Archive for Millikin
fear breeds you
I’ve been thinking a lot about fear lately. Mostly because I am full of it. I’m bursting with it really.
If I were any more fragile right now I’d be made of meringue.
There are moments in your life when reality hits you so hard in the face, you have to take a step back and wonder why it would do something as awful as that. One of those moments where you ask yourself, “did that really happen? Did life really just bitchslap me in front of all of our friends at Kelly’s birthday party, and then just walk out of the room like everything is normal, and then pretend the next day like it doesn’t have anything to apologize for, and say that it isn’t even worth talking about?” I just had one of these moments.
It turns out, through a series of events that would not be interesting enough to outline here, that I am completely and unequivably fucked. I, at the tender of age of 21 have had a complete mid life crisis and suffered a startling loss of direction. I used to have a pretty firm grasp of my goals, my desires, what I wanted to get out of life, and how I was going to get there. Things seemed pretty clear, because I planned for them to happen, and I’d be damned if I’d let anything get me down.
Well, consider me damned. You can also consider me fucked up the ass, fisted and verbally abused while you’re at it.
This of course all comes back to that wonderful thing we call money. It’s no secret that my finances have always been in a sorry state. I never factored in being rich anywhere in my grand life plans before, because being comfortably poor has been the one constant in my life. In fact I can say that it’s definitely been one of the few facts of life that hasn’t let me down at some point. Well, not to deviate from the norm, money has once again stuck it’s big, fat fist up my ass.
(I apologize for the graphic gay talk. I just finished season one of Queer as Folk, and I now dream of a world where queer terminology just becomes something second nature and colloquial)
I’ve been sitting here for the past couple of minutes trying to come up with a more eloquent way of saying thing, but really the best image I can come up with that will adequately illustrate not only my emotional state right now, but also the situation as it stands now… I’m fucked.
I’ve been backed into a corner. A corner that includes taking a management position at family video and indefinitely putting off my dreams of being that kick ass twenty-something living it up in the city trying to make it as an artist. While the idiom “starving artist” has its charms, in my case the starving part may become a bit too literal to be healthy. I always had these big aspirations about struggling for a couple of years to pay the rent , then being discovered for my intense amount of talent and being able to live a comfortable life of noteriety and financial stability.
That’s not going to happen for a long time. Because dreams like that, dreams that big take time. They take focus and dedication, and more importantly they take people. Meeting lots of interesting people who can help facilitate your rise to the top. Working 60 hours a week in Kansas City for Family Video so I can pay off my staggering, dear I say paralyzing amount of debt won’t leave a lot of time. It won’t leave a lot of room for a life either. At least not the life that I ever thought I’d be living.
And without all that, I feel hopeless. I feel like for the first time in my life the luck has run out. I don’t think I can talk my way out of this, nor can I wait around for some kind of miracle to happen that’ll get me through. I’ve been a fool, and now life’s little lessons have finally caught up to me. And it ain’t pretty.
It took me a long time to be able to sit down and right about this. It took me a long time to sort out my feelings about the whole thing. I’m scared. I’m scared that I won’t be able to hack it. That everyone who’s ever thought I’d fail will be right, and I’m afraid more than anything that I’ll lose something about myself in the process. This is all, of course, fairly dramatic, and like a lot of things I’ve ever blogged about will serve as a milestone in my own self-absorption and will only be looked back on with scorn and a maybe a slight laugh on my part.
That’s what I’m hoping at least. I’m hoping that the mix of my defeatist attitude, and my alarmist nature have finally met cute and are looking at have one big life-sized baby called a stress related ulcer.
Let’s hope that at least doesn’t happen.
I loved you so much just then
I feel like this semester is filled with greater moments. Moments that make me feel like I’m actually twenty-something and alive. Those moments where you realize life won’t get much better than it is right now, and someday when you’re thirty-something, these are the memories you’ll hold on to the tightest.
Sometimes I feel like I should probably write something less self-indulgent in here, something that everyone would want to read. I read other blogs and they talk of topics that would spark interest in almost anyone. I’m not exactly sure what this blog would spark in someone. I’m not sure it would really spark at all.
What should I talk about then? That’s the thing that’s hardest to figure out.
june is busting out all over.
Pat, my favorite office lady is retiring today. One of the only perks about a dear friend leaving you forever is that you have time to sit at your desk and write a blog about it. Currently Pat, and her office lady cohorts are congregating around a rather large chocolate cake that someone meticulously created, with the words “Some of us will miss you Pat” in pink icing. Those office ladies have a real sense of humor.
But I have a feeling everyone will miss Pat. She takes some getting used to, and she definitely isn’t a “warm” person by any means, but she was undoubtedly my favorite. Pat was the quiet one out the fearsome foursome of fifty year old women that I spent seven hours a day with. While Connie is the leader and the christian, Pat is definitely second in command, getting more done and with a less Jesus-y gusto than Connie.
