New Year's Resolutions/Confessions

Happy New Year!

The past year has been one where I've been very unhappy.  I don't know if it's been THE most miserable of my life, but it's up there.  This year I learned how I look to creditors (like a wet-behind-the-ears child), I felt like a prisoner (had to give up my car for a few months when we lost our second car), I feared losing people I love (friends and family), and I struggled with money (having to support my sister and her brood when she blew through $10,000 and then again when she up and quit her job and didn't get another one for over a month).  I've been very stressed out.  Normally, I don't talk about my FEELINGS, so I don't really open up to many people.  I've always felt a little like my problems are less than others' problems so I bottle myself up.  This post is going to be about expressing some FEELINGS and making some resolutions.

First, I wanted to run through the six major emotions and give an example of how I've felt each one in the past twelve months.  The six emotions are fear, disgust, sadness, anger, happiness, and surprise.  I've said it before (though somewhere else, I believe), those are some depressing emotions.  The only chance for happiness is, well, happiness, and possibly surprise.  Let's see if I was surprised for the better this year -

1)  Fear:  This year I've been afraid that I'm just a convenience to most people.  I feel this way a lot, in every aspect of my life.  From my house, where I feel like a convenient meal ticket, to my job, where I feel like a convenient filler, to my friendships, where I feel like a convenient backup.  I wonder what's wrong with me?  I fear that people often realize there isn't much to me, that I'm too boring, too shy, too nervous.  I fear that I have to admit they're right.  In the beginning, I meet new people and they want to go out after work or out to dinner on a weekend.  We make plans a few times, we go out.  Eventually I ask them to go out and they're busy.  Then they aren't busy as long as someone else is coming.  Then they make plans with that person right in front of me and don't invite me and that is very painful.  But then I think how I'm not exciting.  My hobbies are reading and video games.  Who the hell would be interested in me?  Sometimes later they ask me after they've been rejected and don't realize I was standing right there and now I know they're only asking me for their own convenience.  I'm probably not even Plan B.

2)  Disgust:  I've felt disgusted with several members of my family.  From my sister mooching from everyone around her to my niece's "I just tell the truth" piss-poor attitude, I've felt disgusted at a lot of the hypocrisy surrounding me on a daily basis.  On Christmas my sister, who got pregnant at seventeen years old, told another niece she was a whore for getting pregnant at twenty-one.  ON CHRISTMAS.  Then, hours later, several members of my family decided to rant and rail about this WHORE in front of a guest, a somewhat stranger, a ninety-year-old invalid who my sister-in-law takes care of and who has no family and came to our house to celebrate Christmas with someone.  I was so embarrassed.  My mother was mortified.  She tried to get them to stop but, you know, sorry, someone has to tell the truth and they're all just telling the truth.  The truth hurts.  It's also ugly.  And often hypocritical.  And disgusting.

3)  Sadness:  It was sad that my middle sister, who is handicapped but pretty much totally independent, was told she might have to make a choice between death and being bedridden for life.  It's been frustrating and sad to see someone punished who is trying, who is taking care of her children, who helps her parents and everyone around her whenever she can.  What force in the universe has decided this?  I know it's just the luck of the draw, just circumstance, but where am I supposed to scream about the unfairness of it all?  I'm somewhat sad that I have nowhere to turn for even cathartic blame.  Luck.  Fucking LUCK.  So far my sister has staved off making this choice. I don't know when her LUCK will run out, though.  It's sad that I know in my heart it will be soon.

4)  Anger:  Anger.  I have felt a lot of anger.  I'm angry at myself, mostly.  I've made my bed.  I've relied on my parents for too long and caused the situation where I have no substantial credit history.  I've allowed myself to get comfortable in a mediocre job.  I've procrastinated.  I've wallowed in so-called "writer's block."  I've secreted myself away and pushed away my friends.  Isn't my sister who lives with me just projecting her internal FEELINGS when she calls people lazy, calls them stupid, calls them WHORES?  My anger with her is anger with myself.  I haven't saved money.  I haven't endeavored for a better job or developed the discipline to turn my talent into something real.  I haven't changed my routine of wake up, work, play on the computer, read, sleep.  Again, who could be interested in me?  Not just socially but financially, career-wise, etc.?  Who am I and what am I doing?  Where am I going, where have I been?  I'll be thirty-four and I can't even FIND my diploma for graduate school.  What the hell have I done with it?

