Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Personal

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My wants have always exceeded my needs, just as much as my reach has always exceeded my grasp. That’s the kind of person i am; always looking to the next step rather than delighting in the one i’m on.

I used to boast that i wrote so well because i wrote so much … 3000-5000 words a day. At the time it was entirely true; between blogging, record reviews, academic work, and personal projects i really was generating that much wordage daily, even if a lot of it was getting scrapped. It occasionally lead to a glut on this page, but i always had an easy time saying what i meant in a very assured voice.

Recently i’ve moved so far away from my three-thousand-word habit that when i sit down to write too much comes tumbling out. Each thing i want to say branches into five other things, and suddenly i’m creating more strands that i can plausibly weave together. I feel like the result is unfocused no matter how much i revise it because the intent is corrupt — i wasn’t sure what i wanted to say in the first place, so i never said it the right way in the end.

In a way this speechlessness posing as verbal diarrhea has expanded into my conversational life: i’m majoring in journalism, yet when people ask me what i want to do i hem and haw, eventually saying that i want to be in corporate communications. Do i? Well, maybe. But that’s not what i really want.

What’s completely shocking to me is that i’ve always known what i really want. What’s completely shocking is that it never occurred to me until about an hour ago. Elise went to bed but i wasn’t tired, and i eventually became engrossed in a very comprehensive X-Men FAQ. All throughout the FAQs explanation of dangling plot threads and character origins, i kept thinking Well, that was dumb; they could have accomplished it much easier this way. And, suddenly, there was a click.

Narrating. It’s as dumb and simple as that, and i have too many examples to even invoke here, including my seven-year-old propensity for authoring short stories on a manual typewriter, my oft-revised but never finished teenaged superhero novel, my late-blooming song-writing bent, and my college devotion of blogging. Narrating is what i’ve always wanted to do, but been too afraid to say. From an age as early as eight i secretly wanted to be a novelist, but knew i would be shot down if i ever mentioned such an artistic endeavor in the presence of my family. Ever since i started writing my own songs i’ve wanted to make my habit a professional one, but have lacked the time and the talent to do so.

I don’t have the plots to be a novelist, or the guts to be a singer-songwriter, but i still have my words. I’ve always said i want to appear in Rolling Stone once before i die, and not having accomplished it by the age of twenty-two doesn’t mean i have to submit to a lifetime of trolling my way into the letters column. For each of the endless times that i’m going to be asked what i want to do between now and June, i want to have the nerve to say “write,” and the backup of those three-thousand-words a day. I suppose we’ll just have to see where that takes me.

Shit, was that a resolution?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2004/01/107303685544558759/

Resolving

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I am at once against resolutions and constantly making them. One explains the other; i don’t believe that you can form a habit or make a decision solely because of a little bit of resolve, so i eschew typical New Years’ fare. On the flipside, you do need resolve to get something done, and it has to start somewhere.

I compromise — i resolve to do things in my head: drink less, do more, waste less, walk more. The interior list spirals into infinity, with each day bringing a new resolution whose name i dare not ever speak, less i infer that i might actually take action in its direction.

I don’t dispute that a new year offers a unique chance to put the right foot forward in terms of new habit; after all, one of the hardest parts of starting something new is starting. And, not coincidentally, i have stored up a few initiatives whose scope dwarfs my daily resolutions that have been waiting to get started. Of course, to resolve to do them would be redundant, as i already have done so on some level and have obviously failed. Still, i want to get these things done — they will make me a better person if i do them correctly. So, without further ado, here are some things which i am not resolving to do this year:

1. Know What I’m Spending – I am historically lackadaisical at best about tracking my monetary expenditures; i have a great idea of what i can and can’t afford, but if i had to cut out $50 a month of spending i would hardly know where to start. For years i’ve resolved to get such a project underway, but never bothered to form a habit that would last me more than a few days. This time i think i’ve done it right — little notecards in my wallet, and a meticulously synced up Quicken account. The method is there; all that remains to be seen is if i can remember to track everything.

2. Be Aware of What I Eat – Whether i choose to thinly disguise it or not at any given time, i have some very persistent weight and body image issues. Yes, i am one of those seemingly thin people who whines about “how fat i am,” and how i “just want to lose a few pounds.” I’ve tried to check this problem with exercise, but it’s a hard habit to form and one that easily indulges excessive and abusive behavior on my part. As such, my alternative is to understand what i eat — not just calories and carbohydrates, but serving sizes and recurrences. So far i’m having luck with Fit Day, which tracks a lot of detail without assuming any sort of diet or fitness craze. At worst i’m creating yet another echo of my life as so much electronic detritus, but at best i have the chance to learn how my twenty-something metabolism really works.

3. Use Time Smarter – I like to do a lot of things. I like to play guitar. I like to blog. I like to spend time with Elise. I like to do well in school. I like all of these things, but i don’t do any of them as well as i should because i am diluting them with each other. Tonight i spent three hours using the internet to catch up on current events when i really should have been doing any of the four previous things, but i hate to deprive myself of knowledge given the time to acquire it. The problem, really, is that i am too capricious with my time … i am most likely to do the thing i most recently resolved to do, even if i resolved to do something else all day. This is why i still don’t have a new album, why i don’t post every day, why i always have something to do when i’d rather be with Elise, and why i am always flirting with anything other than A’s. I need keep my overarching priorities in mind and not allow my current impulses to eclipse them.

