Category Archives: Modern Life

Aug 23 2012
12 Comments
Humorous, Modern Life, San Francisco

The Internet Doesn’t Need Me

Please?

A couple of days ago I moved into a less horrifyingly-dirty apartment, which is great. Unfortunately, there is no internet due to a freak accident. The good news is that we’re having a dude or ma’am come pour us some more on Saturday, but the bad news is that they’re coming on Saturday, not now.

I’ve been hooked on the internet ever since Mom took the sisters and me to the library so we could play Neopets for hours on end, pissing off people who were trying to look for jobs and/or porn. Just like many others from the I-Can’t-Complain-But-I-Still-Do generation, attachment to the internet characterizes my hyper-socialized existence. Smart phones are whipped out at every chance, email and facebook checked as routinely as blinking, and barrages of tweets barrel down our throats every other second. Much of what I call “work,” I do from my computer, and using the internet is my only hobby.

Living without the internet, albeit for only a couple of days, has forced me to adapt to what I used to believe was an untenable situation, and I’ve come to a startling conclusion, one that has rocked me to the core and that I can’t wait to forget.

The internet doesn’t need me.

Through my forced detachment, I found that because of the massive amounts of time I spend communicating and throwing tweets out there and cultivating facebook for notifications, I came to believe that people needed me to be out there talking to them, that things would go horribly awry if I weren’t there, that #searchingforemily would start trending if I hadn’t tweeted in x amount of hours, that my emails would pile up and every employer I ever contacted would get back to me and demand a response within an hour and then give up when I was incommunicado.

What I did find was a different situation altogether. When I made it to a café yesterday at 8:15 AM, eager to see what kinds of crucial communication I had missed, I found that not much had happened.  I had one personal email to respond to. Suddenly, I realized that I didn’t need the internet attached at the bellybutton in order to maintain relationships with people I loved, and that for the most part, things go on without me pretty well out there on the web. Most importantly, I learned that more internet does not mean better internet. It means more aimless wandering, the endless searching for the next shock or haha.

Will I take these lessons and make them a part of my life when internet does come home roost forever, or will I greet it and kiss it on both cheeks and say welcome dear one  I have missed you let us never be parted again? I think we all know the answer to that question. Things will probably go back to normal and I will waste time and not get enough done. But at least I know that I’m the only one that really cares.

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Aug 21 2012
17 Comments
Modern Life, Two minute read

Oh Those Days of Existential Crisis

She just drank curdled milk.

Do you ever have those days when you wake up and before you finish making a cup of coffee you feel the impending doom and think, “Uh oh…. existential crisis.”

On these days, the most mundane and routine actions are the ones most likely to send you spiraling down an endless and ultimately fruitless contemplation of what it’s all about. The thin fibers of normalcy that hold your days together become themselves something to be examined and prove to be just as flimsy as the skin on the top of a glass of overheated milk, something that can be poked at and punctured.

What am I doing here? Why am I doing it? What’s the end goal for this week, this month, this life? Does what I do even matter? Should I brush my teeth today? Pants are so weird. The world is too arbitrary. I’m eating ice cream for breakfast because I can’t figure out what matters.

The old answers that you tell yourself for some reason don’t quite ring true today and it seems like you could fall through the living world to a different place if you’re not too careful. Appearances seem more like facades covering up reality and the truth that lurks beneath is undoubtedly dark.

On days like this, you still drink the tea made with a little bit of curdled milk. There wasn’t too much, you reason. It’s probably fine, you say. And you loathe yourself.

Sleep beckons you, but there is much work to do, even if you can’t quite figure out why. You know tomorrow will make sense again and the world will seem more solid, especially because you will have moved into your new place and won’t run into Sam anymore in the kitchen. He’s one of those where, just like girls periods move into synch after living together, your kitchen movements have synched and so every time you’re in there you’re constantly in each other’s way even though it’s not a small kitchen. It’s maddening and awkward, especially because neither of you find the other very funny and your jokes simultaneously fall flat as you try to make small talk.

