Alone and Unobserved

Growing up, I thought coffee was the devil. Booze was the devil squared. People who drank coffee or beer were evil, filthy, satanic. They were destroying their souls. And besides, caffeine and alcohol were poisons, right? Those people were poisoning themselves.

Even worse, Mormon propaganda films so conflate alcohol and drugs that there was almost no distinction in my mind between a) drinking vodka, b) smoking pot and c) shooting up heroin, and there was certainly no way to do any of these things responsibly. Any and all of them would inevitably lead to you overdosing and dying… presumably while your pure Mormon family stood around your bed, weeping at your lost potential and blaming themselves for your terrible life choices.

While I was growing up, I heard all the time about Mormon girls who slept around, who got abortions, who lived with their boyfriends without getting married—pretty much the worst things you can do in Mormonism besides murdering someone—but who wouldn’t touch caffeine, alcohol or tobacco. When you heard these stories, you were supposed to laugh at how screwed up the worldviews of these women were, because keeping dietary restrictions is way less important than staying chaste and morally pure.

“Hahaha! They have sex at the drop of a hat, but they won’t smoke a cigarette! What idiots.”

(It’s also interesting that the subjects of these stories were all female—men were expected to remain pure and chaste as well, but somehow it felt worse when a woman crossed that line.)

And yet, what was my experience of giving up Mormon teachings like? I drank my first cup of coffee furtively at ten o’clock at night in a Salt-Lake-area Village Inn, feeling guilty and sinful. But before I allowed myself that first sip, I had already

• Made out with any number of boys, including strangers
• Had two boyfriends
• Given my first handjob
• Received my first handjob
• Given my first blowjob
• Received my first blowjob
• Stopped wearing my temple garments

My first mouthful of liquor was from a friend’s Cosmopolitan at a party. It looked delicious, but to my virgin tongue it tasted like turpentine. Poison! I thought. I didn’t really have my first drink until two years later, by which time I had

• Resigned from the Mormon church and had my priesthood authority and temple covenants revoked
• Had SEX-sex—like, all the way—with any number of people, including hook-ups and one-night stands
• Railed openly against the Mormon church and its history of corruption and deception

I stopped even paying lip service to “divinely inspired” Mormon dietary restrictions quite early on in my deconversion, but still they were almost the last part of my upbringing that I let go. And I can’t explain why.

Just about two years ago, I enrolled in a ten-week fitness/weight-loss program with the goal of losing sixteen pounds of fat and gaining six pounds of muscle. I never made it, although I did make significant progress, and for about six months to a year after the program I was thinner and in better shape than I’d been in years.

Unfortunately, over the past year or so, I’ve gained it all back, and a little more. Worse, because I’ve been so lackadaisical with my eating and exercising, I’m probably in the worst shape I’ve been, ever. I knew I wasn’t doing well, but I managed to reassure myself that I wasn’t doing that badly until two days ago, when I shaved off the gnarly beard I had grown… and discovered a chinless hobbit face looking back at me. It was a shock. I didn’t even recognize myself. I still don’t.

About three days ago (when I still had my beard and still recognized myself in the mirror) I read Greta Christina’s post on “The Fat-Positive Feminist Skeptical Diet” and liked what I saw. I downloaded the LoseIt app for my iPhone, which Greta Christina said she had used and loved, intending to put it to use eventually.

Well, “eventually” has come. Here are my goals. I will:

• Eat something immediately after I get up in the morning. First thing.
• Log everything I eat in the LoseIt app, to the best of my ability, no matter what.
• Try to eat a calorie allotment each day that will allow me to lose about a pound a week.
• Exercise every day, even if that just means going for a walk.
• Take the stairs at work, unless that is impossible (for instance, if I’m pushing a book cart).
• Weigh myself once a week.
• Stock up on healthy, filling snacks so I never have to let myself get hungry.
• Stay clean-shaven until I’m comfortable with my appearance. I’m done hiding behind a beard. Even if I stay at my current physical condition—or even get heavier and less fit—I want to be able to accept myself for who I am.

