The Art of Writing, Aging, & Laziness

I tell myself all the time how utterly lazy I am, and how I don't write enough. Mostly, when I finally come home from work (usually after working unpaid overtime-usually my own decision), I just sit down in front of Netflix and binge-watch either an action-packed anime or a down-to-earth, touching romance/drama like When Calls the Heart or Call the Midwife.

I decided today (Easter) that I am going to use today as a more-realistic New Years Eve. I am not Catholic or Christian, so maybe the best way to celebrate today is to use it to review my New Years Resolutions, discuss how I let them drop, and write new ones I will actually follow. One is to write as much as I did as a kid. For inspiration, I decided to read some of my old diaries for guidelines from my young self.

And I found these three, consecutive gems:

Dear Journal (2/10/06),

I have no clue what to write. Nothing important has happened today. Bye.

Dear Journal (3/1/06),

I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. I love David. 

(Yes, I wrote that 29 times in my middle-school diary that day. Why 29? No idea. That's just when I stopped.)

Dear Journal (3/20/06),

There is no way I'll EVER finish this journal! 

Okay, so they weren't all gems. And maybe I do write better entries in my journal now.

Happy Easter.

Things I Do Instead of Being Productive

When I was an undergraduate, one of my writing professors had us all read a short story about a woman who would do careless things just to amuse her. One thing was buying a house and then wandering around in it, turning on lights, and going Hm, I have a house. It has stairs that go up and down to blank, bare rooms. I have a kitchen primarily not used for cooking. (I only imagine this was the exact dialogue in the woman's head because that's what I would think.)

Everyone in class thought that was ridiculous and unrelatable. Who would buy a house just because it amused them? Completely reckless!

So, here's what my life has become:

1. I got a promotion and instead of taking the time to consider how my life is progressing, where I wanted to go, and what I should start doing now to get there, I bought the most expensive apartment and new furniture that I could afford.
2. I made a late New Years' Resolution to start posting more regularly on my blog (we all see how that has gone, right?), and promptly ignored it.
3. I made a late New Years' Resolution to start spending an hour a day working on my literary journal, and promptly ignored it (as I am doing right now.)
4. I adopted a cat named Teddy one day while volunteering at the animal shelter because they ran out of things for me to do and said Hey, you can play with the cats in the cat room until your ride gets here. Then they learned not to let me do that anymore.
5. I bought Teddy Lupin (yes, Harry Potter) a scratching post that he promptly ignored (he takes after me.)
6. I did not do anymore wedding planning for two months and instead would go to work, walk the 10 minutes back to the apartment, and binge watch any anime on Netflix (in my defense, I'm having a half Great Gatsby / half anime wedding. This is called research. And spending all night in the same position on the couch, staring at the TV, forgetting about every single thing else I was supposed to do.)
7. I started seeing a new therapist because my first therapist, who diagnosed me with having trust issues, could never show up for our therapy appointments on time. Last time, she didn't show up at all. I wasn't even upset, I laughed. I'm still laughing (and a little bit of crying.)
8. I don't get paid overtime but sometimes I work 11 hour days (approximately 6:30am to 5:30pm with no lunch break), then reward myself by buying nice things I forget about. Like tickets to Mamma Mia's farewell tour, which was this past Wednesday, and I just did not remember to go.
9. Rented Good Morning, Vietnam finally and was actually "nice fiance" and helped my fiance with his paper for one of his history courses by watching the movie with him, telling him everything I thought was important about the plot and characters, and making him write it down word-for-word because I am, in my own words from that night, "A complete genius." This, of course, ended up being what we did instead of remembering to finally see my favorite musical live. 
10. Tried to start volunteering for our local LGBT and interreligious organizations to help out, and was completely blown off. I guess someone isn't "free labor material" anymore.
11. Walk around my apartment daily, turning on and off the lights, and going Hm, I have an apartment. It has stairs that go up and down to blank, bare rooms. I have a kitchen primarily not used for cooking. I use it to store more action figures and books.

Tales From a Sugar Mama

It's a little ridiculous that I consider myself financially secure. I touched on this earlier when I mentioned to you (my readers) that I have a $1,800 mono-printing piece of art I call Natalie hanging in my childhood bedroom. In my parent's house. Where I still live.

If I can afford a $1,800 piece of art, you may be wondering why I still live with my parents? Good question, audience! Well, the answer is simple:  when I was nine, I had encephalitis, had two seizures, and lost my peripheral vision. No driving for me.

