Blessed Economy

My wife is essentially a student—she's self-teaching so that she can get licensure to work in a specialized field, so as a result she isn't employed. In a good economy, that would be a problem. In the shitheap we live in now, though, my high-end-of-average paycheck ($1k every 2 weeks), we're doing quite well. We don't shop the good stores, but every time we see a liquidation sale, we march in with a fistful of bills and walk out sitting pretty. The missus has doubled her wardrobe, and I've been scooping up all the old games and software that people have been hawking, desperate for money. We've also gotten ourselves a new HDTV, one of those digital frame thingys, and we're moving into a much bigger and better apartment that (after incentives) will end up costing us hundreds less than where we're living now, since they're desperate to get tenants of any kind.

I feel guilty, to a certain degree. I really do feel like I'm profiting off of other people's mistakes. But then, isn't that how it should work? All those pretentious fucks I knew in college kept saying to me in their most condescending voices, "you're an idiot for renting an apartment. You're throwing your money away, not buying a house." Meanwhile, 80% of their house payments went to the bank, and the bank just blew the money on nothing, and then reneg'ed on their loan, and their house depreciated by more than they paid for it. That's not even considering all the money they spent on yard improvements, sewer lines, maintenance, and all the other stuff that's built in to a rental price, but they have to pay for themselves (which doesn't improve the value of their house).

All those fucktards kept chiding me for getting an English degree while they were out getting their MBAs. Then they got a lucrative job at Washington Mutual, while I devoted myself to being a big fish in a little pond, and now they're getting laid off because their company realized they provide no actual value to their employer, while my income has increased steadily and unwaveringly by 28% a year. And because I have practically no investments in high-risk stocks (all my money is in CDs and annuities), I haven't really lost any money in this economy. And once my wife does get her license, she'll be applying for jobs almost completely unopposed, because for all those snobby little assholes who were skating through med school with 'C' grades, their parents started questioning whether it was worth it paying 6 figures on an education that their kid clearly doesn't give a fuck about. So while the health industry itself is recession-proof, and riding a wave of support from a President who wants to amp up health care, there aren't any new doctors coming out of the college circuit, and the ones who are coming out don't know shit about the actual work, they just knew it was a high-paying enterprise. So as the hospitals try to keep costs down so they'll qualify for some of that sweet, sweet government subsidy, they spend a lot more time looking at these alternative-certification doctors who really know their shit, and couldn't care less how much they spent on their education. As Keith Olbermann is fond of pointing out—the fact that he went to Cornell A&M just means he was paying $500 per class for his Cornell education instead of $3,000; the classes were all the same.

So you know what? I take it back. Fuck all you self-congratulatory blowhards. You were wrong—that's what happens when you get your life philosophy off the cover of Greedy Fucker magazine. I learned all my life lessons by living. You see, things make more sense when you find them by thinking things through.

P.S. See my new fiction blog, The New Republic, at http://web.me.com/bonwell.parker/The_New_Republic/Blog/Blog.html.

A can do anything with my life

You know what I've been doing with it thus far? Making excuses. That's why I am where I am now. Hell, I'm at work now and I'm not even working. I'm blogging. And it's not my break. Which is why I'm the least productive employee in my department. And least accurate. Quite a change from the prodigy I enjoyed being for most of the last 25 years.

So... now what?

Welcome to entry #100!

So, I'm playing Dance Dance Revolution in my apartment, and it occurs to me the problem with my job: I can't be perfect at anything.

I'm playing the game at a very respectable level (difficulty 6), and even occasionally stumbling upon a level 7, and I'm actually doing really well. Not passing the levels, mind you, but keeping pace to be sure. Then I pop my knee which makes my leg a little sore doing the really tough ones, but I set a goal for myself (700 calories) and by God, I'm going to keep it, so I just do some easy levels. I figure, this will be a nice cool-off period before I call it a night.

Plus, I've never seen the screen when you get a perfect score. So, since I can easily keep up with level 6, I do a couple level 3 songs—ones so easy, they verge on boring. And you know what? Not once did I get a perfect score. I can hit a 100-combo on fast speed no sweat, but I do a comfortably-paced song with only 80 steps and I will screw one up, guaranteed.

This is the exact same thing that I keep getting in trouble for at work. I am "above expectations" in every single category except one: accuracy. In accuracy, I still do very well (92%), but according to the job detail, you have to be 100% accurate. You're allowed a 98% average every three months, to allow for the occasional slip (that comes out to 3/4 of an error per month). I have never hit 98%, let alone made the average.

