You’re not really submitting that, are you?

Hello. I’m interested in a position with your company because I’ve given up on applying for any jobs that sound like they’re tailor-made for me – any responses I’ve gotten from those employers thusfar have been computer-generated – and instead I have sunk to playing the job market like a numbers game, using a one-size-fits-all resume and cover letter in the hopes that something about me sounds impressive to somebody out there.

I guarantee that I had not heard about your company until minutes before submitting my application, but should you decide to extend an invitation to me for an interview with you, I will have fabricated a version of my life story that makes it sound like working for you would be a dream come true. Google and Wikipedia will make me the foremost expert on any publicly available information on how your company was formed and what you stand for, and I will appear to admire every bit of this.

If you are looking for something that makes me stand out above everyone else who has a bachelor’s degree in math and a few years each work in demanding hospital and government positions – all the details of which you can find in my *actually* 100% truthful resume – I will use the rest of this cover letter as an opportunity to produce a series of increasingly improbable lies in the hopes that you are really as gullible as I had hoped.

I know twenty-six separate languages, but only regularly use three, so my skills using the rest for anything more than everyday conversation may be a little rusty, and I may mix up Cantonese and Mandarin.

In my spare time, I restore the sight of blind puppies and train them as service animals. The Catholic Church has confided that they are prepared to canonize me as a saint for my deeds, but procedure dictates that this will have to wait for my death before my sainthood is formally recognized.

From my extraterrestrial lineage, I have inherited the extraordinary powers of x-ray vision, eye lasers, flight and superhuman strength, but my moral code prevents me from using any of these powers for personal gain. Instead, I use my powers to stop petty crimes and do small favors for local citizens in need. If you are wondering, no, I am not weak to kryptonite. That’s something they added for dramatic effect in the popular comic book adaptation of my life.

If I have caught your attention and anything about this cover letter has somehow made me sound employable – even just my attempt to have a sense of humor in the current job market for a region where the unemployment rate has only recently *dropped* to 9.8% according to a recent Modesto Bee article – feel free to contact me and request a more professional cover letter and/or a job interview. I can just about guarantee this approach to the application process has made me no more popular than trying to frame my actual skills and accomplishments in a traditionally, professionally, boringly honest way, so scheduling a job interview with me should be just about as easy as giving me enough time to shower and drive to your office.

If you would like to speak with anybody to get an honest appraisal of my ability, work ethic, and positive attitude at work, I can draw from decades of relationships with high school teachers, choir and theater directors, friends, bosses, classmates, and co-workers who would be able to vouch for me without giving cop-out answers to questions about my greatest weaknesses. They are all honest people.

If nothing else, please take this cover letter as a testament to my written communication skills.

Thank you for your time.

On being fucking weird

I’ve never had any issue finding the words to describe anything. In fact, eighteen or so years ago, before the word “blog” had been coined, I was writing in my online journal several times a week to update nobody in particular about the minutiae of my daily life, and I didn’t have much of a life. In my freshman year of high school, I had a particularly obsessive crush on a girl, and the focus of my writing was generally to describe our interactions, and my self-awareness that I was far too invested in someone who was both a very, very small part of my life and already in a relationship. The site had a moderate following, though now in the age where some full-time bloggers are household names (depending on the company you keep), I guess having like twenty people who regularly read my entries wouldn’t seem like much. I talked about saying hi, or looking at this girl longingly from across the room, and people wrote me notes about all this like it was something beautiful.

Here’s the problem:

Eventually that pre-blog blog got a bit too big, and for maybe a week it blew up, became kind of a thing at school, and before I knew it I was catching word that her boyfriend wanted to get some friends together and jump me. She called off the hit squad, and then we never talked to each other again, except for a couple creepy e-mails I sent to say I wasn’t obsessed anymore, and maybe one “hi” when we accidentally made eye contact a couple years later.

And from then on, I kept my diaries out of the public eye, because I saw the sort of damage that making my intensity so public could cause. I found a different sort of outlet as the editor/lead contributor for what was essentially the creative writing section of the school paper a couple years after that scandal blew over, but I was writing about nonsense. That was actually the name of the section: Nonsense. I wrote and edited Nonsense.

There were a couple personal articles I let slip through – about the difficulties of moving to a new home in the middle of my senior year, and the pressure of picking a university and major and starting what felt like an irreversible process of deciding the rest of my life – but when the end of the year came around, I earned three awards: one for a short story where I had a conversation with a cockroach, one for a diatribe about emoticons, and one for generally daring to be more bizarre – “Loftiest Constructions.” None of this was for being bravely personal, because I was largely done with that phase of my life.

See, when I was made aware that someone wanted to physically harm me for writing public odes to his girlfriend and insinuating that he was someone inferior that she needed to be saved from (like the horrible, horrible “nice guy syndrome” douchebag I was back then) I lost a lot of my courage to be too intense in writing, and now that the Internet has evolved into something everyone keeps instantly available at all times in their pockets, and hiring companies are often expected to do some sort of social media investigation before making a job offer, I guess there’s more reason than ever to be cautious about saying something that can’t be taken back.

But, you know what? What does that leave me with? Writing cryptically about trying to deal with recent happenings I’m afraid to elaborate on? Telling tales of personal issues I dealt with over a decade ago? Writing about how there’s this book I’m writing? Writing about how there’s this blog I’m writing? Writing that I’d like very much never to have an office job again, that I’m poor, that I like one show and dislike another? Writing about how I’m having trouble coming up with anything safe to write about?

Because that’s what this thing has been so far.

I’m sure I’ve had clever turns of phrase buried somewhere in all these posts, and I’m sure the tales from my childhood through early twenties still hold some power to evoke an emotional response, but you know what’s missing in all that? Thirty-one-year-old Jon. Jon, as of August 15, 2014. Not just Jon’s polemic on something popular he doesn’t understand, not just a reference to something more interesting and personal that he’s writing (or more often not writing), not just an aside about weight loss goals, but the emotions that drive me. The stories that gave me a book’s worth of personal fuel to burn off. The things that keep me up at night.

There have been little glimpses of all that so far, but they’ve all been tempered by this fear that my primary source of traffic is my Facebook page. Like, if I talk about the problems I had with my family while growing up, or issues I’m having with friends, or anything else that directly involves someone I’m Facebook friends with, the moment I share a link to my most recent post, it becomes this passive-aggressive way of sharing with the world something that I couldn’t bring up with that person directly. Or if I talk too much about the lame first-and-only dates I’m going on, it becomes this whiny “why am I single?” blog. Or if I really, fully describe my misgivings during periods of self-doubt, I become this very old angsty Livejournal teenager, over-sharing with anyone who will listen.

The trouble is I give too much of a shit not to give a shit.

Because I feel like I’ve already spent so much of my credibility on quitting my full-time job with great benefits, moving in with my parents, and pursuing something I frequently have doubts about, that I’m not sure I have enough credibility left to write about anything that’s not… safe. I’m afraid of writing anything that makes me sound fucking weird.

