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2019: Non-consumption recap

morning swim before work, new year’s eve 2019

Here’s to the new year.
May she be a damn sight better than the last,
and may we all be home before she’s through.
(Col. Sherman T. Potter in M*A*S*H)

Crush Girl’s Christmas gift to me was a gift card from my second-favorite boba spot, plus a small boba charm/keyring. And a Ghirardelli peppermint bark square, which may not have been part of the actual gift but Crush Girl knows I have a weakness for them despite my not being much of a chocolate guy.

Pretty good friendzone gift, right? Thoughtful but not too personal. Well done. Mine to her was a set of color pencils, with the colors named after references to her favorite TV show. Also thoughtful but not too personal, and sliiiightly less friendzoney than a gift card. I think I did pretty well too.

I think I’ll remember 2019 as the year of Crush Girl, and while that’s not the cheeriest possible milemarker for 365.25 days, there are certainly less cheery options, as there have been in years past. Except for Crush Girl the only thing really distinguishing this year from others was my company’s physical move from the university campus to an office building near Ala Moana, kind of a boring thing to mark a year by, but certainly influential in a lot of ways. Where a person physically goes to work is as big a deal as for whom one goes to work. We just usually tie the two together, so they seem like the same thing but here’s one case where they’re not.

I’m encouraged by my adding some healthy things to my daily life. I got the wheels in September 2018, but we had such a wet winter that I didn’t habitualize the morning beach stops until around March. I can’t say there’s been a noticeable, visual difference in my health, but I’m doing things in the water (and for longer) I haven’t done since I was in my twenties.

The benefits of morning swims and long evening walks to my mental health cannot be measured (nor even really confirmed, especially given my Crush Girl depression around the middle of summer, and lingering effects deep into the fall), but when I go without for a week or so at a time, I feel the difference. And the difference isn’t mere self-loathing brought about by malaise. I wouldn’t call it an endorphin addiction (if only!). I might call it something related to the multi-sensory stimuli I get from both activities.

After two years of adjustments to my medication and sleep routines, I seem finally to have gotten my BP into acceptable ranges, and fiiiiiiiinally I’m regularly getting good sleep with the stupid Darth Vader mask clinging to my face. The two major factors were 10 mg of melatonin before bed and a black sleeping mask. I must be a sight but since I’m still single, I’m not going to worry about the sexiness and feel good about the REM sleep.

My living space continues to be a disaster. I suppose that will have to be my 2020 focus, somehow adding that enormous project while maintaining personal health gains. I have to be honest and say I don’t know if it’s doable.

Personal writing slowed way down but didn’t come to a screeching halt, thanks largely to NaNoWriMo and its step-sibling forms in April and July. I wrote some interesting short-shorts and the beginnings of what may be a fleshable novel. My writing partner’s new freelance gig certainly helps there too.

I’ve had a few service-related projects in mind for some years, and now that I have wheels and a steady job again, I’ve felt the need to put at least one of them in motion. That’s going to be a January initiative for sure, although I’m wary (again) of losing the gains my positive lifestyle adjustments have brung about. I never was Superman, but I’m less so today than I ever was. And now I’ve learned to accept it. I’m beginning to think this is one of those step-out-in-faith things.

I’m writing this in a boba cafe, not any of my usual haunts but one at Ala Moana. After a swim, I had breakfast at Subway (of course), then took a short walk and sat down here to write. I’m off from work until 1 p.m. and at first I had no plan for the extra time, but taking a moment to write this was a good move.

Tonight it’s all about chilling at home, and hopefully doing part two of this recap.

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Friday 5: Accidents will happen

From here.