I can't be perfect. I've never been perfect at anything. I've never sung a song and gotten every word, even if I'm reading the lyrics while I do it. I've never played a song without missing a note. I've never typed a letter without a typo or mistype (which I have to pick up with a proofread). The only true 100% grade I ever got in school was when I was taking the Social Studies GED, in my second year of college, and that was entirely by luck; on every other test, I missed exactly one question.

This isn't me complaining or self-deprecating. I'm very, very good at a lot of things. In fact, there are tons of things which I can do and only make one mistake every time. But I am never perfect.

This month at work, I've made special arrangements to game the system; i.e. get a "perfect" score, not by avoiding any mistakes, but by guiding QA to the ones without any mistakes in them. Now, you may ask, if I know what QA is going to look at, why don't I just fix the mistakes that they would have found before they see them? And if you ask that question, you obviously missed my point with this blog. 

Don't beat yourself up over it, though. We all make mistakes.

Wanna buy an insurance company?

AIG, the second largest public insurance company, is selling itself off for parts. The Feds bought 80% of their stocks for $85 billion, which AIG immediately lent to itself, giving it $170 billion to work with (I'm not really sure how that's not fraudulent), and are now paying something like 30% interest on the loan, so they said they need to sell off their services. So they've put up their aviation department, casualty insurance, life insurance, and property insurance departments up for sale, along with a few smaller business units, which they said they will sell for and "reasonable price." They're hoping to pull $150 billion dollars, use $85 billion (plus interest) to pay off their loans, buy back $48 billion worth of their stocks (80% of the remainder), and give back the other $12 to the shareholders, who just watched their stock drop from $62 in January down to about $2 and dropping by the minute.

I am tickled pink. I've thought the stock market was a ridiculous idea from the moment I learned about it in high school economics. I'm going to get hurt by this financial crisis, of course, but not NEARLY as much as the people who have bought into it. The only investment I have in the stock market is my 401 (k), which is worth about $1,500. Currency isn't an actual object; it's a unit of measurement, and comparably I'm getting wealthier and wealthier the longer this crisis continues.

The Internet Strikes Again

Every night, without fail, I sing a half hour or more of my songs. To this day, I clear out my living room and put my microphone stand in the middle of the room. The west wall—the one without windows—is my stage. I put together a set list, I announce myself to the wall, and I perform a full set. I thank the wall between songs, I mind the fourth wall with every step, I choreograph my moves in synchronization with the invisible musicians in the room with me. I consider it my aerobic exercise for the day, as I'm always drenched in sweat by the end, after giving my all to the performance. My throat is sore, my arms are tired, my neighbors are irritated by me singing full throttle, full dance moves, thrashing into the ground with the music.

I haven't performed my own material to a real audience in six years. I don't have the hair for it anymore anyway. I don't have real band mates. The only people in this city who have even heard my music are my ex-girlfriends and friends who knew me from back when. My old bandmate lives here, but we don't play together anymore. I don't think his wife has ever heard my music. He sits with me at the bar sometimes and talks about how bored he gets, but he never calls to invite me over.

I manifest myself to the public as an employee for a mid-sized insurance company. I was in a kid's musical this summer—one of my coworkers happened to see me perform- her input was "it's great to have hobbies outside of work," like that shouldn't be a given. Like I don't spend ten hours a day letting my life waste a way, and just half an hour a night reliving the times when it wasn't.

An old groupie found me online the other day. She was my biggest fan ten years ago. She was fourteen, I think. She used to call me and invite me over. She listened to my music every night. Once, online, she gushed to some guy online about what an enormous crush she had on me, only to find out that she was actually talking to me (she got her screen names confused).

She's doing well. She's twenty four, living in Boulder. She's the lead singer of a band. She called me on video chat. I remembered her, referred to her by the name I used to call her, forgetting that it wasn't her real name. She laughed and said she remembered the night I gave her that name, every detail of it. "I was such a girl then," she said. Then she went on about all the things going on in her life, all the music she's playing, the people who come out to see her perform.

When I was her age, I was playing shows, too. In fact, I was just getting ready to move to Portland, ready to show my music to the big city. That year, the band broke up. Over the phone, no less. I was already living in Portland, and was driving back home for a show. I still wanted the band to make it. I'd travel for shows, no sweat. My bandmate, the one who lives here now, called me to see if I was already on the road. The show had been cancelled. I found out later it had never been booked; they just didn't have the nerve to tell me. And anyway, the drummer quit. He said that he didn't feel my heart was in it anymore, or I would have stayed with the band.

