Witty Title Here

ugggghhhhh.

I have been trying to write two paragraphs for 6 hours and 24 minutes. It is 3:30 in the morning. It is already a day and a half overdue.

TWO PARAGRAPHS!!

I pray that I never again have to write two paragraphs on topics this boring in my lifetime.

Please let this be the low point.

Please.

A Scary Thought

So...

What if I don't want this? What if I don't like all the effort I'm pouring down the drain? What if the possible payoff is too small, and such a long shot to boot? What if I've wasted six and a half years in a place where I don't speak the language, among people I don't get, performing menial tasks in the hopes of someday being promoted to another task... which I won't really enjoy?

It's strange. There is a lot of dissatisfaction at work. No one feels utilized the way they would like to be. They all feel like they should be doing more than they are, and they're all correct. Everyone is angry and frustrated and unhappy.

But I'm just resigned. Because the sad truth is that this is still a better job than my other ones. Everyone is coming from better jobs into this and I'm coming into it from much worse ones.

They're all in disbelief that they would be treated like this.

I'm mildly surprised that I'm treated as well as I am.

It really hit me in talking with the youngest person at our office. I don't even expect the things she thinks should be automatic. I don't know how much of it is bad luck and how much of it is me own getting in my own way and how much of it is just a terrible match of industry and personality, but in the time it has taken her to rise through six different levels, I have stayed at the same serf level.

I am the very definition of defeated. Look it up. There I'll be, waving from the illustration on the left.

I don't want to feel like I've sacrificed my whole life for this. Especially when I don't think "this" is something I even have a prayer of getting. It all feels small and paltry and lame and not enough.

What are the options then?

1. Quit and go do something else. Preferably with people you actually enjoy.

2. Stop thinking; it's too depressing. Just keep your head down and believe some day it will happen, and when it does, it will be worth it.

3. Figure out if it is me and what I've been doing wrong.

4.

There has to be a fourth option. There must. The other three can't be the only options. #1 is failure. #2 involves placing all my faith in a system I have zero confidence in. And #3 is fucking impossible -- I've been trying for years.

So I need a #4.

One Foot In Front of the Other

Additional info about the German shepherd was discovered over the weekend. It was not good.

And the rational part of myself is looking at the moping, weepy part and is just incredulous. I am mourning someone who did not exist. Someone I made up. And everything I find out just underscores this. The person I built up and hoped was there -- all my imagination.

But still... it's a heavy thing to keep shoving off every time my brain wanders back, every ten minutes. I can shove it off fifteen or twenty times, but then I can't. And by the evening, I'm tired of pushing it out of my thoughts.

I'm really proud of myself for going to trapeze tonight. I didn't want to. It's starting to get cold here. I didn't want to work out. I wanted to give up and run home and pull the covers over me. But I told myself that going would make me happy, and that at the end of class, I would be a little stronger and more creative. I'd be a little happier, and I'd have a tiny bit more sense about how life was going to work itself out and how I could be happy even though it felt like there was a big hole in my life.

And all that did happen. I worked on tricks and got a little stronger, and we're going to have a performance before Christmas, so that's another thing to get excited about.

I'd love there to be love in my life. I think my ridiculous imagining shows just how far I'll contort in order to get some facsimile of it. But it's one of those things that's out of my hands, so I just have to try hard to be happy with what I can put in my life.

I have to push myself to make a routine, so that all these things I need to drag myself to do but which are ultimately good for me become second nature.

October, You Pack a Punch

Today was painful.

There's this.... dog I know. An awesome dog, but a dog. A German shepherd. And I put bunny ears and a bunny tail on him, but it didn't make him a bunny. And no one was fooled. He didn't think he was a bunny, I didn't think he was a bunny, no one looked at him and thought, "Oh, right. Bunny." If they thought anything, it was "What is that poor dumb girl doing to that poor German shepherd? Can't she just leave him alone? Just let the dog be a dog."

But I couldn't. I really wanted a bunny, and I thought I could fool myself. And the tail was so cute and fluffy, even if it wasn't his, and was just sort of tied on. And I liked the German shepherd a lot, even though I really did want a bunny. And sometimes he played along, because he liked me, even if he did find the costuming binding and unnecessary, and when he did, he could be very convincing.

