Observations From the Gym

—Or—

I’m Not Really Holier Than Thou, It Just Sounds That Way


As with a few of my previous blog posts, I have to begin this one with a caveat:

I am not a certified personal trainer. I am not a doctor. I am not an expert in physical fitness or exercise physiology. The observations I make below are for fun and good humor—at least, I hope it’s good. Where I poke fun at certain activities one tends to come across in gyms, I’ve also made a point to acknowledge the benefits of said activities, and pay lip service to all the counterarguments.


This post is intended to entertain and amuse, not to infuriate. I’ve written it in good fun, and I hope you’ll receive it in the same spirit.


Okay. Now that the business is out of the way, here we go…


Most of the jobs I’ve ever held were cushy office jobs. I’ve sat in front of computers, and I’ve sat in classrooms. Even when I worked inside airplanes, I still sat in front of a computer. Since most of the rest of my life was also pretty sedentary, I’ve deliberately made exercise a non-negotiable part of my life. Even if it just means walking to the library or post office instead of driving, I try to do some kind of physical activity every day. (That is, physical activity that involves more than picking up and setting down the remote control, or the rapid firing of my fingers across the keyboard as I type snotty blog posts about things I see and hear at the gym.) My devotion to exercise is also the result of my lifelong battle with what I see in the mirror, but if I go off on that tangent, this post will be about ten times longer than it is now, and it’s already ridiculously long.


In the interest of getting on with things, let’s just say I’ve been exercising regularly for about twelve years. (Not continually, of course. A girl’s gotta sleep! And eat! And daydream!) During that time, I’ve used gyms in California, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Washington, DC, Nebraska, and Iraq. I’ve been to enough gyms in enough places that think I’ve acquired a pretty good idea of how they’re supposed to work. Well, maybe not how they’re supposed to work so much as how I like them to work.


I like gyms that are gyms. Not health clubs, spas, or wellness centers. I have nothing against saunas and massage services (as long as that’s really what they are, and there are no “happy endings” involved). I don’t use them, but I realize other people do, so I’m not bothered by their mere existence. Still, for my purposes, they’re really just fluff.


I like gyms that are, for lack of a better word, manly. I like cardio machines, free weights, lifting machines, and benches. I don’t like fancy lighting, pretty carpet, or nice artwork on the walls. I prefer a bare bones approach to gym décor. It doesn’t have to be bleak and depressing, of course. No one wants to work out in a dungeon. But most frills are just that. Frills. It’s like the fancy packaging some high-end retail stores wrap your purchases in. Tissue paper, ribbons, and nice bags with rope handles are a nice touch, but they don’t change what’s in the bag.


I like gyms that aren’t meat markets. I like gyms where people go to work out, work hard, and go home. I don’t like gyms where guys spend a few minutes doing a couple of sets of this and that, and then spend the rest of the time shooting the breeze, as if the mere act of standing inside a gym is enough to gain results. As if they could get a better body through osmosis. (If only! If there are any engineers out there reading this, when you invent a way to do this, call me!) Gyms can be good places to meet people, but I don’t like gyms where people try too hard. I like gyms where women dress like they’re there to work out, not to whore themselves out. I know people sweat when they exercise. Believe me, I know. I have to hang my workout clothes up to dry before putting them into my laundry bag. (Gross, but true. Someone once told me sweating like I do is a sign of good hydration. So there!) Getting hot and sweating a lot are not reasons to wear skimpy clothes to the gym. A sports bra is not a shirt! It’s a bra! Put something over it! (Okay, who am I kidding? If I had a flat stomach, I would totally work out in a sports bra…)


Before I left for U.S. Air Force basic training, I belonged to a gym in my hometown. Now that I’m out of the military and back home for a little while, I joined again. Big changes happened there in the four years I was away. First, it’s under new ownership. Second, it’s been expanded. It’s almost three times the size it used to be. Third, whereas the previous incarnation was the classic bare bones gym I alluded to earlier, now they offer classes in traditional aerobics, yoga, boxing, spinning, and Zumba—whatever the heck that is. (Someone said it was some kind of Latin dancing or something? Whatever.) There’s a babysitting service. There’s a big, beautiful locker room, complete with showers and comfy benches, where there used to be nothing but two bathrooms—one male, one female—both the size of broom closets. There’s also a juice bar, where you can get pre-workout drinks, recovery drinks, protein shakes, fruit smoothies, and probably a handjob, if you asked the girl behind the counter nicely enough. (And if you’re a guy.)


All things considered, it’s a vast improvement. I imagine it’s especially welcoming to people who don’t like a bare bones gym. People who are, in fact, intimidated by places where there’s nothing but big, scary machines, and lots of big, scary guys with arms as thick as my thighs milling about. I like the new gym. It has frills for the people who are comforted by frills, and the main area of the gym is still perfect for people who want to work out and go home. It’s spacious and sufficiently equipped that I’ve never had to wait for a machine or a specific weight of dumbbell.


That being said, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have anything negative to say. (Seriously. If you’re reading this, then you probably know me personally, and you know how I do so love to get disproportionately enraged over simple things. [Personal aside to M: *doot* RAAAAH!] But I try to do so in a funny way, and I hope I haven’t fallen short this time.)


And so, I offer the following treatise on gym etiquette. It does not contain the usual advice, which most gym goers should already be familiar with. If this category doesn’t include you, here’s a quick lesson:


1. If you sweat to the point that it drips onto the machines, grab a towel and wipe up after yourself.

2. Kindly remove the weight plates from the bars when you’re done and restack them in their proper places. It’s great that you can bench 250 pounds. I can’t, oh great Mr. Beefcake, so do the weakling girls like me a favor and don’t make me unload a bunch of your plates before stacking on a few of my own. Yes, technically, I could view this as an added bonus to my workout, but I’m more likely to view it as an inconvenience brought upon me by a rude meathead who lacks common courtesy.


And now, for my observations. We’ll start with…


The management


1. Why do you insist on pumping music through the PA system (or whatever it’s called—the speakers that make up the surround-sound system in the main area of the gym, that encompasses everything but the aerobics room, boxing room, and locker rooms)? After looking around and taking note of my fellow gym goers’ listening habits, I’ve come to the conclusion that most people prefer to work out to their own music. Most people on the treadmills, bikes, and elliptical machines have earphones in their ears and a long wire attached to some sort of listening device that is either strapped to their arm, nestled in a pocket in their pants or shorts or, as is the case with my poor man’s mp3 player, placed securely in the holder on whatever machine I’m using.


Furthermore, why do you insist on keeping this music so loud that even with my own tunes turned up almost to the maximum volume, I can still hear yours in the background? Even though I don’t walk, run, or bike to the beat of any of the songs on my workout playlist, it still bothers me that my sheer enjoyment of the music is sullied by the relentless pounding bass of whatever you call the stuff you play. I can’t focus on the rhythm of my own music for the insistence of yours.


I’d like to say something to you about this one day. I’d like to walk up to the front desk and politely ask if you would mind turning it down. You don’t have to kill the music. Just make it low enough that the few people who want to hear it can, and the rest of us can enjoy our own carefully selected playlists that much more. The thing is, I’ve only been a member of this gym for about three weeks, so I don’t feel right asserting myself yet. Besides, maybe I’m the only one who has a problem with the loud music. After all, if other people were bothered by it, they would have already said something, right? Right?


2. If you’re going to go through the trouble of printing flyers and notices, and wasting a ton of colored ink in the process, couldn’t you at least have someone who knows something about punctuation take a quick look at them before plastering the gym with them? I appreciate the sentiment behind your year-end wishes, but Happy Holiday’s? Really? Really? A possessive s? I admit that I am not an expert on grammar and punctuation—as should be obvious to anyone who’s ever read this blog. I use those big dashes far too often, and also probably use parentheses too often, and incorrectly at that. But, like I told my friend, S, who’s a professional writer and editor, I write the way I talk. (Or is it speak? See? I don’t even know which is correct, and I’m not sure I care.) Outside of this blog, I mostly write fiction. I create characters, settings, themes, and sometimes, when I’m feeling ambitious, plots. But I don’t get hung up on where the commas go, or the em- and en- dashes. That’s for people like S, who know what they’re doing. Still, I know something about punctuation, even if it’s just a little something, and I know the phrase Happy Holidays does not require an apostrophe. (For a hilarious exploration of the few other things I know about punctuation, with a few jabs at spelling and grammar thrown in for kicks, wait on the edge of your seat for a future blog post. I promise lots of chuckles and nods of recognition when I bring up things like all the people who’ve resolved to “loose weight” in the new year, and other classics.)


Other than that, I have no complaints about the management at my gym. In fact, I’m pretty fond of the people who run the place. The gym is always clean and smells nothing like a gym. (This is an especially welcome change, as it’s the opposite of the gym I worked out at in Nebraska. Said gym was not air-conditioned. You can imagine how much fun that was in the dead of summer.) I like that I’ve never entered the building and swiped the membership card on my keychain without being greeted by someone at the front desk, and that I’ve never left after my workout without someone wishing me a good day.


Now that I’ve addressed the management, I’ll move on to…


The Men



1. Do you really need to put cologne on before hitting the weights? I appreciate that instead of smelling like sweat, you’d rather smell like the latest concoction being peddled by David Beckham, Kenneth Cole, Calvin Klein, or whatever new formula was dreamed up by the chemical engineers behind Axe and Old Spice. The thing is, you’re at the gym. People expect you to smell like sweat. That’s a good thing. That means you’re working. (Then again, let me be honest: if you did smell like sweat, I’d probably complain about that, too. But unless you have some unfortunate glandular condition that causes your individual brand of body odor to reek so stupendously, most guys get by just fine with a normal application of deodorant. [May I recommend Axe? Or Old Spice? Heehee.])


Seriously, though. If your cologne is so strong that it causes other gym goers—namely, me—to actually get dizzy when you walk by, you’re wearing too much. (By the way, going back to the grammar bit, I can’t believe I just used the word namely. I HATE namely! But I think the use was appropriate there. If not, I’m sure S will let me know.) If you applied your cologne in the morning, and it just happens not to have faded all that much during the day, I could see where that could be an acceptable excuse. However, if you applied your cologne in the morning, and it hasn’t worn off throughout the day, you probably put way too much on in the first place! (Either that, or you reapplied it during the day, in which case you’re worse than most women I know!)


I understand that a gym—even one that’s not a meat market—is a decent place to meet members of the opposite sex. However, do you really want a potential date’s first impression of you to be waking up to your hand waving in front of her face, with you asking if she’s okay, because she passed out when you walked up to her and she caught a whiff of your love spell (available at fine stores everywhere)? Furthermore, if she’s going to survive a date with you, she’s going to have to be able to breathe around you, so my advice is, go easy on the cologne and/or body spray.