5)  Happiness:  I don't know.  There were little moments.  I was happy when I got my car back after about six months of never being able to use it.  I was happy when I discovered the writer Haruki Murakami.  I was happy when I found a Chocolate Orange in a random place at the grocery store because I've searched up and down for them.  I was happy listening to Gene Wilder read an audiobook.  I was happy when an antibiotic finally cleared up the acne on my face (please let it last).  I'm trying so hard to think of something big.  To think of a moment that carried me through longer than a day or two.  Maybe...maybe happiness is just those little moments?  Maybe I should print that out and tape it above my bed.  Maybe every day I need to sit down and remember the one thing that made me happy that day, even if it's just the hot UPS man calling me "dear."

6)  Surprise:  I was suprised to admit to myself it's okay to be unhappy.  I've spent so much time being upset when my somewhat happier childhood was brushed off as though I was less of a person for feeling happy.  Pain is supposedly what makes us human.  I hated the words, "You don't know how that feels," because it was like my life was not valid because I hadn't experienced this or that.  I still don't cater to that theory.  Everyone, even happy people, are valid.  Their opinions and FEELINGS are valid.  But...I'm a little less happy than I have been in the past.  And that doesn't break my theory.  I don't feel stronger.  I don't necessarily feel weaker, either.  I feel...different.  I feel...focused?  I feel...exposed?  I feel....

So I've made some resolutions.  Some I've made before, like reading and writing schedules.  It WILL happen.  This time (I mean it) I don't have a goal as much as a routine.  I will read one book, then take a day off to reflect on that book, then read another book, etc.  One thing I've learned about myself recently is that I don't like to read books back-to-back.  I like to ruminate.  I like to bounce around ideas and uncover flaws and discover wonders.  I like to return to particularly intriguing passages.  When I was finished reading 1Q84 by Murakami, I tried immediately reading another book and what happened was I hated the newer book because I wanted to return to parts of 1Q84 and think.  I know, it sounds like homework, this routine.  It sounds like all of the pleasure is being taken out of picking up a book and getting lost in it.  But I promise, for me, this is how I can make myself happy.

The next resolution is about money.  I'm going to keep a ledger.  I want to see where my money goes.  I already started an informal one and for the most part my money goes toward the little groceries we need to keep the house running (milk, toilet paper, bread) and I go to the store for those things almost daily.  Last week I bought five gallons of milk.  FIVE GALLONS.  Everyone at my job knows when my parents call me they're going to ask me to pick something up at the grocery store after work.  So my resolution is this:  I will keep two columns - one where I write down the exact amount I've spent and one where I round up to the next dollar.  At the end of the month I will put the difference into a separate account.  Also, any money left out of my paycheck at the end of every two weeks will go into my savings account.  That's a third account, by the way.  I will have two checking accounts and a savings account.  The savings account is for absolute - and I mean life-and-death - emergencies.  The second checking account is for smaller emergencies, though my plan is to try very hard not to touch it either.  These two accounts are secret.  I also have a 401(k) and life insurance.  I WILL start saving money.

My final (big) resolution is to get out and do something.  The local bookstore hosts readings, bands, and other events and I'm going to attend at least one of these events each month.  There is a great wood-fired pizza place right down the street and the bookstore has wi-fi, coffee, and well, books.  Yeah, I'll need some money.  But when I look at how much money I spend getting Subway when I could be making cous-cous and salads that last for several meals and are awesomely fresh-sealed in a jar, I realize that splurging on a $7 pizza and a $10 book once a month isn't what will break my bank.  And now that I have my car back, I can go anywhere I damn-well please for as long as it pleases me.  And I WILL.

I need to do these things to put myself on some sort of track.  These things aren't major life changes but they are what I feel I can do right now.  Do what you can with what you have, right?  Right.

I WILL have a happier new year.

