Tag Archives: day-to-day

Modest Tea

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I’m not a success by any means. I’m only a marginally published author, and I don’t think I’ll be published any more than I already have been. I’m not an artist, not anymore, even after all the work I put into it over the past ten years. I’m divorced and living in the curtained-off living room of a one-bedroom apartment, most of my stuff in storage. I can’t get a job, despite four solid months of looking—though I do have insurance and some work at The Container Store. The Murphy name terminates with me, in that I have no children.  

When my ancestors, who fought and toiled their way through Ireland and Poland to get to the United States and battled in wars and suffered to bring me to being, look at me, will they be disappointed?  

Probably not, because I’m happy. I’ve got a lot to worry about, but I live a good life. I have lived a good life. I’ve seen the world. I lived in one of the most exciting cities on the planet for six years. I’m living in an exciting city now. I’ve met countless people who have enriched my life. I’ve written six novels and am in the home stretch of a seventh. I’ve got a cat who may be the most annoying animal in the world, but he is the most precious thing to me. My roommate is the Queen of Cracking Me Up.  

I know that my ancestors would see that I’m not toiling in a field eighteen hours a day, that I had married for love, that I’m broke but not starving, that my name and my memory will carry on long after I’m dead because of the people I’ve touched—not just because of genetics, that I can turn my dreams into words that live in my hard drive, but may go elsewhere, who knows, I’m not counting anything out. They would see all of this and breathe a sigh of relief. They would be proud. They may not understand things like cafes, but they would be proud that I go to them so frequently and drown myself in my imagination. They would be proud that I made something of myself. That something may not be CEO or bestselling novelist, but it’s enough. It’s all I want*.  

And so, on this, my forty-third birthday, I give myself a slow clap. I did it—I kept it together, despite how hard the world (and my biology) have made it. That calls for some cake. 

_________________________ 

* Well, that and a freaking job. 

Something About a Bullfrog

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One of the advantages of having such an unusual name is that, when I hear someone say “Jeremiah,” I’m 80 percent certain they’re talking to or about me. So I’m trained to react to it like a dog reacts to its own name.  

That’s why I was in a state of such high alert when the lacrosse bros were sitting behind me in the cafe, having a long, detailed conversation about their bro, Jeremiah. I was so tense and unfocused while they were there that I don’t think I wrote more than a paragraph. By the time they wrapped up, I was a wreck, relieved that they and their bro were gone. 

Taking their place were a middle-aged lady and a teenage boy who, based on their conversation, were a church youth leader and a church youth. They talked about, at length, a fellow youth named Jeremiah. Was this this same Jeremiah as bro Jeremiah? It doesn’t matter. I have a repetitive stress injury from my ears perking up every time they heard that name.  

I don’t think I can adequately express the amount of anxiety that hearing my name coming from strangers causes me. That’s why I avoid wearing my name tag at work. It’s been literally years since I’ve heard my name spoken about a person who wasn’t me, so the bombardment gave me a bit of a complex. That’s why I was so relieved to go to work that evening, where people don’t ever use my name, even when they are referring to me. 

Enter Sandman

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Want to hear something that’s going to make some people absolutely hate me? I have full control over my sleep. I can stay up as late as I want (within reason), wake up as early as I want (though it might take one or two snooze buttons for me to roll out of bed), and—and this is the one that’s going to annoy people—go to sleep within ten minutes of closing my eyes in bed. The other night I went to bed an hour early because I wanted to wake up an hour earlier, and I was out like a light, even though I’d had two glasses of iced tea with dinner. Also, I can sleep through anything, which helps because my roommate comes home late from school and has dinner, and there’s only a curtain separating the kitchen from my pillows. 

This didn’t used to be this way. I used to toss and turn for hours and rise from bed like a rotting zombie, but I changed somehow, I don’t know how, and I do not, for one minute, take this skill for granted. 

Funny You Should Mention

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For a little over a year, I’ve been lamenting the loss of my humor. One of the side effects of finding the calm and emotional stability that I needed to function in the everyday world seemed to be that I ceased to be funny. I used to make people laugh, it was one of my sources of pride. I was sorry to see it go, but I had come to accept that this was who I was now. It was one of these Doctor Who-style regenerations I’m always going off about during my birthday. People would hear tales of me telling a joke, and the person they’d be hearing about would be as foreign to them as the hard-drinking Jeremiah is to anybody who met me after 2007. 

