Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

self-aware

Alert: Communications Overload

by

I know, I know. Don’t get married to the content. This is our mantra. You are not writing the next great American Novel. You are not Dave Eggers. It’s a letter about medical routing codes. Don’t get married to it.

I have invoked the phrase under my breath enough times that I now recall it unconsciously anytime my elegant sentences are ginsued, by associates and program directors alike. I do not flinch, because I am not married to the content.

Disconcertingly, what I have become inextricably betrothed to is the procedure. All the approval emails, final signatures, pre-flight revews – the OCDness of the whole process just turns me on. When completed in the correct order, it provides an unassailable, errorless communication. Yet, a single misstep can turn you from communications-do-gooder to a despicable piece of liability.

I do not enjoy incurring liability, so I make it a point not to miss steps. However, life is not a procedure, and sometimes things happen out of order. And, this morning, I got a little confused and let an email fly that wasn’t completely informed, and got very succinctly shredded into tiny cheddary pieces by a co-worker. Not because she doesn’t like me, not because I am a bad person, but because she didn’t like the liability I represented. I would have done the same thing to her.

And, and, would you believe that, upon reading her cool clinical rebuttal of my 9:58 am email, I felt as though I was about cry? In the past this sensation has been attributed to lack of sleep, or inadvertant overdosing on allergy medication, but today all I have to pin the blame on is my strawberry smoothie, and I drink that every day. Like a little kid who just got reprimanded by his favorite teacher, the one person I trust implicitly on the team does the same thing to me that I expect – nay, require – her to do to everyone else, and I have to go sit alone in a toilet stall and take a few deep breaths.

On one hand, oh my god, I am such a freak, no one should be a little communications perfection-monkey to the point of inducing tears for a tiny, completely repairable error. On the other hand, I like that I am emotionally invested in my otherwise somewhat clinical occupation, that I can get tied up in language edits and approval processes, and actually feel proud when I do something right (and, conversely, feel utterly crushed when I do it wrong).

Where’s that balance? I do not want to be the automatons that I stand on the elevators with, who do what they’re told as best as they can right up until 4:49, and then go home to do something completely else without a thought of what they left behind. But, I don’t want to be here until seven o’clock for the rest of my life for a myriad of reasons, including that I don’t want to be here for the rest of my life, and that staying two extra hours a day effectively lowers my wage by nearly a third.

Am I just too detail-obsessed to work somewhere where detail obsession is an encouraged trait, sending me into a spiral of minutia-examining doubt on every email I send? Or, is that I am supposed to be doing something that I am truly in love with, rather than something I just geek out about?

Or do I maybe just need to leave the building during my lunch-break a little more often?

Disuse, Misuse, and Abuse

by

Lindsay and I sat at her high kitchen table, comparing calluses. Hers, she said, had faded from disuse. “But,” she sighed, “I guess you wouldn’t know about that.”

I don’t, and was shocked to hear that Anthony, a particular six-string-slinging idol of mine, had similary forsaken his instrument for the better part of a year.

What is it about stupid me, who can’t reproduce four distinct lines of underneath harmony after a month of practice, who still can’t play the solo in “Say It Ain’t So” even with my spiffy new guitar, who has the least performance experience out of everyone who touched one of the five guitars we had with us on Sunday, that keeps me plucking and strumming away, while others with more talent have set their habits aside? Why do I care so much about something I’m not particularly good at doing? And, why don’t I have more new Trios to show for it?

In other news, my name is 796, “intuitive” edges “crushing” by 198, and “crisis” is only a hair more common than “conflict.” Not that there’s anything intuitive about any of these conflicts. All I know is, at the point tipsy is only electrolytes away from shogun blondes, we need to do something…

Yeah, I Could Have Told You That

by

Also skimmed from CNN’s headlines, a fairly lightweight article about male eating disorders. It’s nice to see this topic getting covered somewhere other than daytime talkshows, but the lightness of this coverage only serves to emphasize the virtually nonexistant support system for men with eating disorders.

Even years after the period where i was most destructively anorexic i am still incredibly suseptible to falling into unhealthy eating habits, and generally only avoid major problems by making a point to make light of my condition here and to my close friends, allowing my humor to let them know they should keep an eye on me.

by

Not shockingly, i play Sims much like i play life: I’m out the door for work at the last possible minute, i eat just enough to subsist (which occasionally leads to some large meals to make up for the difference), i indulge in any practicing activity too much (guitar, sit ups, playing sims ect), i maintain my friendships only as much as i have to, and i never get enough sleep unless i miss the proverbial car pool.