She sits at her computer every day, handing me files to alphabetize and reports to type, and she always does it with a look of absolute boredom and apathy. Unlike the others who try and fake like this job is somehow difficult and important, Pat is the only one who openly shows her disdain for just about everything. When I say that not everyone has adorable children, Mary (the cheerful, spacey one of the group) argues that everyone is beautiful in their own way. What does Pat do? Shoots the bitch down. She, like so many others realize that there are just some plain ugly ass kids. And thank God for her.
When I found out she was retiring recently, I lamented that we never had enough time to become “BFF’s.” I thought Pat would ignore this comment as she often does (I tend to talk to Pat a lot, because I know Pat won’t talk back). But instead she patted me on the shoulder and said with a sigh “I’m sure you’ll find a way to make sure we’ll be BFFing forever.” I’m still not sure Pat knows what a BFF is, and what that could mean about her response, but I like to think that Pat envisions a lively future, of me visiting her without warning, and her grudgingly accepting my presence in her life.
In a few hours I’ll likely never see Pat again. I’m not sure how important she was in the grand scheme of my life, but I’m confident she warrants at least a chapter in my eventual biography, which will be scathing, I’m sure.
At least I still have Myra. The feisty black one of the group. She’s fierce.
Life: maybe attending.
The end of the school year has always brought with it the most general mix of elation and depression.
In three months I’ll be in London.
useless.
I am taking this opportunity to publicly denounce all super chain convenience stores. Wal-Mart, Target, Meijer and the like. They’re completely useless.
Why, I ask you, would you sell me a warranty for a camera, when the company has a complimentary warranty already attached to the camera? You make it seem like I’m getting this super fantastic deal, when in reality the warranty is completely useless.
It really chaps my ass that the facebook community will no longer see the wonderful pictures and videos that I take on a weekly basis because some drunken idiot dropped my camera (this drunken idiot could have very well been me… But whoever it was, they were probably drunk, and most likely an idiot), and the fucking customer service policies at Target are full of loop holes and syntax misconstrues. The hilarity that people will now undoubtedly never see- it pains me.
The world is full of idiots, and I think places like Target and Wal-Mart only breed them faster. Fuck you super chain stores! Fuck. You.
rewrites and schemes of grandeur.
It’s hard to be positive when your prospective plans for the summer involve anything to do with Decatur. When companies don’t call, and money must be had, sacrifices are made. But goddammit, why Decatur?
Sadly enough I am not the first, nor will I be the last person to say that, but that’s no comfort when you feel as shitty as I do right now. I’m so unabashedly pissed off at the justice in the world where under-qualified and under-deserving people are promoted beyond belief, and other people who are under-nothing are fucked over.
That’s not any kind of justice at all.
While all this is well and good, it’s moments like these that I’m forced to take a deep breath in, sigh, and imagine what wonderful adventures await me this summer in the midwest’s armpit. Adventures yes, but adventures in an armpit to be sure.
Nothing left to do now but count the soy, and bide my time before I’m found dead in my woods apartment one day from a combination of a wine overdose and a soy-induced asthma attack.
you may well be the best damn thing that’s blown into this town
Seems to be a while since I’ve been ’round these parts.
I’ve got a lot to say, but never enough time to say it.
I’ve been busy, trying to figure out my life. Believe it or not, shit like that takes time. I’m sitting here trying to explain what may or may not have gone on in the past couple of months that would be worth mentioning, and for the first time in a while (probably a couple of months…) I’ve realized how overwhelming the last couple of months really have been.
Perhaps some things are better off un-blogged.
I officially sent my first fan letter to my hero Eric Bogosian. More on this later. If he sends me an e-mail back, then I’ll be sure to post it.
Captions without words seem to say more than I ever could
I’m living in an unacceptable amount of chaos right now. And what I mean by that ladies and gentlemen, is the pile of suspiciously ambiguous clothes that currently towers next to my lofted bed- which I, awkwardly enough, have found myself dressing out of the past several days. It’s not a pretty picture, and I’m fairly certain it’s had all kinds of negative effects on my psyche over the past few days. The fact that I’ve stayed calm long enough to write this paragraph is a miracle in itself.
The touring cast of River Dance that currently resides above me just had the gall to stomp their feet in protest over my mildly loud music. Excuse me, but if it’s ok for you to clog at all hours of the day and night, I think I can play my newly burned Jay Brannan at a pleasantly reverberating volume. Honest to Pete, I’m going to shit a brick.
This is what a messy room does to me.
I’ve stated it before, and I’ll state it on this blog. Whatever state you find my room in, it will most likely match up to whatever emotional condition I’ll be steeped in at any given moment. My room is in chaos, and my life is in chaos. It’s only fitting, I mean who has time to tidy when you’re stuck in a whirlwind of mainstage time, and homeowork and directing, and being an art-teest, and all that sod. I just need to get me to London, and soon.