But I am fucking weird, and I’ve always been fucking weird, and I’m self-conscious over being fucking weird, and being called fucking weird, and pushing people away by being fucking weird, or attracting people who make me severely uncomfortable by being fucking weird, and I’m worried that advertising a blog where I’m just being fu… myself… where I admit that I’m as weird as everybody’s first impression lets on… where I whine, and rage, and repent, and obsess… is going to just be one more thing that prevents me from one day joining the ranks of normal people – “normal people” in this case meaning people who have found a niche in life where other people generally accept them.

Because if there’s one common thread in my life, it’s this unmistakable feeling of not being accepted by most people.

Story time:

By the end of my first semester at Chico State, I had firmly established myself as an outsider among the other students on the second floor of my dorm. When it came time to permanently part ways with the school at the end of my freshman year, my brother asked me to retrieve a backpack he had left at someone’s house during his visit several months before. I got a hold of the home phone number for this guy, called, and asked if I could either come by to get the backpack, or if he was going to be visiting campus and had a chance to bring it by.

Instead of responding with anything related to my goal of getting my brother’s backpack back, he told me I was fucking weird. He told me I was the weirdest fucking person he had ever met. He asked me why I was so fucking weird. He was clearly drunk to the point of either cruelty or honesty, and he kept building all of his sentences around using the phrase “fucking weird.” I tried restating my request for my brother’s backpack a couple times, but after what felt like and eternity (but was probably less than a minute) of conversation, I no longer had the willpower to insist that I get the damn thing back. Kyle could keep it, if it meant I never had to talk to him again. I had to tell my brother that his backpack was a lost cause, because there was no one in town I could think of who would have my back in dealing with this guy. People liked him better than they liked me.

Story time:

I often find it hard to participate in conversations in group settings because it feels like the Venn diagram of my interests and shit nobody cares about is a circle. (with apologies to John Green)

Story time:

The incidents that made me leave my last job, including a death threat and two arrests (three separate incidents), on top of the daily experience of having the weight of people’s desperation on my shoulders, were probably psychologically damaging, and I probably need therapy, but I feel like admitting that I’m kinda damaged goods at the moment would drive people away more than inspire them to be supportive, because I associate being honest with being left.

News flash:

I’m fucking weird.

And sometimes I don’t know whether it’s better to be myself and suffer the words and actions of people who feel like it’s their duty to make me feel uncomfortable in my own skin, or acknowledge that I’m already uncomfortable in my own skin, and limit the thoughts I share with other people to the ones I think they’ll probably relate to, like what was on TV last night, or the nice little restaurant I recently discovered around the corner from my house.

The most compelling blogs I can think of involve people who write frankly about the things that would frighten me to drop a link to on Facebook, to have associated with my name, and I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of trying to become that person again.

Because I have difficulty seeing being different as a strength.

Because it’d be easier to share pictures of cheesecake.

Bill

One thing I’ll always remember about Bill was that he was always smiling. We wanted to like Bill, but I think we just didn’t have it in us. He was a nice enough guy, or he tried to be, but there was something subtly wrong about everything he did. He’d be at the F Street Bar by the time anybody else got off work. He’d be drunk, or seem drunk, by the time we got there, and none of us was ever sure he actually had a job.

Bill reeked of alcohol and sweat. I figured he either worked out in the sun all day or he was just homeless. I never bothered to ask. Bill talked enough without anyone asking him any questions. If he actually believed we cared, I don’t think he ever would have shut up.

We would get in at maybe 5:30, as soon as most of us could get there after our 9-to-5s. Some days we’d just have a beer apiece and be on our way; others, we’d call our wives or girlfriends or roommates to apologize in advance for getting home late. You know, if the Steelers were playing, or we found ourselves involved in a particularly heated game of dice. Sometimes if our rat bastard president came up in the news that day.

For Bill, it didn’t seem to matter. He’d be there no matter what, grinning like a plastered idiot. If it was football, he’d want to tell us about when he was on the high school football team. If we were playing dice, he’d be telling stories about the last time he was in Vegas. If it was current events, you could tell he had no idea what we were talking about, so he’d just try to change the subject any way he could.

 

It was like he wanted to be with other people so he could talk about himself. Hey, that’s a good story, but I’ve got a better one, because I’m the hero in this one.

It was all pretty innocent, but it got on our nerves just the same. Bill, smelling like a third world country, looking like his mom had dressed him twenty years ago and he’d never changed since, always trying so desperately to be the center of attention, not once just trying to be a part of the group. It was always, “Hey, I’ve got something funny to say,” or, “That reminds me of a story about me,” or, “Can we change the channel?”

Like, he wasn’t a bad guy. He wasn’t trying to be an asshole. He just didn’t know how to be friendly quite right. And maybe we could have even overlooked that if he just showered every day. Dan was probably the biggest asshole I’ve ever met, and he fit in just fine. Dan was usually scowling and smelled like cheap aftershave, and I guess that was good enough.

I couldn’t tell you too many specifics. We did our best to ignore him, so I could probably remember the score at the top of the third inning better than how many girls Bill said he’d slept with.

But one day, Dan just lays into him. Probably the most excitement the F Street Bar had ever seen. I don’t know what set him off, but suddenly Dan looks right at Bill and says, “Bill, you ever seen a dead body?”

It was the quietest we’d ever seen Bill. I don’t know if he was trying to invent a story or just shocked somebody had addressed him directly, but after what felt like a year, Bill says, “No,” real quiet, almost whispering.

And I use quotation marks pretty loosely. Like, I know I’ve got the right idea, but maybe not all the same words are there. This next part is etched into my memory verbatim.

Dan says, “When I was a freshman in college, I’d just started drinking. I passed out a lot because I thought that was how you were supposed to drink.”

“So one time I go to this frat party. Mardi Gras. Tons of beer, five dollar cover, and nobody’s checking IDs. I swear I must’ve finished a keg by myself, and I don’t think I cared about the masks or the beads or the live band. I just couldnt’ believe how much beer I was getting for my five bucks.”

It wasn’t like he was particularly eloquent. It was just one of those moments you can remember with a weird sort of clarity and detail. Everyone had stopped what they were doing to listen. Like they knew he was going somewhere with this. I can remember every word.

“I was so drunk, I couldn’t find my way home. I lived on 5th and B, and I couldn’t figure out which way the letters and numbers were going. So eventually I just found this dumpster in a parking lot. I didn’t want someone walking up to throw something away just to recognize me and say, ‘Holy shit, Dan, what are you doing sleeping out in front of a dumpster?’

“So I see around the back there’s like a foot of space between the dumpster and the back wall. You’d have to be looking for it to know there was all this space. And I crawl back there, and find a soft pile of trash, and I’m out cold before I can decide this is the most disgusting thing I will do in my whole life.”

Bill was dead silent. His smile had mostly faded into pure interest in Dan’s story. It was a sight.

“And when I woke up, I felt something against my neck had made an impression while I’d slept. Something squarish. So I turn around the best I can to see what it is, and it’s a belt buckle. I’d just spent the entire night with my head against someone’s stomach. But when I looked closer, it wasn’t just some other guy who couldn’t find his way home. His eyes were rolled up to the back of his head. His skin was leathery and starting to rot. There were bugs crawling in his teeth. I’d just spent the night sleeping on a corpse wedged behind a dumpster.”

Dan paused and gave us all time to let this sink in. I’d never seen him like this. He was so serious, it gave me the chills.

