Who'll play with me on saturday afternoon

8-25

Well, here I go.

I still want to have my own web page/journal, but the lure of un-delayed gratification is something I just can't resist. Diaryland does all the work instead. Hey, it what America's all about.

At the moment I'm piddling about at work, waiting for a new graphics project.It's hotter than Hades here in TX. Grass fire season, oh joy!

Yesterday, I got my first official rejection letter. One of the generic ones, so I can only guess why they didn't like my story. Should I send it out again? Should I write it off? (is that a pun?) I must ponder. Meanwhile, I web-surf pamie.com and despair over my miniscule amount of ambitious energy in comparison to hers. I'm forever a type B, and we always have a bit of an inferiority complex around type A's. (the girl used to give *herself* homework. Oy!)

But we type B's have fewer stress-related heart attacks, so maybe it all works out. That's what I tell myself when I'm surfing/going to the library or bookstore/watching TV instead of producing, anyway.

Matt's my husband. We've been married 2-point-something years. He will appear frequently in my inane ramblings, and we are still nauseatingly affectionate, so be prepared to hear a lot of disgusting chatter about how wonderful he is. Just so you're prepared.

Oh, that's what I'll do, introduce some of the "cast". Because it doesn't look like I can come up with something amazingly witty and engrossing about my life today.

Me: Born in '71. Aspiring writer. Doing graphics to pay the bills.

Matt: Hubster. Born '74 ("Train 'em young!" my momma always said). Musician. Working for evildotcomrunbyrednecks.com.

Uncle Albert and Jehosophats: our cats (you knew we had cats, didn't you. Yes you did.)

Madding Crowd: various and sundry co-workers, friends, and random people that I'll introduce as time goes by and I have embarrassing stories to tell about them.

There, that's pretty good for the first try.

8-27
It's Sunday. Which means laundry day, as well as sleep till noon and get sorta-dressed by 5 day. Sleep, Sloth, and Simpsons are three of the four S's of Sundays.

I'll let you guess what the other S is.

Sunday used to be church day. Is there anything more agonizing than dragging yourself out of bed early on a weekend, putting on your good/uncomfortable clothes (I hated guys because they got away with a tie and slacks, while I was subjected to the misery of pantyhose and skirt...no pants on the womenfolk to morning service, my dad put his foot down. Urgh.), and sitting in a dimly lit church for 2 hours? What good does this do? The only part anybody liked was the music, because you got to stand up, stretch, and make noise. And a lot of those Baptist hymns were catchy, being variations on old dance-hall and Tin Pan Alley tunes. Some of them were even genuinely moving, lest you think I'm a callous old backslider; I miss them still.

I do not miss being lectured on the second-class status of women when it came to church leadership and family life, however. No siree.

That kind of sums up my problems with church in general. The stuff that actually involved the whole church, not discriminating between genders or classes, like music, is such a small part. The rest of it is just...being told, over and over, how not to get out of line. I never debated whether I was a sinner or that I had "darkness in my soul". Of course I did/do; we all do. I just could never make the connection between battling that darkness and sitting in church. If our pastors had told us to show up in jeans and work clothes on Sunday morning, cause we were going out to build a house for poor people, or run a soup kitchen, that would've made sense.

Don't get me wrong, our church did do such things; but they were done on weekdays, on the side, and were, not surprisingly, poorly attended because people had to deal with work and family during the week. What a waste. Those who disagreed would answer that Sabbaths are for rest and prayer. Our conception of what Sabbaths are for is pretty narrow, in my opinion. Why is it ok to go to a movie and a restaurant (which requires the staff to work on the Sabbath), but not to go help the poor? So here I am, writing in my diary. Hoping the fact that I give to charity lets me off the hook for not being out at a soup kitchen right now.

8-27

Monday..insert Garfield comic here. (How long is Jon Davis going to cruise on that tired punchline, anyway?) School's started, so those of us who are non-students avoid the halls, and the desperately lost freshman asking "where is room XXX?" I've noticed in the last few months that kids that age annoy me much more than previously. I guess I'm drawing closer to old cootdom or something. It's scary in a way but also rather perversely enjoyable. I think I'll make a good crazy old lady, yelling at kids to get off my lawn. If I were to be a sweet old lady, giving out lemonade and such, every neighborhood kid would be at my house all the time, and how would I get any writing done? Sure, I may get my house TP'd on occasion, and have rumors started that I'm really a witch, but that's ok. I can already do a very convincing cackle, so I'm ready.

