Category: General

I’m listening to this podcast and they’re talking about happiness and what makes people happy and it made me reflect on my current situation.

The podcast is  You Are Not So Smart, and I love it so much. David McRaney has been writing about all the various ways our brains fool ourselves for a long time. It started as a blog, way back in the day, before it became a podcast. He’s done a whole season on logical fallacies; he’s talked about right-wing and left-wing thinking; he’s examined the idea of consciousness itself. 

But this episode, the most recent one, Episode 163, is called The Happiness Lab and in it, he interviews Dr. Laurie Santos, who has started a podcast herself called, non-surprisingly enough, The Happiness Lab. They cover a lot of ground together. I don’t know if this episode is one I’d recommend you jump right in on if you’re not familiar with the way McRaney approaches the topic, although it’s hard for me to tell, being a long-time fan. 

But the part that made me think “Hey this is something I can write about tonight!” is where the host invites Dr. Santos to explain why so many people seem to be depressed or lonely now, and what may have changed in society to cause that change in the past few decades. She has a somewhat intuitive but still remarkable answer.

ATMs.

She feels, from her research and study of what makes people happy, that generally, our intuitions and feelings about what might make us happy are often wrong—as I said, this is right in the YANSS podcast wheelhouse—and that science can examine the evidence and make recommendations for us to follow, recommendations that will let us live happier lives. 

And the science tells her (she tells us) that generally speaking, happier people are also more social. They spend more time around other people. They interact with other people more; they live and work around other people. They don’t hide out in their apartments; they go out to coffee shops instead of using DoorDash or whatever to have food and coffee brought to them. 

She traces all this back through the usual suspects: iPhones and always-on internet in our pockets; Twitter and Facebook and Amazon Prime and streaming videos; cell phones and texting and online dating… but the initial inflection point was the ATM. When they were introduced, they represented replacing a human interaction between us and a bank teller with an interaction with a robot, a machine, that had no human qualities. 

I’ve written here before about feeling isolated; in an apartment, that’s at least a 30-minute drive from my closest friends’ house, on the outskirts of my city. I’m not in a neighborhood that is nearly as walkable as my beloved Sellwood. There are few good bars I can walk to from here. I have to drive to a grocery store, unlike having two grocery stores in walking distance in my old stomping grounds. And my roommate moved out (for his own reasons, which I understand, but which is still a factor for me now).

In a lot of ways, I’m more isolated than I was. Granted, I wasn’t that social in Sellwood, except that I knew the names of many of the bartenders and waitstaff for the bars and restaurants and coffee shops and diners I would haunt. And my friends rarely came over to visit me, even when they were closer than they are now—but we would hang out from time to time, slightly more often than we do these days.

I don’t just want to focus on the current adverse effects, however. As Dr. Santos suggests, I’d like to take this info and see if I can use it to move in a happier direction. Are there any ways I can spend more time around people?

I do spend time around people at work. I work side-by-side with Val; we share an office. And once or twice a week, Kevin, a fellow tech, works out of that office. Plus I talk to and deal with my users daily. And even though I don’t work with the rest of the tech team (they have their own office and work for other clients), my boss does have regular in-office casual time. Not meetings; we don’t talk about work. We drink adult beverages and hang out and sometimes play games. My job is already more social than my previous job.

I always make a point of going to my favorite Sellwood haunts whenever I can. I like being recognized and knowing the names of the staff there. Those are the ways I’m being more social.

Could I try to interact with my neighbors more? Is that a thing? It seems a difficult hurdle to hurdle over but maybe so.

Ideally, I think, when I move back closer in, I’d like to try living in a big house with a lot of roommates. That seems fun. Last year, when I lived in my sister’s house, even though I’m sure I got on everyone’s nerves sometimes, and I sometimes felt the same about them, it was comfortable having people around. It was my sister and her husband, my niece, and nephew, and their mother-in-law. And my sister is far more social than I am, and by extension, so is her family. They would have people over, throw parties, the niece and nephew would have their friends over… there were always people coming and going. Plus the adorable dog and the two cats. That house was a-rockin’. And I responded to it all.