Wish me luck! The LoseIt app automatically posts frequent updates on my exercise habits and weight loss—or gain! horrors—to Facebook, and I’ll be posting infrequent updates here. Hopefully that’ll motivate me to keep going.

Here’s to a svelter and fitter me come summer!

Despite having been me for the past 29+ years, and having lived with my short attention span and cyclical interests for that whole time, I’m still surprised when my interest wheel clicks over and I suddenly go from reading four novels at a time to reading none at all. The art supplies I couldn’t get enough of in January and February are scattered around the house, forgotten for the moment. My Flickr photostream—where I was posting drawings, comics, photos—is stagnant. My Twittering has suffered. Even this website is sitting idle.

For the past several days, I’ve done almost nothing but play Final Fantasy I on my iPhone and watch Torchwood and Doctor Who on Netflix. I’m trying out doing some off-the-cuff blogging on Tumblr; I like the community feel of the site, and I far prefer the Tumblr iPhone app to the WordPress one for blogging on the go. I’ve gone to a few music performances, something I really don’t do often enough.

I can already feel the nigglings of change, though. My piano beckoned to me today, for the first time in a couple weeks. I have a hurt index finger, so I didn’t get very far, but my piano is a determined flirt and won’t give up until I’m playing it again. I have a couple books on hold at the library that I’m excited-ish to read. I’ve really wanted to start dancing again, and of course I need to take a drawing class or several. And I’m still slowing making my way through the Star Trek: The Next Generation catalog (I’m on Season Three—welcome back, Dr. Crusher!). There’s so much to do, and I have to do it now, before I lose interest in it!

Sometimes I really wish I had a more stable, consistent set of interests. If I were always interested in writing, or drawing, or dancing, or blogging or what-have-you, I might be able to do something with them. As it is, it looks like I’ll be a permanent dilettante at whatever I—ooh, shiny!

I’m sick. Just a cold; nothing major. But it’s made me realize something: I don’t get sick very often. Oh, I call into work occasionally with a sinus headache, but my meds always kick in by the next morning and I’m (relatively) good to go. Today is the first time I’ve called into work for the second day in a row in over a year. I… just don’t usually do that. And my god, it sucks. There’s only so much television and internet and warm baths and lounging around lethargically I can take—especially when I’m kind of achy and sore-throaty and I can’t get comfortable and nothing’s really engaging.

Here’s hoping I’m feeling better by tomorrow. Better yet, tonight. Or how about… now? No? Okay, what about… NOW? Argh.

No matter how long it takes me to actually get better, I can guarantee it’s going to feel like an eternity.

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
I finished school, forever. Or rather, I finished a degree program without having another one lined up already. Hopefully I’ll give myself at least a few years before going back to school, if I ever decide to.

I decided to learn to draw.

I grew a real beard.

I fell in love with bourbon and learned to mix a yummy whiskey sour.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?


Resolutions give me hives. I haven’t made any in years.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?


I don’t know how close we are anymore, but my sister Gabrielle had my first nephew, Gabriel, in July.

4. Did anyone close to you die?


No.

5. What countries did you visit?
None except the USA.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Financial security (unlikely). Leisure time. Peace of mind. Also, I’d like to have my urge to create back. I miss it.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I dunno. None so far.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?


Everyone seems really excited about my finishing school, but I’m honestly not too proud of that achievement, since the program was a joke. An expensive, tedious, two-and-a-half-year-long joke that was not very funny.

I’m not sure what my answer is. I don’t feel like I accomplished a whole lot this year, besides remaining employed, alive and domiciled.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I haven’t engaged with my work as much as I wish I would lately. Sure, I complain a whole lot about dealing with the public and its foibles, but there’s a whole lot of professional development and side projects I could have taken on and didn’t.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Uh… no? Not that I recall. Beyond a mild cold or two and the inevitable allergies.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Well, I’m really happy with the dirt-cheap one-speed coffee grinder I bought Craig for his birthday. But the best money I spent was probably to get my Macbook, which I love and curse in equal measure.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Eh. This question fails to inspire me at the moment.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?