8-29
Hallo, Tuesday. So, I hear you asking, how did you discover the wonders of the Internet, Emjay?(Aside: a brief explanation of the nomenclature. "Emjaybee" is merely the phonetic version of my initials, MJB. I got the idea from a friend (Hi, Christina) who liked to give people nicknames and called me "Emjay". Also, it reminded me of the title "Master of Ceremonies" which was shortened to "M.C"....then lengthened again to "Emcee". I love stupid little language quirks like that.)

Anyway, the Internet. I had little/no contact with it until about 2 years ago. No! you gasp. It's true. No modem, no access at work, no clue. But lucky for me, as soon as I changed jobs and started surfing on my new employer's computer, I ran into (a now-defunct site called) Chickclick...and then Hissyfit.com. It would be hard to describe the effect Hissyfit had on me. Just finding a group of smart, funny women talking about real life (as opposed to "Makeupfatthighsshoeshusbandsbabiesohmigodi'm sooldtimeforaboobjob blah blah blah") was like a homecoming. The web as I perceived it had been a cold, clinical, wilderness full of Doom players, porn addicts, and anime freaks.

Hissyfit is run by a Canadian husband-and-wife team, the impossibly cool Wing Chun and the mysterious Glark, who merely wanted a place to vent their rage in witty and urbane ways. Through them I discovered nearly all my bookmarked hangouts.Through them I met Mahir, the Turkish Lover (defunct also!).

They are also responsible for publishing my first paid article, and $100.00 American buys a lot of love, baby. (Too bad it doesn't buy me the know-how to link to my article, which appears to have vanished into Hissyfit Archive-Land). Anyway, I now surf with confidence, pooh-poohing the porn, anime, and anime porn, safe in the knowledge that Hissyfit will make me feel ok about things.

9-3
Journaling is harder than I thought. I shouldn't be surprised by that, most things worth doing are. I feel as though I haven't been using this journal right, being flippantly (and unsuccessfully) "amusing", rather than saying anything of value. The truth is I've been in the center of a lot of emotional weather, and I wasn't sure if I should put my thoughts online. I'm still not.

But I also find it unlikely that anyone I'm talking about is going to stumble on this (editor's note: Ha!), and if they do, well, I'll deal with that when the time comes. And I need to get this down, and maybe, get some feedback on what others think.

I've been very distracted lately, doing a lot of re-reading; Possession and Angels and Insects by A.S. Byatt, plus authors from the library, Florence King, David Brin, some Joan Aiken (who doesn't seem to be available outside of libraries). I am reading, but I am anxious about the fact that I'm not doing much writing. I know I am a writer. It's the only thing I truly care about. But I seem to have this crippling inertia when it comes to setting words down on paper or taking myself seriously as an artist. It doesn't help that the world never takes artists seriously, and I live in a particularly conservative part of the world. But that's not all of it. I can't seem to find a voice, a theme that drives me. I read constantly, drawn to so many different things: science fiction, fantasy, 19th century literature. A lot of non-fiction; biographies, reminiscenses, feminist thought, science, opinion, humor. Yet nothing concrete comes of it.

All my fiction writing up to now has been fantasy, based on mythological ideas or stories. But I feel constrained and limited by that genre. It's so well-mined, and the myths we have are so hostile to women, or ignorant of them. Robin McKinley seems to have covered all that ground and transformed all our major fairy tales, with varying results (I didn't really care for the last two....I think she's feeling too confined by her subject matter). I want to write truths about life, and the people around me, but I can't seem to find a beginning point. Am I really a writer at all, or am I coming to it too late, too bound up in my mundane preoccupations? My precise calling is not evident, and at 29, that's a scary prospect. My ancestors were not long-lived; my grandparents all died before they were 80, most in their 50s or 60s as did my father. I may not have a long time to make a mark. But I'm like a painter in front of a canvas, without any preliminary sketch. Nothing to guide me forward.

