Whirlwind

So as the title indicates, my life has been a hot, fabulous mess lately.  Sunday afternoon at around one, I was smoking a bowl with my friend Violencia.  I thought to myself, How did I end up getting high outside a warehouse at a photo shoot with drag queens?

Well to answer that question, let’s start with my friend Tony, who I met through a mutual friend at a gay club.  He is a pretty cool photographer.  His most recent shoot happened this Sunday. He did like seven different spreads in one day- I was amazed!

I guess we’re going to Tarantino this.

Last Saturday, I brought my hot friend Brian out to the club with me.  All the guys and queens immediately ate him up.  Tony told him he should consider modeling and invited him to the shoot.  Brian, having a healthy ego, accepted.  Tony invited me too because I’m Edie Sedgwick or Lady Gaga or something.  (My explanation- not his.) I, apparently, have an unhealthy ego.

Later that night, we ended up at Tony’s friend Mandy’s house for an after party.  We got super drunk and shit got weird- a good weird.  Lady Gaga was blasting, and shots of some kind of tequila were flowing.  Brian and I danced in our underwear.  In Brian’s case, Mandy’s underwear. (The one downside of going commando.) I recall Shawn, Tony’s boyfriend, taking off my pants sort of against my will.  He staunchly denies this.  Sort of.

I've been in serious need of letting loose lately though because my job at the school has been ridiculous.  One day, within a half-hour period two different students were in a three-person restraint.  What?

At gym last Monday, one of my students- let’s call him Tommy- was having a fit because he wasn’t getting his way.  He started throwing scooter boards.  (Yes, those sweet yellow ones that you sit on and have adventures with!) I was sick of him thinking he can get away with whatever he wants.  I went over, slammed my hand down on the remaining pile, and told him to stop.  I remember thinking, Wow what has my life come to when I’m like, “Yup, pretty sure this 10-year old autistic kid is going to punch me in the face”?  Luckily, the gym teacher came over and helped me out.  Crisis averted.

Needless to say, my kids are ridiculous.  Psychotic almost.  Well not literally, but to the outside observer, they might sometimes appear that way.  And sometimes to the inside observer as well.

A fun night out is just what I needed.  And continue to need.  Friday was another fun one for me.  I went to see my friend Krissy’s play and brought the boy I’m dating.  We dated during college too.  I’m comfortable with him so it’s kind of great.

Anyway, a part that I’m not comfortable with is that I’m also friends with his roommates.  Well normally, that part is awesome.  But then there’s the awkward.  I’m loud.  I can’t handle one of them overhearing and never looking at me the same way again.  I try to stifle myself pretty unsuccessfully.  I tried to make the pitch lower so the sound wasn’t so piercing.  It just ended up sounding fucking weird.  I couldn’t help thinking that I sounded like a kid with Tourette syndrome.  Again, what is my life?

A couple weekends before that Brian came to see me in Boston while I was visiting my other friend Brian.  Brian that I’m not dating took me to see this show at midnight after Brian I am dating left.  It was called “Naked Girls Reading.”  Yeah, you would think I would have more to say on that topic.  It was literally just naked girls reading.  Short stories.  Sometimes from a male perspective.  One of them was about a plumber in an era when he had to pull zombie parts out of drains.  Not erotic.   

Phew.  So there.  Hopefully, that explains why I haven’t written in a month.  I love when a title encompasses a motif so perfectly without being obnoxious.  At least I hope it wasn’t obnoxious.

Career Path

I hate looking for jobs.  It’s awful.  My hatred for this is probably equivalent to my hatred of dating.  Side note: the thing I hate my ex the most for is that he made me rejoin the dating world.  Well not really, but let’s say that anyway.  But seriously, dating is terrible.  And so is applying for jobs.  There’s the fear of rejection.  The sea of undesirable, unfulfilling options.  And all the good ones are either taken or otherwise unavailable to you.  Waiting to hear back.  Playing hard to get.  Feeling obligated to pretend to be interested when something turns out to be not exactly what you were looking for.  Also, you have to send out impersonal applications online which sound at once pompous and unremarkable.