I’m going to see what I can do to add more of that in my life. I want to do whatever I can to be happier. 

For science.

This video makes me smile and laugh, no matter how many times I watch it.

via Gfycat

via Gfycat

(This isn’t my 500-1000 word post for today. I just wanted to share this.)

A year ago this weekend I moved into this apartment, a two-bedroom one-and-a-half bathroom townhouse located on the very eastern border of the city limits of Portland.

I originally moved in with my nephew, Max, which is why we chose a two-bedroom place. The price was OK for us, even if the location was a bit far away from our friends and family, for both of us.

That weekend was bittersweet for me; I can’t speak for how Max felt about it. I felt I had very little choice. Other townhouses in the same price range and closer in had turned us down—me for bad credit, Max for no credit. This was his first-ever apartment.

I’ll always be grateful for the help of my friends and my family; helping me out after I couldn’t afford the apartment I’d lived in for almost two decades, a victim of rents rising faster than income and my own prolonged unemployed and under-employed status.

But damn did I hate not being in Sellwood anymore.

Max and I called the new place The Treehouse, a reference to Finn and Jake’s Tree Castle from Adventure Time. And that winter was a fun and yet frustrating time. Fun because Max is a very good roommate, but frustrating because as the weather got colder, we discovered the heat did not work at all. We suffered through many a cold night, fighting with the strangely hands’ off management company trying to get it repaired.

My friends all joked that I lived in Gresham, which I laugh off but does sting a bit. I’m a native Portlander, and my current address is a Portland address. I vote in Portland city elections. I’m inside the border.

But only just inside.

Max spent most of November and December house-sitting for his parents and wasn’t around, and I felt a little lonely; far from my friends, no one else around to talk to or play video games with, dealing with the cold weather. They did finally repair the heater, and within a week or two the managers announced that the property had been sold to a different management company, which, in retrospect, explained some of the odd goings-on with repairs.

I felt more than a little anxiety as the year wound to a close because my work contract was ending at the end of the year, and I had begun looking for a new job. But at least I had a car that worked and a place to live and a roommate to split the costs with.

In December, Max announced that he was planning on going back to school and that he would be moving into a room in West Linn, to save money. He promised to help me out with a month or two of rent, knowing I was losing my income in January, which to his credit he did not have to do. I figured I could afford a month or two on unemployment but I had to push for a job as quickly as I could.

After he moved out I moved my bed into the bigger bedroom (he got the big bedroom and I got the single parking space; a fair split between us) and turned the smaller one into a computer room and office space. That reminded me of my two-bedroom in Sellwood. It’s nice to have the extra space.

I started my new job, at a moderately higher rate of pay, just two and a half months into the year. I hoped I could make enough to move back in closer to town, but the rise in pay was not quite enough for me to build up my savings.

Meanwhile, since it was only me in the townhouse, I began calling it Tattooine, because, if there’s a bright center to Portland, I was on the block that’s farthest from it. I nearly always have to go to my friends’ houses or neighborhoods; it rarely makes sense for them to come to mine. They have visited, from time to time, but normally… it’s just me.

I know many of my neighbors in this complex by face but not by name. Is that normal for Portland, though? This isn’t the South, where people introduce themselves and get involved. Portlanders are polite but stand-offish.

There is a very cute cat that I see sometimes. She is a grey and cream tortoiseshell color, and she is very sweet, and sometimes she tries to come in my apartment and I have to stop myself from letting her. I know she has an owner because she wears a collar, and they would miss her. Maybe I should get a cat for myself. My friends all think it would help me.

I’ve put up some art, but not everything. I have decorated a bit, but not as much as I could. In my mind, this is a temporary space. I want to move out—or, rather, move in, closer into the center of Portland, closer to my friends, possibly even back to Sellwood. My resistance is knowing I don’t have much savings, and that I have a bad rental history; I am suffering the consequences of my decisions, and it’s very easy to beat myself up with them.

But maybe with a year of good rental history, I can demonstrate I’m back on track. Tattooine can be a waypoint, one stop in my journey. For now, I’m just remembering a full year in this place.