“That was the most horrible thing I had ever seen, and the most horrible thing I had ever smelled. It was, until tonight. Jesus Christ, Bill. When’s the last time you had a shower?”

The mood didn’t lift immediately. There was shock, then some seconds to process everything, and it was all laughs from there.

 

We all took turns clowning on Bill, just an endless stream of jokes, some of them clever, some of them not so clever. Bill just smiled through everything, same as ever, while we called him a creepy, socially retarded pedophile. He didn’t seem the least bit offended. He just appreciated the humor for what it was, or maybe the attention, and when we’d started to wind down, he bought us all a round of drinks. Eight drinks. This guy bought us eight drinks after we suggested that his parents were a skunk and a turd.

He laughed at every joke. He roared with laughter when we insinuated that he hadn’t washed his clothes since he dropped out of high school. I would swear he actually enjoyed our company as we were roasting him relentlessly.

The next day, Bill wasn’t there. It was eerie. I mean, some of us had had a good day and were getting the residual smiles out of our systems, but the mood was off without Bill. It was eerie. We didn’t exactly like the guy, but he was a fixture, and for the first time the day before, we felt like we’d connected with him on some level. Not that our noses were willing to forgive him for the eons of olfactory war he’d waged against us all, but we were ready to accept him as a human being. We were just about at the point where we’d see him and say, “Oh, hey, Bill.”

We never saw him again. He was found hanging in his apartment from a rafter.

Yeah, I know.

I didn’t ask for more details. The whole thing was disturbing enough without finding out whether he’d used a rope or a necktie or an extension cord.

We’d spent so much time not caring about him, why start now?

A better front-page post

I’m not going to lie. I look at the last entry that I wrote, and I’m happy that I made a Faith No More/Mike Patton reference in the title, but the entry itself isn’t my best work. It’s basically the product of wanting to talk about an intensely personal situation but kinda not being able to. It involves someone else deeply enough that I can’t really freely discuss it, but carrying it around and only being able to talk about it indirectly can be alienating.

It’s that Facebook post that says, “*deep sigh*,” and then all of the poster’s concerned friends ask what’s wrong, and the response is invariably, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I had this half-formed thought I wanted to express about, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if good intentions were enough?” And I made false starts on it two days in a row, and I published it on the third day, and I edited it on the fourth, but you can’t polish a turd. In spite of all the effort, it’s still kind of a shitty post.

Basically, what I wanted to express was this:

Sometimes, in spite of all your best intentions, mitigating circumstances make it hard to communicate that you wish someone well.

And wouldn’t it be nice if just saying, “I like you. Please have a wonderful life,” was enough?

But there are some people I can’t get along with, and trying to coexist is just a headache for both of us.

Que se-fucking-ra.

I don’t know. It’s something that’s happened more than once, but obviously I have one specific person in mind when I write all this, and I’ve probably written a book’s worth of thoughts on the situation in my own personal stash of offline journals, and at the end of the day, no matter how many pages I dedicate to the subject, our friendship has been rendered irreversibly toxic, and I haven’t come to terms with that yet. It sucks, but beating around the bush made for a really shitty front-page post, and it’s been up there for like a month because I haven’t put in the effort to write about something more interesting.

That is all I will say on the subject.

So here is a superior front-page post for you:

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I have been going on bike rides to work off those negative emotions, as if that feeling in the pit of my stomach is actually embedded in my belly fat, and if I continue riding my bike and eating healthy for at least three meals a week, all I will have left will be muscular abs and a positive outlook on life.

Well, depending on my level of energy, the openness of my schedule, and the temperature outside, I have been attempting on some days to double my bike rides from a paltry 3.5 miles to a somewhat less paltry 7.0 miles. And I have been attempting to go either of these distances more frequently so that my pedaling can keep up with my intermittently fatty, carby diet.

My weight’s kinda stabilized at 10-13 pounds lower than the weight range I was in for the year and a half before I moved back home, but at this point my calves are expanding while my waistline recedes. My slacks with elastic waistbands haven’t been leaving indentations, and the jeans that used to fit snugly are sagging a little and relying on my supple ass to hold them up. It’s taken less effort to take photos without double-chins. This past weekend, someone even commented, “Wow, you’ve been losing weight.”

In other words, it’s taking far less effort to take my vanity seriously than I’m used to, and that’s kinda nice.

There was a time I was 125 pounds (at 5’11”) because I played a game called Dance Dance Revolution constantly, and all the In-N-Out and Jamba Juice and Dr. Pepper and Pepsi Blue in the world was no match for my hot legs. Even when I cracked a toenail in my big toe in half, I managed to find the time and strength to visit the arcade and be one of those kids (or… 20-year-olds) who people stopped and watched, because the routines I was doing were not casual performances. They were intense cardiovascular workouts.

But as the social scene in the arcade died out, I spent less time at the arcade during each visit, and I went up to a less worrying 145.

And as my family’s subtle mockery of my workouts started piercing through my armor of being ridiculously healthy and not giving a shit, I went up to 165 – a fairly average weight I had maintained through the majority of college.

And without a replacement workout routine, when my uncle invited me out for a weekend of drinking and eating rich foods, I gained about 10 pounds that I never worked off.

And six months later, in spite of some rather weak attempts to play Dance Dance Revolution on my now years-old mats whose arrows didn’t always respond to my footwork, I moved out to the Bay Area at a slightly tubby 186.

In December 2013, I had ballooned up to about 196, occasionally breaching 200 if I was retaining a fair amount of water and wearing one of my heavier jackets.

That’s a decade worth of weight gain summarized in a few paragraphs. Do you know what it’s like to be 70 pounds heavier than you were 10 years ago? Do you know what it’s like getting used to having a resting heartrate under 60 bpm, and then watching yourself develop a beer gut that pops the buttons off of all your nice pants? Do you know what it’s like making New Year’s resolutions five years in a row to lose 20 pounds, only to have your weight steadily rise during that period because you only feel motivated to put in the effort like once every other month?

It makes you feel like you’re going to cross that 200 pound mark for good, and in another decade maybe it’ll be 300. It makes you feel like maybe you just need to invest in sweatpants. It makes you feel like you need to take an honest look at all of your social media profile pictures and ask yourself, “Am I using myspace angles here? I’m pretty sure I’m fatter than this.”

It makes you think, “You know what? Why bother? I’m having Doritos for breakfast, because I’ve always wondered what buffalo ranch powdered sodium tastes like on corn chips.”

I can’t really sell this as a success story that can inspire everyone to hop on their bikes and get the swimsuit bodies they’ve been dreaming of, because the way metabolisms work, your mileage may vary, and besides, I still look pretty flabby in a swimsuit at 185.

But it’s starting to work for me, and maybe it will continue.

That’s the kind of realistic victory I’m somewhat excited to cautiously celebrate right now.

We Care a Lot

Interpersonal relationships are funny. In a perfect, simpler world, it would be enough that two people care about each other for them to remain on good terms. But caring isn’t always enough. There are so many ways you can express that you care about someone, and sometimes they just don’t hit the mark the way they should.

