Changes

Looks like Google changed the layout of my website somehow. I am not sure that I did anything to change it, but there is the possibility that I did. It has been a long while since I last posted here, it's difficult to know for sure. I do know that there has been many changes on the backend of this program. The whole mobile first movement seems to be at fault for it. My feeling about that is somewhat mixed. Yes, I do know that all things internet seems to be moving towards the mobile market. However, it is my feeling that the mobile form does not allow for the longer essay like posts that I prefer. I will try to hang on to words as long as I can, even though our visual culture marches forward.

Disappointments

Not that I have abandoned this blog, far from it. It's simply that I do not feel the same motivation that I had for writing that I once did. I know that isn't much of an excuse, but at least it is an explanation.

It's somewhat fair to say that I been feeling poorly, but perhaps that is a bit of an understatement too. I've been grappling with a lot of issues related to my self-concept. It feels as if I am falling into a direction in life that I wouldn't have chosen for myself if I could have avoided it. It seems that, for the rest of my life, I will be as poor as ever. I have far too many debts from school, a tremendous burden that will sap the opportunities for a life with simple pleasures: a wife, a home, a family, etc. My naivete was extreme in my college days, but there was no-one to tell me where I was headed. And of course, I might have not listened anyway.

I feel a bit upset when I consider how a future life of poverty was incurred as a result of my striving for something better (a PhD and professorship), and then failing at it because of my ignorance of myself, my difficult and (also failed) romantic experiences, and seeming inability to endure it all. But there it is. It cannot be bargained with or changed. It was real and it happened. Therefore, I must continue on and face consequences of actions that I did not know I had chosen at the time.

I am trying to make the best of it. One of the things I most frequently hear from friends and family is that "life is what you make of it." True enough to provide some hope and thereby small measure of comfort. And yet, while one can try to improve life and circumstances to a degree, no-one seems to acknowledge its severe limitations. Life restricts opportunity as much as it provides it. The difficult life lesson is learning how to accept its restrictions with calm equanimity and be unperturbed in the face of failures.

I wonder how people who experience a persistent and oppressive injustice in their life learn to cope with the outside forces that prevent them from attaining their visions of comforts and happinesses. I should consider myself lucky that I do not experience racism, persecution, hunger, and etc. that many people the world over do. I suspect that the key is to ignore the restrictions imposed from the outside and learn to be content with the life one leads on the inside, but as with everything, knowing something isn't the same as doing it. Or in my case, feeling it.

I hope to continue on my internal path of change, so that I conform my behavior to my vision of a better and happier self. Faced with frustrations, depressions, irritations, and unhappiness it seems hard for me to get there. I will not, and cannot ignore restrictions. Most modern folks I talk with say this is the way to get happy, but really they seem to be advocating blindness and ignorance. There should be a richer path of acknowledging injustice, pain, and disappointment without it sending your emotions careening over the edge into an expanding void. I grasp at the solid iron bar of calm acceptance, but it still seems a little out of reach.

Inflated Pride

On my bed are two balloons: one, blue, and the other green. I bought them a couple of years ago in one of those dollar store packages of balloons you get at the grocery store or Walmart. Most people buy balloons for some party giving occasion, but I bought them because I intended to use them for a photoshoot for a student design project for a book about clowning. In the end, although I took the pictures, I did not use them for the project. Instead, I took a picture of a classmate wearing the clown nose I had bought. She had an anxious, almost sad expression. The balloons came home to rest on the television nook for a year. I took them off about a week ago, intending to use them for a friends party. I was a guest, but even for all of my outward hilarity, I felt out of place. For one, I was among the very few attendees who did not have children. Most of my friends were distracted by their offspring for much of the visit and our conversations only occurred in brief half-minute exchanges that are difficult to piece together into an entire thread. Thought is broken up, and lacking words to fill the spaces between us, emotion fills in the cracks. This time, it was anxiety and embarrassment for having become this old without a clear direction in life, and a certain sadness for being middle-aged and not having a place entirely of my own or a career that marks me as a reasonably successful person who has the means to provide solely for himself and, perhaps, one or two others. The balloons came home in my jacket pocket, and somehow, through a series of small and unremarkable and forgettable daily actions, ended up on my bed next to my evening reading material.

---

I have had a couple of tormenting dreams. The most memorable of which was not the one in which I experienced the hell of being in a place or among people who I did not wish to be around and responding to their terrible actions. No, the most memorable and meaningful one centered on how my vision of myself, my self-concept, is opposed to reality and is mildly delusional in a mundane manner. However, please do not think that I mean to say "delusional" that I imagine myself as some character like "Napoleon," or think of myself special and unique, apart from every other human on the planet. Other than the experience of being human with human thoughts when we find ourselves by ourselves with moments for reflection, I do not live in a world separate from reality, nor do I have such a disconnection with reality that I cannot operate as a functional member in it.

The delusions that I mean are the ones that the generality of humanity has about itself in our era. We each think of ourselves as the heroic actors struggling in the movie or play of ourselves, and how we are being either shaped by tragedy or accomplishment, we thereby achieve the natural results of our endeavors, endeavors that most of us judge to be good.

And yet, this belief is nothing short of vanity.

As young people, this sort of vain thinking is so extreme in its improbability as to be utterly laughable if it was mentioned aloud. As adults who have mellowed (or tried to) in their years, the struggles we imagine lend to our shaping as beings of pure virtue surrounded by difficulty are much, much more mundane. No longer do we imagine ridiculous success filled with fame and fortune; instead, we find our "heroic" struggles in paying bills, dealing with co-workers or relatives, or some other life event. But, in its way, this sort of thinking is can be no less vain or laughable.

