Summers that end in Seven always signify new beginnings to me–67, well I won’t talk about that here. 77, Summer of Sam, summer of six weeks in Europe, come to home to a six week temp job that began in October and ended…10 years later October, 87, interviewed for new jobs. Shearson Lehman opened a job for me on Black Tuesday, October, of course. 97–circled many coop ads, 20something on my birthday. Seven brokers got back to me.
“Please if there is a god, let this be the apartment,” I remember thinking as I entered my building’s lobby. The apartment was even better. Closed on 10/1, coincidentally the first night of the Jewish New Year. Would take a sleeping bag and sleep in the closet until I actually moved in two months later.
Summers with Seven make me feel anticipation. Seven should be my lucky number. It’s not.
Summers with Seven have a definite edge. They live on way past the end.
Summers with Seven have a sweet forlorn beauty. They make me yearn for somethings new, as I hang onto the wonder of the present.
People get New York in the summer of 77 all wrong. It was the cusp of new beginnings. So was I. Made myself remember the events and the nuances. I began looking back to it before it ever ended. Geneva was a different world than New York. Geneva made me into a girl who could throw the best parties. They had them there.
77 will always be a watershed wonderful summer for those of us not affected by the affects of the black out. Yes there was Sam but really what were the odds? We did live in quasi fear probably brought on by our parents who most likely wished they could order us somewhere else.
Mine paid for a six week trip. True I stayed with friends, and a few bed & breakfast type places, but air fare was much more. As I was working for my parents I could take the time.
Spike Lee got 77 right. The only one to do so. It wasn’t my New York then. Mine was the New York of privilege. It embarrassed me, an emotion I know people today can’t relate to.
In the fall I was to take a job where for the first time since I was a kid I was going to come into en masse contact with children of the boroughs. Somehow I felt a part of me had come home.
I have always wondered if that was a deficit. If I was hiding from my identity. Scared of potential, I didn’t want to know I had. Or if I was searching for other worlds in the city of my birth.
real real gone…
I can’t stand up by myself
Some people say you can
make it on your own
You can make it if you try
I know better now
•••••••••••••
in the youth of a thousand summers
like a sweet bird of youth
in my soul
••••••••••••••••••••••••
memories of summer days
so long ago, people and places
that we used to go
oh, those memories
all I have now is memories
Van Morrison should be winter. But he’s all seasons. In the summer of 77 I went to Max’s,
CBGB’s, Upper East Side fern bars otherwise known as restaurants where you drank too much, picked up strangers and sometimes took them home. Sometimes you got to see cable in the morning. Reuter’s news flashing, ‘NEW playing in the background. All these years and I never realized what the call letters meant. Began in the summer of 67 I believe. All album sides.
Summers with Seven always bring something wonderful. I’m a sucker for summers with Seven. The unimaginable becomes reality. This damn well better stick to the pattern. I believe in the power of a summer with a Seven.
Stumble it!
Once I did write on subjects other than the blogging mojos. I cleaned up the post. I do write differently now.
It’s been raining since last night. At times there’s been thunder and lightening but it’s cold and my building either has too much heat or no heat. It’s the later tonight. I had a 10:30 dentist appointment, and left for it at 9:45. Most people wouldn’t have even bothered trying to get a cab but would have taken a crosstown bus and another going down Fifth. But would I? No. I think I’m made of money and always rationalize that since I would have walked if the weather had been nice…
It took fifteen minutes to get a cab; my building entrance is off Riverside Drive, and cabs are on West End, so having a doorman does absolutely no good in a rain/cab situation.
Got in the cab and for some reason looked for my wallet. I had left it home. We finally got to the building. The fare was $6.50 and I found $6.82, I gave him $6.80 and apologized for the 30 cent tip.
The cab driver could have come from infinite ethnic groups, had a familiar but not instantly placeable accent, and his name had been Americanized which I found strange. He threw money back to me.
“What did you do that for?”
“Too little money.”
Usually I overtip for karma but I just didn’t have it. The dentists office suite is in a large building my sister and I cleverly call “the dentists building,” because there are so many dentists. It’s on Fifth and 61st; just two blocks from my old apartment, and many people still call it “the new building,” though it was built 20something years ago.
I held up one of the quarters he had thrown:
“I gave you $2.75 in quarters plus four singles.”
“No. My money.”