And then an interesting thing started happening. People started laughing again. It started as I was living in my parents’ place, when I’d made jokes and they went over well with Mom and Dad, but also with the long-distance friendships I was rekindling, and later, with the new roommate/long-lost friend I’d found. It really hit home when I made a comment about the menu in the pizza place that got my roommate’s friend guffawing so loudly I thought we were going to get kicked out, that maybe my humor hadn’t died, it was just resting.  

Over the past two months and a week I’ve been learning to live a brand new life, but maybe it’s also giving me a chance to welcome an old one back too. 

Ringing in the New

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It’s hard to look back on 2018 without being blinded by that pretty momentous thing that happened at the end of the year that pretty much obscured everything else. I can say this about it though, on December 13, I had exactly one friend I thought I could count on, but in the following weeks, I had dozens. And not for nothing, I was able to reunite with my former best friend who I’d been forced to remove from my life when she and Kate became enemies. I have yet to get back on my feet, but the past two weeks have been relaxing and uplifting in a way that shouldn’t be the case for someone who went through what I went through. 

As for the rest of the year, I finished five novels, I did a thing on Amazon you’re about to find out about a little later, I spent Christmas with my parents for the first time since I was in college, I saw glaciers, I worked at a job that I actually kind of liked and really started to warm up to my coworkers, I had a conversation with my estranged sister. It’s a pretty short list because all I really did with my time in 2018 was go to work and write. And I was content doing just that. It was a quiet, productive life, and I really liked it. And I’d still be doing that today had circumstances not happened the way they had. 

2019 is going to be a really big year for me, and I thank you, with all of my heart, for being here as it happens. 

Declaring Marital Law

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Yesterday, at the beginning of what I assumed was a routine marriage counseling session, Kate handed me divorce papers and a folder filled with everything I needed to do in the next few days to extricate myself from her life, as well as a letter in which she asked me not to contact her again, and then she walked away, leaving me with two-and-a-half days to clear out the condo so she can move into it without me while she stayed with friends. To say this was a surprise is an understatement. When I went into that session, I was fully prepared to brag about how well I thought things were going. 

So, yeah, I had no clue this was going to happen. Actually, that’s not true. I had several clues, like the way she asked me how to do the things that are typically my job to do in the house—like medicating the cats. I asked her why, and she gave me some nice answers that didn’t include impending divorce. So, I thought, don’t be ridiculous. Kate would never dump you in secret like that. She trusts you. She would talk to you. Evidently not because here I am, kicked out of my home, away from my best friend of fourteen years, having my cats snatched from me, being forced to quit my job and live with my parents. 

The fact is, Kate and I have been living separate lives for a while now. She has work, work-related travel, CrossFit, being an organizational member of three pagan groups, and close friends she loves to spend time with. I write a lot of novels and work every weekend. We only ever saw each other a few hours a week. But I honestly thought this would just be a chapter in our story (the one in which we find personal enrichment apart and then come back together). 

I’m not going to contest anything. Financially she’s always held us up, and otherwise, she had long ago made up her mind to systematically eliminate me from her life, so there’s no changing her opinion. 

I’ll be spending my last days in my home doing the things I need to so to start a new life, packing up, and spending time with the cats, especially Andrew, whose last days I’d always assumed I’d be here for. 

I’m angry, hurt, confused, and overwhelmed. We’ll see how I do as the days go on. 

Pet Dad Dilemma

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This past summer, Kate and I took Andrew to the vet, fully expecting to be coming home with an empty carrier. He wasn’t eating or grooming or doing anything other than curling up in the cave underneath the scratching post. He’s eighteen years old, and he has either pancreatitis or pancreatic cancer—this was inevitable. But rather than do something final, the vet prescribed a new painkiller and appetite stimulant sent us home to give him one more chance to pull through. Some time to say goodbye. It only took a day for him to return to his old self.  

Six months later, he’s doing great, but he is definitely old. During his last appointment, the vet told us that we didn’t need to bring him in ever again, that the next time he sees a doctor will be the last time. Which begs the question, how will I know it’s time? I’ve asked this question of a lot of people, and the consistent answer is, he’ll tell me. But will I listen? 