I never played with a band again.

Luckily, she didn't ask how I was doing, what I was up to. I mentioned something in passing that I had done a little acting, but I think she just assumed that I had gone on to be a successful Portland musician. Why wouldn't I? I was her hero, after all. I'm the one she looked up to, that made her decide to be a lead singer too. She was living the dream.

What would she say if she knew I'd given up music and got a job at an insurance company? How would she look at me then? Would it scare her? I could tell by her voice, the way she worded her sentences, that although she was grown up now and realized I was just some guy, she still respected me. I don't care about the respect, not from my side of it anyway. I'm just worried about how that would change her life view.

I'm not saying she'll be a successful musician. I'm not even saying her band won't break up soon too. I just want to make sure that she stays onstage long enough to inspire some fourteen year old in the audience, like I inspired her. Eventually, one of us will make it, and one of us will enhance people's lives. It won't be me, but I still want to be a part of that. I don't want to break the chain.

A fucking tip

Hey, if someone looks really pissed off, a really good way to piss them off even futher is to come up to them and say, "are you okay? Is everything all right? Is there anything I can do to help?"

Just leave them the fuck alone, asshole. You're not the fucking pope. Who the fuck do you think you are, that you have all the magic fucking answers that they must be missing? On top of that, why the fuck does everyone think that 'talking it through' is the answer to all the world's problems? Oh fantastic, I've been able to express how I feel! Why, having you tell me that "everything's going to be okay, I just know it" has suddenly dug me out of debt, got me the perfect job, and cleaned up everything that's wrong with the world.

Unless you're fucking Jesus, eat shit. I'm competent enough to fix my own fucking problems, I don't need your fucking charity.

No Honor Among Thieves

When I was fifteen I was a fairly habitual shoplifter, and had been doing it for years. I wasn't so much a thief as I was fascinated that I could just walk out with something and completely violate the agreement that I would pay for it. Then I got stopped by security. A man had reported that he saw me pocket something and they wanted to check my pockets. I had a jumbo candy bar in my left pants pocket, but I just looked at the security guard with a confused look and said, "what do you mean by 'pocket' something?" He explained that he meant "steal," and I just glared at him like the concept was completely foreign to me.

I shrugged and told him that I respected his job and encouraged him to check all my pockets, as was his responsibility to keep the store safe. I gave him my jacket, and as he rifled through the pockets, the man who accused me of stealing kept his eye on me. While the man watched me, I calmly slid the candy bar out of my pocket, into my sleeve, and into the band of my jeans. I then pulled out my front pockets and showed him my sleeves. He asked to pat me down, so I slipped the bar of candy into my sleeve and held up my arms. He patted me down, apologized, and let me go, and I vowed to never steal again... it was just too easy for me to get away with it, and I knew I was heading down the slippery slope into a criminal lifestyle, which it seemed I would have been very successful at living.

In April, I made a boneheaded mistake at work and ended up costing someone hundreds of dollars. I prolonged the situation for months, and now our client is outraged that they were cheated out of money they earned. I made no conscious effort to screw them out of their money, and I profit in no way from it, but that didn't mean I wasn't responsible. I went straight back to the client and said nothing could be done about it, which was true, but of course they still wanted someone to blame. I explained the situation in full fact to both my supervisor and the client and at no point making any effort to defend myself, yet both of them are now walking away thanking me for going to such great lengths to try and make everything go right, and for helping them fix the mistake that they are now convinced I had nothing to do with.

Not once did I lie, I omitted no facts, and yet I have again been absolved of all responsibility for something I unequivocably made happen, and once again, I'm walking out of the store scot-free with the candy bar still in my pocket.

It's not always a good feeling to succeed.

I, Portlander

Every June, I remember when I first lived in Portland (I moved here in late May). I remember how all the buildings looked the same, how there were so many people on the streets. I didn't have a job, so I would just wander around downtown looking at stores. I remember thinking how many backlit signs there were on the sides of the buildings. I remember standing in the South Park Blocks with my best friend at 11:00 am, thinking surely there had to be somewhere to eat late at night in Portland, unaware that the night scene was all in Old Town, a mile north of the black street where we stood. I remember the horribly humid 100 degree heat, and how the sun was so prevalent that nothing cast a shadow. I would take my laptop to Starbucks and watch people go by, while I would chat with my old friends online, telling them what it was like to live in a real city. I remember dating models. I remember eating alone in restaurants. I remember spending entire weeks playing SimCity. I remember writing in my journal every night, really introspective stuff. I remember writing these exact words: "I have no job, I have no friends, I have no future, yet my worst day in Portland is better than my best days back home." Then I remember the first time I caused confusion, talking with an old friend from high school, when I told him I was homesick, but by "home" I meant Portland.