Which leads me to my dream. I cannot say what the images were that played in my head, who the "actors" were in this dream, or what I saw. Frankly, I have forgotten it; perhaps, if I try to recall as accurately as I can, I saw myself. The real meaning of the dream was in its impact. I realized that how I see myself in my daily actions, how I comport myself in my head and the thoughts I have about myself, can be in complete and utter conflict with how things really are. My thoughts, which I believed were a reflection of reality, a pilgrim's path of virtue, were in fact, imaginings that were vain to a such degree that it led me to blindness.

My attachments to how I want my life to go, to how I want to direct myself to this new heroism of virtue, lead me to think of myself as an heroic actor. And yet, to really be a decent man, I have to give up this stupid thought. I am not a mighty hero, standing tall with a sword of nobility against the gales of ungodly daily enemies. Enemies representing everything from my propensity for anger when a driver cuts me off, or my pride of intelligence and creativity I feel I receive an unfair criticism about my work. Yes, I do need to fight against those things, to give up anger and pride. But to imagine myself as the heroic actor in this play of myself? That is too much limited thinking. It makes me the center of a universe that disdains me for silly haughtiness and spits me out towards wretchedness.

I must strive to be a better person who can attain virtuous qualities and do a good deed or two a day, but I should also give up the idea that I am a better person for doing so, because that leads to pride, which causes blindness, and then people fall. And when they fall, the fall horribly hard and damage themselves. There is another thought here about seeing the end in the beginning, about how recognizing how this path of pride and vanity will lead to falls, and therefore, seeing danger ahead, one can avoid it. But I will leave that thought for another time, so that I may better try to hold on to the feeling of being exposed in my dream for my vain thinking which has led me to this wasted day and feelings of remorse for the stupid things I say and do in these occasions. I truly want to be a better person, I want to be virtuous, but life can really show me up sometimes, so I have to guard myself from too much stupidity on my part and recognize that, for how much I think I know, I really don't know anything.

Slight Frustration

I think that I feeling a slight frustration from wanting to be more accomplished than I am at art and design, hearing about more people without training describe themselves as designers, and not knowing how to earn an income from doing what I am doing now. I have been told that I should write a book, but I don't feel the passion for it like I used to. I may think up an idea for a story or two, but really hammering something out does not seem like it is in the cards for me. I fear that I rely to heavily on cliches, don't do enough reading (like everyone else), and wouldn't have something to say.

Although, the creative idea that I have lately center on the nonsense tales of the 19th century. It seems like 21st century could use an update that isn't a mere imitation of the past. There are plenty things in the world that are ripe for parody and satire, and the deft use of metaphor would go a long way of helping certain people be aware of the layers of nonsense that have built up over the years. (If I may digress: maybe they are seeing it? There is a lot of tumult in the news lately in many countries. People are suffering under the burden of not knowing what to do or where to go to solve their problems. Another person reciting those problems to them in a literary way isn't going to put food in their mouths or make them less miserable.)

I guess I am trying not to get too stuck too much in a limbo of despair. Yes, there are a lot of people out in the world who call themselves designers and maybe do not have all of the skills that they need to have for that job. Maybe, the world is too much over-saturated in media anyway and a new designer isn't going to bring real change to the world. But then again, maybe there is still room for me. Maybe I do have something to say or offer to the world in my chosen profession that will set me apart from the rest. I know that I have some talent, but I am frustrated that some people still haven't recognized it yet. I know that I can do this and be great at it. I know that I can achieve this and astonish everyone, but getting to that point without succumbing to my old "friend" of melancholy is going to be the real challenge. I cannot let him chill my heart into inertia or inaction. I must continue to strive to do my best and not allow poverty to keep me back too much.

There is something real here and I have to work even harder in the next few weeks to push myself forward to get it done properly.

Going along

My last post was pretty gloomy, and frankly, I was in a gloomy place. I have done a lot of personal reflection since then, and I feel that I am in the midst of turning over a new leaf. I wish I could say that I had some kind of awakening that was like a jolt, a sudden insight that opened up a new reality, some kind of startling cause to get me to try and turn things around, but the simple fact of the matter was that I was tired. I was miserable and tired and did not want to be like that any more. Years and years of struggling and focusing on all of the bad things in life, things which were as real as the moon above, had chilled my heart to such an extent that I lost a lot of hope. Hope has gotten some bad rap, and I think most of it is deserved. Hope is like that one aunt who listens to all that airy flute music, is concerned about her cat's feelings more than the local homeless people, and thinks that good things happen to people if they think good thoughts. It's pleasant to think so, but if you're going to be able to move out of a lot of pain, you have to acknowledge that there is a lot of pain out there. Life is difficult, plain and simple.

Still there is an element of choice in how you feel about life being difficult. If you choose, or more likely, simply don't choose, life's ugly side will present itself to you with growing volume and intensity. It's like the absence of light, you can invite it in, or it can sneak up on you. However, if you allow yourself to think good things on occasion and do good things for other people (and not be so focused on your selfish needs and wants), then real hope, quiet hope for the honest small things in life, can begin to grow. And that quiet hope is like a rock, a visionary individual protected with the armor of faith from all of the poison arrows of doubts and sorrows.

I have chosen not to feel bad for the mean things in life, the sorrows, and the pains it holds. Yes, I still feel some sadness and confusion for some it, but I will really try much harder to not be overwhelmed by it. I will not allow myself to let its darkened arms wrap themselves around me and freeze my heart in its place.

All of that having been said, today was a little bit of a difficult day. It was a kind of day which, if I hadn't just spent a couple of months trying to recover and reconnect to better myself, I would have spent a few miserable weeks in bed. My artwork was rejected publicly for reasons that cannot or will not be made clear to me. I had more than one instance of someone making the wrong inference about me and my life. An instructor, without consciously meaning to, even teased me about my handwriting on an assignment. The sum total of those events made me feel, for the thousandth time in my life, like I was truly out of place. I feel as if no one really understands me or where I come from. If I could count for you all of the times that I have been called weird, unusual, or something similar, you would be astonished the number.