2. Don’t be a hero. My gym has a wonderful and brilliant sign near the dumbbells and weight plates: If you can’t set the weight down gently, you can’t handle the weight! I respect the concept of working a muscle “to failure.” I respect the concept of pushing yourself beyond what you thought were your limits. And yet, every time I hear a stack of weights clanging fiercely into place, or a pair of dumbbells being dropped on the floor, I can’t help thinking that maybe, just maybe, you went a little too far.


There are several weightlifting philosophies out there, each with its own core concepts and areas of emphasis. Some of these suggest that the eccentric and concentric portions of weight lifting are equally important. That is, the work your muscles do as you lower a weight is just as important to building strength as the work they do as you lift that weight. If this is true (and I would imagine anyone who lifts slooowly will tell you it is), I’m not sure you’re getting the full benefit from that last rep when you barely lift the weight at all, and then drop it like a hot rock. (And now, I have to make sure I clarify things here. I admire anyone who pushes themselves hard, and who tries to lift more than they did the day, the week, or the month before. And if this means that on that last rep, it takes everything in you just to get the darn thing up—and maybe not even all the way—and you’ve sapped yourself so completely that you have no choice but to let go and let the weight fall where it may, I really have no problem with that. I’m impressed by it, in fact. After all, I think I read somewhere that Arnold Schwarzenegger once said something like, “It’s that last rep that really builds the muscle, when you’re exhausted and the only thing that gets the weight up is your sheer force of will.” Take my criticism in the spirit it’s intended. I’m just trying to be funny. Give me a break. It’s only a blog.)


3. Don’t be a caveman. What am I referring to? The grunting, of course. I’m not going to lie; I’ve been known to grunt and growl on my last few reps now and then. But can’t we agree that there’s a fine line between exerting yourself and going off the deep end? Just like challenging yourself to lift a weight you might not be quite ready for, I acknowledge that there’s a method behind the madness of grunting while trying to eek out that last rep or two. For some reason—and I’m sure there’s a fitness magazine or physical training trade publication somewhere that can tell you in exacting detail exactly what it is—letting go of your vocal inhibitions while you lift seems to make lifting easier. I’ve experienced this myself. I don’t know why, but those unintelligible grunts of exertion actually help me get through those last few reps, and with better form and focus than if I was just going through the motions until I hit the magic number. In my mind, I’m thinking, “Do it, do it, DO IT!” or, “Come on, come on, COME ON!” On especially dark occasions, after ninety minutes of staring at the impossibly lithe, thin, and perfectly proportioned gym pixies has really gotten to me, my saddlebags, my stretch marks, and my gut, I might be thinking, “You F-ing fatass, you F-fing fatass, you F-fing FATASS!” (Yeah…the growl from that last one can get out of hand pretty easily.) But whatever the words in my mind, what actually comes out of my mouth is a sound that could pass for either someone in the throes of passion, or someone being beaten with a baseball bat. Still, I manage to keep that sound relatively quiet. Can the guy next to me hear it? Yes. Can the guy all the way across the gym hear it? No. So why can I sometimes hear other people’s grunts all the way across the gym, even over the music blasting out of the wall-mounted speakers?!


Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate that you’re pushing yourself. I understand that those caveman sounds may very well help you to perform one or two more reps than you thought possible. And yet, I can’t help thinking those sounds could come out of your mouth just a little more quietly. You could argue that my own grunts are quieter because I am quieter. My 5’2” hm-hm-hm-pound body probably isn’t capable of producing the same volume or power of projection as your 6’3” 200-pound body is. (To M, whom I’m sure will read this eventually, did you actually think I was going to reveal my weight? HA! You know me better than that, don’t you?) But I’m not sure that argument holds much weight—no pun intended. Ever seen Celine Dion live? Well, neither have I, but from what I’ve seen on TV and heard on the radio, that tiny woman has got one BIG voice.


Another reason you might feel entitled to grunt much louder than me is that you’re lifting much more weight. Of course you are. If you were doing bicep curls with the same amount of weight I was, I might laugh at you. (No, I wouldn’t. Believe me. If you looked like that was all you could handle, I’d respect you for doing it, and for even being at the gym in the first place. We all have to start somewhere. But if you looked like you could lift two or three times as much as me, well then, yeah, I might laugh. Not at you, of course. I would chuckle softly to myself, as if recalling something funny from earlier in the day. But really, it would totally be because of you.)


This argument doesn’t hold much weight, either. After all, lifting is a relative thing. What’s heavy to me would be a joke to, say, Mario Lemieux. (Lest you think I’ve abandoned my love of hockey…I’ve gotten away from it in the past few years, and I know it’s been several seasons since Mario last donned a jersey with a big penguin on the front and the number 66 on the back, but I would imagine he’s still in fine male form, if ya know what I mean.) If I can lift something that’s heavy to me, and grunt only a little, can’t you lift something that’s heavy to you, and also grunt only a little? I mean, let’s face it: Isn’t there a fine line between vocalizing the effort you’re putting forth, and sounding like a total idiot?



Now that I’ve sufficiently emasculated the men, I’ll move on to…


The Women



1. No cell phones while on the cardio equipment! And now that I think of it, no cell phones in the gym at all! Unless you’re a brain surgeon, a heart surgeon, a first-responder who’s on-call, or your mother/sister/daughter/friend is nine months pregnant and likely to pop at any minute, KEEP YOUR DAMN PHONE IN YOUR LOCKER. That’s what they’re for, y’know: your car keys, your coat, your purse, maybe a change of clothes, AND YOUR FREAKING PHONE. This applies to women and men, of course, but I see women violating the rule much more often than men do.

If you can hold a conversation while you’re on the treadmill, sweetie, you’re probably not working hard enough. I’ve read that a good measure of exertion is whether or not you can keep up a conversation. If it’s easy, you’re not working hard enough. If you’re gasping for breath and speaking is nearly impossible, you’re working too hard, right? Pardon my language, but, BULLSH*T. What’s all this hullabaloo about HIIT (high intensity interval training)? Do you honestly think you could tell your “BFF” all about the party you went to last weekend, or all about how Cindi, the nail tech—who not only spells her name with an “i,” but dots it with a heart—screwed up your manicure and it was the absolute end of your life, and still put forth your highest level of perceived exertion? I’m no expert, but, ahem, I think not.

I’ll make allowances for women who aren’t looking to go all-out. Plenty of people just want to walk or bike at a calm pace to get their heart rate elevated, but not too elevated, and that’s fine. Not everyone wants to go all-out every time. In fact, it’s not even good for you. Sometimes your body needs you to take it easy. If you’re working at a relaxed pace, you can hold a conversation without getting out of breath at all, and there’s nothing wrong with that. BUT THAT STILL DOESN’T MEAN THAT EVERYONE ELSE IN THE GYM WANTS TO HEAR WHATEVER YOU’RE YAPPING ABOUT. If what you need to say absolutely, positively cannot wait, GO OUTSIDE AND MAKE YOUR DAMN PHONE CALL. Or at least go into the locker room. But if you do go into the locker room, FOR GOD’S SAKE, DON’T USE THE PHONE WHILE YOU’RE IN A BATHROOM STALL! Pardon me, but seriously? SERIOUSLY?! (Sorry…someone’s been watching a little too much Grey’s Anatomy.)


2. Stop kidding yourself. You can lift more than that. I know you can. Listen, sweetcheeks, you’re not doing yourself any favors by sticking with that 5-pound dumbbell. You are NOT going to “get big” or “bulk up” if you lift heavier weights. You could, if you wanted to, but it would involve ingesting massive quantities of protein and drugs—some legal, some not—and possibly injecting those slender little biceps of yours with steroid cocktails. And if you do that for long enough, it’s likely that eventually, the perky, cheerful boobs you’re so proud of would deflate like the helium balloons on the centerpiece two weeks after your sweet sixteen. It’s not a road you want to travel.


It’s not easy for women to build and maintain muscle in the first place, let alone wind up looking like a longer-haired Mr. Universe. It requires a relentless workout and feeding regimen. Lifting a little more than you’re used to isn’t enough to do it, so relax. Take a look around sometime. In my experience, the women with the nicest bodies lift a surprising amount of weight. (And by “nicest bodies,” I don’t mean they’re overly muscled and have veins popping out of their forearms. I mean they still look like women, and more, they look like hot women. They’ve got curves and valleys in all the right places. They’re strong and they’re toned, but above all, they’re feminine.)


Challenge yourself. Lift more than you think you can. To clarify, I’m not suggesting you go crazy and lift something that’s obviously out of your reach. Don’t go getting yourself injured and then try to sue me. But do challenge yourself. I think you’ll be surprised at what you’re capable of. I realize that many people, with much more expertise than I have, have hammered it into our heads that if we want to look “toned” we should stick with low weight and high reps. That idea’s not without merit and, despite the snarky tone of this entire post, I’m humble enough not to try and argue with people who have PhDs in exercise physiology. BUT, in my experience, lifting a little heavier builds muscle pretty nicely, and if what those same experts say is true, muscle burns fat. Muscle is metabolically expensive tissue. It takes a lot of calories to maintain it. So if your goal is to lose fat, you probably want to gain some muscle. And I’m not sure lifting a 5-pound weight fifty times is going to do that as quickly as lifting a 25-pound weight ten times.


All that being said, if you’re lifting at all, you’re doing pretty well for yourself. You’ve stopped being a cardio queen and you’ve embraced the beauty of strength training. Maybe you’ve even gotten over your fear of the “guy area” in the gym. You know the place. The one where the free weights and scary, manly machines are. It takes a lot of courage to conquer that fear. If you’ve managed it, I applaud you, and at the risk of making myself vomit, I can’t resist offering you a good, solid, YOU GO, GIRL!


3. Stop holding on to the handrails on the treadmill. You’re not getting as intense a workout. Believe me. I’ve tried it both ways. Let go, honey, and if you go flying off the thing, perhaps you’re not quite ready for that level of incline. (But before I go any further, let me acknowledge my friend S again. She explained to me that she will actually fall off if she doesn’t hold on. I used S’s treadmill last week, and I will concede the point—for that particular treadmill. It was a good machine, but narrower and a little less sturdy than most other treadmills I’ve used. I managed to pump my arms like I usually do, but I admit it took some getting used to. I will also concede the point that some people might have balance issues no matter what kind of machine they’re on. I applaud anyone who makes an effort to do any kind of exercise. If they need to hold on to the rails, or the handles, or any other part of a machine in order to keep exercising, then so be it. Good for them for exercising at all. But I think it makes the workout easier. Not easy, just easier.)

I’ve held on and I’ve not held on. When I held on, I could feel right away that my legs (specifically my quads and glutes) weren’t working as hard as they were when I wasn’t holding on. This can be remedied pretty easily, though. All you have to do is deliberately squeeze those butt muscles with every stride. And maybe the delicate young things I see holding on are doing that. Maybe I’d be able to tell if I wasn’t so distracted by the fact that they’re ON THE PHONE! (By means of an earpiece, of course. They have to have their hands free to hold on, remember?)