  1. What was the last thing you spilled?
    A Super Big Gulp I walked from the 7-Eleven to my desk (it’s a block away). My budget was extremely tight and I didn’t have a lot of room for the $2 drink but I’d worked hard that day and really wanted it. I missed the desktop, slamming the cup into the edge of my desk, which broke a hole in the plastic cup (!) and spilled Diet Pepsi mostly on the carpet. I was heartbroken.
  2. What was the last thing you broke?
    I break things all the time but I think it’s miraculously been a while. Ohhhhh. You know what? I don’t know how I did this because I’m careful about these things, but I snapped the snap-cap on my liquid dishwashing detergent shortly after I opened a new bottle. I hate that. Now I have to set the cap down somewhere while I do dishes. Thank goodness that bottle’s almost empty and I can start fresh with a new one.
  3. What was the last thing you dented?
    My phone case. But of course that’s what a phone case is for.
  4. What was the last thing you tore?
    I was gift-wrapping a weird-shaped item and when I tried to manipulate the paper around a tough spot, I ripped the paper. At first I was annoyed because it was really nice paper and I didn’t have a lot of it, but I made it work. You totally couldn’t tell while the gift was wrapped that there was a tear in it.
  5. What was the last thing you stumbled over?
    A case of water in the middle of my laundry room. I’ve been stepping over it (it’s part of my hurricane readiness kit) for a year, with varying degrees of success.

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Friday 5: It’s around here somewhere

From here.

  1. What was your most recent unexpected expense?
    Legally changing my name so that my birth certificate matches all the other documention I’ve assembled over the span of my life. Ugh. Stupid gold star ID thing. By the time this is over, I’ll have spent $300 dollars or so.
  2. What was your most recent pleasant surprise?
    Crush Girl gave me a Christmas gift. No, I don’t know what it is yet because I’m one of those wait-until-Christmas guys. I seriously didn’t expect this to happen. It gives me hope for our friendship.
  3. What can’t you find?
    I can’t find my Santa hat, even though I pretty much know where it is. It’s put a little bit of a dent in my Christmas spirit.
  4. What are you hiding from?
    i’ve been fleeing the reality of my thinning hair for several years. 2020 is the year I decide at least to attempt some kind of proactive maneuvering.
  5. Who is a mystery?
    We have tandem parking at the office — one person parked in front of another in one very long space. Most of the time it works fine. I requested a parking buddy I knew I’d never mind getting up for. And I don’t. But we’ve been having some problems communicating, and I’ve been discouraged by my inability to be a good partner. I wouldn’t say my partner is a mystery, but figuring out how to click has been a serious puzzle.

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Write drunk; edit sober

My writing partner got a freelance gig writing listicles for a momblog. I think she’ll be great before too long. That she’s writing at all is a bit of a surprise to me, but I’m happy to see that mommyhood hasn’t driven it entirely out of her.

This helps me out because it means the resumption of our meetings. We used to meet weekly but I think this year, the year of her becoming a mom, we met twice or maybe three times. If you’ve ever been in a workshop-style writing class, you know there’s pressure to produce, and having a good writing partner with whom you meet regularly works similarly.

The thing I’ve been working on for a million years is back in hibernation. I will get back to it but I need to learn a few things first, such as plot development. This was the focus of my NaNoWriMo project last month, and it turns out I might have a decent idea, one that could be a real novel.

So it’s what I’m working on right now. I’m sparing my writing partner the entire manuscript as it came out of my fingers in November, and sending her instead selected edits of the work in its presumed order. Once we get through the skeleton together, from crown to tarsals, if I still feel this way, I’ll go in and put some flesh on the bones.

I have to say I’m encouraged by the work so far. It doesn’t suck. My main character needs better definition — I made decisions about him on the fly, and of course they weren’t always consistent. He’s a lousy student in the first semester of his senior year but pretty diligent in the second. That’s pretty much how I was in my senior year but I didn’t take time to develop it well — had to keep my story moving!

What surprised me is how a certain theme emerged as I wrote, a theme about how people make up after major fallings-out. I didn’t plan it, but the main character falls out with three important sub-characters: his best platonic girl friend, his father, and a girl he sorta dates.

It’s the kind of thing I’ve been striving for in my other long projects, a book not about the major story arc but about some truth. The first Harry Potter book, for instance, is a book about a boy who discovers he’s a wizard with a mortal enemy. But one could say it’s really a book about alienation and redemption, or about the power of friendship.

That “what it’s really about” has been evasive in my other work, and I can’t figure out why. I’ve been trying to get there with every stalled novel (and there have been many). This one kind of happened organically — I didn’t even realize it was emerging until I got to the point in November where I knew I had to tie up loose ends. That end needed tying, and so did that one, and hey look, they kind of go with this other thing that happened early in the story.