And yet, I will try and choose to see this as my particular path in life. There is nothing that I could do differently to change this day. It has already happened. I will try to remember the silver linings to these clouds and hope that tomorrow will go smoother. If life itself is an educational experience, then I can learn from it, and if I can learn from it, maybe I can get better at it as I go along.

Anguish

It is hard not to hate myself for my lack of success with most things I try my hand at. I feel like a reverse King Midas at times; everything I touch turns to rust. If there is something beautiful and golden about life, you can be sure that I am going to ruin it somehow. Usually, it is through my desire to preserve it, or capture it, or even, sometimes, just witness it. And, of course, when I touch something beautiful or golden, innocently at first, then with the desire to possess, it crumbles before my eyes in that dirty rust pile. You would think that I could be used to that as often as it has happened to me, but each time it happens, I am so distressed and distraught about it, that I can barely function.

I feel monstrous, like there is an inherent flaw within me that causes this to happen despite my best intentions. And this monstrosity creates a pain that burns into a searing white hot blast of hatred for myself. I eat the fire of hate and it boils in my stomach, a toxic crucible of molten pain. And in that crucible, the devouring snake of nihilism, grief, anguish, and tortuous cruelty winds itself upward to my heart and swallows it slowly in the grotesque opera of self-destructive hatred. My brain tries to speak to my heart, to soothe it, to prevent the snake from completing it missions, but it can't be heard above the heart's screams.

And then, the snake, having eaten its fill whispers its forked narrative of hatred. I become the monster of hate for myself. My snake heart convinces the brain that I am the most hateful person on the planet, that god has decided to hate me, that it is my destiny in life to be isolated, alone, and ugly. My brain, struggling to pull logic out of a locked or hidden closet, says that there are things I can do to prevent this from happening. But the snake heart is more convincing; its words have more sting. "You will not be successful," in one venomed filled word. In another, "you will always be alone," and "women do not like you," in another. My brain cannot make reply because these words seem to be couched in the deepest truth.

---

I am in utter anguish about my failures. I want so much to connect to a special person, but it is not for me. I have prayed, pleaded, bargained, and struggled until I cannot sleep anymore, but it is no use. I am monster. Hated, ugly, and alone.

The Accident

I'm still searching for still waters and trying to keep an even keel. The period directly after my graduate school career (and breakup with my then girlfriend) was the biggest upheaval in my life so far. I truly hope with a visceral feeling that there isn't anything in the future that comes even close to that. It was a trauma, pure and simple. It has been a handful of years since that event; I can vividly remember those handful of days at the end, and remember the extraneous details that most would have forgotten. The first several years was struggling to cope with the reality of what happened, the loss of everything (including very nearly myself), and new realities it had created. Recently, it seems that I am beginning to see how the dust has finally settled just a year or so ago. And Now, I am in another period of great change, but this time it is my own choosing.

I was riding along in the car "of life," and hit a tree. At first, I was unconscious, and then I was recovering from the immediate injuries of that for the longest time. The pain was excruciating and forced me into difficult positions and hideous thoughts while I recovered. I do feel like I can start working towards goals again. This period is akin to physical therapy. I do have my scars and, so while the injury no longer hurts like it once did, I am a little tender in those spots and am more likely to react when I wouldn't have otherwise. I need to learn how to control that reaction.

To that end, I think I am going to try to recenter myself. Instead of looking outward for solutions, instead of analyzing inward for new insights and answers, I am going to try and forget all of that and work on developing an inner calm. During the healing process, I may have tried a a few things that I thought would be the shortcut to recovery. I realize that there are no shortcuts, and so, maybe meditation, thoughtfulness, and calm is the new way to go. If I have the self-discipline and the courage to face the horrors that life sometimes contain, I really do think it can help me.

Turning Invisible

So, yeah. I'm pathetic. And no, I am not pathetic in the hipsterish, too cool for his own good way. I'm simply pathetic in the aging, not really that important to notice anymore way. It's like I am slowly turning invisible against my will. I'd like to fight it. Hell, I am trying to fight it, but some fights are lost even before they get started.

I'm not sure how I could describe the multitude of thoughts that lead me to the above conclusion, probably because any amount of detail would reveal too much about myself and other people. As for myself, I seem to care less and less these days about how many people perceive me, which is mostly as an epic (but nice enough) loser. But even losers can be noble about wanting to protect other people's privacies, so I keep my damned mouth shut.

The basic problem I seem to have at this exact moment is "wanting" and not "having." And, being who I am, I think about how I could have what I want if I worked really hard for the next several years. Scratch that. There is no guarantee that I could have what I wanted if I worked hard. I guess I mean to say, I could have the chance to get what I wanted. Time will not wait for me to catch up.

I think about how my life got to this point. (Like I always seem to do. This entire blog is nothing but several years of me sifting through the momentary grains of sand that make up my life.) I think about the many, many mistakes I seemed to have made without realizing, of course, they were mistakes at the time they were happening. For example, I should not have ever tried to go to graduate school as English major. It is not for poor kids who don't already have money to burn or powerful connections to exploit. Poor kids with aspirations can usually only hope to be middle class providing they learn a sale-able skill. Not going to graduate school really wouldn't have prevented the mountain of debt I accumulated during my first pass through college, but it might have lessened its overall mountainous size. I also should have realized what was happening in that earlier relationship I was so committed to. I should have simply "let go" years earlier.

And many other thoughts like these about past events. But, then again, like I said, I didn't realize these were mistakes while they were happening. There was no warning bells clearly delineating any of the consequences of making those seemingly small and daily choices. I believed that, if you really want to make something of yourself, to improve your lot in life, you go to college and try to go as far as your brain will take you. I did not know that you could ruin your future with a lifetime of debt. I really did not know that by hanging on a relationship that had long since ended, that was draining me of self-esteem, I would be condemning myself to middle-aged regret and loneliness, and that I would be compounding and reinforcing that condemnation by preventing myself from exploring other, perhaps healthier, relationship opportunities. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was being faithful, noble, pure in heart, and well-intentioned.