The easiest friendships I have involve just being able to meet up once in a while for coffee, dinner, or a drink, catch up on everything that’s happened since the last time, spend a couple hours together, and make vague remarks about the next time we’ll do it all over again. It’s easy, the plans are rarely creative, the formula rarely changes, but it’s fun, it generates good will on both ends, and the idea of meeting up again genuinely sounds pleasant after all is said and done. It’s almost completely mindless, fairly low-stakes, and the topic of conversation doesn’t often get much deeper than what’s going on with work/family/relationships.

Still, these people are my friends. The word works like a one-size-fits-all latex glove to cover any number of close-enough relationships with people I’d feel odd referring to as acquaintances or former co-workers or ex-classmates.

But not everything’s that easy.

Some of my friends are going through tough times, and in those conversations, I have to give up a little bit of my side of the conversation to say everything they need to say. Because if I’m fine and they’re not, they could probably use the time to vent a little more than I could, and I can just leave my side as, “Yeah, work’s going all right. My parents are still in good health, my siblings are still employed and in relationships. But anyway, you seem distraught. What’s up?” Sometimes the conversation goes a little deep. Sometimes it gets a little uncomfortable, if only because the conversation breaches the “everything’s good” norm I expected the night to fall into.

And sometimes I’m on the other end of the conversation. Sometimes I’m the one who needs a little more reassurance that everything’s going to be fine.

Or sometimes it’s both of us. Sometimes we both need to vent, and the conversation becomes this gentle balancing act of my needs and your needs, and I go on a little too long about my problems and catch myself and say, “I’m sorry, I’m rambling. You were saying about your mom?”

Or sometimes things have been bad for one of us for a while, and the conversation becomes an extension of the coaching one side was doing for the other the last time we met. Sometimes one person takes on a temporary sort of mentor or caretaker role for the other, because the expectation that “I’m OK, you’re OK” just isn’t true.

Sometimes people go through tough times. Sometimes people go through major life changes. Sometimes people break up, divorce, quit their jobs, become injured, get depressed, develop substance abuse problems, fundamentally change their major life goals, start their lives over from scratch, have children, move to a different county.

And sometimes there’s a change big enough to alter the very nature of the relationship. Sometimes these are people I’ve just met. Sometimes these are people I’ve known for decades. Sometimes these are family members.

And whether or not the relationship is able to weather whatever changes have happened since last time depends on how we show that we care. Because showing that you care is not always as easy as showing up for coffee, or buying the second round, or grabbing a medium-priced gift off of somebody’s wedding registry. Sometimes relationships get strained. Sometimes people age and the same show of respect that used to completely hit the mark fifteen years ago suddenly feels like a sign that somebody hasn’t paid attention to how much has changed in the past fifteen years.

Sometimes it’s not as easy as just caring.

Sometimes people suspect ulterior motives.

Sometimes there are ulterior motives.

Sometimes friends become attracted to one another. Or sometimes it’s just one-sided.

Sometimes friends tire of one another and continue to spend time together out of habit, and it just eats away at the relationship.

Sometimes friends hurt each other, and both people are suddenly on the defensive: one saying, “I didn’t mean it;” the other saying, “I don’t know if I can trust you anymore.”

Sometimes people just change.

Sometimes friendships fall apart.

Sometimes we have to re-evaluate whether we actually still care about the people we’ve cared about for so long that caring has just become habit.

There are so many ways we can show that we care, and none of these is one-size-fits-all.

I spent a good chunk of the past week watching Freaks and Geeks. At its heart, it’s a show about people from different social strata, many of whom barely know one another, finding ways to break through the most obvious barriers between one another to show that their common humanity is enough to get along, at least for a few minutes at a time. At one point, the head cheerleader finds common ground with the most insufferably awkward geek at school, and they make out. It sounds terribly trite and mired in high school drama, but I honestly teared up, even on the third watching.

And the reason the show was so effective, that I cried at some point during at least half of the episodes, that I wound up identifying with all the characters in some fashion, that I’ve brought the show up in the majority of the conversations I’ve had since starting the show, is that the show is unrealistically optimistic. If life were like Freaks and Geeks, reaching out would be enough. Kind words would be taken as kind words. Turning over a new leaf would be, without fail, recognized as a commitment to change. And it’s beautiful for that.

It’s moving to get a glimpse of a better world. Freaks and Geeks made me re-examine all the situations I’ve had to deal with where caring didn’t seem like it was enough, where friendships degraded, where I’ve wound up in shouting matches with people I respect, where I’ve recognized that someone is honestly trying to reach out, and it hasn’t been enough, and I’ve kept my distance.

Because showing that you care isn’t always as obvious and effortless as grabbing coffee on the weekend. Showing that you care isn’t always as simple as, “Hey, how’s it going?” Sometimes sending a Christmas gift or birthday card isn’t enough.

Sometimes showing that you really care means respecting boundaries, acknowledging that people who used to be your friends need distance. Sometimes caring about somebody means recognizing that you no longer have anything in common, and trying to spend every Super Bowl and St. Patrick’s Day together is eventually going to grate on your nerves and lead you to say something hurtful. Sometimes the best option is to let a few years go by, see if your friends regain their humility and welcome a friendly gesture when the sting of a fight has lost its intensity with time.

Sometimes friendships aren’t the effortless collisions with one another we’d like them to be. Sometimes we have to be sensitive about not bringing up obvious topics of conversation, we have to actively work on directly communicating that we care, that we want things to get better, that we’re trying, that we’re honestly sorry for any past transgressions, that it’s worth making amends, that taking the time to repair a friendship is worth the effort, even if it might be harder than just making new friends, because this friendship is worth the extra effort.

By this point, it’s no secret that I’m basically mooching off of my parents while trying to launch my writing career. We’ve had our strained moments in the past few decades, but my parents made this incredible gesture a couple months ago in converting one of their upstairs rooms they had previously used largely for storage into a little writing studio, with a desk, an office chair, a bookshelf, and a door that, when closed, will signal my need for absolute privacy so that I can focus on writing my book, something that’s been a dream of mine for over twenty years.

A few days ago, my parents left the state to take care of my sister’s dog while I finished out the last few days of my temp assignment. They left enough food in the fridge to cover my lunches through the end of the week. They called to make sure I’d woken up on time for work. They asked if I’d figured out how to assemble the Zip-loc bags in the fridge together in order to form full lunches. They texted to make sure I’d taken the dumpsters out to the curb.

And there was room for me to feel like I wasn’t being taken seriously as an adult, for me to feel like my parents thought I was so incompetent that I couldn’t set an alarm clock, feed myself, and take care of basic household chores. Indeed, after about fifteen minutes straight of being treated like I’d never lived on my own, like nothing in my life had ever come together without somebody else’s help, I started to feel like a child – a thirty-year-old child whose parents were still enabling his juvenile dreams, while lacking any sort of faith that he could take care of himself in even the most basic of ways.

What else were they concerned about? Had I checked my gas gauge to make sure I would be able to get to work? Had I remembered to shower? Was I still exhaling after each breath in?

But I had to slow down, recognize the somewhat misguided questions for what they were, and take into account that I like the idea that my parents care about me, even if they don’t know the best way to show that sometimes.

Being able to recognize that somebody’s trying, anyway, was enough to soften my heart a little.

And maybe that’s the way it should be. Because sometimes I don’t know the best way to show I care, either.

Go easy on each other, people. Life’s hard enough.

