all by itself in fields of scrub and yukka, up north of downtown, with nothing around it - you'd think it would have attracted other hipster businesses and formed a scene, but no.  It's all red inside, with lots of Christmas lights and photos of political protesters and wood benches and stuffed animals, a bathtub sitting by the restrooms for no good reason, an accordian player serenading us during brunch.  The menu has lots of vegan stuff, lots of spicy Mexican sorts of stuff, but also one dish featuring eggs on Elk.  I love that it still exists.  I wonder if I would hang out there often if I still lived here, or if I would just go every 5-6 years, as I seem to now, and marvel at it as a time capsule of my youth, but not make it a key central part of my life?
• Work is undergoing a restructure, and last Tuesday they outlined the vision for our part of the business, and sort of outlined what our jobs might become, and I'm not sure I want to do either of the jobs my job might evolve into.  So I got on the phone with an agency I work with in Milwaukee, and as luck would have it they are looking for exactly one of me just at the moment, and were hoping to hire someone before the end of the year, which is just when our restructure is supposed to be complete.  I was meeting with them anyway, just taking advantage of the fact that I was flying out of Milwaukee to come to Denver for my Mom's hip surgery, but it turned out to be more or less a job interview.  So, I might actually move, just about the time I've done 12 months in this town and job.  Or I might not.  Since I haven't put roots down very far, it wouldn't be that hard, and since Milwaukee is a bigger and much cooler city it could be really good, but it's still unsettling.  And makes me very unmotivated to do any work - instead I've been...
• spending lots of time standing around talking about guitars.  Because I have a new guitar!  I always thought I wasted my youth by learning cello instead, but I guess I'd written it off as an avenue no longer open to me.  I think I believed that if you don't start when you're 17 and spend 13 hours a day practicing, you'll never be any good, and I think I also thought you had to start on acoustic, learn Bob Dylan and John Denver songs, then do a few years of Classical, and only then would they let you plug in and actually play something good.  But all of that is wrong.  In fact, they tell me, in some ways it's easier to learn on an electric.  And the kind of music I like to listen to is rock, not Bob Dylan or John Denver or folk songs or even Classical.  I wandered into a guitar shop just over two weeks ago, and I remember the feeling crossing the threshold, the feeling of stepping over all those false beliefs.  And, more on this later because it's more than a bullet point, but I'm now the owner of a Standard Stratocaster, and a leather strap that belonged to a colleague at work who is working as a mentor to me, and I have a lead on a teacher and might even start next Friday.  I also have a number of offers to jam, which I didn't expect.  The fellowship of guitar enthusiasts is welcoming me warmly, and I'm very excited to reclaim this lost dream and realize that it's not too late.
• In some ways I have nothing to lose.  My narrative ran out just over three years ago, maybe even longer, maybe as far back as when I was retrenched.  I have no plan, no goals, no specific desires, no unrealized ambitions.  I was feeling like that after the Milwaukee sort-of-job-interview meeting, on the plane.  There are some scripts in my head that you shouldn't leave a job after less than 12 months, you shouldn't leave a company who moved you across the world, you shouldn't leave a job that you're good at and they like you perfectly fine, you shouldn't move cities all the time, you should buy a house, you should settle somewhere.  But I thought, I'm basically dead now.  I basically died a few years ago, and now it doesn't matter what the heck I do, so why not?  It's hard to explain this feeling, because it's not a suicidal feeling, but it is an absurd feeling.  Maybe I'm living more in the truth of life, that in fact there's no real story or structure or meaning to it, it's just one damned thing after another.  I'm improvising, rather than following a planned path.  But I'm also going back and picking up things in this post-dead life that I didn't do in the first one, like become a rock goddess.  And who cares?  What does it matter?  What difference does it make that I'm way too old for this?  I'm already dead, I'm beyond the boundary, I'm no age, there's nothing appropriate or inappropriate for me because I'm in a goal-less void.  So, why not?  It's hard to explain this feeling without making it sound like I'm depressed and still have some bad grief things to work through.  I might.  But right now, I feel somewhat fearless and very creative.  And alive.  In the now.  So, we'll keep going and see how all this turns out.
• Tonight at the hospital we were watching The Sound of Music on ABC Family, and it was fine, but when it got to the point where Maria had run away from the Von Trapp household back to the abbey because she couldn't handle her feelings for Baron Von Trapp and the idea that they might be reciprocated, and the Mother Superior told her she had to go back and face it and see how it would work out, and told her that the love between a man and a woman is also sacred and maybe God had another plan for her, and then turned to the window and sang "Climb Every Mountain", it made me weepy.  It's okay to be weepy in a hospital, fortunately, and I could sort of blame it on tiredness and hitting the wall of hospital-sitting, but I think what made me weepy was something about love and truth that I don't really know what to do about.  Again, like with the guitar and the job situation, I will just keep going, living this absurd life, and try to feel alive and creative and have fun, and whatever.  See what happens.