Of course, my doctors didn't bother to find this out when I was nine. For years, my eye doctors (I went to two different providers regularly in my mom's failed attempt to find out what was wrong with my eyes) marveled at the oddly pale backs of my eyes, then did nothing. No tests. No guesses. Just a lot of Hm, that's weird, but she can still see, right? Then I guess she is okay! If her eyesight starts going, then we will look into it.  It wasn't until Obamacare forced my eye care center to give their patients routine tests that it was discovered. The test ran all while the eye technician (or whatever she is called in eye-doctor language) complained loudly to me about Obamacare and the unnecessary testing and costs and time and paperwork (my god, the mountains of paperwork!) it was causing her.

Then the eye results came back and she shut-up about Obamacare.

So, I don't drive, so I continue to live at home where I have to rely on others for awhile. This allows me to save up a lot of money, which I spend ... erratically, to say the least. A really cute $12 tank top at Target? Hm, I don't know if I need this. . . . A trip for two to Disney World? Fuck yeah! Fast food three times a week? Hm, do I need food? Really? But I'm so little.

Even though I put a lot of thought into what I spend money on (sometimes), somehow I became my boyfriend's Sugar Mama. Trip to Milwaukee for Summerfest, trip to Disney World for a week, action figures, food, movie tickets, etc. . . . Even though Boyfriend would love to pay for stuff, he knows he can't, and I think he is finally comfortable with how much I spend on us.

Too comfortable.

—Boyfriend and I listening to Meghan Trainor's new song. The lines I never pay for my drinks. My entourage behind me. come through his car's radio—

Boyfriend: I never pay for my drinks either. —holds up a bottle of soda I just bought him to keep him hydrated on the way back from Summerfest, where I paid for our hotel stay—

I spoil him, and I don't know why.

Maybe because of his resemblance to Shaggy from Scooby Doo, representing simpler times where I would also blow my allowance on many things.

Thoughts From A Girl With OCD

I have had OCD (obsessive violent and/or sexual thoughts) my whole life. Probably even before I hit puberty. Like most OCD-sufferers, I just thought I was evil reincarnated.

Now that I know what it is, finally at the age of 23, I accept that I'm not evil reincarnated (how narcissistic of little kid me to think that I was the most evil, villainous thing there was!)

However, that does not mean the struggle has completely gone away. . . .

Common OCD Thoughts When Meeting A New Male Client:

Boss: Jordyn, I would like you to meet Mr. Client. Mr. Client needs a new website.

—Mr. Client holds out his hand in greeting—

Mr. Client: Pleased to meet you!

Me: Pleased to meet you too.

—Sudden image of my kneeling down and sucking his dick enters my mind while we shake hands—

Boss: —unaware— Please sit so we can get started.

Mr. Client: Great, well, as you know, I am a family man, and I really want my clients to get a sense of that on my website.

Me: Okay. —takes notes—

My thoughts: Images spread of me pulling down my pants, sitting on his lap, and riding him.

I look to Boss, convinced he can read my mind. Finally, he looks back and smiles.

Oh no, he CAN read my mind!

I look at Mr. Client, who is talking to Boss, and giving me a smile in the corner of his mouth.

Oh no, he can read my mind too! I better stop thinking!

Mr. Client: Website, blah blah blah, family, blah blah blah, products and such.

My thoughts: Trying to force the image of his old, wrinkly dick in my mouth out of my head. Image only grows stronger. Image Me seems to be enjoying it, and Image Client is not.

Boss: I think we got a lot of good information today. Jordyn, what do you think?

Me: —looks down at jumbled, nonsense notes— Yes, I agree!

I reach over to shake Mr. Client's hand, the picture of his cock finally out of my mind. I am thinking clearly again.

Me: It was great meeting you. I will send you the first design once it is finished.

Mr. Client: Great! It was nice to meet you too.

Mr. Client gives me a friendly smile again and I think—He DID read my mind!

The End.

Why I Can't Ever Live Alone

Most graduates can't wait to live alone. I just realized that I never can.

Reasons Why I Am Too Immature to Live Alone

1. Tornado Warnings Don't Scare Me

I live in Peoria, and so far (until recently) a tornado had never come close to my house. We get warnings all the time in spring, but after years of my parents pulling me downstairs to take shelter in my footy pajamas, I realized that none of the tornadoes ever hit us. Just because they hadn't hit us yet. Because I am smart.