“No. That was my laundry money.”
Laundry money is sacred. People who don’t have washer dryers, don’t have washer dryers in their building that accepts a card, or send their laundry out collect quarters. It hurt when I counted the quarters and gave it to him. I’m the person who always figures out the check.
I have never cheated a person out of money. It’s not who I am.
He tried locking me in the cab. I waved to a doorman who came over, and the cab driver had to let me out. Now I didn’t have any money to tip the doorman. While I don’t live in this building, I spend more time in than some people who work in it. The doormen are wonderful.
All the money I have spent on Karma this past year was gone in two minutes.
Never have a checkbook with me, but I was going to deposit a check and had brought it with me instead of my wallet; the onset of dementia, I know.
Though I’m naturally too fast, I slow myself down to do things extra carefully; otherwise I make truly stupid mistakes. I gave my dentist a check for $20, and was able to get home.
The dentist appointment was virtually pain free; I walked down to Barneys and got a cab immediately. Had been planning to go to Barneys but without credit cards or a bank card…or any ID to show with my check, the safest and only place for me to be was home.
Don’t give up all your hard spent Karma. Never forget your money
Stumble it!
I just pre-ordered my copy of Diesel’s book. Even the pre-order form was funny–as Sage said: a hoot.
Sage has some great photos. He’s a person who does. Unlike those of us who take a million pictures of the beach. The Boat Basin at Riverside Park has new lights. There are entire new parks on the river.
But whenever I go, I get into walking or socializing and forget to take pictures.
I’m allowed to blog because it’s Saturday. My blog. My rules to be broken.
********************
I am focusing on my book–when I can focus. I don’t want my obit to say: She had so much potential but she wasn’t organized and had ADD. I don’t want to go on meds for it. When I move I want to get health insurance without hearing about pre-existing conditions. If you get help, insurance companies hold it against you. If you don’t get help they say the condition existed and you neglected it.
It has been suggested that I move into a tank for the duration of the book. That’s very appealing to me, especially if it overlooks an ocean. I would put a paypal donation thing but that’s so not me. I could ask for people to design one, but I wouldn’t trust any design by anybody I know. Especially if it involves confined spaces and re-circulated air. Even more if it involves electricity. And I don’t want to think about electricity and water Continue Reading »
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Diesel wrote a book that has actually been published. Actually won’t be until next month I think, but can be pre-ordered.
Would be jealous but I like him. Diesel’s book is cleaned up essays from his blog. They are very funny.
My book has nothing to do with my blog so I have to give it my full attention. No blog posting for awhile. No reading blogs. No commenting. I have faced up to my blog addiction, and hope to make it manageable by September.
I have long believed that personal blogs should come with an expiration date.
This blog has had more than its share of successes. I purposely downplayed all the mainstream attention it has received because I was never in this to to be competitive.
It’s not a niche blog. It’s not written for the coveted 30 second attention span. It doesn’t purport to tell people how to do things or why they should be doing whatever. It’s not an image blog. There are many many things Courting isn’t. We’re not a humor blog, but we’re not a whiny one either.
It has been pointed out to me that I’m not a true blogger as I don’t moderate comments. I was a founder of a political blog, have helped people begin blogs–OK I usually send them to Doug, but I point them in the right direction, answer all comments, and sometimes edit posts, or give people the confidence to post. I think that all proves I’m a blogger.
I keep reading mainstream publications that put down blogging and bloggers.
Then why do they all have blogs?
Blogging is hot. Everybody and their grandmother has a blog. Every damn magazine and paper have blogs.
Instead of becoming a new medium that allows for experimentation and cream to rise, it’s just another way of recycling old info, and writers who have already made it.
It’s a medium for the coveted 30 second attention span. Yesterday I was reading a magazine that was touting its new web site. You can chose one from column A, one from column B, etc–all very quick and very healthy. It’s good to know that the old fashioned Chinese menu lives on.
It’s good to know that a medium that is ten years old this year is already entrenched with old media people in a new format.
It’s good to know that there are so many people who will happily tell you how to blog, how to find your niche and how to optimize search engine efficiency. I probably did the opposite of every single thing a blog on blogging will tell you to do, and I still rose to the “top.”
Courting will be three years old in August. I first realized that people actually read blogs that following November.
