Between the time the alarm went off and I woke up, I had this dream, that I was back at my old college, because I desperately needed to talk to my favorite college professor, and I found her, finally, after trudging through the snow all over campus in my dress shoes, and I told her that I hated my “present circumstances.”
And that I felt so paralyzed by guilt over how obnoxious it is to have “circumstances” that seem perfect for me and that a lot of folks would kill to have and over how afraid I am that I’ve topped out and that any other set of circumstances I might find myself in would be worse and I would forever live with the regret of not having stuck with the good stuff I had, when I had it, that I couldn’t see a way out. Shoot, I couldn’t even motivate myself to figure out what direction to start in to find a way out.
And so she took me to her house and chained me to her toilet and I sat in her back bathroom where everyone who came in the house kindly said hello to me as they walked by.
I woke up but had no motivation to get out of bed. Finally, when I realized that I was thinking about just staying in bed all day, I got scared and got moving.
I don’t think it takes an expert to see that I really just want someone to tell me what to do, to point me in the right direction, give me a list of things, and I’ll go down the list getting them done. That made me an excellent student. It has made me a somewhat mediocre adult.
No, I take that back. I wish it made me a mediocre adult, because then I’d have an excuse.
But here’s what I’m like. I’m like an unformed blob of chaotic energy. If you focus me, I can turn that energy towards all kinds of fun and cool stuff. But I am not structured. I need that structure to come from outside me. I need someone else to impose a framework instead of “allowing” me to build my own, because it is very hard for me to build my own. That’s not where my strength or interest lies.
But if you just put pressure on me, all I do is spread thinly across everything. And if you then get mad at me for spreading thinly across everything, it pisses me off.
Anyway, all this is kind of beside the point.
In a perfect world, I would own a spooky occult bookshop and be a tour guide, while writing my liberal feminist kick-ass newspaper column. I think I’d make a good tour guide. After all, what are we doing here every day, but me giving you a tour of what’s going on in my brain?
And y’all seem to like that.
Anyway, I feel better. I’m sorry to keep bitching about this, as I know it’s got to be boring to most of you, but it’s obvious that I’ve got to do something to change my circumstances, but that requires focusing my energy, and that requires building some structure to do it. All this complaining is a lot of foundational work towards that.
B, create your perfect world. It sounds just fine to me. Especially with Molly Ivins on the disabled list right now. (Crap crap crap crap crap about that. Anyway.)I would browse in your bookshop and ask advice and would also help publicize your tours. (I mean, for dog’s sake, they’ve got two gals out there on a bus in cheap red wigs talking trash and making a mint off Nashville tourists right now; you’re telling me you can’t do even better than that?)What you write here is not boring; it’s fascinating and inspiring and usually clench-your-thighs-together-and-waddle-down-the-hall-fast funny. It’s also constructive for you to get things out of your brain and onto virtual paper where you can make your OWN checklist and see how to implement it.We kiss you and await your next revelations.
I will gladly be the guy who stands outside your book shoppe (there has to be an "e" on the end…) and turns a hose on the prostelitizing protesters who picket outside and take down the license plate numbers of the occultists who patronize your business.Always itching for a good fight,CLC
I realize that I don’t know you, but it sounds like you would be great at something like event and/or meeting planning. Although event planning is more fun, in my opinion.You take a bunch of disparate elements, get them herded together and stampeding in the same direction, millions of details, defined time span, to say nothing of having to deal with Acts of God (which concentrates the mind wonderfully) and then voila! the event takes place and its success is completely dependent on how well you pulled everything and everyone together. And then on to the next event, unless you’re lucky enough to be handling more than one at a time, in which case you have no time for anything.
Your dream of being chained to a toilet means you want me. Seriously. Look it up.
Oh my god! I looked up "dream analysis" on Wikipedia and it did say, "dream of being chained to a toiled=you want Jon of Mushin no shin." And we all know Wikipedia is never wrong.Shit, I guess this means I have to start acting like a total stumbling doofus around you so that our every interaction is tinged with my dying of embarrassment.In good news for you, I have quite a track record of sending men who can’t quite bring themselves to want me in return on to their wives. So, look for that life change.Argh, see. I want to come off all cool and nonchalant but now I’m paralyzed by the fear that I’m making a giant ass of myself. Oh well, what’s the internet for if not for making a giant ass of yourself?
Your prof left you chained up to your own crap, not uncomfortable exactly but also not free, while you work out the problem yourself.Alternately, it means that you want Jon. Your call.
Well, I was in Jordan while you were chained to my toilet, which means that bridgett’s analysis is certainly right: I left you to work out the problem yourself. I’m also flattered that you wore your dress shoes over to see me, and that you were willing to ruin them in the snow. You know what I think: you’re the most original student I ever had. And you know what I think? I think you’d make a wonderful new Molly Ivins-from Nashville this time, but with the same fine command of southern idiom and out-front wit, aimed at just the right targets with right-on analysis.I have also always thought that if you’d write short fiction from that same vantage point that your circumstances–physical and metaphysical–would find themselves changing. If chaining you to my toilet would make this happen I would be more than happy to crap in the back yard until your first collection was published.So there.The College Professor
Damn, woman, thanks. I mean that. Thanks a lot.