So, a few weeks ago when a tornado came very close, I tried switching the channels to get away from the pesky weatherman pulling an all-nighter to save my neighborhood. When my father demanded I finally come downstairs, I grabbed my laptop. And the novel I was reading. And some water. And toilet paper, for after I drank the water. And then I finally decided I had enough necessities to be safe and sound.

My brother had immediately ran downstairs and was shaking. His hand looked like it was going to fly off his arm any moment.

"Stop it," I had said while I tried to find a station that worked, but my parents yanked the remote away to watch the dedicated weatherman.

2. I Would Never Be Able to Shower

After the tornado, unfazed even though this one almost came to our street, I was the only one that stayed up past midnight. Then I realized that I didn't want to shower in the morning.

I made the adult, reasonable decision to shower now so I wouldn't have to shower in the morning. So I got a towel my mom will wash, pajamas my mother had washed, and my retainer for after the shower.

I took off my clothes, turned on the hot water, and closed the shower behind me. And realized that this was how every horror movie trailer starts.

NOTE, I said trailer. Because I'm too scared to watch the entire horror film. And instead just watch the trailers. While covering my ears. And shutting my eyes. And praying (yet not religious) until the trailer is over so I could finish my Parks and Rec.

Again, I made another reasonable decision to not close the shower behind me, and instead soak the floor so I could observe if any spirit or murderer crept in. Because seeing the intrusion could totally help my naked 90-pound body stop a spirit or murderer from killing me.

Not only am I not smart enough to realize that I could never, ever stop my own death, but I would drown my bathroom. And I can't swim.

Think about it.

3. Too Awkward to Exist

I work at a marketing company where I sometimes walk through websites with my clients. One client has a YouTube video on their home page, and they were wondering about the random video suggestions at the end of the video.

And I forgot that I was logged into my work email, so the YouTube channel I was connected to would be the one automatically created for my work email. And I forgot about all the VH1 100 Best Songs of the 90s videos I had been watching.

So the clients and I were skipping through the video on their home page and we came across four suggestions. Two of them were related to their business. One was some video game YouTube video because my boyfriend uses my laptop to watch his nerd things.

And the last one, in the upper right corner, was "I Touch Myself" by the Divinyls.

The two choices were clear: Confess that these were my personal recommendations, or think that a video with a thumbnail of a girl lying on a bed was a random suggestion that would come up for all their users. Even for children and the elderly.

And I spent the next few minutes telling them that "I Touch Myself" was actually a song, and that I just listened to a lot of 90s songs. I'm still not sure they believed me, but the website is launched so I don't have to see them again, so whatever.

When they left, I immediately deleted all of my recommendations on my work email YouTube channel. Especially the Britney Spears ones. I think if that suggestion had been a Britney Spears video, I would have been more embarrassed.

Because I am so un-adult that I think a well-known pop song would be more embarrassing then a possible porn video.

My Childhood Hamster Had Balls!