Because here’s the thing. I don’t hug books, but I know book-lovers who do. They don’t hug them all; they hug the special ones. When eventually someone I don’t know reads my book, I want it to be a book the book-huggers hug. Those Wayside School books by Louis Sachar are excellent, and super super popular. But dammit, I want to write Holes.

I’ve been audacious enough to say I want to write a Newbery winner. I do. And it’s a stupid thing to say, of course. But I say it to remind myself that publication isn’t the goal. That book-hug is the goal.

I asked my writing partner to be straight after she read the first few chapters. Is this the beginning of a book someone might read? Does it read like someone who knows how to write? A stupid question — I know I can write. I just, I just know my own voice so well now that I can’t tell if it sounds like a writer or if it just sounds like me. Maybe that’s actually what a writer should feel like, utterly unimpressed with his own voice.

Anyway she said yes. If I wasn’t so vulnerable in the moment I would have said, “Yeah, but what do you know? You’re just a momblogger.” Instead I just took it, and I’m hanging on to it for 2020.

This week I’m going to prepare the next set of chapters for her to look at. We meet in the second week of the new year. I did a fast skim, and yikes. It’s not nearly as good as the stuff she’s already seen. The middle two weeks of the month were a struggle as I tried to figure out what the heck I was telling, and if I decide to flesh this story out they are going to be the biggest challenge, I think.

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Following my arrow

Just had a really long day. Scribbling for a few minutes just to decompress. I won’t get into it here but if we’re FB friends you can read it there. If we aren’t, you should add me.

If you’ve never worked where payday is every other week, as opposed to twice a month, I suggest quitting your job and finding someone who’ll pay you this way. My first school paid this way, as did the engineering firm. The non-profit used to pay me twice a month but a couple of years ago switched to every other week, at the urging of employees. And yes, I’ve worked for a Japanese-owned company so I know what it’s like to be paid weekly! That could be sweet too but I don’t see it happening.

It means 26 paychecks per year instead of 24. People who work in places like this call those extra two the extra paychecks, and they can be glorious. See, most monthly deductions for stuff like insurance or parking are split in two, since you usually have two paychecks a month. Twice a year, you get a third paycheck in a month, and these paychecks don’t have the deductions. So not only is it a third paycheck in a month, but it’s often a larger paycheck.

I don’t have that many deductions, but I have more now than I ever did. I’m paying for parking (we get free parking after our fifth year; I’m just completing my third) and I loaded up on supplemental health insurance last year, in anticipation of turning fifty. I was sure I was going to get a colon cancer diagnosis, which I did not.

My check was not quite two hundred bucks larger, but holy moly what a difference it felt like. I’ve been super bummed about my pay lately. I knew when I switched careers I’d be starting over, but I kinda thought that in three years I’d have proven more value than they were expecting. My employer doesn’t see it this way.

The not-quite-$200 take-home pay bump this pay period isn’t quite half the increase I want, need, and deserve, and it felt soooooo good. I almost forgot how unappreciated I feel. Until this long (pricey) day, I almost felt like a grown-up making a grown-up living.

On the other hand, it’s Christmas. Getting most of my shopping taken care of during the weekend felt great, but now it’s going to be a pretty lean couple of weeks! Still feels good, though. Better to be scraping bottom because I spent money on gifts than scraping bottom because of the usual reasons.

Is it weird that I left teaching and became poorer?

I put Crush Girl on my Christmas list. I hope it’s not weird. I didn’t even get her something practical; I wanted to get her a book but I know her stack is pretty high right now. Plus I gave her a book for her birthday and I have a feeling she didn’t care for it.

So I got her something that’s probably just going to take up space but is a cute gift. I saw it while flipping through IG. Those ads are pretty useful. I’ve now purchased two things IG targeted at me, both of them gifts. And there’s one more thing I bookmarked to get myself for my birthday next month.

I didn’t see the Kacey Musgraves Christmas TV special, but I picked up the CD and it’s pretty cute. Yes, I still get CDs. Not nearly as many as I used to (thanks, employer!) but I don’t want the medium to die.

I feel fine about the long day I had, but it’s created me more work, which means at least two more long days in addition. Not really looking forward to that but not complaining either. I don’t know about jolly, but ’tis the season to be positive, and I remain so.

Oh, I finished NaNoWriMo just past 50K words. Yay. I’m drained! So I’ll save discussion about that for later.