4. You’re probably expecting me to say something about the skimpy outfits some women work out in. The showing off of bodies that look like the results of winning either the gene pool lottery or the plastic surgery lottery. But this type of clothing is blissfully absent from my gym. So with all the cynicism I’ve spewed in this post, I want to take this opportunity to applaud the women of my gym for dressing for comfort, not for a fashion show. Yes, some of their outfits are more form-fitting than necessary, but I have to admit, if I had a body like some of them, you can be darn sure I’d show it off, too.

Maybe it’s from all those high reps with low weights… :D


Maybe they do know something I don’t…


Maybe I’ll call you from the stair machine tomorrow…

Fences

I’ve never felt like I belonged in the world. I’ve never felt at home in my own skin, never quite felt like I fit in. During high school, it was for the usual teenage girl reasons: I wasn’t thin enough, pretty enough, or perky enough. In college, I was a creative writing major, complete with the requisite melancholy score that played in the background of even my happiest moments.


After a period of unemployment and then some time spent working in the financial planning industry, I went to graduate school to study international relations. It was immediately clear to me that I was out of my league among my classmates. Some of them had been missionaries overseas, some had done stints in the Peace Corps, and others had diplomats for parents. I must have gotten on the wrong bus; I was a novice compared to these seasoned veterans of international cultural and educational experiences.


My school was in Washington, DC, just a few metro stops away from the Pentagon. Going to evening classes, I saw members of the armed services on their commute home. I stared unabashedly: the uniforms, the meanings I imagined behind the ribbons, the air of competence, of confidence those men and women radiated. I wanted the same aura to surround me. As an added bonus, the military was someplace I was sure to fit in. Someplace where being part of a team would be drilled into my mind from the first frenzied moments of basic training.


Three years after I enlisted in the Air Force, I found myself on a six-month deployment at the largest military base in Iraq. I saw the time away as an opportunity to shed the couple of pounds I’d been trying to lose since those awkward high school years. My efforts were successful, thanks to a rigorous exercise routine at the base’s well-appointed gym, and a nearly religious avoidance of sugar and starch. After a long day, while my brothers and sisters in arms rewarded themselves with French fries, fried rice, and chocolate cake, I would bypass the main entrée line and go directly to the salad bar, where I would fill a to-go container with mounds of iceberg lettuce, dry tuna, sliced cucumbers, bell peppers, olives, and carrots.


After a while, I began to wonder if the employees at the dining facility—mostly third country nationals from South and Central Asia, where, presumably, they had signed on for jobs in a war zone because they could make more money there than they could at home—thought I was snubbing them, turning my nose up at the food they had painstakingly prepared, refusing to partake of the kind of bounty some of their countrymen could probably only dream about. That certainly wasn’t my intention. Avoiding the corn, pasta, and warm biscuits wasn’t an insult to their cooking; it was my way of blocking temptation, even as those savory wonders called my name with their sweet, buttery aromas.


The male employees at the dining facility—I don’t think I ever saw a female—were friendly, outgoing, and eager to practice their English with the female service members. Even in the digital age, where images from around the world are at our fingertips, it seemed that fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and blonde women were a bit of a visual draw for them. We were anomalies. Fascinatingly out of the ordinary. They saved us the best fruit: the sweetest, juiciest watermelon hearts; the ripest chunks of cantaloupe. After several weeks of watching me eat nothing but salad, and taking notice of what I put in it, one particular worker would fill a container, piling it high with my favorites, and set it aside for me, if he didn’t see me come in at the usual time.


In spite of all the training I’d been through, all the times when, indeed, I was part of a team, the military had not cured me of my chronic out-of-placeness. (In retrospect, I should have known I wasn’t cut out for the military; I look ridiculous in hats.) Feeling like an outsider in everything I’ve ever done has led me to retreat into myself. I don’t talk much. I avoid eye contact. In the service, I often walked with my head down, and my eyes attuned upward only so I didn’t miss a passing officer and fail to salute. I worry that people mistake my shyness and introversion for coldness. For standoffishness, or—worse—for arrogance. Nothing could be further from the truth. I want to be cordial. I want to be friendly and outgoing. But I’m not. The burden of my perceived flaws causes me to close myself off from the world. If I can barely stand myself; how could anyone else possibly stomach me?


Despite my avoidance of most of the foods they toiled to prepare, the workers were always friendly and seemed happy to see me. Maybe it was my fair skin and blue eyes, but I like to think they somehow sensed that hiding underneath my scowl, buried behind my cold expression, was someone who could use a kind word and a smile. I was touched and grateful to receive both of these on the rare occasions when I braved the main food line to get broiled fish and steamed broccoli.


I started to wonder if the men at the dining facility had a nickname for me. Maybe it was Seinfeld-esque: instead of a "low-talker," I was a no-talker. Or, maybe they had dubbed me, simply, The Salad Girl.


When I wasn’t eating or exercising, I was working. In month after month of combat sorties, looking out the aircraft window at the country below me, I never grew accustomed to how stunningly green the landscape was. Not all of it, of course, but parts of Iraq were far more verdant than I expected when, in my ignorance, I had departed the United States with images of nothing but tan, dry, lifeless earth as far as the eye could see. From the concrete jungle that was the base, I would never have guessed there was fertile soil all around me.


From my limited perspective on the ground, all that separated “us” from “them” were concrete, chain link, and barbed wire fences. Once airborne and ascending, however, those barriers got smaller and smaller, until the landscape struck me as unified and unfettered. Like an astronaut gazing back upon Earth, I was awed by how idyllic it looked. By how the dirt, the noise, the cacophony of seemingly insoluble conflicts disappeared, and what was left was simple terrain, free of political borders and cultural boundaries.


Now, safely back home, I regret that I wasn’t more friendly toward the men who prepared our food. I regret that I let my own self-consciousness and lifelong self-doubt close me off from other people. Most of all, I regret that the emotional fences I’ve erected in order to keep myself in are far more insurmountable obstacles than the physical ones anyone could ever build to keep others out.

YourSpace

—or—

I Wish I Didn’t Suck at Life Quite So Much


Before anyone accuses me of being anti-technology, or of downplaying the importance of the Internet for communication, let me preface this post by making it clear that while I am an admitted technology dinosaur, it’s not because I’m afraid of technology. It’s because I’m good at simple things: writing, making music, cooking, daydreaming, and making plans I’ll never follow through with. Regarding technology, beyond finding a close enough electrical outlet to plug my laptop’s charger into, I’m helpless. I don’t know the first thing about advanced connections, routers, networks, servers, motherboards, RAM, ROM, or any of the other scary words and acronyms that pepper the conversations of those more savvy than I (which is pretty much everyone).

That being said, there are a few stops along the Internet that I look forward to pulling into daily. I like keeping in touch with friends via email. When I was deployed to Iraq, I liked that news of home was never further away than my fingertips. Years ago, the men and women of the armed forces waited weeks to receive letters from their loved ones, and when they did, they’d be lucky if it hadn’t been steamed open, censored, and resealed. I like listening to the live music stream from my favorite independent radio station out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (WYEP-FM, in case anyone’s curious…you’ll find a link in the list on the right.) I like looking for recipes, I like skimming the news headlines, I liked that I wrote entire term papers based on nothing but information I found online, and I love being able to buy pretty much anything from the comfort of my house at three in the morning.

I spend enough time twiddling around online that it wouldn’t be fair of me to judge anyone for the amount of time they devote to sites like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, and the myriad others that surely exist, but which I have never heard of. I’m not willing to admit how many hours a week I spend glued to my favorite forum for all things low-carb. (And for those of you who know me, you know I usually have no problem admitting to some pretty wacky stuff, so that should give you some idea of just how much time we’re talking about here.)

A few years ago, when I had a job where I was in front of a computer for most of the day, I did my share of instant messaging and chatting. (My boss was very cool about it. As long as I got my work done, he didn’t mind. Although…there was one time [just one] that he had to gently remind me that while sending instant messages was fine, it was not actually the top priority for which he was paying my salary.) I understand completely that it’s difficult not to spend a lot of time on those personalized sites, particularly when you have your own computer and a decent amount of down time at work.

The thing is, I’m not sure these sites are everything they’re cracked up to be. To be fair, I admit I have accounts on all three of the sites I mentioned above. However, it’s been at least a month since I logged into Facebook, longer than that for MySpace, and I honestly couldn’t tell you how long it’s been since I did anything on Friendster. I keep getting emails that so-and-so, whom I haven’t seen or spoken to since elementary school, has requested me as a “friend” on Facebook.

I can’t deny that it’s interesting to see what people are up to—where they moved to, where they went to school, whether they’re married or have children. I also can’t deny that these friend requests have put me in touch with a handful of people I wish I’d gotten to know better years ago.

On the other hand, I wonder if we aren’t eroding the concept of "friendship" when we accept as “friends” people whom we weren’t really all that close to in junior high, let alone seventeen years later. It’s not that I have anything against any of these people. (There’s only one person on the planet against whom I hold a grudge, and she knows better than to try and be my “friend.”) In fact, some of these people were the “cool kids” in high school—or, at least, I thought so at the time. They were the people whom I wished I could be friends with. But it’s been a long time, and while I’m still not completely comfortable in my own skin, I have enough peace with myself that I no longer long for superficial relationships, and I don’t define myself by the clothing my friends wear, or by whether they partied Friday night or sat home with a good book. I didn’t go out of my way to fit in with them then. Why would I, now?

I hope I’m not coming off as arrogant or uppity. Like I said, I’ve heard from a few people whom I was genuinely happy to get back in touch with. The others, though…well, I don’t know how to say this delicately, so I’ll just say it. There are only so many hours in a day. I have a hard enough time staying in reasonable contact with the people I truly care about; I’m not sure how much I can spare for people who’ve resurfaced after twenty years (in some cases), and with whom I was never really chummy in the first place. It’s not that I dislike them, or that I ever had a falling out with any of them. I guess it’s simply like I said: there are only so many hours. We pick and choose how we spend our time, and some pursuits are more valuable to us than others. (This is one of the nicer things about growing up, I think. You have a firmer idea of what you like and what you don’t, and you get over feeling like you need to apologize for either of them.)

Another reason I’m not the biggest fan of these sites—although I’ve changed my mind about this recently (and will explain why in a minute)—is that I thought they give people a false sense of self-importance. Oooh, look how many friends I have! I *must* update my page, so that everyone knows where I am and what I’m doing at all times. Call me crazy; I just don’t think I’m that special. (Again, before I inadvertently offend anyone out there who’s addicted to these sites, I do understand the immediacy they can take on. I’m addicted to plenty of stuff on the web, so I’m not looking down on anyone who cannot tear themselves away. I’m merely explaining why, for the most part, these personal sites aren’t for me.)