    When I was ten, I wanted nothing more than a cute little hamster that would follow me to school and around the house in a hamster ball. On my eleventh birthday, I thought this wish finally became a reality when my father took me to the pet store to pick one out!
    “I want that one!” I said, pointing to the smallest, most delicate looking hamster I could find. This hamster was like the pet-equivalent of me, but better—this hamster was a redhead! I had selected a tiny orange, black, and white one just so the hamster would match my favorite new name, Ginger.
    I don’t think I wanted a hamster so much as I wanted a Ginger. Really, the whole point of getting a hamster, for me, was to name it Ginger, because I love names. As Told by Ginger was the best cartoon at the time, in my humble opinion, and naming inanimate stuffed animals, dolls, and even select corners of my house was not good enough. I got a child-sized guitar, named her Maddie, and never played her. Then I got a normal-sized guitar, same thing happened, named her Sally. Sally is covered in dust in the basement, and Ginger is dead.
    But back to the story:  I needed to give a living thing a name. I needed that type of power, to mark a living thing forever. “You!” I’m sure I yelled like a dictator in that pet store, “are now Ginger forever! To everyone! And you can’t argue about it!”
    (On a side note, this is why I don’t want children. I only think I want a house full of children so I can name a house full of children and force their first hobbies on them. I just want to force a girl to forever be called Carolina and spend her early years playing soccer, and a boy to forever be called Troy and spend his early years learning the art of dance. And then resent me for all these decisions. And they wouldn’t be able to do anything to take these early decisions back!
    I’m a tiny, tiny, fragile little girl. This is my Napoleon complex.)
    At the pet store, the part-time employee in an oversized blue polo stupidly gave a tiny eleven year old (who looked seven) the box of live hamster to hold, while my dad helped me pick out a cage and accessories. In the end, I got a large, clear tub to stare at my hamster at as long and as often as I cared to.
    I couldn’t wait to make the hamster love me, as all pets do! We took Ginger home, set the hamster up in the tank, and I ignored the new edition to my family for the next several hours as my dad took me to a birthday hockey game.
    I think this neglect so early in our relationship is why Ginger got fat. That, and I stopped taking Ginger out to roll around in the hamster ball. It was fun at first, making Ginger roll around and around as long as I wanted in a tiny room, until I noticed that little brown pellets rolling around the ball, which could fall out the ball’s cracks for breathing (why do hamsters need air? Why?)
    Shortly after this, Ginger started plotting a hamster-sized escape. We put the large tank on my tall dresser, which Ginger learned to crawl up and down out of, and into my closet. There, Ginger nibbled on the feet of my oversized stuffed animals. Because it’s not like Ginger was fed enough (over-fed, ungrateful hamster.)
    When Ginger got very obese-ly fat, I saw my first pair of balls. Being eleven and prematurely narcissistic, I assumed my hamster was whatever gender I wanted the hamster to be. Nope, oops. Ginger was a George, and I learned about male anatomy (which was good, because my parents never got around to giving me the talk after my first period. I needed this lesson in biology.)
    I also learned about death. One day, when I got home from school, I did the normal routine:  cross the hall to my room, put the backpack on my bed, turn to head back out for a snack, but as I turned my head this day, I noticed Ginger/George’s tank was missing.
    “Ginger?” I asked the air above my dresser. I still always called George Ginger.
    “Dad?” was my next thought.
    “Yeah?” he asked, nonchalantly ducking his head in my room.
    I pointed my little finger to the naked dresser.
    “Oh, yeah, I had to take that out,” my dad stated. “The hamster died.” Then he left my room to go to second shift at work, having already had a productive day of letting his daughter know that death ultimately meant nothing. Life moved on.

Discovering You're a Narcissist Through Hoarding: A Weirdo's Tale

    I’m certain I’m a hoarder. Last month I decided, again, to throw away all unnecessary things from my room. I then threw out one bag of actual trash—plastic boxes from toys I didn’t have the strength to discard when I opened them. Years ago.
    I keep every scrap of paper I wrote one line, a few words, on. This excludes most college course notes, unless there was a doodle or the middle of a poem. I have two loose-leaf accounting binders in the corner by my door. I am not an accountant and I never had any desire to account anything, but there they are. Waiting, but I’m not sure what they are waiting for.
    A pile of newspapers I have never read from my childhood rests in front of my closet, blocking passage to most of my clothes, because when I was in high school I liked to think of myself as the kind of kid who read newspapers. One Journal Star features a large cover picture of the Jonas Brothers, when they came to the Civic Center for a concert. Concert tickets were my birthday present, and I kept the newspaper as a memento of the time I picked up a newspaper featuring my favorite band at the time, and I never read any of the articles, even the one about the concert I was going to see. This was my fifteenth birthday. Next month will be my twenty-third.
    I thought I deserved a change from this life of nonsensical papers and student-less accounting books, so I bought that famous book about cleaning up your life—The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up—and I sat it on the floor by my childhood bed. The next day I awoke to better my life and read it, but the book was covered by a mass of forgotten clothes that fell off my bed. I didn’t even know I had these clothes on my bed. They were always covered by my blankets, probably since the day I brought them home from the mall. One shirt still had its tag, and spoiler alert, I never read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. At least now I know why my feet were always so warm.
    So instead, I went to Barnes & Noble to buy another book. After spending too much time flipping through a book of Hillary Clinton haikus, I made my way to the psychology section and looked at books for my hoarding anxiety. I figured if I fixed my anxiety about being a hoarder, the hoardiness wouldn’t matter because I simply wouldn’t care anymore. Instead of being free of my clutter, I would be free of myself.
    Suddenly, as I skimmed these covers, telling me how anxious people can be, I became anxious about my anxieties, and then I got angry that my anxieties made me anxious.
    Luckily for me, what did I find a few shelves below? Anger management books! Automatic relief was followed by the realization that no, I wasn’t relieved. These books didn’t make me feel any better, but I journeyed to the next bookcase, where books about changing your mood and feeling good were held. The designer of the psychology section must understand me very well, and saw how I would seek books about anxiety that would make me angry, and then I would find no relief in anger management, and I would need to learn to feel good again, if I ever felt good at all.
    On first observations though, I don’t think this book arrangement worked, because my first observation was that one of the men on these read-me-and-be-happy books was nearly ugly, and I didn’t know how he could ever be happy.
    Maybe this case was built for people like me, who think those thoughts, because the next shelf had books about dealing with narcissism, and reading about those self-loving freaks made me realize that I finally found home.
    I’m a writer. I’m a writer who used I 51 times so far in this post. I (52) choose to write non-fiction because I (53) believe that I (54) am the greatest character I (55) could ever come up with, so now I (56) know I’m (57) a narcissist, all because I (58) didn’t want to be a hoarder anymore.
    The lesson of this story is to never, ever, clean your room (wow, I (59) used your! How good for a newly-found narcissist?)
    Now I’m (60) going to go stare at myself in a mirror. I I I I I (65)