Yes, life without Sam will be better. And you should really get more sleep and not eat ice cream for breakfast. The issue will resolve itself by disappearing, like it always does, and you will go back to the bright world even if you don’t quite know what it means.

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Jul 24 2012
51 Comments
Humorous, Modern Life, Two minute read

Why Exercising is the Worst

Yup, that’s about right.

I have about a billion and one problems with exercising, aside from the fact I struggle doing it regularly. First of all, I can never spell the freaking word. I always get the c and the s and the z* mixed up and yes I do have a college degree and even if I went back and got every single degree I would still misspell exercising because it is accursed.

Aside from spelling, one of my personal struggles with exercising stems from the fact I only have one sports bra and hate doing laundry more than three times in three months. This becomes a problem when I try to exercise every day, because as one exercises, one’s body produces sweat, a combination of accumulated self-loathing and lethargy that melts and drips out of the body’s pores and into clothing in a most unattractive way. This sweat often has a scent that reminds me of herds of large animals running in the midsummer sun. What I’m trying to say is my bra gets gross and I hate having to do a special load of laundry just to satisfy my exercising habit.

Probably the biggest issue I have with exercising is that it is never-ending. It’s not possible to work out regularly and extremely for three years and have the effects last longer than a couple months. There’s no internal bank of exercise credit in which one may store up and then slowly distribute all of the hard work that has been put into the body. One can sweat their eyeballs out for six months and then one month later, their bodies never remember leaving the kitchen.

At any time during a phase of regular exercise, the anti-motivation demon comes to call. My alarm goes off in the morning and instantly I start making excuses as to why I’m unable to leave buddy the bed and complete the scheduled routine. My throat’s scratchy, there’s not enough time, I’m too sore from yesterday, the other runners will jeer at me, my clothes are too dark, etc. As my mind grasps at any possible excuse to not leave the house, I know the whole time that I am sabotaging myself and will never be a person that has the healthy-person glow, a glow that can be imitated, but not reproduced exactly, through the use of alcohol.

As I lie in bed convincing myself that my legs will fall off if I start running, another part of me says, “You are pathetic. You know you could go running. You know you’re not sick and that it won’t be that hard. But look at you, all soft and squishy, curled up in bed. You should have known you wouldn’t be able to exercise regularly.” After a while I start agreeing with the voice. “I am sad and flabby. I don’t deserve the healthy glow.”

And then I stay in bed and hate myself for it, even more than I hated myself for rarely exercising. Thus I’ve concluded it’s best not to start the whole ordeal, just as it’s better to never love. When no one loses, everyone wins.

*”But there’s no z in exercising!” You might say. Why, then, do I put it in there every single time I type the word? There must be a z! There must!

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Jul 18 2012
20 Comments
Humorous, Modern Life, Two minute read

Watching Dogs Crap and Other Joys of Living in the City

Just out of sight, a baby is de-feathering a pigeon.

I am but a prairie lass, born and raised in the gated communities of Oklahoman suburbia, where everyone besides me got a car for their 16th birthday and our motto is “Free parking for all!” Now that I’m living in San Francisco, which is a bigger city, if not the biggest, I get to experience those subtle joys of urban life, the things that make living in the semi-tropical concrete jungle worthwhile.

Take yesterday, for example, when I was riding the MUNI (subway) and reading my NOOK (not as good as a kindle) while heading to the outer sunset (a neighborhood.) After a couple of stops, a rather vocal and drunk man across the aisle decided to direct his conversation to four other passengers scattered about in the car that were reading books, including me. “People used to f-ing talk!” he said. “Now look at them, with their f-ing tweetering and facebook…….(mumble)…there used to be CONVERSATIONS.” I smiled inwardly while staring determinedly at my NOOK. “This is great!” I thought. “City life!” Seconds later the man asked me for a cigarette and shortly after that I hopped off the train and skipped home.