This has been a watershed year, in so many ways. I am coming to know myself, and yet I still don't know what I am capable of. I only know what I cannot stand; working in useless and meaningless jobs the rest of my life. Writing seems my only tool to get out of that, but it's a tool I barely know the uses of. I want to be original, to say something in a way no one else has. Stories don't come to my pen (keyboard?) unbidden. Thoughts and theories and general philosophies of life do, but I'm just not sure what to do with those. Why would anyone care about my views of life, and the nature of reality? I don't have a philosophy degree, and am almost hostile to studying it; I'm tired of spouting the views of others, I want to build my ideology (if that's what I'm doing) without them. And I hate most philosophical debate, because people in general seem incapable of reasoned discussion. If they can't adequately defeat your arguments with theirs, they start making personal attacks, becoming hostile, loud, and unpleasant. My refusal to back down on my views (though I never insisted someone else agree with them) has broken up more than one friendship. Why a "friend" should think it's ok to demand that I give up deeply-held, often prayed-over beliefs in order to keep their friendship, is a mystery. If you are my friend, you accept who I am, without change. But very few people know what real friendship is, and end up as flattering followers or tyrannical leaders of their "friends". And I often end up alone because neither role appeals to me.

This entry sounds full of self-pity to me now. I don't pity myself too much, I hope. I have a husband who is a friend in the truest sense. I have my self-respect, for the most part. I have the respect of my family, and a few friends whom I see now and then. And even if I haven't found out exactly what I'm supposed to do as a writer (you didn't think I was coming back to that , did you?) I don't worry anymore about what people will think when I tell them that's what I want to be.

9-8
I just finished Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, which I highly recommend. Funny, but also poignant in a way some of his other books Notes From a Small Island and I'm a Stranger Here Myself aren't. I'd thought him a bit self-conciously cute in those books. Maybe he needs another person to focus on besides himself. His travelling companion, Katz, in Walk, is full of human failings;overweight, inexperienced, messed up in his personal relationships, prone to substance abuse. Someone it's impossible not to identify with in some way. He seems to bring out a better writer in Bryson. I also picked up the last Berke Breathed book, an Outland collection.He made the right decision when he quit; those last few strips are verrrrry tired.Which saddens me; Opus was an early influence on my social conscience. And now (This Modern World's) Sparky, another, much angrier penguin, is an influence. Who knew they were such political birds?<

May I mention that adding HTML text to these entries is a big pain in the tuckus? If you want my excuse for not posting every day. If there was anyone reading. I would also like to mention that I will NOT be linking any book references to Amazon (editor's note: Ha again), should I bother to link a book. Their recent decision to sell their customers' information willy-nilly means I won't be shopping there.Fortunately, I never have; did you know they have refused to allow any unfortunate customer whose book preferences and personal information is already on their site, to be deleted from the database of info? How unfair is that? It would be one thing if you knew going in they could sell your info. But if you knew they didn't, and then they changed the rules, shouldn't they allow you to not shop there anymore and not have info you gave them in good faith sent to god-knows-who?

Which leads in a meandering way to my next topic. I saw a special on theways in which managers can monitor anything you do on a work computer...every keystroke, unsent and deleted emails, any quick game of solitaire, you name it.This journal included (hi, boss!).I'm not so outraged at that (though I think Connecticut has the right idea in making them inform you you might be monitored) as perturbed by the idea that data is now essentially immortal. Everything you've ever typed into a computer anywhere, thanks to the infinite storage/copying ability of the Internet, could very well last until the end of time. I suppose things typed into an offline drive which was destroyed would be lost. But if a disk with that info exists,it could find its way onto the internet.Anything you print out of your computer and send to someone could be scanned and put online.And forever be floating in cyberspace, maybe to resurface when you least expect it.

The archaeology of the future will have the opposite problems it does now. Instead of making sense of a few surviving clues, archaeologists will have more information on more people than has ever existed before. Poor saps,combing through endless amounts of sales profiles, joke chain emails, and online diaries to find something significant in a sea of ordinariness. I hope they have some super-intelligent computers to help them sort the mess. Barring a large-scale catastrophe, the internet will be with us in some form or another from now on. But though it is a bit disturbing to think of all the goofy emails I ever sent residing in a database somewhere, I am hoping they will be so buried in a sea of similar emails that it's unlikely anyone will ever be able (or inclined) to use that information against me in some way.

9-12
I'm back at work today, but I'm almost wondering why. So little to do at present. Whenever that happens, I try not too complain too hard. My boss looks the other way when you read a book or surf online, so long as nobody's screaming about missed deadlines.

