August 28, 2001

Promoting nightclubs and raves is often hectic work, I'm finding. Often hectic, usually tiring, and almost always confusing.

It is the last factor that caused me to run around a nightclub, looking for my boss at one of the larger events we've been putting on. I knew he was in the VIP area, so my logic was that if I find a door manned by a security guard who turns away everyone who tries to enter, I've probably found the correct place.

I managed to find such a place, and over the smoke and strobes and noise, I somehow explained to the guard that I was one of the promoters, and he let me in, presumably recognizing me from earlier in the evening.

It was to my great confusion, then, that I found myself not in a comfortable open space with couches, but in a narrow hallway filled with electronics. As I moved closer, I saw that there seemed to be turntables, a mixer, and other assorted audio equipment around. In fact, there seemed to be a person wearing headphones in the middle of this confusing mess, giving me very strange looks.

It was only after I stepped fully into the corridor, looked to my right, and saw a half-thousand people start to scream and cheer that I realized I was in the DJ booth, and they all thought I was the headlining performer, ready to start my set.

...

Please, dearest reader, make up your own ending to this story, as it could not possibly be less graceful than mine.

I woke up this morning and threw up. I wasn’t even sure I could stay on my feet, and I retched up bile and nothing.

Nothing.

The day cast me back into his domain, his memories, ripe with a certain kind of a lingering pain I hadn’t expected. There is anything I could have dealt with except for the familiar. He kept coming up, and he is gone. A friend was kind enough the night before to remind me he was never here. I’d never let myself remember that. I’d never maybe realized. Maybe. I.

All the signs of him were gone, but all the holes were even more obvious: lockers without locks, and nametags pulled off; aprons discarded leaving empty hooks; a can misplaced, his tools all scattered. I wonder if his work was ever here.

I went to my classes and I was terrified. I made pleasant conversation with all of the old cronies, but they’re the people I never knew. I saw the professors who put on happy smiles and hand out expectations as if they aren’t already etched in my forehead (no wait, maybe those were mine, engraved by fire, tearing my skin). I haven’t an original idea in my body, and my skill has never been a compulsion. It’s just been a way to get things out, and right now I don’t even know what the things might be.

An ex-boyfriend told me once that I was never happy where I was. He asked, he implored, why am I never happy where I am? He gave me pain. I wonder it now myself. I wonder all of his questions over and over and over again.

Unpleasant email from my family, attacks in text when I was just starting to think things were alright. I don’t know what he’s talking about. One weekend at a time, maybe once in a given three months, I go back, who knows. I don’t remember, but have a feeling I will never live it down. As always.

I went back to my apartment with a heaviness like despair and hurt and no concept of how to push it out so I started painting. My roommate stepped behind to look over my shoulder – which I hate — when he got home and asked ‘o-o-o-h ... is that ... is this an homage to ...?’

Oh no.

I haven’t an original idea in my body. I thought I was working through some things I’d started last year ... now I remember they were all based on him. Every one.

I have nothing left. And no idea I want to see him in my work or in my head or in my tears. I cried. I cried silently so my roommate wouldn’t hear, so tired and so alone. He broke up with his girlfriend yesterday and he’s not himself. He’s haggard. He’s a lot like me. But quieter. He never would have come up behind me otherwise. He said he knew it was a bad idea the minute he did it. But still...

I don’t know where to go.

This year was supposed to be my triumph but now I’m beating myself. Maybe there’s nothing here. Maybe I’m just supposed to be ordinary. Then again, maybe I’ll make it ok. Maybe there’s art here after all. Maybe it’ll be wonderful, and I’ll shake off these ghosts at last.

Maybe I just need to go to sleep.

Ah, the Day Log: I remember this thing! Keep in mind, I'm totally cool with daylogs, I don't think daylogs suck, I've been really busy, is all. It's difficult to node what's not noded already, I'm finding. I'm having to hit Random Node again and again, just so I can find a topic. It doesn't always work, I'm not ashamed to tell you. It's actually sort of fun. Even though Webster_1913 comes up a fuck of a lot.

But I'm saying things that have already been said somewheres else, aren't I?

I'm composing this in Notepad - the only part of Windows that hasn't gone fubar on me at least once - and I'm voting simultaneously. This is hard. But I love some of the gems I find in Random Nodes, stuff by Webster_1913. Some's damned incomprehensible.

I'd like to relate, if I could, some of my thoughts regarding the writing process. That is, the writing process as it relates to me. If it were any different, and if I felt as if I were a qualified and accomplished enough writer to speak for a great portion of people, this would be its own node. Also, I'd probably be in university, ready to teach high school english.

I've been encountering a lot of difficulty. Up until now, it's always been somewhat of a game to me. Writing has always been something that I felt I had an aptitude for. The stringing together of word and word into a sentence, sentence and sentence into paragraph. And so on. It's a lot deeper than just coming up with cool-sounding fluff, I've found:

The boyish figure stood, with its hand outstretched, and he knew that, even with the madness upon him, that he could see the stars bouncing off the blood on the ground.

