Bonding

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I don’t fit in at work. I’ve been really self-conscious of this lately as I’ve watched the teasing and banter my colleagues have with each other. When they work closely with one another they chat away; when I work closely with someone there’s silence. I know I’m not imagining things because this came up during my last two evaluations*. 

It’s not like there’s anything wrong with my coworkers. They’re not cliquey or rude. I just can’t get the hang of small talk. I used to be able to. I don’t know what happened. That’s one of the most frustrating things about depression—even when you’re having a functional day, you still remember when you were well, and the person you were then is so foreign to you. 

I’m not sure what I should do, except go to work and keep trying. 

_____ 

* What also came up is the fact that I don’t smile enough. 

Summer Champ

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I won a prize at work!  

You know how at some cash registers at some stores they try to get you to enroll in their email reward programs? The ones you probably say no to because you don’t want to get anymore junk mail?  

Well I have managed to sign up a higher percentage of people than anyone else at the store. Mind you, that’s still a pretty low percentage overall, but I’m way above average. So much so that the managers want me to share my secret* with other employees. 

Go me! 

_____ 

* I don’t actually know my secret. I just ask people if they want to join, and a lot of people say yes. 

The Fall Guy

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A few weeks ago at work I fell off a ladder. For the second time. I’m pretty sure they think of me there as That Guy Who Falls Off Ladders.  

It could have been worse, though. It could have been like my first time, where I lashed out to brace myself on the closest shelf, only to have it collapse, spilling its contents all over me, so I grasped at the one underneath it, only to have it collapse, spilling its contents all over me, so I grasped at the one underneath it, only to have it collapse, spilling its contents all over me, until I thudded against the floor, covered in kitchen organizers.  

One of our employee mottos is “Safety First,” but I am clearly too much of a rebel to abide by it. 

Customer Service

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Disclaimer: I take my job seriously and treat my customers with the utmost respect. That said … 

A woman today came up to me at the cash register and told me she was looking for the “old-fashioned tabs.” I asked her exactly what kind of tabs she was looking for, she said “the old-fashioned tabs.” I asked her what she was planning on using them for, and she said, “organizing.” I asked her where in the store she purchased them before, and she said, “I don’t remember. Just that they were the old-fashioned tabs.” I asked her what specifically she was looking for, and she said impatiently, “The Old. Fashioned. Tabs.”  

Meanwhile, the line behind her grew.  

Ordinarily in this situation I would go to a computer and search for what the item might be based on a general description. But “old-fashioned tabs” wasn’t giving me much to go on (I even typed in “old-fashioned tabs” just to see if it was a brand name I was unaware of. I’ve been surprised by that kind of thing before.).  

Meanwhile the line behind her grew. 

So I tapped a bunch of buttons on the keyboard at random and said to her with great disappointment, “Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t carry those anymore.” 

“That’s okay, I didn’t think you did,” she replied, clearly satisfied with the exchange. 

The rest of the day was a bit more normal. 

Working Stiff

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Last September I lost my job editing for one or two reasons, so I had to find a new one to bring just a little bit of money into the household. And now I’m working retail. I’ve been at this place part-time for seven months now, and to be honest, I’m a little embarrassed about it.  

I’m a trained, experienced editor with a decade of office experience under my belt. I’m a published author and a somewhat talented artist who (occasionally) sells greeting cards. And I spend fifteen to twenty hours a week behind a cash register, and I’m not that great at it. 

I am aware that there is something a little bit snobbish about my embarrassment, but not as much as you’d think. I work with people from seventeen to seventy, and I don’t judge a single one of them; they all have their reasons for being there–some out of necessity, some for just a little extra money, and some genuinely love what they do. So why am I so down on myself, if I’m not down on them? 

It may just be because I’m down in general. I haven’t been okay since last summer. I don’t feel like I have anything to contribute to the world, basically. It’s why I don’t post all that much anymore. Some of this is probably a midlife crisis. Much of it is the mental illness I’ve been struggling with all my life, which has been a major source of frustration for my psychiatrist, who can’t find the right cocktail to reduce the pain.  

But in the end, what I’m trying to say is this: I work at The Container Store* now. For better or for worse, it’s what I do. 