Emptiness

Having had some rather lengthy gaps in my employment over the past 6 months (by the way, it’s now been just over 6 months since I quit my job with the government. Who’s throwing me a party?), there’s a weird kind of comfort in having a steady, low-paying job that involves over an hour of commute every day, forcing one day’s after-tax pay to go directly into gas every week.

It’s like financial Stockholm Syndrome.

On the bright side, it’s gotten me financially prepared to do another 6-month car insurance payment all at once so I don’t have to budget terribly carefully until November.

On the bright side, it’s given me enough spending money to get me out of the house and meeting new people, and given me more options for spending time with the people I already know.

On the bright side, it’s eased my apprehensions that people are seeing this “moving back in with my parents” thing as an excuse to lie around and palaver on about the creative process going into a book I’m often not able to find the inspiration to work on.

But even so, the work itself is completely unremarkable, the commute is a significant chunk out of my day, and the lack of challenge coupled with the praise for a job well done makes me feel like nobody expects much out of me.

The overall feeling is that they’re offering meager pay in exchange for significant chunks of my life that I will never get back.

I can’t say that’s been the only complication in my life lately, but I also feel like getting too deep into everything else would both be a major overshare of my private life and drag this entry out to the point of losing sight of the point.

The point is that sometimes I get home and there’s this enormous feeling of emptiness sitting in my gut, an intense burn, a desire to be doing something I can’t figure out, like an inconsolable baby crying over God knows what, and all I can do is cycle through the most obvious options: food, exercise, social interaction, sleep, or a discharge of whatever creative energy has been stuck with nowhere to go across 40-hour weeks in a cubicle.

Or maybe it’s that one thing, Jon. That one thing you’re not even going to talk about here. That one thing you’ve reached the best imaginable closure on, but that you still can’t fix.

We can only hope buffalo wings will be the answer to all my problems on any given day. Food is easy.

That emotional abyss opened up inside me today, immediately following 24 hours involving plenty of social interaction, sleep, and food. I’ve even been able to write some “stuck in a cubicle nightmare” chapters for my book over the past week, though I can’t imagine where I got the inspiration for that.

I stepped on the scale and determined that clearly I was ahead of the game on exercise, too, and as I started planning out more social interaction, setting a time and a place for tacos and beer, the giant black hole began sucking in more and more of its neighboring emotions, growing in size, threatening to devour everything.

And I’d just ticked everything off the list, right? Considering I’m working right now and don’t have hours to hide away in a calm space with a moderate amount of ambient noise, considering that one’s not terribly plausible right now, I’ve explored all my options, haven’t I?

Well, just because my bike rides have dropped me down to a record low weight for the year, doesn’t mean I don’t need the exercise today. That cacophony in my gut? Maybe that’s not a psychic vacuum. Maybe those are calories screaming to be euthanized.

These bike rides used to feel more horrible and exhausting. I would ride 5 blocks and be ready to drop. I would feel like getting into shape was a total pipe dream, like the moment I crossed into my 30s my lungs and legs had decided to retire, and my body had hired more flab to fill their positions.

It turned out my brakes were just constantly pinching the front wheel because a little metal doohickey had come loose, and once the bike shop replaced the defective part, I was able to ride four miles without stopping. Turns out those meager 5 blocks I had to push myself to get through were more intense workouts than I had imagined.

The new brakes started deploying again. The metal thing was definitely still attached this time. I turned some knobs, flicked some switches, and poked various other parts with a stick, eventually somehow stumbling onto a solution for whatever the problem was. For a moment, I felt like MacGuyver and Kaylee Frye had a baby.

Riding down the Virginia Corridor, passing retirees with better physical discipline than I may ever have, swerving to avoid grade school children forming healthy habits at an age where I was sinking 80 hours apiece into all of my Super Nintendo games, breathing in marijuana smoke coming from beneath the Briggsmore Avenue bridge, witnessing runners who dared to use crosswalks to get across major streets getting harassed by motorists whose commutes had been increased by maybe an extra 30 seconds, all the while pumping away at those pedals, pumping, pumping, pumping, refusing to stop for a moment, especially at the hill, the emptiness started to subside, and turning around at the end of the trail, and pumping, pumping, pumping back up the hill, the hole in my heart winked out of existence for a moment.

I reached the top of the hill and started gliding down, wanting to hit whatever ridiculous top speed I’ve hit in the past, but instead braking constantly to avoid those groups of two who somehow manage to barricade the entire trail by walking at exactly the wrong distance from each other.

And as I used another crosswalk and got honked at, and fatigue revealed the flaw in my plan to make another circuit down the entire length of the trail, realism crushing my brief hope that I’d knock out my weight loss goal by my 31st birthday, and events of the past few months came back to me, and the rest of my workout became a slow, labored trudge home that – Jesus, was it over yet? – the void returned.

“Jon, would you be willing to stay with us a little longer?”
“… how much longer?”

“As long as you can stay.”

And as much desperation as there was to find a source of income to beat away the listless weeks of waking up late and maybe biking to the coffee shop to write a couple chapters (if chapters reluctantly agreed to be coaxed out of me), as much uncertainty as there was that the explosive bursts of well-expressed prose, when they came, would last even another minute longer, as often as I was out with friends and had to call it an early night and say, “Sorry… not working right now, so I have to stay under budget,” those are the weeks that make the dream possible.

Even if there are weeks where I have to eventually trash upwards of 80% of what I produce – generally the same weeks where the writing takes more time and effort to produce – these are the weeks that make the books possible. These are the weeks where work is being done, and they do culminate into observable progress, as labored as it is.

Because I do not feel very well in touch with my creative juices when I come home from staring at spreadsheets for 8 hours.

But… money. Those weeks don’t pay.

“I can commit to another week after this one. For now, let’s say I can go until May 9th.”

“Do you… have another job lined up?”
“No, it’s just… the commute’s getting to me.”

Oh, like that’s the biggest problem, Jon. You just feel silly admitting that the real reason you’re turning down honest work is that you think you’re going to be a big writer one day.

“Commute? Where are you coming from?”
“Oh, Modesto. Like, 35 minutes. And maybe I’m a big baby about it, but that’s an hour out of my day, every day.”

And you think $12 an hour is insulting.

“Well… we’re working on hiring some part-timers, so I guess maybe you could show them what you’re doing and they could pick that up until we get a real replacement.”
“You can go ahead and check up with me on a weekly basis to see how I’m feeling. Just… for now, I’m only willing to commit to a week.”

Did you just set yourself up to fold again next week? Jon, it’s one thing to be polite and decide against telling them that this work is shamefully beneath you and makes you feel like you wasted the eight years it took you to find enough motivation to earn your four-year degree, but what the hell is this?

“Well, we really appreciate having you around. Any extra time you can put in for us really helps.”

And here’s where there could be a polite smile or a, “Thanks for saying so,” but my shift ended half a minute before this conversation did, and I can feel my life becoming more and more defined by sitting in cubicles. I power down the computer and walk a little faster on the way back to my car, hoping I can earn back those precious thirty seconds of my time.

Wait, no… it was the creative energy thing after all. Writing about it made me feel better. I needed catharsis.

No wonder this is what I’d rather be doing with my life.

And while not everything may be right with the world right now, for tonight, I can take joy in the little things. Like the fact that the sixth season of Adventure Time just started.