Now, looking back, I try to untangle the Gordian knot with rather old and stiff fingers, tracing each ropey path back to its source, usually discovering another source behind that other source. And slowly, the choices I made begin to look a lot like fate. If I did not know that choice A would lead to consequence B, then how could I have prevented B from happening? If my problem now is that I do not have the means to provide for the people I love, can I trace that back to generations of poverty, systematic economic oppression? Can't anyone in the history of the world can? If yes, then why not also me?

Many of peers have said that I have always had full control over circumstances. And I do recognize that one can have an impact on own's fate. I do feel that one can work to improve their lot in life and try and make the best of things as they are. But, I cannot agree that you can fully choose your own fate. This is not a popular idea in our modern world, where independence and choice is an ultimate virtue. You say things like this and people react emotionally. The truth of the matter is that there have been, and will always be, forces beyond our control that will shape our lives as much (and in some cases, more than) our own choices.

And, for me, this where the frustration has crept in. I do not know how, among all those past mistakes, all those past choices, I could have prevented becoming a lonely middle-aged man in the depths of extreme poverty. Conventional wisdom is that one can control their own fate, and they implicitly mean that one can "fully" control one's own fate. I wish I could agree. I can't. Experience has taught me different.

Trooping through the Grass

I am not sure why I have been so tired lately, or why I have needed to take a nap in the middle of the day. Perhaps sleeping is my reaction to stress. I've been feeling the sort of existential disconnect that make great novels, and of course, it is all connected to considering my place in the world and the state of affairs it (and I) am currently in.

It seems that my biggest challenge during this stage of my life is learning to be happy in the face of everything that seems to be headed in the wrong direction. I wish society was nicer, more concerned about the true and beneficial growth of the individual, less concerned with the material selfishness of getting ahead, less focused on contention and pain, and committed to taking care of those who are less fortunate. When I say all of that though, I realize how far away that I am from fulfilling those conditions personally. Evidence of the disconnect I mentioned earlier perhaps. But enough of being vague.

---

During my afternoon nap, I had a dream that I was at Woodstock '69 listening to a concert being given by a lesser known musician. She was on stage playing her guitar. She was very beautiful, but did not seem especially connected to the crowd. She had some sort of weird face jewelery that I could not make out entirely, but it was interesting and stylish. Eventually though, as the crowd surged and morphed around the stage, I found myself wandering out into the nearby fields of tall and sunlit grasses.

As I stood looking out toward the horizon, I noticed a small troop of hippie children walking down the sloping hill in front of me. They had long hair and happy faces. They were playing a sort of game. I sat upon the ground and watched as they walked almost single file through the tall grasses, laughing and talking. They seemed to have a single minded purpose to their play, but what that was, I did not have a clue. I watched as they filed passed me. I considered taking a photograph of the stripling in front and the older children behind him. The kid in front was a happy-enough child leader who had a long and wild tumble of curly hair falling about his shoulders. They did not take much notice of me. I turned to watch them go and edge themselves along the garden behind me. The afternoon sun was warm and friendly.

And then I woke up. I really don't know what the dream symbolized if anything, but I remember a sort of wistfulness about it that stuck with me for an hour or two. I think part of me felt like I was being "passed by" in life in general, that I was missing something. But I did not (and do not) know what.

For most of my life, I think I have felt like an outsider looking in on things. An observer who can see how some of the puzzle pieces fit together, come to an insightful conclusion that others can be impressed with, but the price of having knowledge that others do not is the isolation that it imposes. It is a shame. I am trying to participate more in my own life, be an active leader of it and directing it to where I want it to go. But I do not think that I am having much luck with that. I go between wanting to steer my life in satisfying direction and figuring out how to cope with the things one must face in life that can not be changed, or live up to the serious consequences of decisions that seemed frivolous at the time. (One of my greatest frustrations is how a seemingly innocent and inconsequential choice that I believe will lead to some small measure of happiness turns out to have serious long term and unhappy consequences for the future. If only I had the ability to predict this better, maybe I would not feel so trapped in the future.)

The Sting of Pain

Just this afternoon, I got a call from a sad friend who is having a bad time lately. And I offered as much hope and support as I could for anyone in a difficult circumstance. I think I did a pretty good job, but perhaps that is because my struggles with depression has given me some hard won experience about how to comfort a sad person. I tried to say all of kinds of things I wished someone would say to me when I am feeling down.

But at the end of the conversation, when my friend was feeling slightly better, I began to experience a kind of malaise or emotional slump. I had all of this work that I wanted to do, but instead, I was side-tracked into thinking what was wrong about me. Why, for example, I am nearly a forty-year-old man with no decent prospects of a comfortable job, nice house, family, etc? Have I ruined my life already? Did I have a string of bad luck? Did I ever really have a decent chance? I think I just want the classic American dream sort of stuff. I am not a teenager, so the fantasies about being rich and famous have mellowed down into a comfortable life with people who I love in a place that is secure enough from financial disaster that I won't have to worry about losing my job or a place to live. Security is my biggest dream, and I dread losing it. Maybe the American dream is dead, and now exists as some sort of phantom haunting people who still believe in it, or maybe being exploited by people with power and money to keep the masses pliant and full of hope for a better life while being ripped off by people with power and money.

I am trapped by my desires for both security and a ridiculously romantic and deeply emotional relationship from an attentive and attractive woman. The first is something that eludes my grasp, and the second, as ugly as it is to say, is sort of dependent on the first. Most of the women in our society are not going to want to have a romantic relationship with a man who has no money, no job, and no prospects of climbing out of the staggering debts he accumulated at University. Universities may have once been avenues for getting ahead and attaining that sort of social mobility that would make me happy, but now it seems they are shells of what they once were. They have become enablers of foolish hope. They will earnestly feed you lines about how they will make you life better, get you a job where you earn a middle class pay, and charge you exorbitant fees in the mean-time. When you graduate, and those things do not materialize, you feel cheated. You see many, many others bitter and depressed about their college experience, and you slowly begin to feel like a giant chump.