Look, we both know I just need to warm up and then I’ll find some groove and it’ll all make sense. Hang in there with me, because I do not know where this is going. As usual.

I watched a couple of videos about The Last of Us, Part 2. I’m super excited for this game. Max and I played the first one together. Well, actually, Max was playing it for the second time and I watched him play and helped with some of the major decision points.

The first game was brilliant: immersive, tense, and character-driven. Oh, and there were plenty of zombies to kill, too. The second game also seems very character-driven, but with a focus on Ellie, the young woman who had some kind of immunity to the zombie-fungus, rather than Joel, the laconic anti-hero father figure.

I’m a bit concerned that Ellie has a love interest and that the game is going to injure or kill the love interest in order to motivate Ellie. Why is that concerning? It’s because Ellie is a lesbian, and “Bury Your Gays” (warning: TV Tropes link, proceed with caution or else you’ll lose hours over there—come back as soon as you can) is a harmful trope in modern writing.

On the other hand, The Last of Us is set in a gloomy post-apocalypse, and those tend not to have happy endings. Any love interest is potential refrigerator fodder. So maybe it’s harder to avoid in this instance. Maybe there is a path through the game to a happy ending for Ellie and her love life. I’d like to think so.

I’m super full right now. I’ve been eating a lot and my weight has been trending up this week. Today I had my usual breakfast (oatmeal, bacon, coffee), plus a raspberry scone, plus a small deli sandwich, plus a gallon of coffee and cream, and then for dinner I stopped at the teriyaki place and got a giant plate of teriyaki chicken, two cups of white rice, and another gallon of teriyaki sauce. I ate it all, and now I can see my stomach bulging like some kind of big bulging thing.

And there’s a small part of me that wants to walk over to the Dairy Queen and get a Blizzard because some small part of me wants to be full all the time. I don’t know what pushes me to keep eating even when I’m stuffed full. There’s some psychology there that I do not fully understand. I can feel the Inner Negative Voice mumbling something… just can’t make it out clearly. But there’s some self-loathing involved because of course there is.

Speaking of video games, I really want to play this terrible goose game that everybody’s talking about. That’s all I have to say about that.

My site (this site!) gets more daily views when I post in the evening. Or did I already mention that? I’m not going to go check now. This is just more words towards my word count. Also… random!

I really hate living right across the street from a Dairy Queen, y’all. It’s bad for me to be able to just walk over there any time they’re open and buy a Blizzard (I never buy anything else, although I do sometimes only buy a mini one (~350 calories), sometimes a small (660 calories) and, rarely, a medium (800 calories or about 2/3s of my daily allowed calories)).

I’m happy that Spider-Man is back in the MCU although I bet that whole brouhaha between Sony and Marvel/Disney was just kayfabe.

I’m really running out of random things to type, so I think I’m just going to call it here. I wrote more than the minimum, it’s late on a Friday, and I’m tired. So tired I took a nap in my car at lunch, even though I don’t have a newborn to blame my sleepiness on. Let’s be real, I’m never going to have a newborn to blame anything on.

Good night, dear readers. I love you all.

OH! One more thing. I have not sent three pitch emails/letters out this week. I’m going to do one or two more this weekend. I have sent one pitch out to two different editors, though. Did I mention that already? Again, not going to go search back and see if I’ve posted that already.

For reals. Good night.

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A post shared by Hannah Hillam (@hannahhillam) on Sep 17, 2019 at 2:11am PDT

I didn’t always listen to podcasts. I had to start at some point.

If you’re reading a blog, you probably already know what a podcast is. In case you don’t, the easiest explanation is that a podcast is like a radio show you’ve Tivo’ed. There are podcasts that cover just about any topic you can imagine, but the most popular ones are generally NPR shows, I think. I don’t know; I don’t listen to any of the most popular ones.

I believe the first podcast I ever downloaded and listened to was Yo, Is This Racist?, hosted by Andrew Ti and Tawny Newsome. I haven’t listened to it in a long time but the format when I did was the hosts reading a letter/email from a listener about a situation and then trying to parse whether or not it was racist. The episodes were short and to the point, the hosts were engaging and friendly, and I learned a lot from it.