Existential dread: it’s a hell of a drug.

One-third Life Crisis

(this entry unofficially endorsed by Maker’s 46, because I can’t afford decent scotch right now, and Maker’s gets the job done)

I don’t know if it’s ever a bad time to re-examine your life and recognize all the reversible bad decisions you’ve made.

Oh, I told a really, really awesome friend he was fat once, for no fucking reason, in the middle of some nothing conversation about candy. I was in fourth grade, and I still look back on that moment and want to punch 9-year-old me in the jaw. But that’s not productive, really. That’s not a reversible bad decision. There are things you can undo and things you have to get over. If I tried apologizing to that friend now, he probably wouldn’t remember what I was talking about. It’s completely fucking pointless, and every second I honestly get sad over the quite temporary pain I caused my 9-year-old friend is one more second out of a shrinking pool of seconds I have left in my life that I am not using to make myself a better person.

But the things you can still do something about… give those a fair shake, seriously. If you live in Fresno, California, and you’re reading this right now, just give that idea a moment’s consideration. Consider what led you to this point in your life, and if you might not still be able to upgrade to Bakersfield, at the very least.

Because Fresno is the most miserable place in California, and it might not be too late for you.

I talk about what I’m doing with my life, and I realize it sounds horrible on paper, and people can either accept it or not. But I am less ashamed to say that I am trying to do what I love (because I do, absolutely, passionately, without regret, love writing – except when I write shit, which happens frequently, but I bounce back, and then I love writing again) than I was to say that I was financially independent just working some job. Literally, the first job that would take me. That was my last job. That was the last four years of my life: just some job. I built a life around that. What percentage of my life did that job take up, and how much of that can I get back?

It doesn’t matter. It’s gone.

One year ago, I was living a life I did not enjoy. It sounded great on paper, but I felt my life slipping away while I focused on things that sounded good on paper.

Right now I’m living with my parents, watching a lot of TV shows from four years ago or more, frequenting a lot of online dating sites, and working temp jobs. And I’m trying to make my way as a writer.

Do you know how many people are trying to make their ways as writers? Look up the word “blog” on google and tell me how many results you get. Look up the phrase “freelance writer” (quotes are important on this one) and tell me how many results you get. I am not a unique snowflake. I am the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. And I have no illusion about what “I’m writing a book” sounds like to most people.

For all those who do not have faith in me, I am delaying the onset of real life by desperately attempting to live the life of a teenager, at the age of 30. I get that. I resent it, and I’m honestly a little hurt when people are direct about not having faith in what I’m doing right now, but at heart, I get what’s so hard to accept about me being a relentless dreamer right now.

This week, somebody asked me to summarize my book, and I’m honestly tired of trying to summarize a half-written book that is, even now, even half-written, even over 50% written (because I honestly, for the first time, believe I’ve made that sort of progress, that over half of the words that will comprise my published (because it will be published) novel have already been written, and that my feel for the book has progressed to the point that more and more of what I’m writing will be final-version material on the first take), even now, I feel like the idea of writing a summary is just… kinda… meaningless. Because it’s not done, and I’m not trying to market it yet, no matter what the self-deprecating title of this blog suggests.

And I balked. And I said that I’ve probably written the most perfect back-of-book summary I will ever come up with at some point this month, but that talking about the book makes me go off on tangents and describe the overarching themes and minutiae of the story, and other things that don’t fit well into summaries. And he had the same reaction other people have sometimes had when I’ve said that I suck at summarizing my book on the spot, and he suggested that, as someone who admittedly doesn’t read much, that he believes part of my job as a writer will be writing something punchy to entice bookstore customers to give me their money, and that as we’re having this conversation, I’m not doing my job very well.

And… you know… right now… I’m just writing it. And I’m loving writing it. And other stuff gets in the way sometimes, but when I sit down and words are coming out of my fingers like fucking lightning bolts, like fucking wizardry, like fucking lexomancy, my life has meaning.

Do you know what it feels like to look back over a single, concise sentence that sums up exactly the sort of inner turmoil your character is going through at that moment, and to know that there is not one word that could be added, one word that could be removed, one word that could be replaced, to give it a different shade of meaning to improve its place in the story? To share that sentence with a friend who has faith in the now two and a half year pursuit that this novel has become, and for her to completely understand how well that sentence serves the story?

That’s the feeling of life having meaning.

What I’m saying is, people have this idea of what it means for me to be serious about sabotaging so many other parts of my life to focus on this idea that writing a book is what I’m doing with my life. I appreciate, more than they realize, the people who actually seem to believe that I am doing what I love, and that that is important. To anyone else, this looks like some kind of one-third life crisis, except I don’t have the money to blow on expensive cars or actual top-shelf bourbon.

But, you know, I’m happy. I’m actually happy.

My current temp assignment might be the lowest hourly pay I’ve gotten in eight years, but it is paying what few bills I have as I live in a guest bedroom I don’t even think of as my own personal living space in my parents’ house, and when I have a few hours with no other obligations tying me down, I can ride my bike to the coffee shop where a bunch of teenage hipsters sing songs about break-ups that happened last week at open mic night, and I can pay for my coffee and open up my laptop and work on building the next phase of my life on my own terms.

And sometimes “my own terms” means watching season 2 of Community at 3 a.m. on a Saturday night.

But seriously, have you watched season 2 of Community?

No regrets.

And if you’re the sort of person who thinks blogs should be more than just a bunch of self-indulgent text, then here, have something beautiful:

Seriously?

I think the hardest part with writing is the idea that it’s so easy for it to be a sort of hold-over interest before life softens me up and I get realistic about finding actual work. “Real” work. A “grown-up job.” It must seem so easy on the outside to be an unemployed writer because you don’t have to show anything for your work; you’re just going to be discovered some day, and for all anybody knows, the idea that I’m even writing a book may be a work of fiction.

But really, every time I get the impression that I’m just that guy, quitting his job, riding out the last of his funds as cheaply as possible, getting as much as I can taken care of on other people’s dime, living the life of leisure everyone else is supposed to be working toward for when they retire… every time that cliche comes up, I actually consider it. Because I’m not producing much. Because I haven’t published anything. Because I haven’t really proven that I’m serious about becoming self-sufficient right now, and some of the pieces fit. How many hours did I spend writing yesterday? I should have an answer I’m proud of.

And what if people are right? Then anytime I’m “uninspired” or “the words aren’t coming” or “I started trying to get my ideas out, but it all sounded so goddamn amateur that I couldn’t take myself seriously today,” or whatever else I say at the end of a day where I’ve only spent an hour on writing and then leave in a huff… it’s just an excuse to goof off. I’ve been drinking and going on dates and playing video games and solving crosswords and surfing the Internet blindly and reading and napping and watching movies and all kinds of other stuff that I would tend to do in my spare time when I had a job.

And now that I don’t have a job, there is more time to write. I mean, at some 9-to-5s, I may be on lunch break right now, but by the time I’ve finished writing this article, I guarantee I will have spent more than half an hour on it. And that’s awesome. I tried writing on my lunch break when I worked for Social Security, but it would involve either bringing my notebook up to my cubicle, where I would feel self-conscious about how asocial it seemed, using the biggest break of my day to be lost in my thoughts; or I would write in my car, which was just as weird, but less visible to my co-workers. Either way, half an hour isn’t enough to focus. And then I would get off, and I would be kinda worn out from people making me feel personally responsible for their inability to get ahead in life, and I would take my weary guilt to a coffee shop or diner and mostly feel like writing about my weary guilt.