So perfect solution! German shepherd wearing bunny ears and a tail. Win-win. Except not.

So after, ugh, YEARS of this pretending game, I stopped it today. I took off the bunny ears and tail, and acknowledged I knew he was a German shepherd. He would never ever be a bunny, no matter how much I wished and hoped for it. And I quit trying to pretend he was something else.

And the thing is, anyone who knows me must wonder why I'm sad. The German shepherd made a terrible bunny. It irritated me all the time, even if it was sort of my fault for pretending in the first place. He tore up his pen, and ate way too much lettuce, and no one was really sure why I was so committed to pretending this obviously-not-a-bunny creature was maybe I think I hope yeah maybe adjusting to life with pellets and a tiny little pen.

But I'm really sad and really heartbroken. And I have to talk about it in this stupid metaphor, because the actual human version still makes me want to cry and throw up.

But it had to happen. I've known for ages it all had to come to an end, and finally it did. I've had so long to prepare for it, and have half-heartedly put a stop to it so many times, and have dragged this whole debacle out so far past its expiration date, it's amazing that I even have tears left. But I do.

I've been assembling Ikea furniture and painting and staining just so I don't have to think about it. I've found it strangely soothing. I think it's having the steps laid out and labeled. It's so wonderful to have one thing in my life that follows a [relatively] clear set of steps. I wish Ikea would send me strange, wordless directions for all the different areas of my life. Figuring out what to do is taking up 93% of my waking hours. Can't a team of hardworking Swedes assess the situation and tell me what to do? Hjälp!

Getting Real-er

And I'm back! After the teensiest of three-year hiati.

I am still living in the tinsel. I just became official, making it onto IMDB, so I feel like a real live person "working in the industry" now.

It's a struggle, to be honest. I arrived here six -- SIX! -- years ago, with visions of Astaire-Rogers musicals dancing through my head and well-worn truisms about the business of show on the tip of my tongue, but it's turned out to be very different than I expected.

I'VE been very different than I expected.

It reminds me of --

[I need to pause here and warn you that a pretty awful analogy is coming up. Awful in that the two things being compared vary wildly in gravity. That said, if you can swallow the disparity --- well, the reaction is dead on.]

In an interview Lara Logan gave on 60 Minutes about her attack in Egypt, she spoke about how she was being attacked by a frenzied mob that was LITERALLY pulling her apart and how, as she was about to lose consciousness, she thought "I can't believe.... that that was as much fight as I had, that I just gave in... How could you do that? I thought you were stronger than that."

And -- again, on a much milder, less horrifying scale -- that's what I've been struggling with a lot over the past year. Isn't there more to me than this? Aren't I made of stronger stuff?

I've been working and paying my dues and getting ignored for years. And I want to throw in the towel at times. But if I did, I'd hate to look back, because it also feels like I've never put it all on the line. I've been patiently getting coffee and cleaning tables and answering phones and taking notes and doing what I'm "supposed" to be doing, all the while hoping someone notices me and gives me a shot, but I've never demanded that they do so.

And I feel age galloping up on me. I was so hurt at work today. A friend with whom I work is a decade younger than me and several ranks above me. She was describing a potential hire.

"He's old," she said. "Like [16}*. Which isn't old-old, it's just old for a [beginning zookeeper]*."

[ ]* = not actually what was said.

I want to be a beginning zookeeper. I am older than 16. Real talk: I am old for someone trying to break into zookeeping. Older than most other aspiring zookeepers by ten or fifteen years.

On the up side, maybe she doesn't know that? Maybe I'm so young and fresh-faced everyone just assumes I'm 12?

It did hurt my heart, though. I have a dull buzz of low-level anxiety at all times about my age, and how it's a strike against me, and whether this whole thing I'm trying is just a stupid wild goose chase, and if I'll be one of those sad also-rans who doesn't even realize she's a sad also-ran because she's so fully deluded. And I tell myself not to give in to my most insecure and paranoid thoughts, and I try to break that tape -- see? old person -- in my head...