Short Blog: Stories from an Atheist's Daughter

In one of my poetry workshops in college, I felt left out. I was one of the only people who did not come from a religious background, and I could not draw from it. I was the Atheist's Daughter who wrote about how she didn't understand religion, which got laughs. And I'm the kind of person who would continue beating any old joke with a sledge hammer until it dies for a laugh.

I wrote about how church service was like a scripted play (because of the nice handouts with lines they give the sinner children of atheists) and how it took me fifteen good minutes of talking to some blond on campus before I realized he was a pastor in training and was trying to sell me on his church. And he was dressed in black with the white little square over his Adam's apple. And I'm not even sure what form of Catholicism/Christianity he was talking about. And he talked for 40 more minutes with his pastor in training buddies that popped up when they found a sinner who was stupid enough not to run from them.

I began to study religion to write more about how I didn't understand it. I bought a Bible and put it on my bookshelf, between my Qur'an and my Wiccan spellbook. I like to imagine that they get along, reading each other's passages to pass the time.

Through my studying, I began to realize that if God was just someone's neighbor today, that neighbor would probably call DCF on his ass. He must have drugged Mary in her sleep through the use of mirth or some other B.C. drug, and raped her until she was with child JUST so the child can die at the stake many years later.

I also never understood Noah's Ark. Like, if God flooded the Earth because he was so disgusted by human beings' behavior except for Noah's family, and he NEVER did it again (like he promised), then how messed up was society back then? Look at us today, God, look at us today! Was it worth it?

When I Had 2 Roommates

I am a recent college graduate, I live with my parents, and I often think of just last year, when I had a student apartment with two other senior girls. Three single gals (well, actually I haven't been single in the past three years, but sometimes I forget and momentarily think I am single, then realize that no, I am not single like them) painting the town red (but our town is already red because of all the shootings that happen here.)

What was it like being three single gals, living it up in an apartment in Illinois, two and a half hours from the only cool place in Illinois? (No diss to my man Abe, I'm sure Springfield was cool in the day of horse-n-buggies and two-feet tall top hats.)

Here is one of those priceless scenes of three wild and crazy gals I remember to this day, one year later:

Me: So, I go into the bathroom, minding my own business, doing my thing, you know—I won't go into the details, YOU ALL KNOW WHAT WE DO IN THE POTTY, DON'T LIE, GIRLS!—but I was there, on the toilet, and I hear a knocking on the door.

Roommate 1: Will you be out soon?

And I was like: Um, yeah. What did she think? That I was leisurely reading and doing my homework in the bathroom, two feet from the kitty litter boxes she never cleans out? Yeah, the best place to spend my spare time.

Roommate 1: Good, because I need to hang up my laundry to dry.

Me: Still using the bathroom and dumbfounded—Why don't you just use the dryer? 

Roommate 1: Said in disgust— They're my delicates! I can't put them in the dryer, they will be ruined.

This was one of the times I noticed the difference between me and Roommate 1—I didn't have delicates. I had $5 Wal-Mart packs of Hanes underwear and five-year-old training bras that I never grew out of. (On a side note, that is why I hate the term "training bra," because what were they training me for? To girls like me, they are just regular bras that fit much better than those I can find at the fancier local Target or Kohls.)

And I put these $5 three-packs of flower-speckled undies and training bras in the dryer. And then eventually they turn from off-white to gray. And my boyfriend deals, clearly because we never had the same type of sex life as Roommate 1.