In the job world, these impersonal pleas take the form of cover letters.  The bane of my existence.  Not that anybody likes writing these really.  They’re tedious and boring and full of formatted bullshit.  She’s a writer so she must be good at writing these, right? No.  Nope, that is the opposite of true.  I would rather write a 20-page paper on data-mining than write a fucking cover letter.

If you ask WikiHow, here is the proper format for one of these fuckers:

1. Kiss up to this person you don’t know and will probably never meet.
2. Say how you found the job opportunity.
3. Bullshit about why you and this lame company are two peas in a pod.
4. Bullshit some more, then tell them how to contact you if they wish to request more bullshit.
5. Kiss ass some more.

Here’s the link to the real article.  http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Cover-Letter  Honestly, I’m too bored by it to even finish skimming.

On top of this nonsense, if you actually get an interview, these employers always want you to tell them that this is the ideal job for you.  What you want to do for the rest of your life.  So much commitment and so many lies.  More analogies to the dating world?  Why yes, I spent 4 (in my case, 3) years at an over-priced university studying Literary and Cultural Studies because since I was a little girl, I’ve always dreamed of being a secretary/bank teller/paper pusher/insert other underpaid, life-draining position that I’m overqualified for.

Jobs you actually want, of course, require more experience than you actually have.  Classic catch 22.  How do you get experience if no one will hire you?  You can either lie or wait for an entry-level position that about a million other people will apply for.  In the mean time, your student loans are due.

So my solution is to get my name out there on the internet, make my portfolio site look pretty, and make as many connections as possible.  As you’ve heard way too many times, it’s not what you know it’s who you know.

P.S. here’s a link to my portfolio site: http://mackenzieschroth.wordpress.com/.  And to a review I just did: http://theumbrellaman.blogspot.com/2012/09/rich-ferri-last-one-out-of-this-town.html.

I was going to call this "Revelations" but I thought that might seem offensive but now I can't think of anything else

This week has been a week of discoveries.  I have discovered what I think is a good strategy for advancing my writing career.  I even discovered a way to avoid a significantly awkward aspect of my job at TJ Maxx!

The worst part about working at my TJ Maxx is the men’s fitting room.  Dun dun dunnnnn.  But seriously.  By “men’s fitting room” the TJX Corporation means three ghetto closets closed by black doors with shuttered fronts.  God knows what they were thinking there.  They also have stiff locks and an annoying door bell noise that confuses our pigeon-like customers.

Two of out the three stalls in the men’s fitting room are pretty much the most thoughtlessly-designed spaces taking up less than sixteen square feet I’ve ever come across.  I don’t know exactly what that tells you.  I’m saying this because these two previously-mentioned heavy doors open inwards.  Instead of opening towards the outside so I can happily present the customer to his luxurious changing station. 

For the last five years, I’ve had to hold the burdensome door open at an awkward angle to be as far away from the customer as possible when he squeezed by me.  Often narrowly avoiding a breast swipe. Not for lack of trying on their part.  In case you wouldn’t have guessed, I don’t want to be within five feet- let alone one foot- of most of these men.  A lot of them smell funny.  More than that don’t understand that I’m contractually obligated to say hi and be friendly; and I am not, in fact, flirting with them.

My solution is to utilize another flaw of these fitting rooms to let them in.  Despite their ridiculous weight, the doors don’t close on their own.  Unless you slam them shut, they stay ajar.  So I realized I can just unlock the door and let the men push it open for themselves.  Hurray!  My bubble can remain intact.

This probably seems like a lame ending after all that verbose build-up, but it’s the little victories.

Now, on to important things.  My career.