Of course, my sim always turns out happy and successful, so, go figure.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2004/01/107413905406753733/

by

When i was younger TGI Fridays was a fun restaurant to go to; it was a slice of Americana, with red and white striped server shirts and electric blue drinks. It was a restaurant nice enough to consider “eating out” but cheap enough to go to with high school friends.

Tonight we were looking for that sort of bargain eating, and so the bunch of us attractive twenty-somethings drove to a Fridays in the city. In a nod to the TGIF uniform of my youth i was in the red striped shirt i had coveted for months, and upon arrival i had a fishbowl sized Sunset Strip in hand. Feeling attractive and pleasantly tipsy, we were seated.

You need to understand something about me and restaurants: i can’t focus on anything written on the menu. It’s a sort of site-specific ADD … too many people, too much movement, too much smoke and clinking glasses. Though i may peruse, i either have a specific favorite in mind or i just flip through and choose the most verbose description.

Here i should mention that Fridays, inexplicably, has joined forces with 7-11 to become part of the low-carb Atkins revolution. The way Atkins re-entered the zeitgest has left me bewildered, especially as i watch people throwing away the buns to eat twice the hamburger.

Does anyone see where this is headed? In my quick perusal i chose the most colorful picture, a chicken dish, and when it was (finally) brought to the table the waitress bellowed “Atkins Diet Chicken!” I laughed, heartily, that she had mistakenly brought this diet dish to our table. When she proffered it to me i joked, “Do i look like i would order the diet dish? Look at me?” The description had made mention that i could “save five carbs by leaving off the peppers,” i calmly explained, but i did not opt in. I had opted out of the Diet Chicken

I was sober now, steely and serious, as if the drink had never existed. I wasn’t on a diet, i told her. This was the third annoyance of the night, i stated coolly, on top of the pineapple in the drink and the slow service. I’d really just like to mention it to the manager. I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just that i’m not fat. I will explain it to your manager; i didn’t order a diet dish.

Or, well, maybe i did. I thought i had ordered the tasty looking chicken with cheese and broccoli. Instead, i inadvertently turned to the page, the one where we are all in on the hip trend, and we are all on the hip and trendy diet. It’s been around for years; South Beach was so mid-2003. I’m not really fat, it’s just these pants.

I delivered a brief but ultimately trite complaint to the manager, who offered to replace my broccoli with carb-rich mashed potatoes, and then silently choked down the food, ignoring my friends. I could hardly taste it, could not feel it in my mouth. Instead, i was feeling it sinking inside me, bloating my stomach, rising in my throat as soon as it left the back of my tongue. The room was suddenly contracted; too small, too loud, my side of broccoli shrub-like in it’s massiveness on the plate, my chicken the cardboard cover of a lean-cuisine box.

The conversation from the table across from me suddenly rose, punching through our table’s idle chatter. I heard the man speaking to the waitress (“Oh, make sure that i get the diet version of that beer. Make sure you take your time with it, i want you to bring it slow.”) and to the inexplicable pimply balloon-sculptor (“Can you make me a light balloon? It’s got to be thin. And can you give it red on the shirt? A really gay red.”)

From there it is a blur, screaming something over Lindsay’s head to the man across from me and his rambling reply floating back at me as i stood and pushed Ross out of the side of the booth, pausing only to throw down all of the large bills from my wallet. I was not gay. I wanted to leave. I was not fat. I wanted my non-descript flannel clothes back, and the underweight body from beneath them. I wanted my fingers flirting seductively with my epiglottis, head resting on the side of the bowl. I wanted to escape.

I walked around and around in the slowly drifting snow, 17th, Chestnut, Walnut, helping the small woman hail her cab, 16th, Chestnut, smiling at the strangers walking to and from the pricey bars, Market, calling Ross to ask him to get change for my big bills, lying easily, “No, no, the bus is only two blocks away,” 16th, 15th, Waiting to let the gorge slip solidly to the bottom of my stomach, the rage lie still.

I take my life for granted sometimes. I live, have lived for five years, in a calm bubble, where the only one judging me is myself. I have allowed my figure to fill out, supressed my irascible nature, embraced the wispy charm of my character, and just made sure to stay calm. Now i have a dozen dozen days of that left until my bubble is burst, one hundred and forty four days from here until i step off that stage into the real world. Everybody judges. Everybody hurts. Sometimes i need to open my mouth. I need to make myself happy a little more often.

I know that wasn’t especially interesting, but it’s what happened to me tonight. I’m always told not to apologize for my art, but it didn’t feel that artful. Thanks for reading. To cheer up, you should check out the bit about S&M in the last post.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2004/01/107440033006968402/