That, however, was just the vanguard. Soon after that I began subscribing and listening to a lot of them. But why, though? Why did I switch from listening to music, to listening to people talking about various things? Wha hoppen?

I knew what podcasts were long before I listened to them. I participated as a behind-the-scenes volunteer for 30-Hour Day, a video podcast live-streaming charity benefit featuring hosts Cami Kaos and Rick Turoczy, back in—ohmygod—2009, ten years ago. That live stream stemmed from a podcast: Strange Love Live. I knew what it was, I participated in a small way, but I didn’t actually listen to it or follow it. It was just part of the tech underground.

I knew Dan Harmon, writer and creator of Community, did weekly shows in front of a live audience that were recorded and released as podcasts, called Harmontown. I knew that from reading about the scandalous things he would often say about making the show and working with Sony, NBC, and Chevy Chase. I read these things on the AV Club back in—ohmygod—2012. But I didn’t listen to the podcasts and I didn’t subscribe.

I could come up with more examples prior to me taking that final step of downloading and playing that first podcast. And if you’ve read the title, you might have a good guess as to what it was.

In February 2013 I left my job at Multnomah County for the vague sense that I should be writing. I spent most of my time at home, alone, staring at a computer screen, and some of that time writing. The times I wasn’t writing, I was procrastinating by surfing, doing minor housecleaning, exercising, or otherwise dicking around not writing. And, quite honestly, I was a bit lonely.

Sure it was my choice. Sure, I still had family and friends to talk to and hang out with. Sure, I made new friends online when I took up scraping nickels off the internet by being a worker for Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and joining some forums to learn how to do it better. But there was still the vast stretches of time when I was home, alone, with only the voices in my head to keep me company… unless I downloaded some podcasts and played them and listened to these people talk about smart things and funny things and serious things.

It didn’t take very long before silence felt weird, and I was putting on podcasts to go about my daily chores as a habit. If I ran out of podcasts to listen to, I’d get agitated until I found a new one, or dug back into the archives to re-listen to an older one that I particularly liked. I’d binge the whole run of a podcast and marvel at how it changed over time—a huge undertaking for something that has been going on forever, like The Incomparable (a podcast for which I am a paying member, because of how much entertainment Jason Snell and his friends have given me over the years).

I now understand why some older folks would leave the teevee on in the background while they were home. Some friendly voices to fill the empty spaces in the house.

Now that I’m working on a regular day job again, I don’t feel that need to have podcasts going 24/7, though I do still listen to them when I’m at home. I also a bit of a commute—30-40 minutes one way—and that is prime podcast-listenin’ time. But I also mix it up with music sometimes.

And sometimes… even silence. I think I’m slightly less lonely these days. That’s a good thing.

As per usual, I’m sitting here in front of my computer with no idea what I’m going to write about. No title, no germ of an idea, nothing. I’ve been sipping coffee and scrolling through the Hellsite trying to find motivation or inspiration and nothing is coming to me.

But the whole point of my ongoing exercise is that I need to write no matter what. It’s not about “finding motivation” it’s about momentum and habit. Which is why I’m just typing this out instead of floundering around trying to scrape together some genius idea I can riff off of for 1000 words or so.

My apologies, as always, if you find your interest in reading this flagging. I just have to get something down on paper. Well, not paper, but pixels and electrons. Same thing, these days.

So… what’s on my mind? Oddly, it’s my old me.

For some reason, my blog software registered that someone was reading a very old post of mine, titled “Epiphany”, which, in my defense, I wrote over a decade ago (posted 18 September 2008); eleven years and 3 days ago as I write this. So, of course, I re-read it. And, wow, it’s a lot to take in.

The tone is entitled and bitter and angry. I’m basically tearing my friends a new one for them not treating me like I wanted to be treated. What an awful, dark mental place that was. I can remember writing that post, and the reactions of my friends to it, and having to defend what I wrote as “this is how I’m feeling lately”, but it was not a good take. I can’t imagine writing it today. Today I am grateful for my friends, and I appreciate them for sticking with me.