I’ve decided I’m going to think of myself as a writer.  As in a professional.  To think of it as my job.  That’s it.  I feel mentality is important.

This may seem silly and obvious.  Not a solution, really. 

But I’ve never actually had that mindset before. 

In college, school work and my extracurriculars formed my job.  I sat in the library or a café or my house/dorm and did my work.  Of course it didn’t always feel like work.  It felt like fun.  Maybe this mentality is just an expression of my love for my college life.

But I got a similar feeling Tuesday when I was sitting in Barnes and Noble working on a music review.  It felt almost like I was working on an essay or a story back in the good old days. (What has my life come to when I miss homework?)  Then, it all hit me.  Not thinking of myself as a career writer is holding me back.  Just because I love it doesn’t mean it can’t be work.  I just have to sit down and do it.

So I’m going to.  Writing is now my third job.  Maintaining this blog is part of that position.  Maintaining my new portfolio page too.  And it feels good.  I feel more motivated to work on my short stories every week.  To seek out freelance assignments.  I’m very optimistic.  And I’ll post links to my new sites later.

Are You Afraid of the Dark? ...Apparently

So while I love nighttime and the dark, lately I’ve been stricken by this crippling fear.  Every night, as I’m getting ready for bed, I get this anxiety that there’s a murderer lurking in the darkness.  My tactic for dealing with this has been to jump into my bed and pull the covers over my head like a 5 year old.  Obviously, this will allow me to evade even the most insidious serial killer.  Maybe I need a therapist to help me get to the root of these issues.

(Insert picture of Brian Peppers here.  I was going to literally put one here but I google image searched him and I just can't.)

Last night, my plans were thwarted because after barricading myself in my room, (read here: closing my bedroom door) I realized that I forgot to look at my work schedule.  I could have possibly had work the next day, so I couldn’t rest until I double-checked.  This meant that I had to brave the horrifying downstairs of my house.  I turned on every possible light that I could as I went.  I looked around every corner for intruders.  Finally, I made it safely up to my room again.  Relieved, I could go to sleep in peace knowing I didn’t have to get up in the morning for work.

Then, I looked at my bed and realized I had forgotten my sheets in the dryer.  Meaning yet another perilous journey into the darkness lay ahead of me.  I would also have to venture into the basement.  Where obviously that baby monster from American Horror Story was living.

You think I would have learned by now that cleaning is not worth the aggravation.  The dusting and vacuuming I did a week ago have also disturbed the apparent throng of spiders who have chosen to take up residence in my bedroom.  Seriously, the other night, I was sitting in bed with my laptop, waiting for my genius to spark some inspiration for my new story, when Aragog fell from the ceiling onto my keyboard.  He then proceeded to crawl away somewhere into the depths of my comforter.  I had to sleep on the couch that night.  So now before I shut out my light for bed, I not only have to check my room for murderers but for spiders.

One thing I’ve been trying to do to allay my terror is make a joke out of it inside my own head.  There was this one episode of Full House when the girls watched a scary movie or something and couldn’t sleep.  To make them feel better, Uncle Joey acted out a skit where he was the monster’s mother.  This made the girls laugh.  Their fears seemed ridiculous.

This is a fairly successful strategy.  I made up phony headlines for the Townsend Times as I quickly grabbed my covers from the dryer.  “Local Youth Murdered in Basement.  If Only She Had Remembered The Sheets Earlier.”  It helped a little.  And since I’ve lived to tell the tale, I’m clearly fine. 

As I said, normally I love nighttime.  It’s odd- I’m more scared walking around my house in Townsend than I am jaunting around Boston at 1 am.

I forgot to mention in my last post, Jon and I even took a candlelit ghost tour of Salem last Friday.  I wasn’t scared at all.  This probably had something to do with the fact that we were both still drunk.  Also, the tour guide girl kept apologizing for how lame it was.  We loved her.