There may or may not be a boy on the horizon, but it’s nothing I’m willing to invest in just yet. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Coulda been a whistle, coulda been a flute.
I may just be crazy, but I noticed tonight in the gym that there’s nothing entirely special about it when you’re completely alone, or when you’re surrounded by several other people. There is however, something undeniably awkward and intriguing about being in the gym with a single other person.
A connection, perhaps (?) that slowly develops over the course of your workout routine. An unspoken agreement to not stay on the good treadmill as long as you normally might. Never let any seemingly out of place moans or grunts catch your attention. To avert your eyes respectfully when you’re nameless workout partner does something truly bizarre on the floor behind you. You avert your eyes only because you expect him to do the same thing when you enact similarly uncomfortable thrusts and stretches in a few moments as well. Unspoken rules like these always seem to apply. Unspoken rules that you always break. Well I do anyway. I can’t help but watch Jocky McJock perform awkward thrusts and stretches on the monochromatic carpet that lines the Woods workout room.
When I arrive in the gym and find it inhabited by just one other person, I always sigh in disappointment, because I know that I’ll feel perpetually judged and gawked at for the next hour. And if it’s one of those freakishly in-shape people, as they tend to be, I have to make sure that my workout lasts until they leave. Obviously I can’t arrive after them, and depart before them. I’ll look lazy. Or something.
But then that moment comes when they finally leave while you’re doing your sit ups on the carpet. And you pause for a moment and wonder if you should nod at them, or wave even as they leave. You did just spend the last forty-five minutes jogging and trying to avoid eye contact with this person. Should you really just let them go like that?
I don’t think I’ve ever been in the gym alone with the same person before. One of us doesn’t like to keep a regular workout schedule, and I think it’s me.
I don’t think I’ve ever been more completely unprepared for a semester to begin before. I know everyone says that. They spend the final day of their break complaining that school is about to start, and attempting to get the random errands that they neglected over break finished while usually a handful of obnoxious friends sit around reciting all the reasons they can’t wait for classes to start up again. I hate those people.
And today I hate the former as well. Because I am legitimately unprepared in almost every way you can imagine. I don’t have my final class schedule yet, and so of course I haven’t really bought any books yet. I’m not sure if I’m going to get kicked out of the classes that I need to take, and I’m pretty sure that I’ve double booked myself at 2:00pm on T/TH, and I’m wondering how the computer let that slide.
I’m convinced that my classes don’t make sense. Why am I in two performing classes? I’m having an emotional crisis. I have no clue what I want to do, and more and more I’m pretty certain it isn’t perform. But then I flip-flop. I’m the John Kerry of choosing an emphasis.
Maybe I’m feeling like I’m giving up on something. Performing was always all I ever wanted to do, no matter what. Then I got here and suddenly doors were opening in places that I didn’t know existed in the theatre. Suddenly I’m a director, and a playwright, and a stage manager and a dramaturg, and throughout all that my “identity” as a theatre artist is getting lost. I no longer know what I want, or more specifically what I want to learn. I don’t know if I can pour myself into anything anymore.
People always tell you that the answer in these cases is simple. That the solution is “staring you right in the face” or “trust your gut.” Well I think that’s all completely bullshit, because I’m looking straight ahead right now, and I see no solution, and when I think about my gut all I want to do is vomit all over the computer. And I really can’t afford to replace it right now.
So here I sit on the eve of my spring semester sophomore year of college, and I have no idea what classes I’ll be taking, what books I need, or even what I need to learn before I leave here. Great.
I’m searching for a sign, and all I keep looking at is my “horoscope a day” calender sitting on my desk right now, and it’s telling me “Just keep telling yourself it will resolve perfectly.” I really hope that it’s right. But somehow putting my faith in a four dollar, rip-away calender isn’t giving me the peace of mind I need to sleep right now.
Fuck me.
We caught a wild aligator
Back in Decatur, and it sickens me how comfortable I am in this town. Comfortable being relative to how comfortable I was in Plainfield, which all things considered, I should be more comfortable there- in Suburbia, rather than here- the Soy capital of the United States. That was an awkward sentence, and I considered briefly revising it, but I just don’t have the energy.
Something happens to me when I’m back in Decatur, and I suddenly develop a new sense of responsibility that is unfortunately absent when I’m in the ‘burbs. It probably has a lot to do with the awkwardly nervous, frantic energy that consumes me when I step onto this campus. Gotta geddit done. Keeps running through my head, I can’t help but to make lists and prioritize. It’s incredibly annoying, but I have to say it does tend to be efficient.
So far I’ve gotten a great deal of work done on Arcadia, run more errands than your average soccer mom, and picked out a handful of prospective plays to direct this semester. All within the span of a few days. I’m proud of me.
I also enjoyed all this responsibility while still managing to intoxicate myself for at least half the day.
But school starts soon, and I go back to work tomorrow morning, so inevitably the awkward, nervous and frantic will only expand themselves and overpower all other aspects of my personality. Be prepared for that.