Ha. Sounds cool. Also needs work. Needs to be better. I am presently engrossed in E2's fiction. There's not a lot, I'm afraid to say, not as much as there should be. What I've been doing is, aside from reading at home (I'm putting my present reads at the bottom, just for you! That's right, You!), is taking a gander at E2's fiction, and them comparing it to my own. I am better than some, I am worse than some. In my own opinion, which I will NOT share in some ways, I am in the lower half. My writing is shit, compared to some of the lovely work I've read here. This makes me feel good.

It means that I can get better, actually. That's what it means to me. It means that I can, even though I have a gift, better that gift. I'm not going to kid myself and say that I'm going to be the next great big name, after I better myself. I won't.

(For example, look at all those tiny words above. It looks uglier as I continue to stare at it. But fuck it, this is just a day log, I'm not too worried.)

Actually, I think I'll get my shit together and node lots of stuff about writing, that I'm gleaning from various stories. But I guess it should be said: read all the time. It helps. With that said, I'll stop rushing this daylog, and go eat. Here's that list:

Dreamcatcher, Stephen King

Shogun, James Clavell

Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

Fire Sea, Margaret Weis, and Tracy Hickman

Secret Windows, Stephen King

My cat Tenchi died yesterday. He just dropped dead. One minute my husband was petting him in the hall, then next, I walked into the kitchen and found him laying on his side, as though he ware having a little rest, except his tongue was hanging out and his eyes were staring off into infinity. He was only three years old. He was not sick or injured. The vet said it could have been an embolism or an aneurism. This is my first personal encounter with death.

The brown of the earth
And the bright white of heaven
Slept on the front porch

I've slipped into "Lebowski mode" (Think Jeff Bridges in "The Big Lebowski"). Wake up at 3PM, stumble out of my house in a bathrobe, frantically trying to light a cigarette. Between jobs, not a full-time student anymore, nothing to do but Slack and wait to hear back from my resume submissions. My friends back here at home know how to party, and the mini-raves and freak-outs that punctuate every weekend only serve to blur reality further.

I feel like I'm slowly falling asleep, over the course of several weeks. This wasn't how it was all supposed to end. I'm supposed to be in school, playing in the marching band, organizing Counterstrike matches between the dorms at Uconn. Instead, here's starting the Rest of My Life, and it just seems too soon (it IS too soon, two years too soon). I feel like i'm fading out. Not because I don't go out and party anymore (because I do), but because there just dosen't seem to be a point to it all.

Today at work, someone came up to me and said, "I was told that you smoke, I'll give you a dollar if you'll give me a cigarette." At which point I gave him a blank look because I do not smoke and do not know anyone who would tell him that I did. I thought maybe it was the new girl, so after affirming that I did not smoke with the guy, I asked Angie if she told him that.

She gave me a disbelieving look. "He asked me the same thing!" she exclaimed. "He said 'the girl at the counter told me you smoked!'"

Curiouser and curiouser.

We determined that he probably uses that so that smokers who don't want to give up a cig can't just opt out and say "I don't smoke." If one professes to have been told you smoke, you can't back out of it without sounding like a dork. Unless, of course, you're truly baffled by it like I was. What a freak!

(Unless Amy in the café told him that. But then, why would she tell him that both of us smoked when neither of us does? Odd.)

My new manager is what they call "operationally compliant." That translates to "follows all the rules that make no sense and cause lots of unnecessary work for everyone." Like keeping the back door locked, which makes no sense since everyone has to go in and out of that door six times a day and EVERY trip then requires a manager to escort them back there WITH keys. No sense! None!

My 1,000-calorie diet continues; it seems I have more room to breathe today. I think the difference is cutting out fruit juice from my lunch, since it's so high-calorie even though it's good for you. I should just drink water and concentrate on getting the nutrients through my solid food.

Today's menu:

Breakfast:
1 peanut butter granola bar: 120 calories

Lunch:
1 English Muffin: 120 calories
1 apple: 80 calories
8 Wheat Thins crackers: 65 calories
1 Chips Ahoy cookie: 53 calories

Snack:
1½ cup salad: 15 calories
2 tablespoons Miracle Whip: 70 calories
1 tablespoon Heinz Ketchup: 40 calories
(I keep having this every day . . . no more 'cause the salad supply is gone, having gone bad. Can't have this snack again until I replenish.)

Dinner:
1 hard-boiled egg: 75 calories
2 strips Morningstar Breakfast Strips (fake bacon): 60
2/3 cup carrots & peas: 50 calories
1 packet oatmeal: 100 calories
Last time this tasted like ass, so I'm trying it with milk this time.
½ cup skim milk: 45 calories
¼ cup lite syrup: 30 calories

That makes my grand total of calories today 923, with 77 to play with. I think I already used it up snacking on that high-calorie cake I baked last week . . . I nibbled a few bites of it, but that is a lot since a TWELFTH of the fucking thing is 270 calories or something. Ugh.