Yesterday was mostly awful...I couldn't catch up on all my missed sleep, it was hot and I felt headachey and out of sorts. Not terribly guilty about missing work. Then when I talked to the people over at Potential Job, the HR lady was an idiot and thought maybe they hadn't forwarded my application because I'd only put down years, not months, on my employment history. So I don't know if I actually still have a chance there or not. Or even if I want one, if they're that messed up. I sent them an updated resume, on the off chance. I should feel guilty, since I just got a raise, but for 1400 extra a year, I don't feel too guilty. Still making a mere pittance, I am. I'll probably wait till I get home to search for more job opps. I felt really good about the one I had my hopes pinned on, but you never know, and their HR is even more useless than most, it seems. I may have to face being here for a while. It's hard. I've been settling for so long, something inside me screams at the the thought of continuing to do so. I have a hard enough time not just moving off north as I want to, Matt or not. His reasons for staying are logical, but not much comfort. I feel confined in my present life; "Tired of myself, tired of this town."

Most of my old friends have changed or moved away, and I spend far too many nights alone in the house. Matt has his friends, and his pursuits, but I keep feeling as though I can never really take root here. I grew up here, I've always lived here by default, just changing zip codes now and then. But it's such a small place, artistically. And I need to be around people who are doing what I want to do, pursuing real dreams instead of trying to be "normal". I need new acquiantances, maybe friends, new places, new opportunities. I need to shake my past for a little while, be someone else closer to who I really am. I've been practicing for just this move anyway. I changed my name in college, deciding to go by my middle name, which always fit me better. I took Matt's last name, partly because it had a better sound to it than my own. I stopped wearing makeup or following fashion with much interest, because I liked who I looked like without them. I don't look like most of the people around here; I sure don't talk like them or think like them. I'm ready to be free of them completely, and just as I realize that, I find out I'll probably have to wait another year to finalize the process. Not that I think there's any "perfect" place. Stupidity and ignorance are everywhere. I just want to be somewhere that will equip me better to fight them. Even in the electronic age, geography matters. Who you hang out with, what there is to do on your free time, matters; it affects who you can be. I've explored about everything I can be in this place, and I'm not satisfied. I need more choices. I need to learn.

9-14
I work in the art building on campus, so I walk past the teaching studios on a regular basis. Class work gets exhibited in the little glass cases, and being beginner stuff (and this not being a big art school) it's mostly awful. Which is fine; I'm only an art dabbler myself. But today, I noticed that the drawings were worse than usual; distorted depictions of styrofoam cones, balls, and blocks.

Suddenly, I was back at my own beginning drawing class in college. I was full of interest; I'd drawn since I was little, and always wanted to be better at it. I longed to learn some new techniques, exploit what talent I had. I had always doodled constantly in notebooks and on typing paper, and was excited to be using the big pads we'd had to buy for class, along with the charcoal pencils and pastels, which seemed so exotic next to my standard No. 2's and ballpoints. But was the first thing our art teacher assigned? A still life of.......boxes. Plain brown cardboard boxes. We weren't even supposed to do shading, just line drawings, so we could learn perspective. After that? Paper bags. After that? styrofoam shapes.

That whole damn class, we never drew anything remotely interesting. Those of us who had any interest in drawing quickly stopped caring. At the time, I assumed it was just a lack of commitment on my part. I assumed that all artists had to start out with the boxes, the bags, the characterless styrofoam forms, and that I just didn't have enough passion about drawing to make it through the "test" the art teachers were setting up for us. I accepted my B as proof of my artistic mediocrity, and moved on to other classes.

What a crock, I realized today. What artist starts out drawing things they have no interest in? Give kids a pencil and paper, and they draw monsters. People. Happy suns, birds, clouds, trees. The world around them. Things they have a relationship to. They don't draw them well, at first. But until they give up or get distracted when they're older, there's a definite improvement; they get more skillful, more realistic, through practice. I was a little girl who loved horses, and drew them obsessively. I started out with stick-animals, and over the years progressed to 3-d forms, shading, and realistic depictions of anatomy, hair, and expression by doing so. I didn't know I was learning; I just wanted my horses to look more real.

And real artists do just the same. Yes, drawing a hand, or a face, or a seascape is nearly impossible for a beginner. They will make mistakes, it will come out wrong. But they will care. They will struggle. They will find out what their weaknesses are. If they're lucky, they'll get at least one part of the drawing right, and remember how to do it again.

If that teacher had really wanted to teach us, she would have taken us outside, given us something complex, beautiful and difficult. A rose, up-close; a tree; the view from the college tower. Our own faces in the mirror. Drawing existed long before the rules of perspective, or anatomical studies, or the golden mean. Those are useful tools, but they are not art. Art for me was always a hunger to get something down, something I saw and wanted to share with other people, or just to remind myself of later. The teacher was an artist herself, but maybe she'd forgotten why. For her students' sake, I hope that someday she remembers it again.