It’s one of those days, snarky, and I can’t get into my work… which is dull and corporate in nature anyway and I woke up with a splitting headache and that dreadful phrase in my head, “what’s the point of it all?” And my co-workers keep telling me that my underwear is showing and I can’t really do anything about it. I think the bottom line, after reading Virtual Pint and a few dozen Ask Nicola‘s is that everyone is reaching out from their various corners of the earth, myself included, for reassurance that whatever path we are taking or abandoning or considering is ok and that there other people reading and writing and drinking and eating and fighting traffic and picking blueberries or apologizing to a lover. It’s compounded need for company in this world they say is getting smaller but actually is so freaking enormous that its impossible to even scratch the surface. And, Kelley, your forum is a great hostel for all of us looking for the point of it all. It is so important, especially in this out of control world, that we all can talk. And share. And listen. That we write. And we read. Work out lyrics and try new things based on recommendation. Kudos, Kelley. What would be a good brew to try on a day like this?
anonymous
I’m sorry you had a snarky day and hope this one is better.
One particularly unhappy year, chock full of snarky days, I was living in Chicago with very few personal connections, no money, no sweetie, and a roommate with a coke habit that didn’t quite hide her vast sadness. I worked in television production and watched the few women I knew in the business become brittle and barbed from the same battles I was fighting. I was beginning to understand that I wasn’t going to be an actor. So I started spending at least two evenings a week in a lovely hot bath drinking a homemade chocolate milkshake. Did it make anything better? Hard to say. At the time, it felt like I was hanging on by my fingernails; now it seems to me that I did a pretty good job of taking care of myself during a hard time.
I was reading the Sunday paper that winter – white sky, gray trees, snow blowing against the living room window. On the front page of the travel section was a picture of people in a pontoon raft on the Colorado river in the Grand Canyon, the hot sharp light of summer. People in motion. People doing something large. I read the article and felt large myself, and also sad, a sort of miserable, resigned ache. And that just pissed me off, you know? So I cut the article out of the paper and carried it in my bag for a year. Every time I got out my car keys or my wallet, I saw it. It turned so soft from handling that it felt like a cloth handkerchief. I started the Kelley Eskridge Invisible Savings Plan (a way of hiding money without actually putting it out of reach). I ate a lot of potatoes and tuna sandwiches that year, and sixteen months later I was on the river myself. And it was fucking amazing, not only because it was as near as I’ve been to a sense of the sacred, but because I felt in motion myself, driving instead of drifting.
So that’s my strategy for the bad times: find small ways to live large while I’m working on the large ones. I talk to Nicola. I laugh as much as I can. I drink Stella Artois or Oranjeboom. I listen to music that makes me feel bigger in the world. I cook myself the potato-chip tuna casserole my mom made when I was a kid. I read an old favorite book. I watch an oh-my-god-if-I-could-only-meet-that-person movie. I dream. I still want to be in a movie, meet U2, have a bestseller, earn an aikido black belt, write a kickass screenplay for one of the women in Searching for Debra Winger, spend two weeks in Moorea, design and build our own house, be fluent in ASL. And go back to the canyon. I’m working on it.
I’m glad you enjoy the virtual pub. I do too. It’s become important to me in ways I didn’t expect. I’m grateful for the conversations here. I like the mix of idea and experience, personal and general. The talk of hopes and fears jostling with reports on the state of the world from our particular corner of it. Sometimes a warm fire and a beer and the sense of companionable folk at nearby tables is just the ticket. Look, there’s your chair.
I had a variety of ‘hanging on to the edge of the precipice’ strategies before. Lately, though, it seems I just complain about stuff when I’m messed up. This probably means my life is pretty good now, or that I’m being shamefully lazy and ought to stay depressed. 🙂 *giggling at my drama-queening*
Things that used to help me feel better—or not go totally insane:
– Long walks, especially when the weather was not too cold and the trajectory included crossing large structures over water. There’s three bridges around here: Granville, Cambie and Burrard. When I was really upset, I walked across all three, for a total of six crossings and a full day or night of roaming the city.