Joe Lieberman’s, Glenn Beck’s and Rush Limbaugh’s. Also: all the teabaggers, the town-hall-meeting crashers and the entire complement of Fox News.

14. Where did most of your money go?
To food. As usual.

15. What did you get really excited about?
My birthday party, which was pretty sweet!

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
“Bulletproof” and “Tigerlily” by La Roux, “Turkish Wine” by Norfolk & Western, and “The End of the World” by Matt Alber.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:


– happier or sadder? Sadder, a little at least.
– thinner or fatter? Fatter, by, like, twenty pounds. Ugh.
– richer or poorer? Richer, at least in a sense.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?


Reading. Writing. Singing. Drawing. Dating. Dancing. Exercising.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?


Eating when I wasn’t hungry. Avoiding social contact. Procrastinating.

20. How did you spend Christmas?


With my family in Southern California.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Nope.

22. What was your favorite TV program?


Venture Bros, no question.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?


No.

24. What was the best book you read?
This is the year I read and finally loved Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu, a collection of stories from the same milieu as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I’d read it before and not loved it; this year I read it and fell completely under its spell.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Blip.fm and Grooveshark.

26. What did you want and get?
A new computer. Any number of little things—the Avatar: The Last Airbender complete boxed sets; several T-shirts and items from Topatoco; any amount of booze and food. Time with my family. Time with my friends.

27. What did you want and not get?
I’m still single, and I’m still probably not that ready for a relationship. I still haven’t started writing a novel. I still haven’t started writing regularly. I still haven’t started drawing regularly.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Where the Wild Things Are. Really wasn’t expecting even to like it, and it blew me away.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 29 this year. On my birthday I didn’t do anything really exciting—I worked that morning, and then treated myself to a late lunch at a favorite café. But that weekend my friend and coworker Stephanie and I threw a fabulous joint birthday bash for ourselves that was crowded, rowdy, booze-drenched and littered with balloons.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Hmmm. More time with friends, maybe? A boyfriend? More money? Less school? Less procrastination? Not sure.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
“I’m Too Fat for All of My Clothes, So I’ll Just Throw Something On.”

32. What kept you sane?


Twitter. No question.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Um. I can’t tell you until next year, when he’s finally legal. LOL

Aside from jailbait who starred in movies I refused to watch, I also fell back in love with Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?


Health care. The fact that we call ourselves civilized while so many of our fellow citizens are un- and under-insured and receive substandard medical care just boggles my mind.

35. Who did you miss?


My niece Vienna, whom I haven’t seen in almost two years.

36. Who was the best new person you met?


New this year? I’d probably have to split it between Lessie, Galen, Hilary and Nick. [Edited to add:] And most of all, Chandelle.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.


I am resistant to life lessons.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.


I’m terrible at this game. Uh… “make a little birdhouse in your soul.”

[H/T to Sundry for posting this quiz so I could steal it, again.]

My parents married when my mom was 26 and my dad was 29. In Mormon years, especially in 1979, this was definitely Old Maid territory for my mom (whose own mother apparently gave up on her ever getting married when she turned 22 or so) and sinful territory for Dad (a quote often attributed to Brigham Young, the second “prophet” of the Mormon church, states that a young man is a “menace to society” if he remains single after the age of 27). So I always understood that my mom was talking at least somewhat about herself when she repeatedly told us not to wait too long to get married, or we’d run the risk of “turning into bachelors and getting too set in [our] ways, and not being able or willing to make the sacrifices being in a relationship requires.” (Needless to say, this description of marriage made us all long for the opportunity to experience it ourselves.)

You know I hate to say my mother is right about anything, but in a sense she was: I’m 29 and single, and I can’t even imagine being in a relationship right now. But I don’t think I have “waiting around” or “becoming a bachelor” to thank for this; far more likely culprits are simply the genes I inherited from my introverted parents (especially my father) and the sheltered, homebody upbringing they gave me.