In blogging years we have been around for decades. And found an audience the first day we hit BE.If anybody wants BE credits, please email me. I don’t know who put so many in my account. I didn’t find that to be a wonderful gift.
Can I be real? Between all the social networks and other things, blogging’s becoming one huge popularity contest. I don’t Twitter. I tried unjoining Blog a Log but there was no opt out available. I find it disconcerting to see my picture in different blogs.
These options are fine for people who blog for a hobby, but for a writer it’s time consuming, tedious, and not worth my time.
“I follow,” “don’t follow,” can go crazy trying to find the code to link all people who comment. I’m sorry, only have BE credits if wanted for comment payment. Blogging linkage has reached absurd heights. That said, link to me–the old fashioned way, in blog rolls, if you like my blog. I was going to say mutual linkage is a good thing, and it is, but I no longer understand the game nor really care to learn it.
I don’t do Face Book or My Space. My niece gave up her account at twelve because she felt it was too Middle Schoolish, and she was in Seventh Grade.
Middle School was the worst experience of too many people’s lives. I won’t begin to go into all the blogging cliques etc.
I have never been a clique person, but always on the fringes of many. I like it that way.
I do know bloggers who were forced to give up their blogs because of gossip or nasty comments. I’m not big on comments because I did get so many hateful ones in the beginning. This fun, interactive experience became scary.
I’m not scared of dissenting points of views. I dislike people who put me down because I’m me. I fell too easily into defending myself, but I stopped.
I have never written to become popular and am not about to now.
I write because I love to write.
I have always thought of Courting as the Parker Posey of blogs. Independent, strong, and not wiling to sell out. Maybe, but the price has to be incredible; the rewards substantial.
I’m tired of everything blogging. Even on days I don’t post I do think about my blog. It overtakes other things in importance when it should be the least important thing.
I’m obsessive and blogging gives immediate gratification. I feel productive even when I’m being counter-productive.
I feel resentful when I’m supposed to prove my blogging worthiness over and over again, as more and more people begin who don’t know my blog.
I can’t and won’t do this. I don’t have the energy, the will or the want to become a “big” blogger all over again.
I’m not nuking my blog. I’m proud of it. It contains a lot of truly horrible posts, some mediocre posts and some truly great ones
I might post in it once a week. But I can’t be held to a schedule or to do the things that I have been doing. I actually put a lot into my fiction posts. I need that energy for other things.
I need to find the joy in blogging again. There isn’t any now. It feels like a gigantic chore, but one that I actually pay to do.
I need to feel free to say what I want to say and I always find myself holding back as I’m afraid of offending somebody or some cause or something. That doesn’t go for the US federal government.
There are archives that go back to 8/04. I actually wrote a poem. Nobody read my blog so I felt free to do whatever I wanted to do.
I haven’t been following its stats for a long time. Blogging stats are the most easily manipulated thing–and I speak as somebody with so called great stats.
I feel sad about blogging. It felt as if it were an amazing medium that would let people do what they enjoy the most and/or are good at.
I do believe that I’m a good writer.
Blogging gave me so much hope. It did allow me to believe in myself and to dare to dream. There were false starts. I care passionately about the quality of my writing. I was willing to start, stop, start, but…and then I had to blog.
Where once blogging felt so free, it now feels as if courses are given so most blogs will read the same.
A few people have read all or parts of my book. They will tell you, if prodded, that they were amazed by the differences. A blog isn’t a book. I have always known that. I have a dawg and I have a___. He will tell you, if asked nicely.
I haven’t been able to sit at a computer for twelve or more hours a day, seven days a week for awhile.
This makes me feel as if I’m a slacker. I’m not, but….
Recently I noticed how much of my life I was neglecting for my blog. It just feels so damn productive when it it’s anything but
I’m writing a memoir and it’s a good one. I can be found at the nearest Starbucks or Dean & DeLuca for the rest of the summer.
Stumble it!
Condi Rice can’t even get an op-ed piece published. She’s just not newsworthy.
Her co-writer Price Floyd said:
The piece, he said, was littered with glowing references to President Bush’s wise leadership. “It read like a campaign document.”
He left the government left the State Department on April 1, after 17 years.
he was fed up with the relentless partisanship and the unwillingness to consider other points of view. His supervisor, a political appointee, kept “telling me to shut up,” he said. Nothing like that had occurred under Presidents Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush. “They just wanted us to be Bush automatons.”