Random Spewing

A)  My sister no longer has a job.  She injured her foot falling down the basement steps and now needs surgery.  Her workplace will not permit her a leave of absence and will not promise to hold her job for when she returns in, tentatively, two months.  Fine, she can't help any of that.  It isn't her fault she fell down those stairs (I've done it twice).  But it has been a week-and-a-half since she went to work and she has complained about having to do things around the house for those of us who do have jobs.  Right now I work five days a week - all long shifts.  The only other person who has a job is my nephew's girlfriend.  Out of eight people, my parents get retirement checks but don't have to be anywhere, neither of my nephews have school because one is online-schooled and one is twenty-five, and the other girlfriend just graduated from school and for the past year only had to be at school for two hours a day.  And you know what happened today?  My mother told me to make sure I always washed my own dishes because my sister said she wasn't going to wash my dishes.  Fuck her.  She isn't in so much pain she can't do things - she's just fine when she has to go to the tobacco store to get cigarettes rolled or when she goes to spend her $400 support check on junk at Wal-Mart.  I do my own laundry, take care of the phone/cable/internet bill, handle the repairs on the car and put in most of the gas, and buy food that gets eaten within twenty-four hours.  Why can't she wash my, maybe, five dishes I dirty a day?  I usually only eat breakfast and only two or three days a week any other meal, so it's often not even five dishes.  And we have a dishwasher which I normally put my own dishes in.  Why does she get to lay around doing nothing, and her children get to lay around doing nothing, leeching off of my paycheck but refusing to do anything for me?  FUCK.

B)  I'm reading The Beekeeper's Apprentice.  I hope it gets better because I want to slap the narrator, Mary Russell, upside the head.  She's egotistical and pretentious.  I know it's because in the beginning she's a fifteen-year-old girl but that doesn't excuse her tone of voice because a fifteen-year-old girl is not narrating this story.  An adult looking back is narrating.  I'm hoping I'll love the book and her once it becomes more of a mystery, once the Sherlock Holmes inspiration kicks in a little.  But once again, I'm disappointed in a book I've looked forward to for a long time. 

C)  I've made a decision based on this:  now that I have to support said sister above even more than I did before, I won't have very much extra money and so I'm going to have to just rely on random books from the library.  I used to go to the library with all my lists of books and try to find specific books but that's beginning to prove more frustrating because I often end up hating the books I was previously excited by.  So I think I'll try random books again.  I've said before, I think, that I used to pull five random books in a row (well, technically I would pull five random authors in a row) from the shelf and out of those, it would be an even bet that one would be awful, three would be mediocre, and one would be excellent.  That's how I stumbled upon The Descent - a book that is so much more intelligent than that horrible movie supposedly based on it - and The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye.  It's how I found Memoirs of a Geisha before it became a reknowned movie and it's how I read Tom Arnold's autobiography, which is surprisingly funny and interesting.  The thing about it is that if I'm disappointed I won't have wasted money.  It sounds to me like a lot of people are rediscovering the beauty of libraries for various reasons, and this is mine.

Random Updates

I've been sick for the past four days. Just a little flu bug that knocked me out. Luckily I had the past four days off from work and was able to leave early Wednesday, the day I first felt signs of being under the weather. The bad part was my work called me both Friday and Saturday, basically trying to convince me that I should be well enough by now to fill in and they needed someone to fill in. Well, too bad, because I didn't feel well enough, I wasn't scheduled, and I can tell you no anytime I want to for any reason I want to. Today I had my first cup of coffee in three days and I'm high as a kite right now. They said I should be able to make it through since I would have been sick Wednesday and Thursday and would have recovered Friday and Saturday. Well, unfortunately illness doesn't work on a set schedule for the conveniences of retail.

This happens frequently at my work. Someone will need to call off, so all the other employees not already working get called to see whether they can fill in. If anyone says no, their reasons are grilled to the point of ridiculousness. You know, if they weren't scheduled when the schedule was posted (and initialed as complete) they don't have to give any reason whatsoever as to why they can't fill in. I've tried to tell my boss this on several occasions but she argues that part of their job descriptions is flexibility. I say, yes, but not spontaneous flexibility. The agreement is the schedule is posted two weeks prior to the dates it covers and at that point becomes a contract. We argue constantly over whether we should sign the schedule when it's posted (agreeing to work the days scheduled) or after it has transpired (agreeing it accurately depicts the hours we worked). While the handbook states the latter, I think I'm going to start practicing the former.

As stated in my previous post, I'm just an idiot when it comes to commenting on anything on the internet. I've received several replies to my statement that I didn't like the comedian, including one that just said, "god ur dumb." I let myself get roped in, wasting precious moments of my life trying to convince all of these people that I'm entitled to say I don't like him and they should just agree to disagree. Of course I'm going to get a thousand emails saying people have responded to my comment and even though I will probably ignore them, I know they're all going to just continue the insanity and I'll be tempted to see just how much hate I can possibly cause. Am I a troll?