Here’s the problem: he’s pretty achy. You can tell by how slow he moves and the position of his tail. My attempts to increase his painkiller dose any farther than it already is have turned him into a sleep zombie, so I’ve scaled it back. But, even though he seems to be feeling some pain, he’s pretty active. He helps me cook, and he follows me from room to room. He’s cuddly, he’s playful, he’s grooming himself nicely, and he’s so hungry. When I look at him, I don’t see a cat who’s ready to retire. Am I just seeing what I want to see? Has he been signaling that it’s time to go, and I’ve been missing it because I desperately don’t want him to go? I mean, he’s literally been with me a third of my life, and I can’t imagine living in this little condo without him.  

I do understand that Andrew has lived a long life full of love, comfort, and adventure. It’s not him who will be missing out when he retires. I know that. 

So which is it? Is he hanging around because he wants to? Because he wants to sniff a few more things, sleep on a few more laps before it’s time? Or am I being selfish and not letting him go? I don’t know, and I don’t know how I’ll ever know. What I do know is that he’s my friend, and I want what’s best for him, and I hope to figure out what that is soon. 

Bookmaking

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In March of 2017, I started to write again, ending a two-year drought. I wrote stories to submit to magazines and anthologies, and I wrote stories for the writing contest I love to play in. When I got booted from the contest, and when I got tired of rejection letters, I came to a crossroads. I was finding that I really love to write, but I couldn’t just write for no reason, I needed a goal. I needed a story idea. And so, a year ago, I decided I was going to write a novel. I didn’t know what it was going to be about or what was going to happen in it, but I figured I’d work through that as it became necessary. 

Four months later, I found myself at another crossroads. I was almost done with my novel, and I really loved the act of writing. What should I do? It turned out I should write the sequel. And again, three months later. And so, as of this writing, I’ve got four completed novels, and I’m well into my fifth. 

They’re not very good. I don’t mean that the writing’s bad or that I’m a bad writer in general (I happen to think I’m pretty good at it), but writing my way, i.e. not knowing how a chapter is going to end when I start it, has been described in every article, blog, and podcast as the wrong way to write a novel. I don’t really do recognizable character arcs—my main character does the thing because it’s the right thing, and she’s the most qualified to do it, and she doesn’t really change. I simply think of something that fits the characters and situations and might present a challenge, and I run with it.  

Also, I have too much dialogue. Every editor I’ve ever encountered has told me I write too much dialogue. So fuck those guys, I’m writing for me. 

I’m considering publishing on Amazon, but that’s a lot of work for what will ultimately be very little reward. And I’m utterly incapable of promoting myself, so that’s something I need to figure out before I take that leap. 

So, long story short, if you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to, it’s been me and my fountain pens living in an urban fantasy world with spirits-demons and fairies and gods and the corporation that secretly controls the country. Who knows, maybe you’ll get to see it someday. 

A Turd in the Hand

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I didn’t know the dog poop was on my shoe until I pulled it off and got it all over my hand. People not cleaning up after their dogs is something that gets discussed a lot at condo board meetings, but no one seems to have any solutions. I say if you see someone not cleaning up after their dogs, you should shoot them with a paintball gun, because Jesus, how freaking hard is it to pick up crap with a plastic bag, when the condo freaking provides plastic bags? 

This has really ruined my morning. 

The Pen Is Mighty

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On my birthday, I woke up and biked eight miles to a cafe a few towns over that I love. I ordered a latte and some chocolate cake, because it’s my birthday and I want cake. I get my latte and my cake, settle into a table, and get to work updating my journal.  

That’s when the guy shows up. He’s an older man, mid-fifties, in sandals and socks, and he is fascinated by my pens. I can’t blame him. They’re a set of twenty-five felt tip pens that run the spectrum from shades of brown and green to shades of red and orange (including black and gray). The man likes office supplies, and so do I, so we bond over that. He concludes by handing me a card and telling me he owns and operates a “Global cannabis business.” Then he goes to the restroom, which is right behind me.  

I put his card in my bag and go back to journaling. 

A few minutes later he sits down at my table and asks me what my passions are. I tell him. He asks what the thing I’d like to accomplish the most is (getting a lot of people to read my writing). He says, “You and your wife should come by my place this weekend. We’ll talk. I could get you those readers.” I say thanks. He tells me about the three Cs of his life: Christ, Cannabis, and Capitalism. But especially cannabis. And he tells me why. Eventually he leaves.  

I didn’t go to his place. I wonder if I’m going to see him again at that cafe. I wonder if he’ll remember me. He’ll definitely remember my pens.