I think that a democracy is defined as a place where people have dissenting voices–even in the government
I don’t like or enjoy politics. I do enjoy living in a country where everybody has an equal voice.
Stumble it!
We’re having the kind of rain that hurts. Hurts my head. Hurts my mood. Hurts my productivity. Wish I could send some to all of you in drought states. It’s the kind of day that I hate anybody who acts happy or perky.
It’s the kind of day where I want to give up on all ambition and just move. I don’t want to take Advil, not because I enjoy suffering, but because I have reached a place called “worry about the side affects.” I’m tired of worrying. I’m tired of not enjoying every day to the fullest. I’m just tired of many things.
In adoption, as with any type of child abuse, there are survivors at one end of the scale who are quite happy with or adjusted to their lives, while at the other end of the scale there is an over-representation of adoptees in America’s mental institutions and prisons.
My book is about me and my parents. Not overtly. It’s about me, boys, sex, drug, rock & roll, my parents and adoption. Honestly I didn’t think often about adoption in those years. He-who-has-played-every-role in my life was fascinated by my being so matter of fact about being adopted.
It was a fact of my life. The last thing I wanted to think about in the late 60’s-early 70’s when I was in my late teens was my parents. Why would I want to think about adoption? It happened and was a good thing.
I knew my parents were special people. I knew that most girls didn’t have the freedoms that I had, and the semi-wise parents to lean on when needed.
My parents let me explore life. I did things that drove them crazy, and they let me know it. But finding an ounce of pot in your teenage daughter’s room….and then later accidentally finding her near her boyfriend’s apartment in the East Village when she was supposed to be in school….those things might have set me off later.
The later was very accidental. If my Mom wasn’t going to Cooper Union Museum and if idiot, me, hadn’t spotted her and screamed: “mommy, mommy…” Thing was I was eighteen and really needed my mommy that day.
It was hard to be a parent of a rebellious teenager in the late 60’s. The rules had been thrown out with no new ones. I was a sweet girl but not a good one.
The next year Dr. Spock asked if he could have lunch with my boyfriend and I, during a lull in a rally. Could he? I was beyond flattered.
I told him that my Mom had worn out two copies of Baby and Child Care and that I would love to tell her about meeting him, but partially because of his teachings, I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.
He laughed. He heard that one often.
In many ways Dr. Spock was a bigger influence on my childhood than being adopted ever was.
Dr. Spock began the parenting revolution and my parents were 50’s early adopters.
My book and now my re-uniting with people I went to junior and senior high with has caused me to reaxamine everything.
I don’t enjoy being introspective. I was overly-analytical for too many years and became sick of that.
I am about the age my parents were when this all happened. I do see it through there eyes. Plus I know too many people who didn’t live to see 25. I know many damaged people.
I am a survivor. I owe it to my parents. So I won’t attempt to answer people who think all adoptees suffered child abuse.
Doctors, except Dr Spock and a few other great ones were too quick to blame having been adopted for too many problems. My real problems might have come to light.
I still would have rebelled. I loved most of my experiences. Thing was I had two built in safety meters. One was something strong in me that was probably imparted by my parents, a basic sense of self-respect. The second was my parents themselves.
I never got into real, real trouble in any sense. If I had, i could have gone to them. But I lived with that strong shield they helped me develop.
I don’t understand why we’re so quick to place blame on our parents without examining ourselves first.
There could be many reasons for the over representation in mental hospitals and prisons that become obvious if you think about a population of people who have been typed since infancy or childhood. There are many other reasons that I won’t attempt to discuss. They’re biased variables.
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Overheard on the Upper West Side: Are you sure you’ll feel good enough to go out tomorrow? You sound windy. I have never heard “windy” used in that context and was left with endless thoughts on what it could be.
If you read me through Google reader or an RSS feed, I take posts down. I edit endlessly on occasion, usually when I have something much more pressing to do. They stay cached in Google. I don’t find myself to be endlessly fascinating. I probably take down the best posts. I’m also going through a “who cares what I think” period which is death for a blogger.
Who cares if I don’t think that Harry Potter or for that matter Oprah made the world read again? I can’t imagine life without books but I’m older and thus old fashioned.
It makes me sad that I want to write about how the whole Harry Potter thing is a crock, but feel I will be demonized That kids who like to read other genres are actually at a disadvantage because Harry is so stressed, fawned on and read.