In retrospect, these three resolutions seem like a quarter-life redux of childhood anal retentiveness, but in effect they’re my attempt to make a better use of my life. I’ve spent almost five years as a college student, to varying degrees of enjoyment and fulfillment, and the entire time i’ve envied people who enjoyed themselves more or fulfilled themselves better. This June i’ll become a real, honest-to-goodness adult, and i don’t want to go there not enjoying myself and feeling unfulfilled; i want to start on the right foot. And, to do that, i need to find out which proverbial foot that will be.

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Does anyone remember the days when Beautiful Freak was a mainstay of my sidebar? In the infancy of CK I’d trade sarcastic entries with its blogger Re every few evenings; she was mentioned about as much as i now name-drop Rabi in a typical month of writing.

I already talk about 2000 like it was ancient history, and that sensation was made all the more real by Re saying “Peter seems to be the only person that I read that has not gone to livejournal with their site on hiatus.” And, well, no i haven’t gone to LiveJournal, or went on hiatus, because no matter what happens to me, no matter how much of a battle it is to write, i never really manage to quit this.

Re, the entire year 2000, is such a long time ago to me. I still had both grandmothers. I still hadn’t had a girlfriend. I was living in my own apartment, taking music classes for the first time. I had never even heard of a girl called Rabi. I had never worked a full time job. So much life got set into motion after that New Year that looking back it seems like it occured in just two or three major symphonic movements, with the individual stories playing out like repeated themes from different instruments … the Queen of Darkness suite, the Loneliness Fugue, and the Girlfriend canon.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about that ancient history, and Re’s invocation of it just served to jog my memory a little more. People change, and cells regenerate, but i wonder if y2k me would even know what to say the nearly graduated boy sitting in my place today. Could he have ever suspected it? Would even believe it?

How much have you changed so far this millenium? What happened to you that you never thought would happen? What ambition have you lost that you never thought you would lose?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/12/107268084996775085/

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When was it that i learned how to tuck the corners in so deftly? This is the first year that i’ve been good enough to warrant the question; the first time that i haven’t hollered frantically for Erika to hold down the folds for me while i taped them. I remember how i used to do it not so long ago, wrapping paper around and around a box and then practically fashioning a bow out of scotch tape to hold it all down. I hated wrapping, and i hated wrapped presented. I told my mother not to bother; “Why use all that time and paper,” i said, “just so i can rip it open?”

When did i start to thrill in surprise? High school’s last Christmas Anastasia and i sat on her floor with empty shoe-boxes and packages of tissue paper trying to decide how to best obscure our killer compact discs. I taped mine down in a goloshes box and covered it with layers of tissue while she created a protective exoskelton to protect the tell-tale shape of her jewel case. Still that mass of paper, still that scotch tape bow, but i understood something about the thrill of surprise; it wasn’t enough just to buy, but to keep guessing until the last possible second.

When did i make it my own? Last Christmas i got a few excellent gifts, but i was more intent on giving. Elise helped me hunt down a wonderful list of bottle stops, DVD players, chess sets, Dr. Seuss Books, and Guiness playing cards in a whirlwind weekend while i slowly amassed her own pile of presents solo. I shopped fearlessly into late December not because i was fearless, but because i was no longer celebrating the same holiday as the people in the line in front of me. When all was said and done i had re-charged half of my credit card, but i was too happy doing it to stop. Christmas had finally stopped being a season, or an obligation — it was an excuse to give something to some of the people that i loved the most.

I almost forgot that this year, creating invisible, impractical, self-imposed timelines and deadlines for myself. Yet, as i lined up the pattern on the wrapping paper so perfectly a few minutes ago, as i cut out my own inventive little gift tags and wrote in the cards, i realized that i have come all the way around: from understanding the joy of surprise, to understanding the joy of the season, to understanding the joy of creating the surprise.

I will never submit myself to the Christmas celebrated by the people i stand in line with at the cash register. It isn’t about their idea, or my idea, or the cash register. It’s about liking the giving so much that you hardly care about what you get in return. It’s about liking it so much that you let it creep into March and September, buying things just because, so that when you look down your list sometimes you can say “i already gave them the perfect gift.”

But, it isn’t about my idea, and you’re giving me an excellent gift right now. Here’s to hoping your ideas are working out just as perfectly.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/12/107216091026681200/

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I don’t know why drinking always seems like such an attractive thing. I don’t like it, really. I guess there’s just something about being twenty-something and metropolitan and going to a bar that makes me feel like i’m having fun. But, after five rounds of mixed drinks and more hours worth of pay than i’d really like to contemplate right now, last night it occurred to me how silly and meaningless it was — doing something i don’t like with people that i do so that we can laugh and have fun, except we laugh and have fun anyhow, whether or not i’m on my third long island.

I don’t think i need to stop drinking, i just think i need to be honest about what it does (and doesn’t) represent. It represents a childhood of watching Cheers, having my family tempt me with shots of liqueur at Christmas, of watching Karen martini-in-hand on Will & Grace. It represents commercials and advertisements telling me liquor is fun and worthwhile. It does not represent happiness, or success, or friendship, or anything other than getting more and more willing to do more and more unlikely things as the evening wears on.

I had fun last night, and wouldn’t trade the hilarity i had with my friends for anything. However, next time i wouldn’t mind saving my money, avoiding the embarrassing phone messages left at two in the morning, skipping the part where i fall on the street and rip my favorite pair of jeans, and leaving out the bit where Elise is so frustrated with me that she just goes home.

Also, sleeping off the hangover, though not entirely unpleasant, kept me out of work long enough that i could have made up my bar tab and then some. Damnit.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/12/107177270727860385/