I can’t imagine being in a relationship because I do everything by myself. Almost literally everything. I sleep by myself, shop by myself, go to movies by myself, go out to eat by myself, watch TV by myself, crack jokes by myself (some of which make it on Twitter/Facebook, but not all), cook by myself, etc., etc. It’s not that I mind doing stuff with other people; it’s simply not part of my routine. And frankly, deviating from my routine annoys me. Hear that, friends? Quit asking me to do things with you. It cuts into my Farscape-watching time, goddammit.

Just kidding. Mostly. But when I imagine being in a romantic, committed relationship with someone, my mind simply boggles. The idea of constantly having to check in with someone else, having to coordinate every activity and outing, to sometimes/often do what someone else wants to do instead of what I want to do… this is making me sound like a self-centered bastard, and of course I totally am, but really I just don’t know how to have friends. And if I don’t know how to have friends—if the decidedly less onerous responsibilities of sustaining and maintaining a friendship are completely lost on me—how on earth am I going to be able to sustain and maintain a more intimate relationship?

So basically what I’m saying is, I have until the end of the month to begin the relationship that will last me the rest of my life, or else my dad has outdone me. And of course we can’t have that.

You know, that thing where I agreed a month ago to work a closing shift but I forgot this morning and so I dragged myself out of bed and all the way to work only to find out I’m not supposed to be here for another couple of hours and I could have slept in?

Yes.

On my way to work I made the mistake of having a thought while still in my not-yet-awake, overtired, uncaffeinated state, which is always a bad idea for me. Because then that thought—or part of it—echoes in the hollow space inside my skull FOREVER, or until I get coffee and wake up, whichever comes first. Some mornings it’ll be a snippet of a song (“I can’t stop loving the MAAAAN of mine. I can’t stop loving that MAAAAN of mine. I can’t stop…”). Other mornings it’ll just be a phrase, or a word (“Biblioteca. BiblioTECa. BIBILIOTECA. biblioteca.”). This morning it was “pourquoi ils auraient fait ça” (“why they would have done that,” in French). Not even a complete sentence. So I walked to the bus, accompanied by a regular refrain of “pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi…” This got a bit boring and repetitive, so I mixed it up: “pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait cela, pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait cela, pourquoi…”

So you see why sleeping in might have been a good idea this morning.

[Note: I am aware that "Pourquoi ils auraient fait ça?" can be a complete sentence in French. You'll just have to trust me that the intonation of the phrase that repeated itself over and over and over in my head this morning ruled out that possibility.]

On Thursdays I work at ten o’clock am, which means—if I want eight hours of sleep, which, when don’t I?—I need to get to bed by one o’clock am. No problem.

Except I couldn’t sleep last night. Like, I tossed and turned and turned and tossed and, the sleep, IT DID NOT COME. Every hour I took breaks to check Twitter, blip songs, and ping the entire online world with updates on how awake and unhappy I was. And then I went back to tossing and turning. Until FOUR IN THE FREAKING MORNING OMG.

At nine this morning my alarm (i.e., my iPhone) went off. I apparently slept through seven minutes of that racket without twitching, although it did invade the dream I was having and eventually woke me up.

I somehow got up, got dressed, and got to the bus stop. Took the bus a few blocks. Got off, stopped in at Beans & Brews for a mochaccino and a scone to go, walked the four blocks to work.

There are a few things you need to know about Beans & Brews.