Sara Gruen just got a five million dollar book contract because she relates well to animals and writes half decently.
Animals? We care more about pets than people. I have nothing against animals and hope to have some pets when I move.
I gave up on the Stephanie Plum books after the second or third as they all began to feel like one, but I will take a female bounty hunter over any animal.
I like the animals I read about to have two legs and not be cavemen. Or fantasy creatures. There’s something reasurring to read about human foibles. I am partial to good mysteries because they explore the human condition so well. Good memoirs and good fiction do the same thing. Good is of course subjective.
I think we have lost something basic in our zeal to embrace the Internet era. We have lost the face to face encounters that are basic to our need to grow. We have lost true solitude that can also be necessary to regroup and face the world again.
Our choice of reading materials shows that disconnect. We don’t care enough to read about basic human interactions. Instead we chose fantasy and animals.
I can’t be held to a schedule this summer but I will have an interview with a woman who wrote a memoir I really like this coming week or the next.
Stumble it!
a href="http://fridayflashback.blogspot.com">
The explosion happened on the East Side near Grand Central. I live on the Upper West Side
I have been getting many spam birthday cards. Least I think they are as they all say “a friend….” No name. Weird, very weird
The first letter was written by my Dad. I was a sulky, despondent teenager without a good word to say about anybody or anything. On the other hand, I cared passionately about causes and was cute
Though not as cute as I was in my father’s famous to some letter upon adopting me. As you can see he was a bit more enthused in the second letter.
Though later I would proudly call my parents my friends.
I never called him “Pa” in my life. Loved to call my mother “Ma.” It made her crazy. And at least 40 women would turn when I called her that in a store.
I tried to write a letter to my Dad to tell him about the world now. So much has happened. He thought he would become hooked on computers. Instead….He knew the economy was moving from a service to a communication one. That excited him, but he felt too old to learn it.
Then, everything else…Felt too gimmicky for my blog. No I won’t write a personal one here. There are many parts of my life my parents never knew about, and truthfully, after they died I sometimes wondered if dead people could see certain things. The thought was repugnant.
The third thing is the song that was number one on 7/19/60. Think it’s way appropriate for my birthday. I was in Oaxaca Mexico the summer this letter was written. My father never sent it to me. Or I don’t remember. He kept copies of everything. No he never gave it to me. I would have remembered “perhaps college.” College was a given, never an option.
Oh I love it.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
July 16
Happy Birthday dear Pia
Wishing you a happy 16th year—not only on July 19th but for the whole year—and always.
Tradition has it that the 16th birthday is a sort of milestone in a young girl’s road of live. I suppose it is so. We are both very happy for you–and for us because you are a lovely girl.
The past 16 years have been very good for our family. We had good health, enjoyed many things and had good times together. Of course there were disagreements between us–but looking back, they were minor and unimportant–part of all of us growing up.
Mom and I love you very much and are very proud to be your parents. You have brought us much happiness–and are looking forward to the next 16 years. W have tried to direct and give you the experiences which we thought would better prepare you for this kind of world
We know that you are kind, gentle and have a good heart–and we love you for it
Fortified with this kind of character we are expecting a beautiful future for you.
You were a pretty baby, a good baby and a happy baby. You gave us so much pleasure watching you grow to a beautiful lady…..graduating from high school, then perhaps college, than along the way–marriage then children. Of course there will be pebbles, rocks and holes along the road—but we hope that you are prepared for them—and Sweetie pie, lots and lots of love and kisses.
Mom and Pop Continue Reading »
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Courting was the top Google search in “don’t like an adoptive family.”
This is sadder than sad. It’s sickening
This is a big deal to me. Usually I ignore Google searches that are so wrong. Usually I find them funny.
This is personal
It negates my life.
I understand that just reading the summary shows my true feelings. But I have gotten comments I didn’t understand, and deleted, until I saw the Google search they came from. Some people only read the header and feel compelled to comment. Yes, they’re idiots–don’t even read the summary. Or decide that the Google search term is more valid than the written document. Idiots!!!!!
If I’m overreacting, this is one week of the year, I’m entitled to miss my parents who I loved very much. They always made a big deal over birthday month. My mother made sure that my six week sleep away camp didn’t begin until a day or two later. She didn’t have the power to start and stop camp dates. But it was important to her that I spend my birthday, my real birthday, not my date of adoption at home until I was about thirteen.