Also while sick, I've been reading some back issues of Poets and Writers. One thing I've learned - I can't be interested in every article and should just skip the ones I'm not interested in after the first paragraph. One article I loved, though, was about book lists (with commentary from Tony Doerr!). The author of the article (not Tony Doerr!) talked about how he realized one day that he would never, ever be able to read all the books on his list and how this had depressed him greatly. Eventually, he was able to come to grips with the fact that it is impossible to read even a fraction of the books that are published in even a given year (thousands upon thousands), especially in the growing market of self-publication through e-readers. He also talked about the guilt many writers feel when they think a so-called canon masterpiece is crap. He had to convince himself it's okay to put down that masterpiece and pick up something more personal - and that whatever an individual chooses to read is just fine as long as she is reading. Tony Doerr(!) said something along those lines as well. This is a constant issue I struggle with, often not feeling these masterpieces are really all that masterful and are really more pieces of.... Anyway, the author of the article suggested making a list of the ten or so books we enjoyed reading the most every year and see if there's any theme. I liked this idea very much.

My sister is in the hospital with an infection in her spinal cord. She had a bed sore at her tailbone that became infected and spread up her entire back, and is now swollen to the size of a basketball. She will need surgery to try to remove the infection and plastic surgery to repair her back. Part of her tailbone is actually sticking through the bed sore. We don't know when the surgeries will happen or what exactly all of the surgeries will entail, so I'll keep updating.

I know all of this seems a bit random, but my mind is a bit addled right now and I was just writing as things came to me. I'm hoping I'll be able to drink some coffee tomorrow and not feel like I'm floating on a cloud. I have to pick up my new glasses tomorrow morning (with transitions lenses, thankfully) and then spend my evening at work, so I'm just hoping I won't be this loopy. I guess it will be a fun evening if I am.

P.S. I've edited this to add that it's Poets & Writers magazine. One of the articles was all about the ampersand, and how certain poetry editors think it's just so annoying and basically would pause before considering a poem just because the author used an ampersand. That's ludicrous. It's a symbol. A well known one. It means "and." Get over it.

March 12! March 12!?! Gadzooks, Batman!

Yeah, I'm a friggin' lazy bum. Anyway, here's a random thought for the day to get me back into writing on here each day.

Let’s play a game where we make up a meaning for some of the random words generated by internet ID checker thingies. Today I got the word “liummure” and I just kept looking at it wondering if it’s a word. It isn’t. But what could it mean if it were a word? It rhymes with demure, mature, and endure. Sounds like lemons, linoleum, or illuminate. Begins with lie, ends with you, in the middle is “um.” Maybe it can mean, like, a selective truth? Like when you aren’t lying but instead you just aren’t telling the whole truth? You liummure the truth. Um…yeah.

I'm currently reading One More Day Everywhere on my Kindle PC. Which, by the way, is fantastic as the other day I realized I was watching a movie on my real PC, I had my netbook (which houses the Kindle) propped open in front of the PC screen, while eating dinner on the pull-out shelf that my keyboard sits on. HANDS-FREE READING! It...was...glorious. As it were.

Choosing What to Read

What's wrong with me? Why am I so afraid to read what I want to and why do I force myself to read books that I normally wouldn't give a second glance to?

There is no possible way that any reader reads all the books that are considered some kind of classic. You have your ancient literature, your medieval epics, your renaissance poetry, your romantic novels, your modern masterpieces, your contemporary classics, and now your post-contemporary bore-me-to-tears pieces of crap. How do I decide which ones are worth my time and why do I care what other people have read?

My fear is that someday I'll meet one of my idols, let's say Stephen King or Jonathan Lethem, and they'll ask me what I thought of Fahrenheit 451 and I'll stare blankly ahead and drool. I'll be forced to say something like, "Duh, I got confused in parts and though I usually like poetry in prose, I couldn't read that thing." And they will walk away, aghast.

So why not just read it, you ask? It's, like, less than two hundred pages.

Because it's boring me. And so is *gasp* The Catcher in the Rye. The narrator and dialect of Salinger's book is really amazing, especially for its time period, but I'm so bored. Holy tube socks, Batman, Sylvia Plath was more interesting than these two books. And I hated Plath's poetry.