__________ 

* We sell containers. It’s the most on-the-nose name for a retail chain. 

You Win Some, You Booze Some

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By July 2007, it became clear because reasons that I had little control when it came to alcohol. Kate asked me to take a month off, and I agreed. However, I wasn’t particularly consistent with this. 

One evening, I realized that I couldn’t be trusted, and that I was only cheating myself, and that I needed to walk away forever if I was going to change for the better. Eight years later, I’m feeling pretty good about this decision. 

Cruel Summer

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In August of 2014, Robin Williams committed suicide. I took it pretty hard. It’s not so much because I’m a big fan of his work; it’s because of what it said about me. I logged off of Facebook and Tumblr for a full week after this, because I didn’t want to see everybody’s assessment of the event. Regardless, I saw everybody’s assessment of the event. 

As a bipolar, I have a rhythm—autumn puts me into hypomanic phases, winter and spring are pretty stable, and summer lulls me into a deep, deep depression. Therefore I was barely holding on anyway when this happened, crippling me with grief. Add this to the guilt of feeling so miserable, despite how wonderful my life is, with the cats and the spouse and the adventures and the time to write and draw as much as I want; and my own death was not far from my mind. 

It’s said that suicide is the coward’s way out. I disagree with this fully. At those lowest of moments, all I could think of is the burden I put onto my spouse—we’d been married for five years before I’d gotten a proper mental-health diagnosis, and the damage done to her is incalculable. What she needed, I told myself, was to be free of me. 

What this brought me back was my parents. For a long time, they’ve looked at me as the go-to guy for info on bipolar, attention-deficit disorder, and depression. I have them, I’ve learned about them, and in their mind, I’ve beaten them. My sister was not so lucky. She’d attempted suicide many times, and, and I’d been the one who was able to get through to her (this is because I’m anti-platitude).  

It was me my parents turn to for comfort and reassurance. For years, I’ve been an expert in (mostly) keeping the depths of my depression to myself, especially from them. Can you imagine what it would do to them if I finally snapped? So I was able to talk myself out of it, no matter how hard it got. 

In the end, I recovered, then hit my annual manic period, then cycled rapidly, and finally stabilized … for now. Summer’s starting, and I’m worried. Will it be as bad as before? Or will the thrill of returning to the States keep me afloat? I have no idea. 

I haven’t been able to talk about this to anyone but my spouse and my psychiatrist (because reasons), but I really, really need to share with someone else. And my journal is locked … and now it’s out there. Keep your fingers crossed that I make it to late September in a somewhat chipper mood. 

YARGH!

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So about a year ago, I stopped sending query letters out for my novel. I had a lot of reasons for this, like, for example, LJ Idol, but mostly it was because the rejections were getting increasingly discouraging. A few months later I began to send out short stories in earnest, and have lately begun to get positive results. 

Recently I have been encouraged (long story) to query a particular publishing house with the full-length book. I’ve written a killer, double-triple-quadruple-checked cover letter and included the first five thousand words in the e-mail, as per the submission guidelines. 

And I got the yips, bad. The e-mail is in my drafts folder right now, waiting for me to hit the [send] button, but I physically can’t bring myself to hit the [send] button. This is such an important, personal project to me, and another rejection—particularly after all that (long story) encouragement is going to break my heart. 

But if I don’t hit the [send] button, they won’t have the opportunity not to reject it … 

YARGH! I am driving me nuts! 

Rome, if You Want To

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My spouse and I just returned from a cruise of the Mediterranean, and I was shocked to find out we were not the youngest couple there–not by a long shot. This was good, because it helped me stave off my midlife crisis just a little longer. This was bad because, just once, I was hoping to be the baby again, like I had been in my New York social circle so long ago. Regardless, cruisin’ and touristin’ it up were a blast*, and I was not happy to return home. 

Here are just ten random thoughts from my trips ashore.  