I think it’s neat that people can post pictures, personalize the background music, all the graphics, and fill their pages with everything from personality quizzes to blogs, to messages from friends. In a way, it’s like email on crack. You post your news, your successes, your failures, your plans, pictures from your vacation to Jamaica, and a detailed account of your trip to the bathroom when you got home from dollar burrito night at the Mexican joint down the road. It’s a one-stop-shop where all your friends can get the play-by-play of every minute of the incomprehensibly awesome thing that is your life.

Okay, sorry…I started doing exactly what I said I wouldn’t do, which is get judgmental. ;-)

Back on track now.

I said that I recently changed my mind about the false sense of importance these sites risk instilling in some people. After giving it a respectable amount of thought, I realized that maybe people need these sites. Maybe they need to feel in control of something, even if it’s only a tiny section of cyberspace. I realized that some people live under a great deal of constraint—some that they put on themselves, but plenty that are more or less beyond their control. If you have a job, you’re automatically not in control of everything. You have a boss you’re accountable to (maybe more than one), and maybe you have clients you’re accountable to as well. Even if you’re your own boss, you still have constraints—time, money, customers, logistics. If you’re married, and most certainly if you have children, you’re constrained. (For a good cause, no question, but constrained nonetheless.) As for the constraints we place on ourselves, well, some of us make sure we spend time working out every week. Some of us make sure we get to church or temple every week. Some make sure we put away some money every month, or spend time volunteering somewhere. It’s hard to imagine anyone being 100% free to control every aspect of their life. And with that realization came the understanding that these personalized sites are the quickest and simplest way to exercise some degree of autonomy. Granted, you might not be able to customize and post everything you’d like to (what with those pesky pornography/obscenity laws and such), but you can get pretty close.

Furthermore, maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the need to feel important now and then. Beyond the desire to “own” a little piece of cyberspace, maybe people need to exercise some autonomy over their very existence. Maybe they need their sites to remind themselves that they are more than some company’s employee, more than another cog in the machine, and yes, more than so-and-so’s wife, or so-and-so’s father. And if posting pictures and writing opinion pieces helps them do that, how could I possibly have anything against that?

And now, lest I leave you with the impression that I’ve fully embraced these sites, let me get into the final reason why I’m wary of spending too much time on these sites—or any time, as the case has been for the last several weeks. Frankly, there’s just too much potential for discovering depression-inducing facts about people with whom I would otherwise never have contact.

Case in point: I was on the phone with a friend the other day (a real friend, not one in name only on Facebook). She mentioned that she was checking out an old acquaintance’s page on one of these sites. (Okay, he was more than an acquaintance. He was the object of many an erotic fantasy for her, and plenty of non-erotic ones, too, that simply involved him falling head over heels in love with her, marrying her, and the two of them living happily ever after in the most blissful wedded bliss in the history of wedded bliss.) Anyway, this young man is now engaged to someone else, and my friend discovered that they registered at a nationwide department store for a china pattern that costs—get this—138 dollars per place setting. Maybe their friends all have money trees in their backyards, or maybe the fiancé’s family is loaded and will settle for nothing less than their daughter eating off of solid gold plates with diamond dust sparkling on the edges. (Okay, in all fairness, I have no idea what the pattern really is, but seriously, for $138 per setting, it had better have some diamonds in it. Or ivory from the tusks of an endangered breed of elephant. Call me crazy, but you can get cute “everyday” dishes from most discount stores for around $30, or a little more if you need more than four place settings. Yes, I’m talking about Corelle, the dishes of champions, the dishes everyone I grew up with had, because our parents all bought them in the mid-seventies because they were cheap, nearly indestructible [though not entirely], and microwave-safe, which would come in handy a few years later.)

Why did I bring up REDI (the Ridiculously Expensive Dishes Incident)? It’s just one example of how these personalized sites can affect the psyche of someone who’s not in the best frame of mind to see how old friends are getting along these days. (This particular situation affected my friend, not me, but you get the point.)

Before I go any further, let me offer a caveat: I’m thirty years old, unemployed, and living with my parents. (Go ahead, just call me George Costanza. Or, if you’ve never seen Seinfeld, then just call me pathetic; it’s equally effective.) I haven’t been “at the top of my game” in eight years. When I graduated from college, I was ambitious, hardworking, dedicated, and poised to take the world by storm. Too bad I didn’t do anything about this, and instead, let my life go ker-SPLAT. From the ensuing years of spotty employment at jobs I hated, and the quitting of not one but two master’s degree programs, I now resemble nothing so much as a wad of gum that someone spit onto the sidewalk ten years ago, and is now black and petrified from a decade of being stepped on, rained on, snowed on, skated over, biked over, and generally considered an eyesore to anyone who happens to notice it. (Okay, it’s not quite that bad. I’ve faced no hardships that can be likened to being rained on or skated over. All the feelings of inadequacy I have are the product of nothing but my own laziness, fear, and self-doubt. I have no one but myself to blame for my current position. Still, the fact that it was my own doing, and not someone else’s, that led me to this point doesn’t change the fact that at this moment, my life is less noteworthy than that blob of decade-old gum that’s become a permanent part of the concrete.)

When I talk about why these websites make me uncomfortable, I am, of course, basing things on my own feelings. That being said, I’d be surprised if there weren’t plenty of people out there like me, for whom MySpace and its ilk are just one more venue for other people to advertise how much less they suck at life than you do. Look, here are pics of me and my entourage in Puerto Vallarta! Here’s a picture of me receiving my PhD in microbiology; don’t I look great in the cap and gown? Here’s an excerpt from my novel that just won the National Book Award. (Copies available at fine bookstores everywhere!)

Okay, so maybe this, too, isn’t quite that bad. Obviously, I’m exaggerating. Most people just post pictures of themselves, their spouse, their kids, and family vacations. And I can’t even claim to be jealous. The fact is, I’m not. I do want to get married at some point, but I’m not interested in raising kids, and even if I was, at the moment, what with being unemployed and living with the folks, I can’t say I’m ready for either one of those.

I guess it boils down to the grass being greener. I don’t know why it should affect me so strongly that so-and-so moved to wherever and is doing whatever for a living. Some of my friends seem pretty impressed by what I’ve done in the military, but to me, most of it was no big deal. It sounded good to other people, but I knew better. Maybe it’s the same way for everyone else. Maybe everyone’s just trying to muddle through as best they can, wondering when they’re going to get their head screwed on straight, and each one of them has somebody they look to and think, Damn, now *that* is something.

The fact is, my life pales in comparison to some. My lack of direction and even a remote sense of certainty makes me feel threatened by other people’s accomplishments. I have no right to feel this way. I’ve put myself in the position I’m in. It’s not my friend the successful lawyer’s fault that my head is up my you-know-what. It’s not my friend the engineer’s fault that I can’t seem to figure out what the heck I want to do with myself. It’s not my friend the ex-cop’s fault that I got out of the military without a job lined up, and it’s not my friend the senior software designer’s fault that I’m so afraid of being unhappy that I’ve prevented myself from even being content. (Shout-out to you if you recognize yourself here! You’re probably the only four people who ever read this thing! Wheee!)

I’m pretty sure I’ll feel less overshadowed by other people once I get my act together. When I’m able to say, “My name is Amy, and for once, I’m earning my paycheck.” Or, “My name is Amy, and my first novel is being published next month.” Or even just, “My name is Amy, and my job isn’t the fulfillment of all my life’s hopes and dreams, but I’m back out here, among the living, being a productive member of society, and chipping away at something that will be a novel if I keep working hard, and I watch funny movies when I need cheering up, and a good, strong cup of coffee is one of my go-to pick-me-ups, and I love going for walks near pretty scenery, and a while back, I turned into a girly girl who likes shoes and perfume, and I no longer want to vomit when I see myself in a mirror, and I love fudge brownies and exotic trail mixes, and Danielle Steel books are my guilty pleasure, and I may not be where I’d like to be, but I’m moving in the right direction.”

Yeah…something like that.

But until that happens, I’ll stick to my favorite websites, where like-minded people preach to the choir, and I don’t have to read tidbits about people from my third grade class that make me feel worthless.


MySpace? No, thanks. It’s your space, and you can have it.










Disclaimer: MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster corporate-type people, please don’t sue me. I *did* acknowledge the good things about your sites, didn’t I? Let’s all play nice and leave our lawyers out of it, shall we? :D

The White Noise of Autumn

There’s something about autumn that makes me feel alive. I assume this puts me in the minority, though I have no statistics to back this up. I imagine most people cite spring as the time they feel renewed. They list every clichéd thing about the season traditionally known for rebirth and new beginnings: the weather warming up; flowers blooming; those first, intrepid blades of grass peeking out from soil that has just begun to thaw. I cannot ignore the simple beauty of those things; they’re a reminder that, no matter how long, dark, and difficult the winter, Nature herself has reawakened to claim the earth. These sensory changes that accompany the transition from cold to warmth, from long, bleak nights to slow, warm days, are perhaps even better markers of the cyclical nature of our existence than are diagonal lines slashed through calendar days, and the holidays and annual rituals we’ve created to root our place in time.

And yet, as cozy as all that sounds, I’ve always found that I awaken in the fall. For me, the novelty and simple beauty of a tiny pink bud venturing to open itself on the branch of a tree has never quite matched the sight of a street lined with trees whose red, yellow, and orange leaves create a Technicolor canopy unrivaled at any other time of year. I’ve always preferred bold, deep colors to washed-out pastels, so maybe that’s why the dark, insistent shades of fall speak to me more than the pinks, lavenders, and butter yellows of spring.

Even supermarkets offer a feast for the eyes in fall. Eye-catching displays of red and pink foil-wrapped candy at Valentine’s Day are trivial compared to bright orange pumpkins arranged casually on bales of yellow and brown straw. Sweet temptations covered in every shade of red and green for Christmas don’t hold a candle to impossibly shiny, perfectly formed Red Delicious apples, on display next to rich, sweet, buttery caramels, reminding shoppers to combine the two into a classic fall treat. Even the cheerful Easter displays, complete with pastel colored eggs, white bunnies with pink ears, and baskets padded with cellophane Easter grass in bright colors Mother Nature never intended, pale in comparison to rugged, weathered, wooden barrels filled with decorative gourds in astounding shapes and colors. (At least, they look rugged and weathered. No doubt they’re mass produced for just such a purpose, but commercialism is a topic for another time. Right now, I’m talking about autumn, and I will not be stopped!) Round, oblong, asymmetrical. Some with smooth, shiny skin, others rough and knobby. White, green, yellow, orange, sometimes all four. Some striped, some solid, some that look like Nature’s try at abstract painting.