I would write more about my own frustrations about this life and the things that once seemed possible but no longer are. But at the moment, I find myself in a position to where my most immediate desire is to figure out a way to remove the sting of pain from the heart of someone else. I am not sure that I can, but I really wish I could.

The Monster

Life has been more painful than usual lately. I could elaborate on the details, but then that would only cause more pain to others and wisdom is more often found in silence. So, the breath of speech is held, and the invisible fingers of mist wind slowly around my neck. Clasped over my throat, those fingers massage the pain into an increasing strangle. I will not share that with anyone more than is absolutely necessary for me to try and get rid of it. So, you won't know what it is that is bothering me, or the confused mess I feel myself in.

Details aside, I will say that my depression is in full form. I have personified in the past as a hulking monster, yet seemingly-affable, that sits beside you on a low stool and whispers in your ear from behind how much it loves you. This is the monster that eats your horrified shadow while you watch, powerless to resist. And once having had your shadow eaten, you become part monster yourself, inured to the good feelings the same way you were before, emotionally numb with only the hints of a dull cold shock of pain glazing over your eyes to indicate that anything might be really wrong. You are zombie. You are ghost.

I have wrestled with this monster before. I wish him on no one because he is truly an evil that has no hope of redemption. Even the hands of compassion are withered and decayed when they reach out to it in the hopes of soothing him. But, his is a nature that cannot be soothed, a devouring fire that burns and sears mens' hearts. The villagers of happy life have selected me, the warrior against the monster of depression, to venture into the dark and chilly bogs of pain and prevent him invading their town. They trust that I can do it, even if they do not see the scars of horror that gets branded on my own soul. My shield is nearly broken and my sword is chipped from a million constant skirmishes, but it is my duty to face it. I have been selected. And it is much my fate to be banished from the town and fight this monster in order that others will not have to face him on their own. I will not share him. The monster, part my own creation anyway, is solely my responsibility. As a traveler, hunter of this frigid beast, I can see the outskirts of the town of happiness, peer at the huts, watch the men hold their children and express love for their wives and the people they care about. But, I know they will also never see me. I am hidden in a thicket of brambles, lost in an envelope of a million shadows. I venture further into to the shadows to face him again. He will never see the town as I have. I know I can stop him from that, but it won't be easy. The mortal dangers of the battle are frighteningly real so it is imperative that I do not lose to him.

Abstractions

Just going to note here how long it has been since I last posted on my blog, but I am not going to say too much more about it. I was pretty busy last term, and thinking about topics for blogging that don't reveal too much personal things about myself or other people is hard. I can see how the really "honest" writers, as they would depict themselves, wind up making a lot of enemies because of their willingness to mine their personal lives and interactions with other people as source of material for their writing. I am not the sort of person to do that. I'm much more private, which probably means that I don't take as many risks as I should or is necessary for improvement of my writing, but I am not willing to potentially upset many people.

It turns out, as far as I can see, that most people live somewhat complicated lives that are filled with partial secrets. What do I mean by that? Okay, well -- just for a minute think about how multi-faceted people and their interactions with others are. I behave one way with my friends at school, and their perception of me is shaped by this behavior and the collection of previous experiences with me when we interact. I make "claims," stated and unstated (as we all do), about my life. And so, they wind up with a "perception" of me. I, in turn, interact with my friends at school based on my "perception" of them, as well as the "perception" of myself when we're interacting together. However, I behave in a slightly different way with my sisters based on a similar process of interaction and the collection of experiences they have had with me in the past. All of which might lead them to see me in a way that appears contradictory to the way my friends see me.

It is a differential kind of definition of one self. These perceptions of me and the way they modulate together together are all true, and yet, never complete. So, I am not defined as a person in the absolute, but in they ways my temporal interactions are perceived by myself and other people. No one can ever say with 100% certitude that I am "quiet guy," because sometimes I am and sometimes I am not. That definition also depends on your experience and interaction with me, which because no-one is with anyone except themselves all of the time, is only part of the picture.

Why am I bringing all of this up at the moment and being so vague about talking about other people. I suppose the real reason is that I am frustrated by my own lack of close interactions with the people I currently have some daily experience with. I want to be emotionally closer to certain people, but the collection of traits and attributes that define me to those people (perhaps true insofar as any statement about people can be true) seem to prevent that. They might say to themselves, "oh, that zhaf, he's a real card!" Or they might say "zhaf is a pretty quiet guy." Or they might say, "I like zhaf, but he kind of weirds me out." Or they might say, "what is that guy's deal?"

As I walked into campus the other day, I passed by the bus stop. I am nearly a forty year old man with and unconventional (but not inappropriate) manner of dress. I would say that I look a little like an old hippie. I was raised by hippies, so this isn't all that unusual to me. Since the bus is just about to arrive to pick people up and drop them off, thirty people are standing there. Some are sitting in the bus shelter alcove on the bench, most are standing in a loose group together with lots of personal space between them. They each have their own personality quirks. I particularly note the one guy with the unusually large beard. Almost without exception, they stare at me as I walk by. Each seems to be noticing my unusual appearance, probably especially the two long braids hanging along the side of my face. I feel like an outsider even though, to my mind, I am expressing who I am. My hair is the one area of personal expression to the outside world that is totally in my control. Maybe I would be a snappier dresser if I had the money for nice clothes and a stylist or fashion consultant.