• Beans & Brews is a local Starbucks-like franchise coffeeshop chain, with seventeen locations, all in Salt Lake and Utah counties.
• Beans & Brews coffee is served boiling hot.
• Beans & Brews cardboard sleeves are the thinnest I have ever seen. Far too thin to protect your hand from the heat radiating from the boiling liquid. Like, PRAYER would be more effective than a Beans & Brews cardboard coffee cup sleeve.
• Beans & Brews coffee cup lids have tiny little sipping holes that are apparently specially designed for maximum ballistic efficiency. Beans & Brews lid + boiling Beans & Brews coffee + a normal walking pace = searing gobs of coffee and foam in your face, on your clothes and all over your belongings. Guaranteed!
• Beans & Brews pastry bags are so fragile that if you happen to drop your pastry while, say, juggling an iPhone, sunglasses and a lava-hot, foam-spitting cup of coffee, when you bend down to pick up the bag the paper will neatly split in two, depositing your scone on the filthy pavement.

Needless to say, I was not in a good mood when I finally made it to work. My hands and face were dotted with red boiling-coffee welts, my bag was covered in tan mochaccino foam, my scone (and its traitorous paper bag) was in a garbage can at the entrance to a municipal building, and I was so, so, SO TIRED. Also, fifteen minutes late. And I hate being late.

But the worst was when I got into work and discovered that, surprise! I wasn’t scheduled to come in this morning at all. Suck on THAT, me!

Since I did manage to suck down the majority of the boiling mochaccino, I’m blogging instead of going back to bed. I got enough of the fruitless tossing and turning last night/early this morning, thank you very much. Still not sure why I couldn’t sleep last night—I didn’t take any allergy medication, and the only coffee I had yesterday was a latte at lunch. It must have been the caffeine from the handfuls of bittersweet chocolate I ate yesterday evening, which wouldn’t usually have been a problem, but apparently I need to make a new rule: no chocolate after 3pm. God. My life, it is so hard.

I turned in my last assignment for the Spring 2009 semester a few days ago, and it still hasn’t hit me that I DON’T HAVE HOMEWORK TO DO. Unfortunately, I won’t have long to get used to the idea—the summer term starts in nine days, so I need to get my party on.

That last assignment, by the way, was one I should have enjoyed thoroughly, and should have done very well on, but (as usual) I put it off until the very last day, which meant it was a stressful, slapdash, rush job. The topic: the evolution of feminist science fiction. Which allowed me to read such gems—and I am not being sarcastic here—as “Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!” by Raccoona Sheldon (AKA James Tiptree, Jr., AKA Alice Sheldon) and “When It Changed,” by Joanna Russ. Both keep returning to bother and delight me, just like all the best fiction does. Cannot recommend either story highly enough.

Last night I went to a karaoke bar for the first time since I started drinking, and my friend Denice and I blew everyone’s minds with our rendition of the Scissor Sisters’ “Filthy/Gorgeous.” Also mindblowing, I’m sure: our filthy, erotic dancing. We didn’t carry no watermelon, if you know what I’m saying.

I’ve been wretchedly bad at updating this blog lately. We’re coming to the end of the semester, and the amount of final projects I’m putting off is poisoning everything I do. Whether I’m reading a book or soaking in the tub or helping library patrons at work or watching TV or getting drunk at a party, there’s that niggling little itch in the back of my mind that says, “You should be doing homework! Stop having fun and work on your assignments!” It’s really cramping my style.

One of the first things that goes when I’m stressed, overtired or out of sorts is my creativity. Not only can I no longer write, I no long even feel the urge to, which is such a bizarre loss that it always catches me completely unprepared. Even worse, I become utterly uncreative and inflexible in my day-to-day life as well, which means I find it harder simply to deal with things. You might not realize how much creativity you use in making mundane decisions, but believe me, you’d miss it if it were gone. Suddenly my mind can only recognize a single way of doing things. In my head, every problem only has one solution, every interaction only one acceptable path to success, which makes dealing with library patrons—who are endlessly creative in thinking up ways to baffle and bemuse me when I’m at my best—almost impossible.

Well, hopefully the end of the semester will herald a brief period of peace, tranquility and (fingers crossed) creativity, before the summer term arrives to crush all my dreams again.

In the meantime, go have fun reading the archives of Mis/adventures in Bookland, where Suffering Silently blogs about dealing with bookstore customers in a small-town bookshop in Canada. I could swear some of her customers also visit my library.