As addictive as those colors and shapes are to my eyes, my love of autumn comes as much from the smells as from the sights. There’s a distinct change in the air at the border between September and October. The air starts getting cooler, and though the days are often still warm—sometimes hot, even—the nights are chilly. Not cold. Not uncomfortable. Just cool enough to warrant a fuzzy, boxy sweatshirt while you sit on your back porch and wrap your hands around a cup of spiced cider or mulled wine, look up at the stars and try to spot Orion, whose first appearances in the wee hours herald the colder weather and longer nights to come.

I don’t know if the temperature drop has anything to do with the uniquely invigorating smell in the autumn air, but I’ve always taken the two hand in hand. The distinct, smoky smell streaming from distant fireplaces is surely part of it, but I grew up in New York City, where very few homes had the luxury of a fireplace, so I doubt this is the sole ingredient. Maybe the chemical reactions taking place in the leaves themselves, as they shift from green to the array of other colors, is part of it. Maybe it even has something to do with where the earth is in its revolution around the sun when it’s autumn in the northern hemisphere. Maybe someone set out a few unfathomably enormous bowls of potpourri in this particular neighborhood of the solar system. Or maybe I just love so much the foods that are traditional this time of year, that I imagine their aromas into existence, even when they’re not being prepared right under my nose.

Whatever the pinches of this and dashes of that that blend so seamlessly into what I call the smell of October, they only come together this time of year. People who prefer spring might claim the warm sun on their face is what makes them feel renewed, or that birds singing as they fly from branch to branch remind them that there’s a world out there, and it’s much, much bigger than the daily grind. I don’t dispute that these things are at once empowering and humbling, and fill those who experience them with a clearer sense of purpose. For me, though, a long, slow, deep breath of October evening air is better than any thrill, any runner’s high, and any endorphin rush, for making me believe I can do it. Do what? Anything. Anything I dream, anything I want, anything I work for, because this is October, and this is when things happen.

Crisp is a word we use to describe everything from potato chips to starched laundry, from military salutes, to the final bars of a symphony, to the perfect landing in a gymnastics maneuver. Crisp lends itself easily to physical movement, sound, and the sensation of touch. Smells can be crisp, too, but not all of them. The smell of brownies baking is delicious, but not crisp. It’s warm, comforting, and even pacifying. Can you imagine anyone arguing about anything—except maybe who gets to lick the batter off the spoon—when there are brownies baking nearby, and the smell of rich, fudgy chocolate fills the air? (Perhaps we should have “brownie smell” pumped into the ventilation systems at the U.N. and in the Capitol Building. Considering all the hot air that already fills those places, what’s a little more, especially if it smells like dark chocolate? I’m not sure, but I may have just come up with the key to world peace.) The smell of the air after a rainstorm is muted. It’s not crisp, it’s quiet. It’s slow. Heavy and lethargic with the weight of the moisture still surrounding everything, as if the intensity of the entire world has been turned down. The smell of an old flame’s cologne or perfume is heady and deep, alive with memories of times both better and worse. It causes you to revisit those moments, to take your time and slowly swim through the milieu of people and places that inhabited that era. It’s anything but crisp. The smell of October, however, is crisp.

The smell of a chilly October evening is invigorating. It cuts right through you. Leaves you no time to wander through the past, taking a leisurely stroll along the paths you’ve forged, stopping to ponder sculptures of who you used to be. The smell of October allows for nothing but unbridled possibility. Maybe this rejuvenation is hard-wired in me. Maybe, somewhere deeply embedded in my DNA, is the knowledge that it’s harvest time, and this is when the world turns wonderful.

The smell of October has a unique ability to revive the spirits of those who spent the spring dreading the heat and humidity summer would bring as each day got warmer than the one before, and who spent the summer waiting for said heat and humidity to fade. For those of us who prefer cooler weather, the smell of October is to our psyches what the sights of spring are to others: a sign that we’ve made it through. That our time is upon us. That lemonade, bathing suits, and trips to the beach have given way to apple cider, sweaters, and cold Sunday mornings spent pajama-clad, lingering over newspapers and magazines.

I’ve always liked cold weather. Not the relentless, bone-chilling cold that makes your eyes water and leads you to question why humankind ever left the temperate zones, but the dry chill that wakes you up and makes you want to take a deep breath and go do something out of character. I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t related, in large part, to the poor body image that has plagued me throughout my life as a young woman in the western world. Cold weather means bulky sweaters and sensible shoes. Banished to a storage trunk are sleeveless tops, shorts, Capri pants, mini-dresses, and that most dreaded of the dreaded, the bathing suit. Exiled to the back of the closet are flimsy sandals and even flimsier flip-flops. (When, by the way, did the latter become acceptable footwear in public? Never, that’s when. If you’re in violation of this policy, stop. Yesterday.)

Cold weather means sheathing myself in layers, and blissfully covering every inch of arm and leg that was painfully exposed during summer. It also means a return to the classic fall clothing colors, which tend to flatter both my facial features and my body better than the bright, happy yellows, pinks, mint greens, and powder blues designers seem so fond of for the warmer months. October brings with it the dark, royal shades of burgundy, plum, hunter green, and burnt-orange, along with the black, charcoal gray, and navy blue every woman knows are slimming.

More important than my favorite type and color of clothing, however, fall brings with it my favorite foods. Despite the fact that pumpkin is available all year long—albeit only in cans in late winter, spring, and summer—very few people seem to realize this amazing ingredient can be used in things other than pumpkin pie. I love pumpkin pie, and would never dismiss such an integral part of American holiday cuisine, but it is far from the only delivery mechanism for this wonder food’s incredible taste, not to mention impressive amounts of fiber and vitamin A. Fall in general, and Thanksgiving, in particular, are when pumpkin recipes appear in magazines, on television, and in seasonal cookbooks. They range from the sweet—cookies, cheesecakes, and breads—to the savory—pureed in soups, mashed with sweet potatoes, and roasted with root vegetables. I have never understood why so few people take advantage of this amazing orange squash during the rest of the year. Perhaps people don’t realize it’s available in a form that doesn’t require you to buy one, lug it home, cut it open—which is a workout—scoop out the seeds, and then first cut it up or roast it. At that rate, I can’t blame them for steering clear most of the year, but canned pumpkin is a true gem.

Pumpkin is, of course, only the beginning. There’s a whole world of other ingredients that, like pumpkin, are available year-round, but seem to get their due only around the fall and winter holidays. Cinnamon, clove, ginger, and nutmeg can be found in supermarket spice aisles all year long, but are sadly underappreciated until it’s time for apple crisps and pumpkin pies. These spices create an autumn smell that is entirely different from—but no less invigorating than—the smell of October.

Fall has unique sights, smells, and tastes. Last, but certainly not least, are its sounds. Breezes blow throughout the year, but only in fall do they rustle leaves that are beginning to dry out, creating that scratchy sound that can only be described as muted maracas in the music fueling the dance between the air and the trees. Only in fall can you hear the crackling and crunching underfoot of leaves that, having finished their summer performance, fell to the ground in a final curtain call. Only in fall do the dried leaves skip across sidewalks and streets, making a sandpapery sound that is staccato, precise, and, of course, crisp. On a clear fall night, you can see the three stars that make up the unmistakable belt of Orion, the hunter, and Canis Major, his dog, identifiable by Sirius, the brightest star in the winter sky. There are times when it’s so dark and so quiet you swear you can hear the stars twinkling.

This is the quiet symphony that underpins the season. The miracle that gets overlooked because of its ubiquity, like the scraping of snow shovels against the ground in winter, like the grinding of lawnmower motors in spring, and like the cheerful, major-key-toned bells of ice cream trucks in summer. The soundtracks of other seasons accompany their own sights, smells, and tastes, and they’re all mesmerizing in their own ways. But until the very last leaf has fallen, and ice turns the bare tree branches into a crystalline dream world, I’ll sit out back in my cable knit sweater, with my hands wrapped around a warm mug of mulled apple cider, with my head tipped back to spot the constellations, while I take deep, generous breaths of the spicy, smoky fall air and listen to the white noise of autumn.

The Tyranny of Choice

—or—

Why I Love Crappy Weather


Anyone who’s known me for even a short amount of time knows that I love the kind of weather other people, bless their misguided little hearts, might call “crappy.” I can’t pinpoint a time when this started; I’ve loved rainy days for as long as I can remember. And until recently, I couldn’t pinpoint why. During the past few months, however, thanks to more down time at work than anyone with a paycheck as respectable as mine has any right to, I’ve been able to devote a healthy amount of time to pondering the answer.

I’ve come up with two reasons why I love dark clouds, thunder and lightning, and that most beautiful of sights, that harbinger of cold fronts, the squall line, where ominous, steel-colored thunderheads contrast so sharply with the innocent-looking sky in front of them. The first reason is simple and, if I do say so myself, almost anti-climactic. Why do I love crappy weather?

I just do.

Were you hoping for something more profound? Sorry. That’s all there is to it: I just do. Why do you like your favorite color? Maybe there’s some long, complicated story behind it, like your first memory as a child is of holding on to your dad’s leg while you tried to stand up and walk. He was wearing blue jeans, and forever after, blue was the only color for you. Maybe you believe in color as therapy, so you wear yellow to cheer yourself up when you’re depressed. Or maybe you just really, really love carrots, and your entire existence would be fundamentally altered without orange.

My guess, though, is that the reason you like your favorite color is, you just do.

I don’t just like stormy weather, though. I love it. I experience it. I invite it into my soul and serve it coffee and biscotti.

By “analyze,” I don’t mean that I see a cloud and then rush inside to consult the National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to Weather, desperate to identify what I saw. Stratus? Cumulus? Cirrus? Altostratus? (I admit I do, in fact, own this book, but honestly, I bought it because I thought looking at the cool pictures would be a better way to pass my occasional boredom than lying in bed, feeling guilty for how rarely I blog. It was in no way an indication of some strange, deep obsession with weather. Trust me, if I was going to have a fetish, it would not involve cloud formations. Donuts come to mind, though, or possibly brownies. Or peanut butter. Okay, I’d better stop. This could get ugly...)

(But as long as we’re on a tangent anyway, let me say that I learned early on not to ask my father—a retired science teacher whose original goal was to be meteorologist—questions about weather. It’s not that he wouldn’t know the answer; he knows too much. You want the Wikipedia version, quick and easy to skim, and you’re willing to accept the risk that their fact checkers haven’t quite gotten around to every single entry. My father, however, wants to go up to the attic, hunt down the hard-bound Encyclopedia Britannica (yes, not the World Book, which was the “easy” encyclopedia we all used for research projects as kids, until we hit high school and that wouldn’t fly anymore, and we were forced to transition to the scary Britannica), blow the dust off the cover, and sit you down for an hour-long lecture on the subtle differences between altostratus clouds and altostratus undulatus. (My mother learned long ago that every question she asked my father needed to start with the words “In fifteen words or less…”)

Where was I? Oh, right…how I analyze weather.