Another thing that I am realizing as time goes on is that poverty, and the daily experience of it, especially as an adult, has shaped me and my thoughts more than I would really care for it to. I am less likely to feel that life is going to be fair than I was when I was younger. So, yes. I know. I know. The old cliche, right? The one that says "life isn't fair." I always knew that, and so did you. But the stronger belief in our culture is one that says the opposite, but not explicitly so. This other belief is that if you want something, and work hard for it, it will eventually happen for you. This is the counterpoint to the "life isn't fair" cliche: "hard work will be rewarded." Perhaps one reason that it is not explicitly stated in a similar cliche is that when it is explicitly expressed, most people will realize that it isn't true. So, it does it work underneath the surface of yourself. And in my case, I am realizing that in the war between the poverty experience of "life isn't fair," and the middle class value of "hard work pays off with rewards," the "life isn't fair" side is winning.

I am trying to improve my lot in life with school, with self-improvement, with minor (outward) image adjustments, and the occasional realization or two. And yet, the whole process can be a frustrating experience, maybe because I am at the middle of my life and I still don't have a lot to show for work I have done. I feel like sometimes I am condemned to be trapped by difficult circumstances, and when I finally work my way out of them, it will be too late to achieve the kinds of things I would have wanted to achieve. It's complicated, and sometimes, it feels like a fresh disappointment is waiting around the corner. For example, the new one is a regret about not being more social in high school. Yes, I had other issues going on at that time that helped prevent that, but I think - what if? Anyway, enough of this kind of self-analysis for now.

The Cat and the Colecovision

School has been really busy lately. There are a million little things that I could be doing at any one moment, but for the last two days, I think I ran out of steam. I am definitely going to be picking back up tonight, and then of course, for the rest of the week. The plus side of everything is that I have not yet fallen behind on my major projects, but then again, it's only a beginning so far. I have to print out some things and consult with my instructors about the progress of the projects that I have been working on.

One of the projects is for a phony catalog for a fake company that we make up on our own. I chose a classic videogame company as my company because I happened to have a lot of the items left over from my past. It did not reuqire me going out and spending a bunch of money, although, truth be told. I did manage to spend a chunk of change on the center piece of the catalog, a working classic atari game system with several cartridges. The colecovision that I have left over is my own, but years of neglect and poor care have made it a little ugly. I spent more time cleaning these silly things than I did photographing them. Another issue that I will need to address at some point is my lighting. I need about another light, maybe some white gauze for a phony soft box and a reflector. Unfortunately, I only have two hands, so I can't hold four things at once while I click the shutter button and hope everything comes out right. The cat picture above is a representation of what I have been working on, minus the cat of course. I think I need to work on having more confidence with my vision for this thing. I know have an interesting idea; I just wish I could feel better about my ability to execute it. Also for this project, I drew a bunch of gophers, for the company logo.

Overall, I think things have been going well. I am on a better schedule, school is going pretty good so far (even as busy as I have been), and for social life stuff, I decided to really jump on board with the whole facebook thing. Not the quizzes and games as much as the ability to reconnect with old friends. I know that some people are already sick of it, but I am not sure if I am going to give it up as easily. I jumped on the whole personal blog bandwagon when it was popular many years ago, and even though the blog fad has worn off to a large degree, I am still plugging away at it. I feel like I should post more, but if I manage a post at least once a month, I think I am doing good.

My Break

School has started once again, and Monday will be the beginning of the second week. Perhaps the most surprising thing about this term is how I am already very busy. There are a million little things that need to be done just about each day, and it is hard not to get too overwhelmed by them. Fortunately, I think I am still on top of it. I have not turned in anything late so far, and that is always a good thing.

On the downside, I knew last term was going to be a bit of a bear because I was playing catch up from a terrible last year, but I thought I had one class nailed down well enough to get an A. It turns out I did not. The last two major projects did not meet the instructor's expectations, and that might be a result of my not consulting with her frequently about it. And that, my friends, is a hard thing for me to do, for a lot of reasons. One of them is that I feel like I am almost always am bothering someone with my issues if I end up talking to them about myself for more than two minutes. I know that there are some students who would have no problem parking themselves in the instructors office for a half hour or more monopolizing their time, but I am not that student. I guess I am the exact opposite: the student who the instructor never hears from unless there is a problem that needs to be worked out, but even then only for a minute and a half.

It will be an interesting tomorrow. I hope I have managed my time well enough to where I will not be too overburdened with work during the middle of the week.

So, catching up on personal news for a moment, I spent most of the winter break housebound. I seriously did not get out of the house except on maybe two or three occasions. I sat in my room and played games or watched television. I even took to standing outside in the cold sunlight just to feel air on my skin again. And, I suppose it goes without saying that I spent a lot of time on the internet. I did manage to draw one or two things, but I did not feel like I had the energy to work hard on my art like I thought I was going to. Fortunately, a day before school started, my sister loaned me her car for several months so I at least can finish this term with transportation. The term after that might be slightly more problematic. Getting out of the house has been nice too. (The drawback to being out and about though is spending money, something which I try very hard not to do since I hardly have any.)

One bad habit that I got on winter break was that I stayed up until 2 or 3 am in the morning and woke up at 10 am or later. This meant that my first week of school has been difficult to adjust to because my schedule has been off. It's my own fault for making that mistake of course, but I am hoping to change that soon. Today, I took a nap in the middle of the afternoon, and tonight I will go to bed at a decent hour. This, I hope, will reset my internal clock a little bit so that getting up at 6 or 7 am on Tuesdays will not present as much of a struggle as it did last week.

I did read more like I wanted to during the break, but I did not finish the book I started. I also intend on buying a notebook so I can write more often offline when the mood strikes. My overarching goal is try to be more creative and artistically accomplished with my art and various school assignments. I have two more terms to really knock this stuff out, and then it is on to finding real work at an actual job. We shall see how it goes in the next few weeks.

Finally Finals

I somehow managed to come out of my latest depression. I think getting back on a steady medication schedule, as well as being really busy with school for the last week, really helped me pull out of it. I almost did not finish my courses this term and was(am) still worried about both my ability to complete the school year, or hold a full-time job when I get out. The economy is so bad right now that finding work seems really difficult. But, finals are finally over and if I don't think about much of anything, I have at least a couple of weeks to relax and catch up on sleep.

