do you know how old I am?
Thirteen, right?
I’m blogging from my training. This is very bad… I should be in the final presentations of this week, paying attention… but I have to be out of here at elevenish… It’s a wash at this point anyway, isn’t it?
Do you remember that middle aged senator from somewhere out west (I think) whose diaries were released to the public or press in conjunction with some impropriety? He had written details about how he fixed his (doubtless thinning, oh the indignity!) hair and dressed for particular functions or meetings– and the impression he just knew he would make because he looked so darn hot.
I remember feeling so sorry for the old lech, because, as odious and womanly as he was, I, too, am that self absorbed.
Don’t you think that most of us have that Walter Mitty dialog running in our head most of the time? (Yes I am in fact a HUGE Thurber fan. He gave us some of the finest and funniest insight into a certain subset of the human condition and culture EVER.)
I think perhaps that the senator’s (or whatever he was) personality was such that he didn’t have the self awareness to be embarassed… but I would have been so mortified I would have absolutely died.
I was at healing school a weekend or so ago and one of my colleagues volunteered to go first for a grueling emotional class exercise involving exposing one’s own subtle and pathetic lies to oneself. She jumped right up, admitting that she loved attention. I could have kissed her! It’s not loving attention… it’s loving it and pretending — or not even being aware — that you do. Her humility is a beautiful thing, because underneath it is discernment, honesty, and compassion, three of the key– in fact perhaps *the three key* components for growth and healing.
It’s attention… but it’s also, for me, a sense of being tied in, or part of something. D’you see the subtle difference? Both are related to my neediness and self absorption I think.
Like, when I wake up in a big city hotel, and the big city day is getting started, and the feel of rush hour traffic is all around, and news is blasting from televisions throughout the facility, and people just seem to have places to go… I love it. I am essentially a country mouse. But when I’m in a congested urban area of a major city, I feel tiny and insignificant, yet I feel like I’m really part of something. I think it would just exhaust me to be part of something all the time… but for a while, as in DC this week or as in Boston last spring… it feels really, really cool.
To get back to my own particular Walter Mitty script, there’s a young librarian in this training who, every time he sees me, calls me by the name of the state where I work. You know… Georgia, or Virginia, or Alabama like the name of the wife in Zelda Fitzgerald’s semi autobiographical novel.
This boy is at least ten, if not fifteen, years younger than I am. He’s a cutie, one of those young men who seem eminently secure in themselves, mature, responsible and thoughtful and serious, yet have a great sense of irony and humor.
What I wonder, because of my self absorption, is would he be relating to me in this manner if he knew how old I am? What is it about me– the way I look or relate, or what is it about him– a general desire to relate to me personally, or a general desire to relate to everyone — both of which I think are kinda cool– that makes him heckle me so? [He also complimented my footwear... does he have a shoe fetish, or is he just gay?]
I like it, because it makes me feel like somebody. Does he think I’m a matron who needs some attention, or does he think I’m hot, or is he just a really friendly fellow… almost doesn’t matter because I like the attention. Although it would reflect wonderfully on this boy if he made it a habit to try to make people feel like somebody, wouldn’t it.
It’s really important to take interactions, and people, as they come, with a healthy combination of friendly interest and healthy lack of expectation. But I’m so needy that I have to think about all this stuff, spin out my Walter Mitty.
I’m just sayin. This is me. The internet is the new vehicle for all our narcissism. At least it’s out in the open now, eh? That’s got to be a healthier state of affairs.
Right?
Maybe…
I was telling my formerly southern belle friend M, who lives in Brooklyn, about my new blog, via email. I was saying about how I am cracking up. Then I was about to say that perhaps I am cracking up because I need to break in order to be more the essential me.
Then I realized, jeez! How far is this egg metaphor going to go? I didn’t even know I was doing it. I erased the line in my email posthaste.
But… maybe I am cracking up because I need to break in order to be more the essential me.
I’m sure too damn tired to hold on to much of any of those pieces of shell that aren’t absolutely strictly necessary for minute to minute survival.
I’m glad I changed my moniker
Today I googled my old blog name. That epithet has become somewhat popular. I didn’t think it up, originally, anyway, I did post that disclaimer on the blog, and now lots of people use that phrase to characterise themselves. So… I’m glad I decided to strike out in a new direction, even that’s not why I decided to do it. While it’s a good move, I have to admit I decided to do it because of one petty thing that just sent me over the edge… oh I’ll save it for another post. Still, it’s a good move.