They were my only family. There are many times that I wish my father hadn’t been so curious and practically found my birth mother for me. I have written too often about the problems that were supposed to be caused because I was resistant to being adopted. If as much time had been spent on looking for the real problems, I might be an improved version of myself
Being adopted wasn’t central to my life. My parents didn’t believe in secrets and thought it might benefit me if they told the school etc. There were years on end when we all would forget about it.
I came of age with the adoption movement and it was very “in” to hate your adoptive parents. Though I had two adopted friends who didn’t as most adoptees didn’t. The disgruntled usually are more vocal. Things like ADD weren’t really ADD in adoptees but part of the adoption process. I did link to an anti-adoption site in that page. It says more than I ever would willing to say.
I have been to meetings where people almost physically attacked both adoptive parents and agency reps.
“Oh, Pia, you had a unique experience.”
Damn straight. Every family is unique. Mine happened to be more unique than most.
Maybe that’s why I loved my family so much.
My blogging friend Jonathan and Wendy, his wife are adopting. Jonathan writes about the process. It’s intrusive. It’s difficult.
My mother told me that they were asked about their sex life.
“Well, Pia, they had to know that we had one.”
Anybody who spent half hour with my parents knew they had one. Aside from the make out sessions in not upscale restaurants my sister and I were privy to, they had a look about them….They didn’t find that question or any intrusive. They accepted them because they wanted a child that badly–
Oh on Thursday I will also post My father’s letter upon adopting me. I keep trying to explain to Bone that I can’t put it in a book about my life as it was my father’s words–I will put it in somewhere.
I’m not going to sue Google as my sister suggested. I am going to send them that page and a strongly worded letter suggesting that they get their robotic whatevers to make sure that the phrase on top of the page actually match the documents.
Oh, I’m thinking of my blog as a document. Maybe my sister….
Stumble it!
I put my adoption/Google rant on the sidebar. Now it’s gone to a Courting page
I don’t know why I was picked up by a Wall Street Journal blog on balancing being a mother with a career. I have never been a mother.
Being a single parent, of either sex, has to be the hardest job in the world. Unless you have the most incredible support network that never fails.
Little Luce is going to be a Senior in high school in the fall, and it’s harder for Lucia than ever. Little Luce is a great almost woman. Her Mom just wants to make sure she gets the best college education she can, at a school not in New York City.
Their bond is strong. It’s time not to sever it, but to expand both of their worlds. In a couple of weeks they’re going to the condo in North Myrtle, and I’m demanding pictures of Lucia asleep in the bedroom. They live in a one bedroom and when Lucia and George first separated she gave Little Luce the bedroom.
Given my closest friend’s situation, it’s hard for me to complain about my life, but I do it so well….
Last night at dinner I felt, once again, Little Luce, has two moms as I told her stories about her childhood. But Lucia deserves solo credit for raising an incredible girl. Many years she used all her vacation days for Little Luce. I don’t think I could ever be that selfless. Not that Lucia is perfect….
Seven years ago I decided that I wanted to give my lifetime dream a real chance. I had no idea how to go about so I took some courses. When I was offered a job as a reporter five years ago, my teacher then stopped speaking to me as she thought I was selling out by working for an alt paper rather than going the lit journal route.
Maybe it was, but i was able to use skills I had become expert in during my three prior careers. They all entailed interviewing and assessing individuals, and researching and critiquing in many subjects.
Because I didn’t have the worlds greatest imagination, was the opposite of assertive (when it comes to things for me), and didn’t think the world was clamoring for a book or magazine articles by me, I thought this was a good way to break in to publishing–given my advanced age.
“Offered” was the key word. Somebody believed in me. That we have both believed in each other and have driven each other crazy since our late teens was, truthfully, comforting. While it was comforting, it was also awkward for basically the same reason. If those two sentences appear as if written in code, they almost are.
I couldn’t advance any further than I did. That said I wrote a damn good cover story for any reporter, including one in her first year.
I didn’t look for other reporting jobs because i really didn’t want to be a reporter. I would say it gave me the confidence needed to pursue other venues but I began a blog, and vowed to complete complicated dental work in two years, some months. My long time readers know more about teeth than anybody wants to know.