“Epiphany” reminds me of all the shit I’ve been through, and how I had to work very hard to keep it from turning me even more bitter. I had to express those feelings, get them down in words and sentences, translate the hurtful black clouds blocking my brain so that I could see and heal from whatever pain I had inside.

But out in the open, seeing something like this:

When I suggest, through indirect language and hints that probably only I can understand, how they can help me, they don’t hear me.

…I see the Inner Negative Voice being channeled and it makes me realize that that is what the voice says when I feel I’m a terrible friend. I see myself having en expectation (why don’t they hear me?) and a strategy (if I say it subtly will they notice?) and I’m creating a fucking test for people to pass or fail and then judging them when they don’t respond as I expect them to. It’s a horrible, transactional way to be.

The rest of the post goes on and seems a bit more reasonable. I try to make the case that everyone is doing the best they can with what they have, and that’s true, but I still come across as bitter about not getting my own needs met. How could I, though, if I wasn’t expressing them? I was hiding in a corner and hoping my friends would come and find me when they didn’t even know we were playing Hide And Go Seek.

Much better to come clean, to ask for what I want, and to accept whatever answer the universe gives me (and by “universe” I mean my friends and family, of course; the universe, my universe, personified in the form of real human people doing real human things with and without me).

Honestly, I’m still tired of going through the motions of my life, repeating the patterns. Anyone reading these posts should be able to see that. But I’m doing my best to break the patterns myself. And, again, honestly, I don’t even know what I would replace it with. What do I want? My therapist and my friends have asked me that in recent days, and I have no answer for them. Whatever epiphany I had, it did not reveal a new path. Just a rejection of the path I’ve had up to now.

My future is contingent on the choices I’ve already made, so it’s not like I can become someone completely different. I don’t want to stay here, though. I need to move forward.

Ugh. Movement. There’s a part of me that would much rather hide away than seek something new. Not sure if that’s the Inner Negative Voice or just the scared quiet child-Brian who was trying to protect himself in what felt like a random and dangerous world—the kid whose inaction and missteps created the Inner Negative Voice in the first place.

Maybe admitting I don’t know what I want is a good first step, though. Before I can move, I need to figure out where I’m headed. In the meantime, I can pay attention to where I am, and what I’m feeling, right now. That is enough.

For now, that is enough. Hello, and thank you for reading my confused thoughts. Happy Saturday.

It feels later than it really is, but that’s because I’ve been awake since earlier than I normally am. It’s 10 PM, give or take, as I write this but it feels like it’s after midnight. Luckily for me and my self-imposed goal, it’s not after midnight because then, technically, I would be in violation, having not written 500-1000 words on Friday.

I’ve been awake since before my normal waking up time because, in one of my pre-alarm wake-ups, I rolled over, checked my phone, and for some reason checked my bank balance, only to discover it was much lower than it had been before I’d gone to sleep. I won’t give you the exact amount but it was enough to make me worry that I might not have enough cash to get me through until the next paycheck.

The shock of that was enough to kick off my anxiety, and I went through the transactions in my account trying to figure out what had come out that I had not expected. My last couple of months have been spent carefully trying to plan ahead and set aside the money I need for my bills, using what is basically the envelope method of budgeting: setting aside groups of money for utilities, rent, gasoline, and food. But nothing seemed out of place. The envelopes had the right amount of money for future bills, but the “safe-to-spend” was just… lower.

That anxiety kept me from just rolling over and going back to sleep, unfortunately, so eventually, I stood up and went about my otherwise normal routine. Once I was showered and had breakfast, I sat back down at my computer and went over my future budget. I will be OK, but it will be tighter than I had originally thought.

I hate the roller-coaster, the feast-or-famine, of my current financial situation. I mean, I haven’t overdrafted my account in several months, so that’s good: my bills all get paid and I’m not bleeding money. But I cut it pretty close. My bank balance the night before my last paycheck was a buck and change. I hate this so much but at least I’m doing better than last year, where I must have given my bank several hundred dollars I couldn’t otherwise spare in NSF fees.