When in a book is it a good time to give up? These are two classics that I know are classics for a reason. And, again, they are less than two hundred pages each. What's my major malfunction? Am I refusing to give them a chance? Is it okay to admit that I don't want to read them? If I took a list of one hundred classics to any literature professor, what are the odds he or she would have read even half of those books? Slim to none? There are certainly people who would have read all of them because they made doing so a personal goal, but does it have to be my personal goal?

The thing about it is that while I'm bored to tears I allow myself to get distracted and then I go off my schedule because I dread picking the book up again. So it's really wasting more time than I can afford to slowly read two pages an hour. The hitchhiking book? I loved it, couldn't stop reading, read it on two different computers, and used my lovely Amazon gift card to get more travel books for my Kindle PC. Why do I stress about reading these travel books? I enjoy them and I learn something and, most importantly, I enjoy them. Isn't that what it's about.?

But (ah, here's the rub) what if I miss out on the greatest thing I've ever read because I lost interest? Won't the fact that I had to wait so long in a book for it to get interesting teach me about pacing and how to keep readers involved throughout the entire story? Didn't King say I would learn more from the bad books than I do from the good ones? How do I make that distinction because art is subjective? When will I stop asking so many questions?

I just don't know. What I do know is that I'm now about two weeks behind schedule because I couldn't stay interested in those books. They are books I would normally be able to read in a few hours and I couldn't even read them in two weeks, and that's frightening. I'm just not sure whether the blame lies with those books, with society, with my fear of the community I want to be a part of, or with my own procrastination.

Though I am sure it's some kind of combination of each and all.

Money

Why is it that when the end of a long run is nigh, there are those people who would still rather skip corners or take blind shortcuts because they don't want to struggle up hill for a few more minutes? I live with my parents and we are finally in sight of a little relief because my sister and her two children moved out. This cut many of our bills in half. But, my parents don't want to have to struggle for even one minute, it seems. Twice a month, I borrowed money, grudgingly, from one of those awful check-into-loan places. We'd get $190 dollars and have to pay back $230. We lost forty dollars each time, which is eighty dollars a month or $960 a year. We were losing $1000! I hated it. But, for the most part, we did it because the bills wouldn't wait another five days because they were due (*cough* behind *cough*). Now they are all caught up except one, which will be caught up by March 5 if we just struggle for the next few days.

We just have to get through the next three days until my father gets paid on Friday, then everything will be all right. But, we don't really have many options and money is tight. We have food but we'll have to make some crazy, surprise, make-em-up kind of meals out of it. We have gas, but it means that all other people will have to be told "NO!" when they ask us to take them to their girlfriend's, then to work, then to their house, then back to their girlfriend's, etc.

But you see, my parents don't want to have to worry about struggling. So, they want me to go get another check-loan thing so we can buy some groceries but then we'll lose out on that $230 we would have to buy groceries on Friday. Why can't we just wait a few days and struggle and get out from under lost money? I ate cheese, summer sausage, and crackers every day for dinner for my first month of grad school. It sucked but I lived.

Anyway, I refused to go get the loan. My father threw a fit and my mother cried, but you know what? It had to be done. I told them that if we never did it - if we always said, "Maybe this will be the last time," it really never would be the last time. So I'm saying, "The last time, it was the last time. We'll live."

Big Words

I'm reading a book about hitchhiking called Riding with Strangers: A Hitchhiker's Journey by Elijah Wald. I can't tell you the page because I'm reading it on my Kindle PC, but somewheres about 75% of the way through the book he uses the word lagniappe.

Many Things

Combining many topics into one. If I get around to talking about late night television, I'll put it last and give a warning so anyone who is tired of it can stop reading at the point.

1) One more movie. Today I finished watching a movie called The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes's Smarter Brother (I cannot not put an 's). I loved it. Of course I did, Gene Wilder is crazy sexy. That man cannot look stupid; he has the most intelligent eyes. And speaking of eyes, Marty Feldman! Also Madeline Kahn and Dom Deluise are so brilliant. I disagree with the reviews I see of this movie as a poor attempt to mimic Mel Brooks. Yeah, I can see that, but there is singing, dancing, word-play, sword-play, and a Gene Wilder. Johnny Depp has nothing on that man.

2) I finished reading Theresa Williams's (there it is again) The Secret of Hurricanes. I enjoyed it very much, and I'm not just saying that because she is my former professor. Even though I don't care much for first-person narrative, the "I" was the only appropriate narrator for this story. I also don't care for revealing plot points before they actually happen, but I overlooked it since the style was easy-going and I found myself reading so quickly I forgot to care about my preferences. I would give it a B. It definitely rose above most slice-of-life fictions, which aren't my favorite kind of story. (Warning: themes of incest, rape, and murder.)