I was so goal oriented I completed the dental work in 21 months. My amazing healing ability had more than a little to do with that as did my true want to get this over with.
And, duh, I’m obsessive. I have to complete what I begin–hence staying in social work school after I knew it was the wrong career for me. I wish I had gone to school for something I really love such as sociology or urban anthropology. I purposely didn’t say writing.
I have come to the conclusion that one can really learn to write from doing. So I wrote in this blog. Wrote chapters for books, edited them, revised them, edited, and threw out. Hence the 1783 posts–two thirds in draft, the endless word documents, and my gmail capacity being up to 26% because sometimes I write in gmail. If I know I’m going away, I save to an external modem and write in gmail as a back up. I have to have something saved to the Internet to feel secure. Possibly falsely, but…..
The story I’m now telling comes easily to me at times. At other times, there’s a huge concrete wall between me and the material.
Actually, just when I need to rev up, I have hit the wall. Hence my apartment is incredibly organized, I’m planning my move, and accept three out of five invitations.
In a few weeks I’m going to do something I would have laid bets just a few months ago I never would do. Have dinner with three girls–always to me, I went to Jr/Sr High with. Then we’re having drinks with at the pre-reunion of the class ahead of ours.
I was so intent on being miserable, I never gave the girls in my class a chance. Two of the girls were in almost every class with me from Seventh through Twelfth Grades. Our school rotated teachers not students. The other girl, I just knew, because our community was so small everybody knew each other. Almost. There are a few people in our yearbook I don’t remember at all. I might have stood out more than other girls as I had the hippie thing going before it was fashionable in our Long Island community.
Or maybe, my parents asserted less control over my clothes and life. In the end, of course, this gave them more control as I listened to them, very occasionally because I liked and respected them. Though my father did attempt to run my life I never let him.
My Friday Flashback will be on Thursday. It’s a letter my father wrote, but never gave to me, on my 16th birthday.
Reconnecting with people who knew me, even if slightly, in those pivotal growing up years has caused me to reexamine my life. Fortunately I had already written much of a first draft about Senior year, can bring up the feelings at will, and the story takes place outside our community.
Even more fortunately the only people I bad mouth are me, doctors and teachers. I’m not about to change this book, and I want it to reflect my truth.
My parents come off as much more permissive than they were. When my mother called Shelby’s Mom, she had no idea Shelby’s mom would lie for me.
It’s hard for me to remain mired in the past. I have developed a big want and need to make new great memories and to just do.
When I wrote that i was busy, I meant assimilating recent events, writing, organizing my apartment in preparation to sell it, and a few other things necessary to making a living and/or career.
I have spent so much time prepping that I forgot there are more steps. No I didn’t forget but began to feel entitled. Something only pop princesses should ever feel.
This road I’m traveling is a hard one. It feels good to have people from all junctions of my life aboard.
I do believe that we can make our own destiny. Yet obsessive as I am, I feel that I might give up before I have even really begun to try.
Sometimes I stare at the same piece of paper for hours, and play games with the words. I have never had such organized files, dressers, closet, and kitchen. Had I known that the secret to organizing myself was to become close to the end of a first draft, I would have done this years ago. I have come close to the ends of first drafts; they weren’t organized. I wasn’t ready to be organized.
I only look like an organized person and have an organized apartment. Inside I’m still as disorganized as ever.
I saved my final grad school evaluation. Nowhere does it say that I’m disorganized, quite the contrary actually. The person it presents couldn’t have Aspergers; my only “four” out of “five” was relating, and caring, too much. To do that job effectively you have to almost create a Plexiglas wall between you and the residents, and I could only do that with one schizophrenic who drove me crazy, but less crazy than she drove the rest of the staff. Yes, I was staff as well as a student. The Newt cuts had taken affect.
I’m still assimilating the realization I was right all along and my problems are borne out of spatial relations. The knowledge made me feel empowered immediately but I kept waiting to be prove wrong.
Instead I have taken charge of my life in ways I could only dream of before. I don’t think that this time next year I will say “I was wrong, it is___”
So much is going on in my head, it’s hard to feel the passion needed to complete a book about the teenage me. I think I recognize that this is one of the times I have to both be gentle to me, and to just do it.
While I don’t belong in a mommy and work blog and apologize to anybody who has come here looking for one, I do belong in a person, work, and shaking up your life one.
Stumble it!