I have been telling friends that this new blog does not have the cohesive and somewhat witty premise or schtick that the last one did. I just feel the need to be, well, to be more myself. I’m still that person that started that old blog– I still, for example, let my child eat fruit and potato chips for supper and then let her watch tv for two hours so I can write– but I’ve kind of shifted gears out of my cutesy mask and into an emotional and logistical place that is more real and not as funny. That is, if it was ever funny in the first place.
So. To a new me, if not as funny, at least more real.
why shaky egg?
Why shaky egg?
There’s a Laurie Berkner song (I’ll explain why an adult hipster like me would be listening to Laurie Berkner in a bit) that caught in my head as I was trying to figure out what to call my new blog.
“I know a chicken… and she laid an egg… oh my goodness! It was a shaky egg!”
I was trying to think of a name somehow as catchy as the name of my last blog–something that denoted my state of being and my joys, hopes, triumphs, and insights, aesthetic, epoch, failures and frailties humorously yet hiply.
That’s just too much to ask of a title. Or anyway, I wearied of trying to figure it out. The shaky egg song stuck in my head and I can get a whole lot of mileage out of the connotations of those two words.
Shaky– anxiety. nervous. (per m-w.com) precarious. likely to give way or break down. lacking in firmness. questionable.
Egg– creativity. capacity to nourish and protect. a beautiful curve that’s extremely difficult to crush. fertility. hopes for another baby. Good egg. Bad egg. (per m-w.com) to incite to action.
m-w.com: Main Entry: curate’s egg
Function: noun
Etymology: from the story of a curate who was given a stale egg by his bishop and declared that parts of it were excellent
chiefly British : something with both good and bad parts or qualities
Here are the parts, qualities, and other perhaps reliable markers of me.
I’m almost 37, a proud generation x-er. I find myself, professionally and culturally, firmly betwixt and between– the near-retirements see my age group as whippersnappers, and the twenty-somethings see my age group as dinosaurs trying to be cool.
I’m a degreed librarian, though not a great one– most reference questions and cataloging questions leave me in the dust. I wear glasses and I stick my long hair up in a bun with a pencil on a daily basis and I share many of the other quirky traits of our profession. And let me tell you, being a librarian involves very little sitting around peacefully reading– unless you’re in my job. More about that in another post.
I have a lot of black in my wardrobe. Until the weather changes and I can go out and buy some more black hip librarian suits, I also have a lot of matronly business casual.
After a checkered career as a student and single career girl I embarked upon a shaky marriage and birthed a baby in quick succession fourish years ago (that’s how I happen to be into Laurie Berkner). My husband is sort of a trophy husband. He’s ornamental and smart and caring but anti-intellectual, a good earner, a stereotypical man’s man except that he doesn’t like sports praise Jesus. We have learned, and are even able to joke about it, that far from post feminist conceptions of soul mates and partnership, marriage is actually the antithesis of getting one’s needs met. We just bought our first house, he’s a decent father, and he makes smart, attractive babies so I guess I’m in, for now.
I wish I were staying home to parent and housekeep, but right now I’m a working part time stepmother of two and full time mother of one hoping to become a mother of three before I’m done. I pray every day for twins– we’re not planning annother pregnancy any time soon but I figure it doesn’t hurt to proactively visualize and petition. I often wonder if depression is the existential lot of a working mother, or any mother. Recently I got on two medications, one to pep me up, and one to ease my anxiety and negativity. I am constantly trying to shake cigarette smoking as a coping mechanism and as an indicator of my rebellion and individuality. I am constantly finding myself between huge frustration and exhaustion, and sublime moments of zen.
I’m a big fat materialist lefty. I’m concerned about, in no particular order, racism, health care for all, corporations’ complete lack of accountability, the environment, social justice, abortion (though I’m pro choice), gun violence, and family issues.
I’ve lived in the South or Appalachia most of my life. I was raised Southern Baptist but defected to Episcopalian in my early twenties. While I am still greatly comforted by the ritual of the church, I am also well into agnosticism and perhaps New Age or mysticism or magical thinking.
I write obsessively. I’ve long wished to be a writer, but I, well, I didn’t really write, except for my personal journal style blog. I’ve finally decided that if I’m going to be a writer, I’m going to have to write. Navel gazing, middle class pondering of one’s lot, is one of my favorite things to do. But each day, when I sit down to write, the fiction gets done first, or else the navel gazing does not get done.
I blog about music, pop culture, housewifery, cooking, mothering, marriage, working, social issues, movies, relationships, books, wellness, and general life events. Thanks for stopping by. I’ll add more soon, and often.