And sometimes that worked. Sometimes I was able to transfer my day’s experiences into something that spoke. I have one short story I sort of don’t want to post anywhere online because at some point I’d like to find a publisher and get… less than I’d want, less than I’d feel it’s worth, but still… get paid. I feel like putting the “good stuff” online would diminish its monetary value somehow, like, “Oh, you’re selling us something you pulled from your blog? This is hardly exclusive material.” So I’m sitting on it, this one soulful thing I wrote in one blitzkrieg writing session while I was working the job I claimed to be draining me of my soul.

Yes, sometimes it didn’t matter that I had that job. Sometimes a little bit of what I was trying to let out seemed to escape on its own. Sometimes I surprised myself, and this happened while I was making enough to support myself and go out for drinks and date and all the other things I wanted to squeeze into my spare time.

But sometimes I would wake up having a panic attack, or something like a panic attack. A depressive mood. An existential episode. A fixation on all the things that were probably going to happen in my day that I wasn’t prepared to deal with. And I would be in bed for two hours just considering what was ahead of me for the day until my shift was ten minutes away, at which point I would finally call in sick, and try to make it a personal day, sometimes drive to the beach and tune everything out like I was on some mini-vacation, but really, my job was eating away at me, and even a day at the beach wasn’t a day at the beach. There are so many things I was told or asked on a daily basis that we would, as an office, have these automated responses for, just because that’s how you deal with two hundred people asking you how they’re supposed to turn their lives around.

“How am I supposed to live on this?”
“I’ve been working on getting my benefits for two years. Has there been a response yet? I just need health insurance.”
“When am I going to get help? It’s been three hours!”

Not to mention all the more specific problems with people’s disabilities and desperate situations, because sometimes the job involved getting very, very deeply involved in people’s problems. And there was a fair amount of bullshit in all that, and when I could identify clear dishonesty or outright fraud, I would feel great. But there was enough desperation and poverty and mental illness that I would get home most days and just find ways not to think. Pub trivia night, Guitar Hero, craft beer, baking wicked-awesome cheesecakes, House M.D., sudoku, napping, discovering new restaurants through Yelp. None of these pastimes was really unhealthy, but they were all distractions. If I sat down to write, my writing would be poisoned by somebody’s terminal cancer. None of my characters got out of their situations or learned anything about themselves; they just revealed the depths of their misery to the reader, like Kafka written by a third-grader.

It was necessary to get out. It’s not necessary to my life goals that I be an unemployed writer, but it was necessary that I get out of that job. Not even just for the writing. For me.

But now that I’m on the outside, there seem to be two camps on what I’ve done with my life over the past year:

1. Wow, I really admire that you had the courage to sacrifice stability for your passion.
2. Wow, you’re kind of a fuck-up. Do you know what kind of job you’re looking for now?

And I get it. I get it because I am probably in both of these camps at some point during any given day:

Internal monologue: Wow, this is awesome! You’ve got this book you’ve been working on for two and a half years, and you’re continuously getting new ideas, and you’re going to do it, man! But shouldn’t you be, I don’t know… fucking writing or something? Loser. Oh, sure, go to your coffee shop and refer to yourself as a writer some more until it just happens on its own. That’s productive.

Am I taking this seriously? Yes, absolutely. When the self-doubt and second-guessing isn’t taking over, I am so deadly serious about wanting to be a writer.

You know how much easier this would be if I had a little cubicle with a little cheaply made plaque bearing my name, labeling me as someone who was at work, accomplishing something? And at 10:15 I could take a break and talk to other writers about the problems we’re having with characters and just let off a little bit of steam about sentence construction, maybe pick somebody’s brain about that word that I’ve been trying to put my finger on for the last 15 minutes, and I just have some awful placeholder in the meantime, and if I don’t figure it out soon, it’s just going to stay as it is right now, but I’ll feel like I lost a battle against my own writing. Then 10:30 would roll around, and it’d be back to the salt mines, staring at my computer screen and pushing some sentences around in a word processor.

A manager would come around with a clipboard and ask what I was working on, and I’d kinda lie about how much progress I’d made over the past two days and secretly think that I’m going to make up for the deficit in my day after I get home and have a couple beers, because taking work home wouldn’t be entirely discouraged.

On Thursdays I’d get my paycheck no matter how many times I had inconsistent tense issues, and maybe my editor would chew me out a little bit too much about how many times we’d had to have the talk about the extra work I make for myself with my weird preference for using a combination of present tense and first-person narrative in fiction, and I’d internally commit to trying out other styles, but really, we’d both be happy with the work I was doing, and improvement would just come with more years on the job, and these meetings would really always be constructive criticism coming from a good place, no matter how they came off. Maybe I’d get pulled away from the desk for a couple hours to go to a seminar/workshop on third-person perspective, just as a refresher, and it’d looks good in my portfolio if was ever gunning for a promotion.

And after work I’d go out to a bar and start a conversations with a girl having a drink alone, and she’d ask what I did for a living, and when I said my career was in writing, she’d ask, “Oh, which office do you work for?”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful for this to be a normal, structured career like everything else I’m used to? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it wasn’t seen as an alternative to work?

I don’t know. It sounds completely distanced from the reality of novel writing, but it’s not like teams of writers don’t exist. Does this mean I want to work for a magazine or newspaper? I don’t think so, but something to consider I guess.

Point being, anyway, that one of the biggest barriers to my writing recently has been the idea that, as a creative pursuit, as something many people are able to do in their free time rather than emptying out their lives to make room for it, with the writers who people have heard of already being examples of success, I think it’s easy not to take me seriously. And I internalize that. Really. I’ve had plenty of “whatever, haters gonna hate” moments in my life, including walking out on the very structured life I had a year ago, but it takes so much confidence to say, “I am going to tank my finances and my resume, spend the next five months writing a book, and it’s going to be so successful that I’m going to go from total unknown office drone to career author before I go broke,” and even more confidence to follow through on that, for months, while my bank accounts slowly drain out. I’m amazed I even got through that first step.

And even if it’s subtle or well-meant, every time I say I’m working on my writing and somebody asks what my real job is, or how I’m going to make my money while I write, or however else it’s worded, my confidence takes a blow. Maybe it’s just a question of logistics, not even intended as a suggestion that I will fail and need a fallback, but there’s enough of that going around that it’s easy for me to get stuck in the middle of a sentence for several minutes, sigh deeply, and click back over to job listings to see if anybody needs some files alphabetized, or some spreadsheets formatted.

Bottom line: I need moral support. It’s easier to take myself seriously when others are able to buy my ridiculous dreams. This isn’t a vacation.