I have gas in my car and food in my fridge and cupboards. My bills will get paid, and I’ll make it to work, and I’ll have food to eat. But anything extra is just going to have to wait. I have a roof over my head, the lights are on, and the internet is working enough for me to keep on typing and surfing and streaming.

What would life be like without the stress of micromanaging my money? I can’t remember ever not fussing over every penny. It’s a fantasy, much like delving deep into an underground tomb looking for magical items and shiny gold coins. Life is dreary at the base of Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs but someone’s got to be down here.

I told Terry I couldn’t make it to happy hour after work, and he offered to buy me a beer. I was honest and he was generous. I feel more than a small amount of guilt for that but I didn’t ask; he offered. I guess that’s what friends are for? I would do the same for him if our situations were reversed. I just can’t see it ever reversing. Life stretches on.

I only had one beer, plus a cheap happy-hour burger that was delicious (it had jalapenos!), and then Terry and I wandered into a conversation about life and capitalism and being driven to change things for the better (me) and feeling helpless to make any difference at all (him) and it was a good conversation about deep and important topics. We agreed to disagree, as we always do, even after the talk continued while we wandered the streets outside the bar and sat on a bench and watched cars drive too fast down a narrow crowded street while pedestrians drunkenly crisscrossed in and out of headlights.

We didn’t solve anything except cementing our positions as Luke Skywalker trying to take on the whole Empire himself (me) vs. Han Solo just trying to look out for himself and his crew and spend the reward he got for risking his life (him). It’s a tale as old as time.

One of the touchstones of our conversation is the idea that if we met now, while we were adults, we would probably not become friends. We have a lot of differences that would likely repel each other. But we’ve been through a lot, and we bonded when we were much younger and less set in our ways, and that friendship keeps us in each others’ orbits. Do you have friends like that? I hope you do, because it’s the best feeling.

Is it even possible to bond like that with someone anymore? I look at the world online and the people around me, and I don’t really think it’s possible. If it is at all, it’s incredibly rare. How would that even happen? Surely not through Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. Surely not.

At any rate, I am tired and there’s still plenty of writing to be done this weekend, so

good night.

To help me re-focus on getting out there and seeing my words published (and paid for!) elsewhere, I’ve been following along with Nicole Dieker’s article A 7-Day Plan for Starting Your Freelance Writing Gig.

The hardest part for me was during Day 1: coming up with five publications I’d love to have bylines in. I’m not sure if it’s modesty, insecurity, or simple ignorance, but it took me the longest time to think up, and write down, five different publications where I would be proud to see my work.

I say “simple ignorance” because I’m just not aware of a lot of different journals, magazines, or publications. Especially so in the last few years, where I tend to read articles online that I gather from Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, and I rarely connect those individual articles with their overall publisher or publication. Which means I need to start doing that, again, with an eye towards “places I might want to pitch”.

But there’s also the underlying fear of “am I good enough?” and “they wouldn’t like me or my work” to deal with.

To combat that fear, here’s the list I finally – finally! – put down on paper. I would be happy to see my name on a story in any of these five, whether in print or online:

1. The Portland Mercury – Portland’s best independent newspaper. Covers politics and local topics with a liberal, irreverent edge.
2. Mother Jones – Also a liberal bastion of politics and current events. My anti-corporate skepticism and empathetic view of people would fit in very well here, I think.
3. Wired – I’ve been reading Wired since the first month it came out. It’s where I honed my views on technology and the culture that surrounds it.
4. Atlantic Monthly – In my mind, it’s the classiest place for narrative non-fiction.
5. The New Yorker – Pretty much the pinnacle of prestige for writers of all stripes. They don’t normally accept unsolicited work, though, so I need to work my way up to this one.

I can think of a few other places but those five are a good target for my aspirations. Perhaps as I work on this, and do more research and reading, I can find more. There’s a whole world of paying publications for writers these days.

Right?