I’ve never told this to anyone before, so you millions of people out there who are addicted to this blog should feel privileged to be the first to hear it. (But if you are addicted to this blog, first, that’s a shame, and second, considering the rate at which I seem to post new and interesting “essays,” it’s a good thing you don’t need this blog to sustain you, like food and water, because, let’s face it: you’d have shriveled up and died a long time ago.)

And it’s kind of embarrassing, so you should feel even more privileged to be getting the information you are about to receive.

I have a kind of “scale” I measure weather with in my mind. It’s not a 1-to-10 scale, or a 100-point system. To be honest, I don’t know what the criteria is. All I know is, it’s rare that a single element will rate over a three, but occasionally, in the cases of unimaginably cool storms, the clouds alone could go as high as four or five.

Overcast skies are nice, but for me, really hideous skies are where it’s at. In fact, if it’s genuinely “stormy,” that’s usually good for two or three points before I even start counting the individual elements.

What do I “grade” when I decide how high a day scores? I usually start with the sky itself. How does it look? Is it overcast? Is there a general grayness hanging low over everything? Probably good enough for a two, maybe a three, depending on whether it looks like there’s a silver-colored sheet spread out over the whole sky, or whether there are patches here and there that are darker, and whether the clouds are moving so fast I can actually see them changing shape against each other. The bottom line here: the darker, the better. Whitish-gray, good. Silvery-gray, better. Bluish-black, damn near perfect. Grayish-green? JACKPOT, BABY!

Green? A green sky? Yes. I hate to be a fan of such “ugly” skies, because they’re usually associated with tornados, and I am, of course, not a fan of the destruction they can bring. Still, we can’t help what we love, right? These skies are really a sight to behold. I’ve been living in Tornado Alley for about a year and a half, and I’ve had the privilege of seeing these skies in all their glory. To give Nature the reverence and respect she deserves, I do have to say, these skies are as scary as they are beautiful. (Kind of like a dozen donuts. Beautiful, but deadly. Best admired from afar.)

I’m a coastal city girl, so forgive me for offending you if you happen to be partial to the Plains, but the most impressive thing I’ve been able to identify about this part of the country is the sky before a storm. I’ll take an Omaha sky over an Omaha steak every time!

The good news is, you don’t have to live in this part of the country to experience the—forgive the triteness—awesome power of a good storm. A few years ago, I was living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I worked on the 47th floor of the tallest building in the city – high up enough to feel the building sway in really strong winds. It was from one of the office windows that I watched one of the most awesome storms I’ve ever have the privilege of seeing. In fact, this is where I came up with the idea of a sky so black it’s green—the standard against which I've come to judge all other skies. These green skies ruined it for the regular ol’ overcast ones. The workhorses. The old faithfuls. The ones who usually bring rain and wind, even if only in amounts that fail to break the threshold of breaking news updates and constant Doppler radar weather maps. You know the ones…the ones where the screen shows only green, the “light” weather, never approaching yellow, pink, or, dare to dream, the red “severe” zone.

Still, there’s something to be said for a simple rainy day, or even an overcast day with no rain at all. You get all the benefits of a more dangerous storm, with few to none of the real threats. You can still drive your car, use your computer, and not worry that the plants you worked so hard to re-pot and make pretty will be destroyed. You don’t have to search your house for a flash light, attempt to turn it on, and then proceed to search your house for some D-batteries. You don’t have to have candles at the ready. You don’t have to pull onto the shoulder of the road because you can’t see a bloomin’ thing and you can’t even follow the taillights of the guy in front of you, because from what you can tell, he just hydroplaned into the oncoming traffic.

So that was the sky. What else do I use to “grade” weather?

Rain.

Rain, rain, rain, and more rain.

Is it raining? Good for at least two points. (A light drizzle might be good for only one.) Is it pouring? Can I hear it coming down on the roof of my house? Good for three.

Is it foggy? And, by “foggy,” I don’t mean the chintzy-ass fog some places get in the early morning, only to have the sun burn it away half an hour later. I mean a heavy, lingering fog. A San Francisco fog. A Monterey fog. The fog of legend. The kind of fog that’s been immortalized in postcards. (“San Francisco on a Cloudy Day” – the postcard is basically blank. White. As if someone forgot to put the actual picture there. But then again, as long as we’re on the subject, I think in the case of SF, it’s more like smog, which is definitely not as cool as fog. As for Monterey, I’m pretty sure it’s far enough away from the big city pollution that it’s all legitimate fog.)

But I digress. (I know…big surprise.)

Is it foggy? Good for at least two points, although the Monterey fog went as high as four on a fairly regular basis.

How about the wind? Is there a breeze blowing at all? If I go outside, can I feel air circulating around me? Good for one. If I stay inside, can I hear it blowing through the trees? Can I hear the screens rattling against my windows? Good for two. Are car alarms going off? Are small children being swept off their feet and blown down the street? Are shingles ripping off the roof? Not so great. Insane winds scare me. No extra points for making me think my house is going to be torn off its foundation. (Plus, ever since I moved to Nebraska, where there are no tall buildings and no mountains to block the wind, strong winds do nothing but aggravate me, especially when I’m in uniform. You see, despite the fact that the U.S. military has some of the most advanced protective gear for chemical and biological warfare, someone has yet to invent a cap that WILL STAY ON YOUR GODDAMN HEAD WHEN IT’S WINDY.)

And now, at last, the smell. Oh, the smell. Come on, don’t look at me like that. You know exactly what I’m talking about. The air smells different when it’s stormy out. In fact, it smells different before, during and after a storm. My personal preference is the way the world smells before a storm. (After a storm, it sometimes smells like wet dog, which is definitely not worthy of any points.)

With all the writing tools I have at my disposal, all the similes, the metaphors, the alliteration, you would think I could come up with some way to describe the smell. But I can’t. All I can say is, for me, it’s the smell of glory. The smell that all is right with the world. The smell that everything’s going to turn out perfectly. (You’ll understand this much better after I get to the second, more complicated reason why I love stormy weather. Also, as long as we’re here, in case you’ve ever wondered if there was a word for the general category of things like similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, etc., there is. They’re tropes. My favorite, in case anyone cares, is zeugma—a way of connecting two or more things, usually some figurative and some literal. Examples: 1. Take your coat, and your attitude, and get out! 2. After their divorce, all they had between them were twenty years and two children. And, as always, since we’re so deeply entrenched in this tangent anyway, it pleases me to inform you that this train of thought has planted the seed for a future blog post. I’ll talk about tropes, and how they can be both a blessing and a curse for writers. [Or, at least, for “serious” writers, or writers who hope to one day be taken seriously, like me.] I’ll address the famous ones, such as simile and metaphor, but I’ll focus on the fun ones. The ones most people have probably never heard of: synecdoche, synesthesia, metonymy, etc.)


And now, for the second reason I prefer “bad weather.” The more complex reason. (Remember? Way back a few paragraphs ago, I said there were two reasons. The first was that I just do.) The second one goes much deeper than the feeling I get when I see gray clouds, feel the heaviness in the air, the foreboding.

Bad weather makes the world smaller. To understand why I see this is as positive thing, you first have to have understand something about me: I have trouble making choices. (Hence the title of this post.)

I’ve always been a pessimist. A glass-is-half-empty/grass-is-always-greener kind of person. I’m pleased to tell you that I feel I’m making pretty good strides toward changing this about myself, but my natural inclination is still toward the negative. (And maybe the gradual shift in my perspective will turn up sometime as yet another future blog post?)

I’m not sure where this attitude comes from, but it’s mine, and I’ve been living with it for as long as I can remember. I haven’t studied psychology much, but as far as I can tell, the reason I have such a hard time making decisions—even seemingly insignificant ones—is that I’m afraid I’ll make the “wrong” choice. I’m afraid that whichever way I go, the other way would have been better.

This, of course, begs the question, what is “better?” On my rare (but increasingly more common) optimistic days, I take to heart the last few lines of the poem Summer Storm, by Dana Gioa. It appeared in Writer’s Digest, with an exact publication date of…a while back:


There are so many might have beens,
What ifs that won't stay buried.
Other cities, other jobs,
Strangers we might have married.

And memory insists on pining
for places it never went
As if life would be better
just by being different.



Better for whom? And in what circumstances? Little details can change everything. If you were in a survival situation in the desert, which would you rather have: plain water or a margarita? Would your answer be different if you were in a survival situation at a wedding with an open bar? Details, people. Details.

Bottom line: I’m afraid I’ll regret whatever it is I chose, and wish I had tried the other path.

This is pretty understandable when it comes to big decisions. How would my life be different if I hadn’t enlisted in the military? How would my life be different if I had gone to Northwestern University, instead Carnegie Mellon? (Not that I regret these things. I’m just making the point.) How would things have turned out if I had slept with Andy Garcia instead of Jimmy Smits? (Oh, wait…that didn’t happen. [Yet…I’m still holding out hope. See what I mean about trying to be more positive?])

The funny thing is, my debilitating “decision disease” seeps into every aspect of my life. You should see me at the grocery store. Choosing a toothpaste should not become a twenty-minute ordeal, and yet, that’s what happens every time I’m faced with the big questions in life: baking soda or hydrogen peroxide? Whitening or extra whitening? Peppermint or spearmint? (And now, of course, the toothpaste manufacturers have gone and made my decision even more difficult, having added flavors like cinnamon mint, vanilla mint, citrus mint, and extreme herbal mint. *sigh.* A while back, Crest came out with a sampler pack that had baby sizes of all four of these. A dream come true!)

I used to be terrible in restaurants, too. Buffalo chicken sandwich or blackened catfish? What if I get the fettuccine alfredo, but wind up jealous of the delicious looking linguine with clam sauce the guy at the next table ordered? Thankfully, this problem has been greatly reduced, thanks to a mostly low-carb way of eating. I do “cheat” here and there, but in general, I’d say I consider about 85% of a typical restaurant menu off limits for me. Even for the dishes I can order, I still usually have to customize them: no potato, double broccoli; no rice, extra veggies. I’m nowhere near as bad as Meg Ryan’s Sally in When Harry Met Sally, but still. I make a small nuisance of myself. I don’t mind, though, and the wait staff never seems to, either.

So now you’re thinking, what on earth does this weird decision disease have to do with this weird girl’s weird love for crappy weather?

Simple: It makes the world smaller. You knew you were going to work out, but weren’t sure if you were going to jog on the trail near your house, or go to the gym. Good news—it’s raining. You’re not going to jog outside. Decision made.