The biggest event as of late was that my car died. I really wish it hadn't, but to be honest, it was a long time in coming. It was an elderly car, 20 years old, and had 300,000 miles on it. I guess cars aren't meant to last too much longer than that. The specific cause of the car's death was the broken timing belt. It threw the engine out of time, and that caused the engine to run poorly and bend a valve. Someone (who knows these things) said that the broken timing belt likely caused other problems that would not be discovered until they opened the engine and looked inside. It was becoming ever more clear that the problems my car had were going to cost a lot of money to fix, more money than it was worth to fix. I suppose I could have tried to get the repair shop to fix those problems, but the money I would have spent on repairs would be better allocated towards a new(er) car.

My friend from way back called me last night to see how things were going. It was interesting to hear about his life: a job, a family, a house. Three things I don't have yet, and now that I am reaching the center of middle-age, these things seem even more unlikely. I am at a point where those thoughts are not as depressing as they might seem. It is just a different set of realities.

The weather has been overwhelmingly cold lately, and tonight, the local stations were predicting a little snow, and a lot of freezing rain. If the power goes out, it will be very inconvenient. Life will get a lot slower and a lot colder. However, I have already chosen a book I am going to read as a way to entertain myself if that happens: Charles Dicken's "Hard Times." One of these days, I am going to go back to Bleak House and read that, but I found it a little hard to focus on it, especially when I was so busy with design work. I hope the power stays on and the temperatures get above freezing again, but in case it doesn't, I've got a flashlight, a few blankets, and a book to read.

Magic Stop Watches

If I had a magic stop-watch, I think I would probably use it every other day. Click!, and time would be frozen. Just for maybe a day or two, so I could get my bearings, sort some personal emotions out, steel myself for the inevitable unpleasantness that would await me when time began again. Living time out of synch would be more of an alignment for me, since as it is, time always seems to be marching ahead before I am ready for it.

There were only a thousand things that I should have done over the weekend, but by Monday, there were a million. And all I could do was lie in bed all day. I couldn't even muster enough courage to eat dinner. I will try and face the music tomorrow. I am contemplating a long discussion with both my instructors about the nature of my depression this time, but frankly, even though it might be necessary to do have these talks to salvage my grades and my term, I would rather do almost anything else: push a marble around with my nose for a few hours maybe.

Every day that I experience a struggle with my depression, I find myself trying to cope with the fact of its disabling reality. Depression, for me, is not merely a set of circumstances that come together in a poor or awkward way to make me feel bad. I feel bad because of a chemical imbalance in my brain that is akin to a broken bone in my leg. A broken bone is not a perception; it is a fact, an existent reality that is indifferent to all opinions. You do not say, "if I just pretended my leg was not broken, I could walk on it without a crutch or a cast." You would not tell other people with broken legs that, "it's all in your head, your leg is not really broken. You just don't have the proper strength of character to walk around like a 'normal' person."

Another one of the various things that I am finding about depression is this: in order to try and live a normal life I have to do a couple of things. The first is perhaps the easiest: take my medication every day. I used to be resistant to it thinking that I could "will" myself to be better, but having been on the right medication for the last couple of months, I am finding that the difference it makes is hard to deny. Taking medication, while the easiest of the various tasks depression demands of you, is not always easy. If you don't have money for medications, you have to scrounge money for it, get free samples, or pray you get on a patient assistance program. For instance, I ran out of the free samples of medication I got from my doctor the other day and did without for about a week. He gave me a prescription for the pill form of the medicine, but it took a day or so to fill it, and then it still cost nearly 40 bucks or so, even with a discount. In the mean time, I had "titrated" off the medicine. That sort of yo-yo'ing on and off medicine makes you more resistant to it, not something that I want or need to have happen.

Depression also seems to be requiring me to talk to people about it when it affects my life negatively, and not always the people I want to discuss it with, and the people I do discuss it with may not always understand. Depression has a stigma (even in 2009, even though it seems like the whole world has it these days). And, I find that among certain people, depression is equivalent to weakness. I can't change minds like those or expect much sympathy or understanding, even if the law, school attorneys, or anyone else for that matter, might require those in authority to have a sympathetic response. You can see the dissonance in their eyes as they look at you warily. In any event, the talk with my instructors that I am contemplating having might go something like this:

"Hello, Mr. H----? Yes, hi. I am just wanted to talk to about my school work. I haven't been able to complete our most recent project lately because I have been experiencing a heavy bout of depression, partially due to the illness I had last week, which in turn caused me to fall behind on things. I know I should have called yesterday to inform you about my absence, but it took all of my courage to eat breakfast and take a shower. I am so sorry if this causes any trouble. I am hoping to get things completed by the end of the term, especially for your classes. I know that there may not be much that you can do to help me out with my projects and their tardiness, but if there is something, I would appreciate it more than you can imagine. Once again, I apologise."

I would then try to explain how my depression affects me, or even what it is again in terms of brain chemistry. I might even go so far as to show him the medications that I am using. I had a letter from the disability office at school about my depression and perhaps need for my time, but it is largely a symbolic agreement of goodwill between the student and the instructor, a paper tiger. As far as I know, there is nothing where the instructor would be "required" to grant me more time without penalty.

I do happen to think that most of my instructors are sympathetic people, but I also worry that they don't understand. Maybe they see me as complaining too much, as an ineffectual weirdo who can't get his act together on any given day of the week. I have seen those internet post from instructors complaining about one difficult student or another. Having been a college instructor (okay, graduate teaching assistant), I know that a lot of students have problems. So, it would stand to reason, some instructors might be completely inured to lot of pleading from students. I've met a couple. I may say depression cripples my life sometimes, but I worry that all instructors actually hear is a feeble excuse along the lines of "the dog ate my homework."