Surveillance, Voluntary Self-Incrimination, and Beauty

Sometimes when I’m on the Internet, all I can really focus on is how every website that allows me to leave feedback wants me to log in with Facebook, so that everything I do online can be recorded and listed chronologically in one central site I once used exclusively to get back in touch with cute girls I met at parties, unsuccessfully. And with some social media apps logging the location I post everything from, and all the other smartphone users checking me in when I join them for lunch or a beer, and… fucking…

THIS

… even with my rather low-profile life and recent tendencies toward luddism (a term I use rather loosely to describe using my fancy, expensive smartphone primarily for text messages and GPS), having people screaming “Big Brother is watching” in one ear and “any employer worth their salt will Facebook stalk you” in the other sometimes gets the paranoia machine going, as if googling up some videos of midget tranny hookers is going to immediately make my online presence less clean and asexual and employable, or somehow make it harder for me to board a plane.

And it’s scary on one hand, and I’m not what the NSA is looking for on the other hand, but the second hand doesn’t make the first hand any less scary.

But then I remember that Pandora recently recommended a band called The Whitest Boy Alive, and suddenly I have hours of new music to listen to, available instantaneously and free on Youtube or my favorite torrent site. And, even with the ridiculous pace I’ve been sprinting through Adventure Time over the past two months, I still have half a dozen episodes left, at which point there’s that other show Rebecca Sugar was working on, and at some point I’m going to have to start on Breaking Bad.

Oh, but I just remembered that the name of the song I had stuck in my head all day was “Gymnopedies,” and though I can’t remember the name of the composer, Google will take care of that, and I’ll probably have a dozen different performances to choose from. And I know it’s not Christmastime, but the uncharacteristically sentimental, melancholic, nostalgic mood of this Tim Minchin song has been putting me in the perfect mood for the section of my book I’m working on:

And one of the friends I’ve made since moving back to my old hometown insisted I watch A Beautiful Mind. And, yeah, that’s on here, too.

And while Facebook continues to trade top ten lists on Buzzfeed and Cracked and Upworthy and all the other sites that crank out rehashed explanations of what it means to be 23 or an 80s kid or a Californian or how whoever made the news today is totally exactly like the Bluths from Arrested Development, you may sometimes forget that every painting Vincent Van Gogh created in his miserable, beautiful life is also just a few clicks away.

And, yes, porn.

And has anybody ever made you watch Validation? Well, here, then:

12:30. I cry every time. Not just saying that. Like a fucking baby. Don’t believe me if I try to play it off as allergies, which I also do every time.

It’s all here. It’s free, and easily accessible, and most of the music and film and TV is probably a bit illegal. But the amount of beautiful things on the Internet is astounding. The music, the art, the movies, the photography, the quotations dubiously attributed to Morgan Freeman. The mainstream, the underground, and the suggestions for similar artists if you liked that one. The sites dedicated to interpreting more complex song lyrics and literary symbols and movie endings, in case you either didn’t get it or wanted to see other people’s takes.

Most of the Internet is probably utter trash, and it’s a beautiful fucking day outside right now, so it’s easy to find yourself looking up from your 200th lolcat of the day to see the sun setting and realizing that you are pathetic.

But in moderation…

It’s easy to forget sometimes, but the Internet is beautiful.

What time is it!?!

I write a disproportionate amount about things that are wrong with the world. I am fascinated by social inequality, sources of alienation, and the inexplicable success of the worst music, the worst TV shows, the worst books, the worst video games. Maybe reading about that can be a drag sometimes.

But you know what’s fucking awesome?

Adventure Time.

If you think I’m a little old to be enthusiastic about a show that seems to be trapped in an 8-year-old’s imagination, you probably haven’t given the show enough time to see it for the absolute gem that it is. It’s the type of show that makes me think, “God, where was this when I was a kid,” but it isn’t trapped in the same silly blurbity blobbity cute, random, mindless realm of entertainment that, say, Spongebob Squarepants is.

Adventure Time is like if you took The Little Prince, told it to lighten up a smidge, and brought it into the 21st century. Not to say that The Little Prince needed to be updated; it’s absolutely timeless, and would make my desert island reading list ahead of a thousand pieces of grown-up literature. But Adventure Time has all the same imaginative magic and age-blind appeal. It is an episodic children’s story chock full of wisdom that doesn’t feel moralizing, some of which will only be recognizable as sage advice by adults.

There’s this brilliant moment in one episode where Finn hesitates to try something he has no experience at, and Jake says: “Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.” It’s just about the greatest piece of advice there is to give, but they don’t go way out of their way to underscore it, closing the episode on that note or building an entire plotline out of it. It’s just a little bit of color conversation while they’re in transit between the episode’s setup and its conflict. That’s how casually this show drops truth bombs.

And it’s not all just overly general, Aesop-inspired “if at first you don’t succeed…” advice. For a show that seems aimed at children on the surface, it has a surprising amount to say about dating. There’s an entire episode to people coaching Finn on how to ask a girl out. He gets conflicting advice. He uses one girl’s advice to try to woo that same girl, and it doesn’t work because she’s just not interested. They wind up going to the movies as friends. The movie sucks and they still have fun. Two of the underlying lessons are that there’s no universal advice on how to ask a girl out, and that being turned down isn’t the end of the world. Shit, man… the main villain is a dude with Nice Guy Syndrome who tries too hard and can’t function normally in social situations. There are some grown-ass men out there complaining about being “friend-zoned again” who could learn a thing or two from watching Ice King fall on his face. Magic ice wizard powers aside, it’s surprisingly true to life.

There’s another episode where the moral is essentially, “Some people are just assholes.” It even goes as far as to say that there was nothing else to learn out of the incident – that guy was just an asshole.

Even taking the show at the easiest, “I’m tired from work and I’m just going to watch some TV before I fall asleep” level, it doesn’t really have to be a series of life lessons using hero/princess/evil monster tropes as a vehicle. It’s as funny as Tiny Toons or Animaniacs. The songs, when there are songs, are ridiculously catchy. Unfortunately for Adventure Time, the incredible talented Rebecca Sugar, responsible for writing music and lyrics for the show’s most memorable songs, has moved on and started work on her own show. But I’ve heard Steven Universe is pretty great, and Adventure Time is still pretty fantastic, so that’s a pretty weak “unfortunately.”

I’ve heard more than one person lump it in with “all the ‘it’s funny because it’s random’ crap that Adult Swim has turned into.” I don’t think that’s fair. Yes, there is an episode where Finn is turned into a giant foot by an evil wizard. Yes, there is a hot dog princess. Yes, one of the characters speaks in Korean, and there are no subtitles. There are things that are wacky – like, Animaniacs meets Kafka wacky. But that’s never the sole basis for humor. Sometimes self-referential, sometimes nostalgic, sometimes clever, sometimes immature, sometimes dark, sometimes sight gaggy, sometimes parody, and yes, sometimes wacky, the show covers a ton of bases with its jokes. Categorizing Adventure Time as “lol random” is painting with broad strokes.

I’ve also heard the show referred to as a hipster thing. I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s a complete list of things to shun in order to avoid being called a hipster. And, in any case, I have come to realize that I do have some things in common with hipsters. Like not having a job. Like enjoying bands you’ve probably never heard of. Like drinking PBR (related to not having a job). Like having fun when I go to hipster hangouts. Even though my bike has more than one speed, I may secretly, accidentally be a hipster.

But if splitting a case of PBR and watching a couple hours of Adventure Time does not sound like a good time, you may take yourself and/or this whole “aversion to hipsters” thing too seriously.

Seriously.