Plus, I was too distracted with drunk texting my ex.  *Face Palm* That was great.  To steal a line from my friend Brian, no one ever looks at a drunk text after sobering up and says, “Wow, I sounded awesome.  I should do that more often.”

So yes, nighttime is host to the weird and wonderful.  Hopefully, I can get over my irrational fears and enjoy it in its entirety once more.

The Return

Supreme and glorious failure on my part to get this blog started.  After my first post, I got a job and a boyfriend.  That explains that.  Whelp my boyfriend broke up with me, and now, while I love my job, I’m trying to get my writing out there.  This is my naïve way of doing that.  It’s a start.  Anyway, I like the name of this blog, so I’m sticking with it.

At my new job, I work at a private school for special needs children.  I’m sort of a homeroom teacher/ paraprofessional…it’s hard to explain since this school’s program and schedule aren’t typical.  These aren’t your typical special needs kids either.  Most of them are cognitively higher than you’d expect.  They’re mainly emotionally disturbed with behavioral problems.  They are great kids, for the most part.  They make for some funny stories.  And some occasions where I want to slam my head against the wall.  Or run for the door.  More to come on this later.  I love my job.  It surprises me how fulfilling and fun I find it.

The more acute reader may say to him/herself, It’s summer.  What’s she been doing these past couple months?  Or maybe you weren’t thinking that at all.  Well to answer your question, I’ve been working at TJ Maxx to make ends meet.  Living the dream, being appreciated for the intellectual that I am.  Although I did just get a promotion, so that’s nice.

I've been spending my free time frolicking around any intriguing location I can reach with $50 or less.  And occasionally getting inappropriately drunk in public. (Don’t worry- I do NOT drink and drive.)  This Friday, for example, my friend Jon and I went to Salem, MA.  We met a witch named Onyx.  She’s a high priestess of the Wiccan faith.

Not what she looked like.  Although she was wearing a stereotypical black dress. 

We had an incredibly illuminating and not entirely sober discussion about life, religion, and Wicca.  After having a few delicious beers at this cool café, Gulu Gulu, (my favorite tasted like liquid pumpkin bread!) we headed across the street to a witchcraft store.  The store featured items like wolf’s hair and love-inspiring incense.  Upon entering the store, we immediately connected with her.  Our lowered inhibitory functions had absolutely nothing to do with it.    

Onyx explained that Wiccans believe in Mother Earth and that all women are goddesses.  (I am probably getting this horribly and offensively wrong.)  I went on a short drunken rant on how the fear and disapproval of Wicca prevail because of a hatred of women.  What else would happen? 

We also discovered that Wicca is very gay friendly.  Which is cool because I’m bi and Jon is gay.  Not that we’re planning on converting.  This discovery came about when Onyx shared with us that she has two gay sons.  Literally two minutes later, one of them showed up out of the blue wearing a red shirt, red jeans, and an excessive amount of gold jewelry.

They were an amazing mother and son pair.  They invited across the street to chat while they smoked cigarettes.  After, Jon and I stumbled down the cobblestone streets with Onyx’s son whose name I can’t remember.  The highlight was our drunk/drunk/sober/sober conversation with a Green Peace representative.  I don’t even think she noticed that we didn’t sign up or donate or anything.  The inebriation might have had something to do with this. 

Generally, Jon and I wreaked havoc through Salem.  Then, I picked up a guy while waiting for the commuter rail.  Well done, me.

Well I can’t think of a satisfying summary for that anecdote.  I guess remember to tune in next week for more adventures in my awkwardly fabulous life in East Jesus Nowhere, America.  My plan is to do a new post weekly from now on.  We’ll see how that goes.

So I was going to start this blog yesterday, but I did too many things.  I mean I made a checklist using Sticky Notes on my laptop and did almost all the things on it.  I needed to be reasonable and not overload myself.

My secret agenda in creating this blog is that some publishing mogul will be perusing blogspot, find one of my posts, and be so struck by my literary genius that s/he will have no choice but to hire and/or publish me immediately.