You got home early from work. Are you going to catch your favorite cooking show on TV, or stay outside and clean out your car, which has somehow managed to accumulate more string cheese wrappers and empty Starbucks cups than you’re willing to admit to having put there? (Maybe that’s just me, though. Then again, if it’s not string cheese and coffee cups, I’m willing to bet all of you have some kind of junk in your car, and no clear idea of how it got there.) Guess what? It’s raining. No car cleaning for you. Cooking show it is.

This is only a small part of the deeper meaning crappy weather has for me. The larger part is that the world is so big. It’s so overwhelmingly enormous, and there are so many things I’d like to do. Never does the world seem so expansive as on a clear day. One of those days with no clouds, when the bright blue looks like it goes on forever. (The kind of sky pilots call “severe clear.”) As my perspective shifts toward more positive thinking, I have to admit, I enjoy sunny days much more than I used to. Nevertheless, I feel intimidated by the endlessness, by the infinite possibilities.

On the other hand, when the sky is overcast, visibility is reduced. You can’t see as far, so the world literally appears smaller. More manageable. This makes me feel like maybe I can do everything I need or want to do. Maybe the things I’m working toward will happen. Maybe I will be a famous novelist someday. Maybe I will have a flower garden someday. Maybe I will feel like I’m “earning my keep” in the universe. Maybe I will feel at home in my own skin someday. And if I don’t get started on those things right away, if I’m not plugging away at them constantly, every second of every day, maybe that’s all right, because maybe it’s raining, and it’s okay for me to make some hot chocolate and curl up on the couch with a good book.

No, Really ... I'm Okay!

For any of you who might have read my previous post, and are concerned that I'm:
A) Depressed
B) Crazy
C) Suicidal ...

Please don't worry. I'm fine. I was having a terrible day, and I let it get the best of me. The truth is, I don't even know why I was having such a bad day. I can't identify any reasons to justify the way I felt. For now, I'm chalking it up to hormones. (Those blasted two X-chromosomes!! There must be something in the Y-chromosome that prevents men from flipping out the way women do, regardless of what "time of the month" it is.)

Anyway, rest assured, I'm currently working on a list of "Things that Make Me Happy." (And, believe you me, it will be much longer than the list of "Things I'm Sick Of.") :D

Until then, my friends, I'll catch you on the flipside.

Things I'm Sick Of

1. Listening to my inner monologue.
2. Skinny women who wear spandex at the gym.
3. Skinny guys who eat horrendous crap and stay skinny.
4. Being lonely.
5. Being lonely in a roomful of people.
6. Living in my own skin.
7. People who can't hold clicky pens without clicking them all the time.
8. Making excuses for myself, instead of actually having the courage and energy to change things inside me and around me.
9. Being useless to the outside world; having no real “skills.”
10. Being so far away from my friends.
11. "Analysts" on news shows. I wish they would get real jobs, and stop criticizing other people for the way they do theirs.
12. Stretch marks – old ones and new ones, which seem to popping up every day, despite the fact that I’m trying to lose weight, and therefore, have my skin not be pulled so tight over my insides that it actually stretches.
13. Doing homework (I’ve been doing it since I was six years old. I’m 28.)
14. Processed "food" (and I use the term loosely). Do yourself a favor and read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan.
15. Overmedicated children and adults. If your kid can’t sit still, he might not have ADD/ADHD. Maybe you should get him/her off sugar, for crissake.
16. A society that wants quick fixes from the medical establishment. "I don’t want to change my diet, so give me some pills." "I don’t want to start exercising, so give me medication instead." "I’m sad, so instead of me making changes in my life to have a happier, more fulfilling existence and get rid of the things that are causing me to be sad, just give me some “uppers” that will make me happy in the short term, but in the long run, do nothing to actually solve the problem." (Caveat…I know clinical depression is a real thing, and that in some cases, medication is a true godsend.)
17. Suffocating under the unbearably heavy burden of the same fears and insecurities that have been crushing me since I was twelve years old.
18. Feeling like a fatass, even while I’m running at the gym to remedy this exact problem.
19. Feeling the saddlebags on my hips jiggle while I run.
20. Old men lapping me on the track, especially on days when I feel like I’m doing really well, and running at a good pace.
21. Days when I have no choice but to get out of bed, get dressed, go to work, and be part of the world, when I want nothing more than to stay in bed all day, with the covers over my head, pretending like this isn’t actually my life. After all, if I don't see anybody, they don't see me.
22. Crying at the same damn things that made me cry when I was a teenager.
23. Sitting down, and noticing how my hips and thighs span the entire width of the chair.
24. Feeling trapped in my own body.
25. Being unable to escape from myself. Life is rough when the person you hate most in the world is yourself. Where can you go to get away from her?
26. Looking at myself and hating every single thing I see.
27. People who are naturally thin.
28. Being scared that it’s always going to be like this.

(Sorry...I'm having a bad day. [Can you tell? ;-)] Nothing a cigarette and a large glass of wine won't fix. Well, that, and a generous serving of ipecac syrup. [Just kidding. I wish I wasn't, but I am, so don't freak out. I'm just too level=headed for my own good when it comes to things like that.])

The Prison of Imagination

***This post is dedicated to M., who said, and I quote, "Blog more." :-)


“All my life I’ve been frightened at the moment I sit down to write.”


So said Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, whose fear of writing did not stop him from winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, for One Hundred Years of Solitude, a masterpiece of fiction and magical-realism known the world over.

It is nice to know that in my fear of the blank page, in the gripping terror that engulfs me when I sit down to write, I am in good company.

In the two months since I posted “The Tyranny of the Blank Page,” in which I wrote about the mental and emotional obstacles to writing fiction, I am ashamed to admit I have not written much of anything. A few more blog posts, yes. (Few being the operative word.) But nothing that will start me along my slow, long struggle to reach the bestseller lists.

Like I said in that first post, I’ve had nothing but gobs and gobs of free time to write. And yet, I’ve done gobs and gobs of just about everything but write. (Well, no, that’s not really true. All I've really done is watched gobs and gobs of The X-Files, and Quantum Leap, thanks to a week and a half of leave time, and a subscription to Netflix, which, I hereby declare, is the greatest thing since Nutella. (Why Nutella? Well, let’s face it folks, “sliced bread” isn’t really all that great, is it? You could easily buy a whole loaf of bread and slice it yourself. But how would you possibly get all that chocolately and hazelnutty goodness whipped up so smoothly on your own? … I rest my case.)

In my defense, during all this time in which I haven’t been writing, I’ve at least been thinking about writing. In fact, I’ve done so much thinking, and so much introspection, that I may have finally discovered exactly what it is that has kept me from putting pen to paper (or hands to keyboard, as it were), more often.

It’s my imagination. I’m a prisoner of my own imagination.

(This, of course, is a natural sequel for “The Tyranny of the Blank Page,” but I have to admit, I’m beginning to wonder what it says about me, when I resort to using such violent words in association with something I claim to love so much…)

If you’ve ever seen the movie The Shawshank Redemption, you might remember a character named Brooks Hatlen. Brooks was a white-haired, older gentleman, who had spent his entire adult life inside the Shawshank facility. At one point in the movie, he gets released. (I don’t remember if he was paroled, or if his sentence was up. It’s not important. The point is, he got out of prison.) Brooks got a job bagging groceries at a supermarket, and found himself a small apartment. The thing is, he had spent so much of his life at Shawshank, that he didn’t know how to function anywhere else. Inside the prison walls, he was safe. The minute he stepped outside, however, everything fell apart. Nothing was what he expected it to be, and he simply couldn’t adjust. He was so frustrated and so scared by his failure to adapt to the outside world, that he wound up hanging himself.

You must be thinking, how could this possibly be related to writing? Well, let me see if I can explain what I mean when I say my imagination is a prison.

When I get an idea for something, whether it’s a poem, a short story, or a novel, it’s always perfect. At the moment of conception, when my mind gets the very first inkling of something that would be worth writing, the entity is complete, whole, and pristine. It’s almost as though the start, the middle, and the end, are all wrapped up in a little ball, or better yet, a single point.

The Italian writer Italo Calvino wrote a story called “All At One Point.” It was set during the time just before the Big Bang, when everything, and I mean everything, was converged in a central, infinitesimal point. People were always fighting, because there was no room to move around. Everyone, by definition of the point they were trapped in, was invading everyone else’s personal space. There were plants, and animals, and houses, and everything else we think of when we think of the world, even though it was before most of those things had evolved, or were invented. The story required a great degree of suspension of disbelief, but if you could manage to put aside your questions and doubts, and your junior high school physics, it made for really entertaining reading.

I mention Calvino’s story to try and explain what an idea looks like in my mind. It’s all converged in a point. A tiny speck. And yet, it’s all there: characters, a plot, lines of dialogue, a great opening sentence, and an even better closing. All the symbols, all the wonderful descriptions, all the joy, all the heartbreak, is wrapped up inside itself, around itself, in this beautiful, pristine form.

The difficulty starts when I try to take the ideas out of my head, and put them on paper. To take something that exists in a perfect, untouched, abstract state, and give it a physical shape. To take these incredible visions, this amazing potential, and transform it into letters and words, and hope that none of the greatness gets lost in translation.

My imagination is a prison because, just like old Brooks inside Shawshank, my ideas are safe inside my imagination. As long as they stay there, they remain perfect. They have the best possible opening line, the best possible final sentence, and, most important of all, everything in between conveys exactly what I wanted to express, in exactly the right way, so that the reader takes away every single nuance, and every single feeling I wanted them to have.

The minute I start to actually write, however, things can only go downhill. If an idea is perfect inside my mind, then when it leaves, and starts to take shape as not a notion, but a novel, it can only get worse. Maybe I won’t find just the right word. Maybe I won’t be subtle enough. Maybe I’ll be too subtle. Maybe the way the character looks to me in dim light, or moonlight, or broad daylight, won’t be the way he looks to my readers, because I’ve failed to describe him the right way. Maybe they won’t laugh when I want them to. Or maybe they’ll laugh when I don’t want them to. Maybe they won’t cry, because my writing doesn’t convey the torturous, soul-sucking emotional agony my character is in.


And now, for a fun break, here are two quotes that summarize this feeling, and also show me I am not alone in this neurosis:


The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it. – Jules Renard


Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. – Isaac Bashevis Singer



I know that this fear is a big part of why I don’t write as much as I should. What I don’t know is where it came from, or how to make it go away. Making it go away is probably very simple. I would think that writing more is the only way to make it go away. The more often I overcome this fear, the less I’ll have to fear, right? Once you’ve slain six dragons, slaying the seventh is a piece of cake.

As for where it came from, well, I’m not really sure how to answer that. I suspect it has a lot to do with what I talked about in “The Tyranny of the Blank Page.” The rest of it, though, has to do with my own expectations.