– Moving things around the house, usually rearranging my desk, bed, bookshelves. I called it: “Playing with my walking, talking furniture friends.” (a la Beauty and the Beast)
– Moving to another neighborhood. This is a more extreme form of moving furniture around, since it involves giving away all my stuff, save for the books (they are enough to keep me busy). This method can also be upgraded, depending on how hellish the world seems at the time, to moving to another city and moving to another country. Sometimes, I wish planet was on the list of moving options.
– Food. Salad with nuts and fruit. Pumpkin pie from Melriches Coffee House. Spinach-fetta pizza from Numero 1 Pizza. Blackberry milkshake from Hamburger Mary’s. Coffee jelly from Shabusen Yakiniku House (their all-you-can-eat is also great). Anything from the Banana Leaf. Double Chocolate Truffle ice cream.
– Reading short stories and novels. Poetry is not recommended, it has a way of pushing you up-to-your-nose deep into the swamps of hell sometimes. Music can also work either way. It’s like playing Russian roulette. Sex can also work both ways.
– Making fun of myself. I can be so dramatic, all it takes is a few steps back so I can realize how I’m just doing my trademark Monkey Dance of Doom again.
– Watching good movies at a large theater with THX sound, preferably during matinees so I get to be alone with the experience and forget I’m me and on this planet for two hours.
– Sleeping. I call this the ‘New Day Technique.’ Things that seem Big and Serious last night shrink and go limp after a good shut-eye session.
– Rollerblading. One time, I got news that upset me so much I rollerbladed around Vancouver’s sea wall three times a day=5 hours of rolling around.
Hm… no wonder I was in such good shape and now I’m a noodle. Many of my Dealing With My Own Drama strategies involved moving. I should really get my ass to the gym one of these days… It’s been 4 long years of keeping my computer chair warm.
Uh-oh. Look, I’m riffing again. 😉
Ah, Karina, your strategies are so expansive!
Mine have become more so since my milkshake-in-the-bathtub days. That’s partly a result of having a little more disposable income (matinee movie showings with popcorn are a mainstay strategy now, and I take my own salt shaker because I like a lot). But mostly it’s that I actually don’t enjoy the suffering anymore.
That’s not a comment on you or anyone else, just me. And I didn’t exactly enjoy the suffering, I suppose — but on some level I got stuck in it for periods of time. My strategies were about retreat and protection, about hiding myself. I got depressed. I am more likely to get mad these days (see recent post on “creative rage,” a thing about which I will write more at some point).
Anger is no fucking fun, but at least it’s expansive. At least I end up (eventually) doing something about how I’m feeling. I’ve expressed more actual anger in the last three years or so than probably ever in the whole rest of my adult life put together. Of course I generally express it very politely (grin), because I’m grown up enough these days to know that anger is a signal to recognize rather than a place to stick in. So I’m interested in getting out of it, rather than internalizing it.
I think physical activity is a great outlet, although I’m not hardwired for it. I am rarely (hah, never) seized by the impulse to walk for miles. But my workouts at the gym sure do make me feel better a lot.
Mostly, it’s doing that makes me feel better. So many of my young-person strategies were about feeling — to the extent that I’d do nothing except curl up and feel. Blech. Much better to do, even if the doing is to go to the park and stare at the water for a while until I can laugh at my own version of the Monkey Dance of Doom. I am so glad that I have stopped taking myself so seriously, it’s taken me years to do it and it is such a gift, no?
I saw this written in very small print at the bottom of a calendar page, “See all the things that are still beautiful and be happy.” And I thought, how nice. And then I looked closer and saw those words were written by Anne Frank.
Right now I see Kelley and Karina.
Jan, I see you too. Happy 2009 to you.