3) I realized today that I can't eat outside of designated times anymore because my body has acclimated itself to eating at either 8:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m., or 10:00 p.m. Today I was trying to eat a shrimp dinner at 5:30 p.m. and even though it was really, really tasty I just couldn't eat it. But I was starving at around 10:00. This...sucks. The times I eat correspond to time periods of my various shifts at work. Screwing with my life when I leave it behind.

*****DANGER, DANGER WILL ROBINSON*****

4)Late night television. Please, please, people, read something other than Bill Carter's book The Late Shift to get a more well-rounded perspective on what happened in 1992. Carter's book is admittedly biased in favor of Letterman and therefore does not give a fair shake to Leno. It also doesn't paint Letterman in a favorable light, anyway, as I feel it makes him look like a child who waited for the world to fall into his lap, then brooded when it didn't. The scenes that are supposed to make me feel bad about him, such as the one where he passes the note to Teri Garr (or Sandra Bernhardt, depending on the source) saying he hates himself seems to me like a person who self-deprecates in order to hear everyone praise him. He is the ultimate passive-agressive.

Questions...the Stolen Idea

(I will not begin this post with the word "so.")

I'm stealing an idea from a few blogs I read, where I feel I've learned some important little things (and big things) about my friends by reading their answers to a few questions. I'm just glad this post isn't a rant about Late-Night-Talk-Show-Host-Who-Must-Never-Ever-Ever-Be-Named-Again-In-American-Society. You can devise for yourselves who I mean by that, whether it be whom America hates or whom I hate.

Anyway...onto the stealing. I took this list from here. I cut out two questions I thought were similar to the previous questions.

Great questions for anyone

What was the happiest moment of your life? Pass.

The saddest? I'd say the day my cousin Tim died. Probably because he wasn't far away, or someone I saw once a year or less, but was right across town and frequently at our house. I couldn't control my emotions in public, which I can't say for any other time.

Who was the most important person in your life? Why "was"? My mother. The thought of losing her makes me panic. It is one of the reasons I haven't moved out, and I know that makes me seem childish to some.

Can you tell me about him or her? She gives and gives, not without complaint. Her first husband died in Vietnam, her second was extremely physically abusive, and her third may not have much money, causing stress and worry all around, but he's around and he rarely gets angry.

Who has been the kindest to you in your life? Certain professors who never used their power to make me feel inferior or inept, and who never whined about how much harder it was when they went to school.

What are the most important lessons you’ve learned in life? To apologize. I don't feel as though anyone has ever apologized to me when they've hurt me, and it has made me always want to be the one who steps up and faces embarrassment.

What is your earliest memory? The layout of the house when I was about two years old. Particularly the divide between the living room and the kitchen. The sliding glass door in the kitchen. There was a long hallway and the bedroom where I slept only had one incredibly small window (maybe 2 feet by 1 foot). I apparently was sick from the lack of light in that room.

Are there any words of wisdom you’d like to pass along to me? No.

What are you proudest of in your life? My education. I do believe I'm the first person in my extended family to go beyond college.

When in life have you felt most alone? Right now.

How has your life been different than what you’d imagined? I didn't imagine living at home and working at a clothing store at this point. But it's of my own doing.

How would you like to be remembered? As brilliant. I'm not going to lie or be cheesy. I want to write the book that wins a Pulitzer and which literature classes read for hundreds of years.

Do you have any regrets? That I doddled around for too long and am just now realizing it.

What does your future hold? A bagel with sundried tomato and basil cream cheese.

Is there anything that you’ve never told me but want to tell me now? Yes, but not now. Not yet.

Is there something about me that you’ve always wanted to know but have never asked? Plenty, but I don't ask. In the same way I don't ask people if I can hold their babies.

What was the happiest moment of your life? Publishing my Master's thesis, my way, my subject. That seems lame, but it's the one moment where I didn't back down and I feel proud.

Addendum to Yesterday

Re: The Narrow House

So, yesterday I said the novel I was reading by Evelyn Scott had been out of print for seventy years, as this is what my professor had informed us. But, the copyright page and the foreward had Scott's death listed as 1963, which was not seventy years ago, therefore the book was in fact in print at least until that year. Was the professor lying or uninformed? You be the judge.