Happy fifth anniversary, me.

Progress Report

My apartment is not clean, but it is cleaner than it was Friday. On Friday, it was cleaner than it had been Thursday. I think that's a smarter way to go. It's like how the gyms get packed every January– all those people, resolving to make a change. But they can change overnight, and then, after a couple weeks, they miss a workout. Then another. Then they figure, I failed, might as well give up.

I'm fucking tired of giving up. So I'm not going to burn myself out, but I'm not going to allow myself to quit. For once. But if I can just get a little farther each day, I'll be a little closer to my goal. So I picked up the front room, cleaned off the bathroom floor, and folded most of my clothes. No one room is clean, but I'm getting there.

I emailed the director of the play I'm in and told him I wasn't going to play guitar in the show. It's not giving up– I didn't want to do it in the first place. But, he asked me, and I seem to have this belief that the more you say you can do, the more successful you are. That's how I got into so much trouble at work, I now realize– every day I wanted to take on more and more, in an effort to somehow prove something. As a result, I overwhelmed myself.

Work, too, is getting better. In rare form, my mother actually offered me some useful input: she pointed out that I should feel perfectly comfortable with lower productivity than my colleagues. Management clearly recognizes that I have some skills which my co-workers lack; I should feel confident in saying to management, "I didn't close as many cases as the others, because I was busy doing all those other things I do." Keep my desk caught up, then just focus on doing what I'm good at. If they ask why my numbers are lower, that's my answer.

I'm terrible at the piano. I never learned how to read music, I never got technically proficient, and I'm awful with music history. Occasionally, I'll really make an effort to learn a song (particularly if it's one of my own; yes, I'm so bad at piano I cannot play song which I myself have written). When I make that effort, something strange can happen- suddenly, my fingers will just start playing the song. My brain takes no part in the action- I can actually look down and see these fingers playing, but they sure aren't mine. They just... play. If I get pushed out of that zone, I can't replicate it. I can't just sit down and start playing the song again.

That's my goal. It's against my nature to be clean, to be productive, to just do what I'm good at and not to try and fool people into believing I can do something else. But if I just start doing it, whether I like it or not, if I just stop trying to force things, I really believe I can get into a zone. I really do think that I can get to a point where, after I finish my dinner, my body will eventually just go over to the kitchen, clean the dishes, put everything away, and pick up the kitchen, without checking with me to see if that's what I want to do. I will just get into this routine at work where I do my fucking job when I come in, and by the afternoon I have a clean desk and I can focus on doing all those things that only I can do.

When I wake up tomorrow morning, my apartment is still going to be dirty, my job is still going to suck, and my guitar will be in its case in the closet. I have to tell myself that's okay- I'll just need to keep on it tomorrow, and hopefully Tuesday, my apartment will be a little cleaner, my work will be a little better, and control of my life will be a little closer.

I've had it

While sitting at my desk today and typing addresses into a computer, I pulled out my iPod as usual. I usually listen to "upbeat mix," for obvious reasons– so much so that I'm starting to get sick of the songs on it. Some of the lists are pretty generic: "singles mix," "on-the-go," "running music," "soft mix." So, really, any of them are a safe bet; if it's anything other than upbeat, I know I'll probably hear something I haven't heard in a while.

So, I put on "killer mix." This is one I actually only listen to on special occasions– the mix of songs that provoke a tangible emotion out of me, every one. So it's not usually what I listen to when I'm trying to do some medial work tasks. But you know what, fuck it. I've got a review coming up where my boss is going to tell me I'm a poor performer. I have supervisors from other departments sending barbed emails about me because they're convinced I'm spying on their department. Let me say that last one again. People in my own company are accusing me for spying on them, because I ask them what they do for a living. Some of my coworkers are afraid of me, others hate me. Others still send me emails saying how blessed they are that I work with them. People I used to work with call and ask me for advice on jobs I've never had. My boss told me it's okay for me to tell people that my coworkers are incompetent. Today, the Vice President from another business unit called to ask me for advice on a case at her desk. So what do I care if I look a bit hot under the collar while I'm working?

And it then occurs to me that it's been too long since I listened to my "killer mix." Evidently, I haven't felt emotions for quite some time, and it was a rude awakening to have them return.