  1. Our cruise ship played that song when we pulled into port at Istanbul. It left me wondering what they would play when we pulled into Greece: “Summer Nights” or “You’re the One That I Want.” 
  1. In Istanbul I have seen in person the sword of King David, the staff of Moses, a tooth and lock of beard from the Prophet Mohammad, and assorted pieces of John the Baptist. 
  1. The main activity for tourists at the Acropolis is complaining about all the other tourists at the Acropolis. 
  1. There seems to be a law in quaint Greek towns that every male has to work out. Because dang. 
  1. There are a lot of strip clubs in Athens. 
  1. Herculaneum is one of the most breathtaking places I’ve ever seen, second to Machu Picchu. 
  1. Most of the hazelnuts used in Nutella are farmed near Rome, making it as holy a site to me as the Vatican is to Catholics. Meanwhile, in the Vatican: 
  1. St. Peter’s Basilica is bigger than you’d think. The Sistine Chapel is smaller than you’d think. There are a lot more gift shops in the Vatican than you’d think. 
  1. The French are not impressed with your attempts to speak their language. 
  1. Barcelona is Catalonia. Catalonia is not Spain. Therefore, Barcelona is not Spain. (And they will not hesitate to tell you that). 

There is, frankly, too much to get into here, and that’s because Oh my God, I got, like, three acceptance letters while I was on vacation as well as an editor who wants me to slightly revise a romance story I’d submitted to her anthology (mostly I need to make the hanky-panky at the climax—Ha! “Climax”!—a little hankier-pankier). That puts me at six-and-a-half acceptances. Maybe I am on a hot streak. 

Also, Venice is really weird, guys. It’s like an alien snatched up intimate corners of Europe–people from every race, buildings from every century, pillars from ancient Rome, weather from wherever—plopped these things onto a swamp, linked everything together with an inconceivable variety of bridges, applied gondolas, and opened it up to tourists. I totally want to live there.  

_____ 

* So much food. So. Much. Regret. 

Who Writes This Craps?

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So I’ve been thinking about gambling. For example, there’s craps. I’m not 100 percent certain of the rules, but I do know that it’s a game of chance: you throw a pair of dice, and they need to land with a certain series of numbers facing up.  

So let’s say you’re in a ritzy casino, and you’re wearing your finest tux or gown—whichever way you swing, really. You clutch the dice in a loose fist, shake your wrist, and toss them onto the table.  

It comes up exactly as you want it.  

The crowd cheers, you do a little fist pump, place another bet, do another shake, and toss another toss. 

Again, you get exactly what you’re shooting for. 

You do another fist pump, make another bet, shake, and toss. 

For a third time, you win. 

You’re on fire. You scoop up the dice, blow on them for luck, and throw. 

That little gust of wind from your lips has to control the movement of your arm, the ricochet of those little cubes off of your fingers, and the angle it flies out of your hand. It has to guide the distance and number of tumbles it takes, factoring in wind resistance. Once on the table, it needs to balance the pressure of impact, followed by the amount of bounces and turns until the friction of the table brings the dice to a halt. Long story short, luck has a lot of work to do. 

This occurred to me this morning as I received a third acceptance letter (yay me!) for a short story. To understand how awesome this felt, you have to be aware of the way I treat publishing. For the past year, I’ve been sending out to magazines and anthologies about a submission a week, and I’ve been getting responses a little less frequently than that. My first acceptance letter came in August of 2014. My second came six weeks ago, after dozens of rejections. And now I have a third, with only one rejection between it and the last one. So when I received the “We’re very happy to say you’ve been accepted …” email this morning, I said to myself, “I am on a hot streak, baby!”  

My second thought was, “Easy there, buddy.” 

I currently have eleven stories out there in the ether, and two (almost) back-to-back acceptances don’t change the odds of publication for any of them. “Well, what does change the odds?” I asked myself. 

Well, assuming I’m a decent enough writer (I like to think I am), then the answer is nothing. An unsolicited piece of writing is affected by any number of factors. 

My pieces tend to run humorous—but what if the editor had been looking for something more serious? I write almost exclusively female protagonists—but what if the editor is a tiny bit misogynistic? I’m not crazy about fairies—but what if fairies are cool at the moment? What if the editor is in a bad mood? What if the editor checked his or her email after a liquid lunch? How many other entries are there? What if mine gets caught in the spam filter? I have no control over any of this. 

And so, when I sent out another piece today, I thought of it not as an act of talent and skill, but rather as a die-roll. And oddly enough, this makes me feel pretty good about it.