In all the time I’ve spent thinking (and not writing) in the past few weeks, I realized there’s more to it than what I said about living up to the standards of other writers. The fear of falling so far short of my personal literary idols is very real, so I don’t want to dismiss it. However, I have come to realize that what has stopped me from writing is actually the fear of living up to my own standards. The ideas in my head are so beautiful in their undisturbed state, and the heart of the issue is that I doubt my ability to make them as good when I put them on paper.

The thing is, I don’t know why I question my talent. I’ve proven to myself over and over again that I can do it. During the past four years (and I can NOT believe it’s been that long), I’ve written an impressive collection of JAG fan fiction stories. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of fan fiction, in a nutshell, you take the characters from a TV show (or movie), and write your own stories with them in it. Some people try to make their stories just like regular episodes. Others, like me, take a more literary approach. We use the characters, stay true to their backstories, and stick to show canon, but we write as if it’s a “normal” short story or novella. (Go ahead and laugh … how do you think those old Star Trek novels got started? And I bet some of those people have made plenty of money over the years!)

I used to be embarrassed about my obsession with JAG. It was all I talked about, all I thought about, and all I wanted to think about. I got hooked on it in early 2002, and wrote my first “fic” in October of that year. I watched it as often as I could, which, courtesy of syndication on the USA Network, was about three times a day. JAG had been on the air since 1995. Thanks to those reruns, and also to being unemployed, I caught up on six seasons in about six months. Through not having a job at all, to having a job I hated, to being in graduate school, to hating graduate school, and through joining the military, JAG was the one thing I could always count on to cheer me up. I scoured the Internet for JAG-related websites, and was certainly not disappointed. I came across a few fan fiction sites, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I used the phrase “used to be embarrassed” about my fan fiction hobby, because enough time has passed, and I’ve written enough stories, that I’m actually very proud of what I’ve accomplished. Since I do not own the copyright for JAG or any of the associated characters, I can’t have my stories published in “the real world.” I do, however, have a relatively large following on the Internet. (I post my stories to several websites, each time making sure that it is clearly stated that I do not own the copyrights, that no infringement is intended, and that no money is being made from my work. And, as I constantly had to tell myself during those years of writing nothing but JAG fanfics, it was better than writing nothing! … Kind of like when I write in this blog!)

I’m very proud of the JAG writing I’ve done. And, even though I can’t make a name for myself in the literary world by using characters someone else invented, the effort I’ve put into those stories has without question made me a better writer. I loved working on those stories, since they allowed me to be immersed so deeply in the JAG world. And now, when I look back on the pieces I produced, my heart gets warmer not only because I remember how there were days when JAG (and the online community it introduced me to) seemed like the only good thing in my life, but more so now because I see how much my writing has improved. My first stories were good. The ones in the middle were better. The latest ones are excellent. So, even though I won’t be able to buy a yacht off the royalties from them, the true payoff is the improvement in my craft. Writing so many of those stories helped me to fit the pieces of the puzzle together better. How did all the individual scenes fit into the bigger picture? Was one particular line of dialogue so essential, that I needed to build an entire scene around it? Or, my most hated, was a certain scene so good, and so well written, but just didn’t jell with the rest of it? Would I have to let it fall on the cutting room floor, and accept that just because it sounded good, didn’t mean it worked in that particular story?

Anyway, I mentioned my catalogue of JAG stories because they are proof not only that I can overcome my fear, but that the fear is unfounded in the first place. I wasn’t so afraid at the beginning, when I first started writing fan fiction. But maybe that’s because my stories were simple, and relatively short. But later on, during the last two years, as my writing itself got better, the stories I wanted to tell become more complex.

I’ve never been very good at coming up with plots. I’ve always relied on the notion that my writing was strong enough, and the JAG characters so well formed, that readers would hardly notice they were reading thirty pages of description, dialogue, and exposition, with nothing actually “happening.”

And it worked, too! Readers loved it! I had them fooled, bless their giant, JAG-loving hearts! The thing was, I wasn’t fooled. I knew I was going to have to learn how to write a decent plot, if I ever wanted to be a “real” writer.

I have since written two JAG stories with (if I do say so myself) very kick-ass plots. Both stories were extremely well-received. Readers liked them, and they told me so. And, more important, I liked them. I was quite satisfied, and not a little impressed, with how they both turned out.

The funny thing is, I remember how terrified I was while I was writing them. I had a very clear picture of certain scenes in my mind, and I was convinced I’d never be able to do them justice on paper. The pivotal moments wouldn’t be as dramatic as I wanted them to be. As I had imagined they would be. I wouldn’t do a good enough job of leading up to them. Or they were so complex I couldn’t get a handle on them. I was like an interior decorator, working with a completely empty room. I knew I had a living room, but depending on what color I chose for the walls, and for the carpet, the room would have an entirely different feel. Putting a sofa on the left side could create a whole different look from putting it on the right. With these two stories, everything wound up in the right place, but it took a long time to move the pieces around. It took a lot of arranging and rearranging, before it sounded just right.

The great thing was, I did it by myself. I asked other writers, whose work I admired, for advice. I even went so far as to ask one of them if she would co-write one of the stories with me, since I doubted, even from the very first moment, that I could “pull it off.” She was too busy working on something else at the time, so I wound up writing it on my own. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. All the good ideas on those pages, all the drama, the suspense, the joy, and the sadness, came from me. There are a few specific scenes that come to mind when I think of these two stories. A few scenes, around which everything else was hinged. They were pivotal moments, and I didn’t want them to fall flat. The good news is, general consensus by my “fans” said they didn’t. And, even better, I say they didn’t. Even now, months and years later, when I reread them, I don’t think I could have done a better job.

When I go back and read some of those old stories, I’m often surprised at how good they are. (When I go back too far, though, like to junior high school, or even elementary school, I’m embarrassed by most of what I wrote, and if bits and pieces of book reports or very early attempts at short stories ever turn up in the Enquirer, or on the E! network, when I’m famous, I’ll deny everything.) But seriously, at the risk of singing my own praises, I’m usually pretty impressed when I read my work. I sometimes even say to myself, “Damn, this is good! I can’t believe I wrote this!”

Like Garcia Marquez, I am always afraid when I sit down to write. Even if I know what I want to say; even if I already know the ending. Even if I know everything that has to happen, I doubt my ability to string it all together in a way that anyone in their right mind would want to read.

My friend S’s favorite author, John Irving, said it best: “I don’t know how far away the end is – only what it is. I know the last sentence, but I am very much in the dark concerning how to get to it.”

My strategy used to be the same. I would come up with a fabulous ending, and then, all I needed to do was figure out how to reach it. This is still my favorite way to write, but my last few JAG stories were written very much out of order. I wrote scenes as they developed in my head, and then, when I had enough of the major scenes done, I wrote the little things necessary to connect them all.

I’ve realized I can write from start to finish, or finish to start, or completely jumbled up, and it’ll always turn out fine. The trick is keeping sight of the big picture. Where do each of those scenes fit in? What needs to happen before I can put a scene in its proper place? What needs to happen afterward? Is the plot strong enough to stand on its own, without a lot of character insight? Or, on the other side, are the characters, and their interactions with each other, so powerful that I don’t need an amazing plot?

I go through what I call a “simmering” stage, when I write. I get an idea, and it has to simmer in my mind for a while. I have to think about it before I can write about it. I have to have enough of it planned out in my head before I’ll be ready to start writing. I can come up with details anywhere: daydreaming at work (my favorite); laying in bed; reading someone else’s work. I’ve started carrying around a mini notebook, so I can jot things down before I forget them. At one point, while I was working on my longest JAG story (which weighed in at a whopping 224 pages—in a 9-pt font!!), my desk was covered in fluorescent-colored Post-it-Notes, each one with a few lines of dialogue, or the gist of a scene I had yet to write.

Sometimes ideas simmer for days, sometimes months, and in one rare case, it took two years. (I got a great idea for a story in August 2004, and even wrote a bare-bones outline. I got sidetracked by various things, including another story that I chose to write first (and which ended up at a not-too-shabby 176 pages, in 10-pt font). But, I never gave up on it. It was always in the back of my mind, doing what my ideas do best: simmering. I kept my notes in a safe place. I remembered the central theme I wanted to present, and I stayed true to it. I am pleased to report that the pot finally boiled over this summer. I started writing it in July, and finished in September. (Not bad, for 92 pages! It still tickles me to know I incorporated lines of dialogue I had written two years earlier! It just goes to show, you never know when you’ll use something. If not now, then maybe in something you write a few years down the road. If it’s genuinely good, it’ll be just as good later. And if it’s not, then you know it wasn’t that good to begin with…)


Besides the fear of living up to my own expectations, there’s one other thing that makes me question myself every time I sit down to write. It’s the little voice that tells me no one would ever want to read about _________. I don’t know if this is something all authors have to overcome, the “Who Cares Syndrome.”

I wonder if Betty Smith ever asked herself why anyone would want to read about a poor girl growing up Brooklyn in the 1920s. (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn). Or if John Jakes ever told himself that no one would read a saga about families torn apart by the Civil War. (North and South). Or if Terry Goodkind ever asked himself why anyone would give a damn about love, war, and one man’s journey to fulfill his destiny in a faraway, imaginary land? (Wizard’s First Rule).

I can only rely on the truth I find in my absolute favorite quote about writing:

“When I want to read a good book, I write one.” -- Benjamin Disraeli

Every JAG story I’ve written was a story I wanted to read. But, since no one had written it yet, it was up to me. If I wanted to read about __________, I was going to have to write it, myself. And, I must say, four years, and I-don’t-know-how-many-stories later, I’ve done a pretty good job. I haven’t done much writing, but I’ve done enough to know that I don’t trust anyone else to write the way I do. If I had given one of my ideas to someone else, they would have written the story in an entirely different way. Not necessarily worse, but definitely different. And it’s just like the quote says: if I want to read a certain kind of story, hear specific kinds of language, and form specific kinds of images in my mind, I’m going to have to write the story myself.

After all, I’m the only one who can read my mind. I’m the only one who can take those abstract images and transform them into the exact words I want, the exact pace, the exact tone. So, no matter how afraid I am to do it, I have no choice. I’m the only one who can.



And now, I’ll leave you with a selection of my favorite quotes about writing, taken from http://www.quotegarden.com/writing.html


There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

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Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~~Nathaniel Hawthorne

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The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. ~~Mark Twain

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Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. ~~Gene Fowler

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Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. ~~Flannery O'Connor

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The coroner will find ink in my veins and blood on my typewriter keys. ~~C. Astrid Weber

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An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. ~~Gustave Flaubert

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A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~~Thomas Mann

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Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all. ~Franklin P. Adams


**Also, if you're interested in the JAG stories, you can find them at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StarTrailsJAGfic (There's a link in the list to the right on this page.) But, I have to warn you, some of the stories there are of an "adult" nature. If you're under 18, you might go blind if you try to read them!