Those who know me will know that I'm a bit melodramatic. Having said that, I felt this afternoon as if I had just woken from a coma and found out that I was 28, bald, fat, acne-ridden and working for an insurance company with a business casual outfit and a decaf coffee at my desk. Why the fuck didn't any of you tell me? 

My apartment's a fucking disaster. I haven't folded my clothes for nearly a year. I haven't had all my dishes clean at the same time since 1998 (that's not a lie; when I move, I always take some dirty dishes to the new place). I drew the window shade, which has been closed since December, to find that a swarm of flies have been living behind the shade. I keep my spaghetti sauce on my living room floor. I've completely given up, and I don't have any accomplishment to have faded from.

I had a band once, but we never made it. You know why? We didn't try. We were exactly like every other college band, except our songs were better and we deluded ourselves into thinking we were taking it seriously. One summer, we played a couple shows in Ontario, Oregon. You know what we called it? A tour. It was the only time we played outside of our home town, and the stress of the travel is what led directly to the breakup of the band.

I moved to Portland after college. I went to a city of opportunity, from a town of stagnation. You know what opportunity I grasped onto? Ten months of unemployment, $15,000 of meaningless debt, a string of superficial relationships with desperate, failed people, a three year alliance with a self-absorbed alcoholic, and a 500 square foot apartment.

Did you know I'm a writer? A couple years ago, I talked to a girl who had a published book out. I said I wrote a bit too, though I'd never sold anything. "Let me guess," she said, "screenplays and short stories?"

So, I guess I'm not all that special in that regard. 

I'm engaged. Yep. To a girl I could have married when I was twenty two, but I didn't do it because I didn't want to deal with the responsibility or investment. In four months she's going to move in with me, into this shithole, and she's going to be expecting to go out there and get a job as a doctor. I haven't done any research on how she could accomplish that, and I haven't sent her any study guides or prep work for her to get her licensure. Actually, aside from proposing, I haven't really done anything for her.

I say this all in optimism. Consider the songs that played on my killer mix: "Letterbomb" by Green Day. "Wait and Bleed" from Slipknot. "Eat You Alive" by Limp Bizkit. "The Perfect Drug" by Nine Inch Nails. "S.S. Recognize" by Alien Ant Farm. "Grind" by me, three years ago. All of those except the last one have something in common: the people performing them are in their thirties. I'm 28. There was no requirement that I die at 20, but I did. And now I realize why those emotions awoke something in me: my emotions kept telling me how mediocre I was. I prefer the voice in my head that tells me how incredible I am.

Look back at my past posts in my blog. I talk about how much better I am than my coworkers. Yet here I am, working with them. I talk about how much smarter I am than all my classmates. Yet I haven't taken advantage of my intelligence since the tenth grade. Hell, I only got a 3.8 in a state uni, and that's with only one honors class. In humanities. I talk about how great I am with language and culture. Yet I only speak two languages, and I work for people who have never heard of the European Union. You know that I work in the city where the headquarters of my old exchange program is located? I was offered a job there, once. I turned it down so I could do data entry at the insurance company. That was four years ago.

So here's the question: I'm going to bed in an hour. Who's going to wake up tomorrow morning– the self-absorbed failure, or the man I claim I could be? Is there a chance that this weekend, I'll meet a man who will clean and care for himself without complaining, who will demand better of himself, who will actually work towards something, even if that means working 80 hours a week? Or am I just typing another fucking fictional narrative?

You know what's playing right now on my mix? "Caterpillar," by me, ten years ago. The guitarist of my old band's favorite part is when I would pound down on the strings and let out a ferocious scream. By the time we recorded the song in 2002, I didn't want to scream at the end anymore. It was too much effort, and kinda hurt my vocal chords.

Update: Tonight, I said goodbye to World of Warcraft. I deleted the porn folder from my computer. I took a shower, cleaned up, shaved, and laid out some clothes for tomorrow. I ordered a new iron so I can put all my clothes in my closet this weekend. I've still got a little time before I go to bed early (so I can get up early and make myself a real lunch instead of paying $7 a day at the deli), so I think I'll pick up my guitar and work on that song I promised I'd have written a week ago. Tomorrow, God help me, I'm going to get caught up at work. I'm too good to fail. I'll be the best fucking employee they've ever had, until I know I've got real, tangible work somewhere else. I'll do everything I have to do so I can be a true professional.

Please, Bob, don't fuck this up for me.