In addition to the characters on public transport, part of city life in San Francisco is getting to watch people watch their dogs take a dump. At any given time in a dog park, 20% of the animals are crapping and 100% percent of their owners either staring in order to know the location of the turds, or pretending to ignore it while mentally mapping Fido’s mess. This bizarre kind of human-animal interaction is something only the urban could have come up with, and it’s just another reason I love living here!

Awkward secondary interactions with strangers are also an integral and precious part of city life. While in line at McDonald’s, a popular local joint, the man in front of me started berating the innocent employee because she had “lied” to him about the cost of honey mustard AND not given it to him. “I’m not here to argue with you!” the man yelled. “I’m here to do business!” After one of the more uncomfortable minutes of my and the employee’s day, the man grabbed his sauce, sat down, and proceeded to eat his gigantic meal alone.  This was business.

As if the city couldn’t get any better, yesterday I ran to the ocean (that’s right mom, I was exercising), and stood triumphally on top of a sand dune, having a spiritual moment as the sun sank red into the ocean. After about a minute, a man walked up to the dune on my left and and assumed a characteristic position that indicated he was about to be sick. Ah, nothing like enjoying the sunset with the promise of someone nearby blowing chunks. Unfortunately, I had to leave and could not stay to watch any bile-spewing, but maybe I’ll catch it next time!

Life in the city sure is fun! But seriously, it’s better than the suburbs. I’ll take the vomit and the weird human-animal and human-human interactions any day. The only thing I miss is my parent’s kitchen.

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May 08 2012
25 Comments
Modern Life, Three minute read

Why I Plan on Selling Out to the Man ASAP

Now ready for salaried work

I’m leaving Egypt for good in about three weeks. My Arabic program, and in fact my entire journey with Arabic, is finally coming to an end, having died a swift but not painless death here in Cairo. Currently, my plan is to go home and marry my sister, or rather, see her married, and then scrimp and save my frequent- flier miles, cushion change, and Chick-fil-A coupons in order to purchase a flight out to San Francisco where I want to “be a writer.”

I was eating dinner at the second-best Thai restaurant in Cairo with boyfriend, friend, and friend of friend, when post-Egypt plans came up in the conversation. I told the friend of a friend that I wanted to be a writer, and he asked what kind of writer, and I said I didn’t know, at which point he burst out laughing. And this is a man who has maintained a neutral face for 98% of his waking life. Apparently my ambitions are a gut-buster. He followed his chuckles with a question, “So when are you going to sell out to the man?”

The conversation turned away shortly after this comment and the rest of the evening was filled with heated yet useless discussion of American foreign policy in which no one admitted that I was obviously right.

At any rate, I pretty much forgot about the remark until this morning, when I was simultaneously looking for jobs and trying to think of something to blog about today. Suddenly, I was struck with my answer to his semi-rhetorical question: “As soon as possible. I will sell out to the man as soon as possible.”

The man has a bad reputation for being a soul-crusher and brilliance-suck, but he (or she) also has health insurance, a steady salary, after-work parties, socializing opportunities with kwards (short for awkward people), logoed shirts, networking possibilities, and buildings to wander through after hours.

He’s also not the only person I could sell out to. I could sell out to yuppies and become a full time babysitter that tries to write short stories at work while the young ones struggle through one of my custom-designed mazes. I could sell out to slightly older yuppies and become a tutor that teaches children to worship the god of standardized tests by sacrificing as many Saturdays as possible to the Great SAT. I could sell out to the coffee bean or tomato and become a barista or waitress, where I will be brainwashed to believe that dinners and lattes are of earth-shattering importance.

All the while, I could be typing furiously on my laptop when I return from work, quipping, editing, and submitting, until finally an obscure literary journal accepts me as an unpaid intern at which point I’ll finally have no time to blog.

So you see, sarcastic friend of a friend who thinks my hopes and dreams are ridiculous and that I need to wake up and smell the black coffee of reality, not only do I like drinking black coffee now (as long as it’s Nescafe Gold), but I also think that selling out to the man (or woman) is one of my better options.

I didn’t say I wanted to starve to death. I said I wanted to be a writer.

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