All in all though, the purpose of this blog is going to be to illustrate to you, the reader, the awkwardness of my life.  The life of a generally awkward person who just graduated from college and is currently just working at the same goddamned retail job she has been working since senior year of high school.  My cousins say that they would watch my sitcom, if I had one, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Here’s an anecdote of my Saturday night to paint a better picture of some of the things that happen to me.  I had to close at work, which was as uneventful as you would think.  Except the part where I made a joke in Spanish to some Spanish-speaking customers and they laughed.  I felt like the cleverest person in the world. 

Afterwards, I met up with my brother’s girlfriend, Ashley, at a bar.  Her bestie’s boyfriend’s band was playing.  It’s a metal band.  This is so not my scene.  I usually spend my weekend nights stumbling around Allston listening to alternative music, dancing sporadically, and drinking expensive beer.  My outfit would have been appropriate for that.  I was wearing a black lacy top over a solid black tank top, dark-wash skinny jeans, Mary Jane flats, and purple lacy socks.  Most other people there looked like they could be at a biker bar.  They, too, were wearing black tops, but more of the rhinestone variety with big high heels; or a completely different route with band shirts and sweatshirts.  Everyone there could have beaten me up.

Regardless, I still had a great time, and apparently my breasts were sufficiently on display to garner some male attention.  The first was Ashley’s brother’s friend.  I noticed the looks he gave me immediately upon meeting him.  Later, when I was trying to dance to metal, he came up to me, grabbed me, and started swing-dancing with me.  This was initially fun until he picked me up and spun me around in a circle.  I’m very little, and my friends like to do this to me all the time.  He is not my friend.  I could feel this weird forced smile/grimace plaster itself onto my face.  I think it was the shock. 

This moment became even worse later when Ashley informed me that he was one of the kids who robbed the McDonalds across from my high school when we were in school.  The same ones who then got caught and went to jail.  Wow.  I am a lucky girl.

The next boy- and here’s the clincher of the evening- was Ashley’s brother.  Yes, I do realize that this would count as incest in several of the more progressive states.  However, he is hot and funny so I let it happen.  And by let it happen, I mean mostly I just rolled my eyes at his drunken come-ons.  Generally, I sat there stiffly, feeling uncomfortable and unsure how to deal with the situation.  In the end though, I survived the evening unscathed and with no new numbers in my phone.  Thankfully. 

So, back to the beginning, what was one of the things that I accomplished yesterday on my checklist you might not be asking yourself but I’m going to tell you anyway?  I made a spreadsheet of my student loans and my budget.  I’m hoping, this way, I can stop over-drafting my account because apparently, even though I graduated in the top 3% of my class I’m still a fucking idiot. 

My online checking account always says I have money when I set up the payments and then, magically, I don’t anymore.  Until this weekend, I was blaming this on the incompetence of my bank because clearly, they just can’t hire a decent programmer who can manage to write a program that instantly displays all withdrawals and deposits. 

Then, my mom started flipping out at me and told me that she doesn’t think I understand how checking accounts really work.  Initially, this obviously really pissed me off.  How can I not understand a basic system of credits and debits?  It’s pretty fucking simple.  But then she goes, “It may say you have a certain amount of money in there, but you may have written a check that hasn’t cleared yet so you have to keep track of that yourself.”  Wow. Now even though nobody writes checks anymore (except that one annoying lady in front of you in line who’s like 50 and “just doesn’t trust debit cards” or some such nonsense), but my mom made a very valid point which I hadn’t considered before.  So the solution is for me to suck it up and set up an excel sheet and just keep track of all the money I spend and earn like adults do.

So now, after my exhausting day yesterday and my early morning at work today, I’m sitting on my couch updating my blog, and that’s pretty much it.  Maybe I’ll fill out my application for the Barnes and Noble Starbucks’ Café later.