And then my decade-younger co-worker just brings it all rushing forward like floodwaters.

So that happened.

I was weary by the end of the day. This job can be so wonderful, and in the scheme of jobs I've had or that one can hold, it's very cushy and a good gig. I'm at the zoo, just where I've always wanted to be. But it is at times very psychically draining.
So, old crone that I am, I finished work and just wanted to retreat back to my hovel.

But I have another ambition with a ticking clock: becoming an aerialist.

Re-becoming, actually. I used to be an aerialist. It's a pretty word, and an even prettier thing to be. And I was one, briefly, a decade ago. Back when someone would have said of me: "Oh you know her -- short, blonde, beginning zookeeper-aged?"

These are my twin pipe dreams. I am fighting against the clock on both. They both steal focus from the other, steal time from each other. Doing one is difficult, and doing both is...well, twice as hard, I'm guessing. But I only feel complete pursuing both. They each represent a half of my personality, and I don't have time to put either one on a shelf. In both cases, if I want it to happen, I need to pursue it NOW.

I was tired and cranky and coming down with a cold. I wanted to go home, but knew that if I went and tried to twist around on a bar and pull myself up and over it, I would be thankful I did.

So I went, and I was thankful. It was such a salve for the rest of my day. I reclaimed tricks from ten years ago and worked on new ones, and practiced getting stronger, and suddenly I didn't care about the conventional wisdom for beginning zookeeper ages.

After all, I can do an eagle on the ropes to standing split. I will SOON know how to do a made-up trick in which I do a standing split on the ropes and then walk into a back walkover. And maybe someday not very SOON I will even be able to do a heel hang.

I still have some fight left in me.

You Keep Using That Word. I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

I realize in looking over my first few posts that I've maybe been a little hard on the ladies. Shouldn't I support other women? Well, yes, but first....

Or maybe, in a way, this post is a way of supporting them...through criticism, loving criticism.

Here we have two powerful, charismatic performers. Anyone who can fill a stadium of screaming fans -- by themselves, not as part of a group -- has some level of charisma. Even if I hate the music, or think that an artist's popularity is due in large part to a calculated image meant to distract from the actual music, getting a stadium's worth of people to buy tickets to come see you is no small feat. And filling that stadium with your presence is no small feat, either, because when you're playing to the cheap seats -- those seats are reaaallllllly far from the stage. So anyone who can do this is pretty impressive, and it's a pretty small club of artists who can do this around the world.

Madonna and Janet Jackson are two of the most famous members of this very elite club. They are powerful artists, and giants of pop music. They've lasted for decades in a business full of one-hit wonders. They've evolved artistically throughout their careers. They've given us classic pop songs and classic videos. They're known around the world by their first names.

These women are AMAZING.

They don't need to prove that they're sexy. They don't need to hang with the young'uns. They don't need to show they're up on new positions or fads or whatever.

Which is why this is just embarrassing.



And so is this.



The tags for this one included 'desperate', 'crazy', and 'strain'. Which just about sums it up.

I think I'm supposed to find both of these sexy. I don't. I find them bizarre and false. And a little uncomfortable. Like watching your odd maiden aunt go into heat and rub up against the armoire. It doesn't make me think either my maiden aunt or the armoire is sexy. It makes me wonder if she's been drinking.

And it's so unnecessary. The only thing that has ever made me doubt the inherent sexiness of these women are these weirdo attempts at proving it.

Anyone Whom Plum Sykes Thinks Is a Regular Gal? Isn't.

I love Gwyneth Paltrow. I can't help myself. I do. I like to think that we would be friends, even though I know deep down that she would give me the once over and barely conceal her lip curl of disdain. I know I wouldn't make the bar, and that, while funny and possessed of shiny pretty hair and talent and a great sense of style, she is kind of a snob. 

But then I see this: 

Doesn't she seem fun?

(And yes, I am aware that if you look at the video at :23, you can see written on her face what she really thinks of commoners. But I don't care. I am pretending :23 does not exist. I still think she and I would be great friends and trade books and go to concerts and have a splendid time together touring Europe.)