I have two pen pals that I need to send something to. One is in New Zealand and the other is in Massachusetts. I don’t know a lot about them. I was connected with them via a Slack group for a local art/tech festival I volunteer for, XOXO.

Not knowing much about them I figured the first thing I should do is tell them something about myself, because maybe they’re thinking the same thing on their end of the connection. I was pretty sure they had been to Portland, my home town, but they probably had never been to Sellwood, the neighborhood I live in and love.

I have three or four pieces of artwork by a local artist, sketches of different corners and streets in Sellwood, and two of those pieces are on greeting cards. I bought them a year or two ago in a boutique, called Fuchsia, just a few doors down from where I often drink and eat myself into oblivion.

I met the artist himself at a charity art show, in fact, where I purchased two of the four prints I own. I had gone there with some friends and had joked that I would only buy something if it was about my neighborhood, and that is exactly what I found.

And then earlier this year, I had seen him again, sitting with his easel on a sidewalk across the street from a breakfast diner I love far out of proportion with the quality of its food. He was sketching that corner, which in addition to the diner includes a dive bar and two different auto mechanics.

Yesterday, in the delightful gray rain, I put on my coat and fired up a podcast on my iThing and walked to that shop to pick up some more cards, to send to my pen pals. It’s an easy 20-25 minute walk.

I walked in, said hello to the lady behind the counter, and wandered around the greeting card aisles; when she asked me if I was looking for something specific I told her about the cards.

“Oh,” she said, her face falling, “we can’t get those cards anymore. The artist passed away.” She couldn’t remember the name of the artist and, sadly, neither could I.

Unsure what to say beyond that this was sad news, I ended up buying some cards of a different local artist, although these cards were not of my neighborhood. I still have to write in them and send them, which is the important part of being a pen pal with someone.

When I got home yesterday I looked at the signature at the bottom of the drawings I own. Mason Parker. I clicked around the site, a basic WordPress blog, and found that he had completed the painting of Bertie Lou’s (see above), and that he had artwork showing in Portland through December. That page was updated on 19 October 2015, in fact, just 10 days ago as I write this. There’s a list of stores that sell his cards and art–notably, it does not include the shop in my neighborhood. Did he really pass away?

Mr. Parker has a phone number listed and a P.O. Box and a PayPal link to order his art. I can’t tell if he’s not actually dead, or if his death was so recent that the site just hasn’t been updated.

Today, I’m going to call him just to check. I’m not going to wait.

Instead of actually writing the chapter (for now), I’m going to write (and think) about writing the chapter.

The scenes I’m working on in my not-yet-finished first-draft novel are pivotal ones. They’re intended to introduce two characters from previously unrelated storylines, and that meeting is going to affect almost everything that happens afterward. I know these characters and, once they’re introduced, I know, the way any writer or storyteller knows, how they’ll react and what bits and pieces of themselves they are willing to share with each other. I am not nervous at all about the interpersonal part of the scene.

The two characters are: a 3 term US Congressman who is facing an increasingly tough re-election campaign, someone who has a code of honor about his civic duty but might be willing to break some rules “just this once”; and a heart-broken woman serving in the US Army under DADT who regrets leaving the love of her life behind because she felt she had no other options for a career.

The parts that are giving me pause in writing are all the details of the setting in which they’re meeting: in and around, to the north and the south and the east and the west, of Baghdad, Iraq, during the height of US occupation.

All I know about the area is what I’ve seen in movies, and on TV. I don’t even really know much about military structure. What ranks would be doing what work? Who would she report to? Who would be there to meet the Congressman and his staff? How much leeway would each of them have to actually have a face-to-face conversation?

All these questions are nagging at me. I don’t want to fuck this up. I’m confident about the emotional elements of the story; the military and setting details, however, scare me. I don’t want to write things so poorly it kicks people who do know these matters out of the story.

I remind myself, however, that this is a first draft. I just need to get something down on paper (well, pixels), and when it’s done, I can have more knowledgeable eyes go over this (and every) section and tell me how to fix it. First draft is a long way from finished book. I can just focus on the parts I know.

Fingers, fly! Time to write.