I would write much more about all of this, but it is time for bed. I really, really, need to pull it together, face the music, take my lumps, and move on with school and the rest of this term. I hope that I can salvage some of it. Even if I can, I will still have a lot of work to do, and I am hoping that maybe when I get into the lab, and start making progress on my work, the thin and whispery tendrils of hope will creep in again and I will pull out of my emotional nose-dive.

Cold Fire

The other night I had a dream of sorts that was really quite amazing. It wasn't about images, except maybe geometric shapes forming a circle. The the inside of a temple dome perhaps. In any event, the real substance of the dream was an emotion of an intense happiness that radiated to the core of my being. It was just a little unreal, and felt almost too happy, at least more than what should seem normal in real life. I tried to hold on to the feeling in the dream but, just like that, it slipped away.

Tonight, that dream seems ironic because I am fairly certain I am really depressed at the moment. I am worried about my long term ability to support myself and pay my already accumulated debts, which are substantial (at least to me.) The anxiety I feel about the future is the spark that ignites a cold fire that burns through my confidence, my hope for myself, and my sense of security. Medication helps, but my supply was interrupted for a bit because the doctor's office ran out of free samples. The various people I talk to during a day would say my depression is a natural result of not having medication for a few days, but I can't help but think the medication is actually masking my problems, which are real and "out there," not just internal. My problems have a substance that is unaffected by whatever attitude or emotion I happen to feeling at that moment.

If I had the opportunity to make other choices over again, I would. Graduate school would be one of those things I wouldn't do. Too much money and not enough return. I think my hopes were exploited for money by colleges that were willing to promise brighter tomorrows. Maybe if I were from the middle classes I aspired to, I would have been able to navigate grad. school better, been able to reap the rewards of familiarity from professional colleagues that so often helps people get ahead.

Right now, it is the middle of the night (4:00am.) I have class in 12 hours, and at two over-due projects still to do. I should have spent the last four days working on them but, except for a marathon homework session on Wednesday, I spent most of the time in bed doing not much of anything in particular.

I would try talking to other people about it more--people who have special meaning in my life--but to them, it just seems like I am complaining about things I can't really change. In that regard, they are right, except I would say lamenting or grieving instead of complaining. The responses from others that I seem to get are either along the lines of "me too," or "fake it until you make it." "Somehow things always work out for the best," they say.

But, I feel that I am too educated to believe that is always the case. Yes, maybe things aren't as dire as they seem, but then again the world can be very cruel and no amount of wishful thinking is going to change difficult circumstances. I've always disliked those philosophies that say that internal positive thinking creates an outward positive reality, an emotional telekinesis that says you can manipulate your mind to attract (when they often mean force) good, and typically material, benefits. The universe is turned into your personal butler, and all you have to do is to learn the trick to get it to do your bidding. Want 500 dollars? Send positive energy into the Universe to get it. Seems highly dishonest to me, even offensive.

I think that the honest acknowledgment of the seriousness and reality of my problems would help reassure me that my perceptions are real and not irretrievably distorted by depression. And, that, for some reason I don't clearly understand, would make me feel better.

Perhaps, a big part of why I would feel better might be that I'd feel reassured that my grip on reality has not slipped, that my judgment is still intact. And then, if that were the case, I would have the firm hope that since I knew the problem as objectively as I possibly could know it, I might be able to find a way to adapt, or even (dare to hope) find a solution.

I've lost at least 10 pounds in the last couple of weeks. I hardly eat breakfast anymore. I am behind in my work. My car is getting more unreliable. I have no money. I am not where I want to be with my art. I feel like a fraud much of the time. I haven't been able to take a shower since Friday. I still cough up phlegm more than a week later, even though the main symptoms of the virus I had have gone away. At times, I really don't like myself very much and can't see why anyone else would either.

Still, for all of that, I will go to school in the morning (six hours from now maybe), and I will try to work on my projects as best as I am able. Sometimes, after the last class is over for that given day, the anxiety surfaces and I feel it best to flee for home and get in bed again.

Yeah, I do try to fight it. The thing about it now, as opposed to three or four years ago, is that, even though I am more aware about the depression I have and its physical causes, I am less able to force myself through it as I was when I was a young man. Ignorance about my depression gave me the strength of will to blunder through daily activities with a tenacity that usually carried me pretty far. Nowadays, I feel like the fighting I did back then to push through did more harm than good. It was futile. So often, during my weaker moments, I find myself back in bed, doing my best to forget about my problems. And trying to forget takes up a lot of energy, almost to the point where I can't really do much else.

Busy week

This week has been pretty busy, with the end of result of my being sick. I slept most of the day today, but now, I am up at 1:00 a.m. and it feels like my eyeballs are going to explode. I just took some Nyquil, so let's see what happens. I am really hoping that I feel better by Sunday at least, because being sick really stinks.

So, it has been constantly raining for the last couple of weeks, and I mean constantly. And yet, when I woke up on Tuesday, I saw daylight and was told that it was going to be sunny until later in the afternoon. Now, here's the thing. I have a brochure project due in class in a week or two, and the project is supposed to advertise a local town as a vacation destination, but due to the rain, I haven't gotten the photos I needed. I had to make an executive decision. After a moment of thought, I called up my instructors and told them that I wasn't going to class that day. I then spent the next six hours or so taking landscape and architecture pictures of the given town. I got a handful of strange looks from the locals, especially since I was using my tripod to get the photos I needed, but looking back, I am glad I took that day off from school because the rain started up again and hasn't really stopped since.

Wednesday was Veteran's day, so I had that day off from school too. I spent the majority of my time that day reviewing the photos I took and color correcting them as best I could. I probably could use another photo session of the town, but I don't really want to drive out there again -- four separate trips should be enough.

Thursday, our class went to the major art museum in the biggest urban town of our state. I have to say, I wasn't all that impressed with the exhibit we went up there to see specifically. Yes, it was interesting, but it wasn't all that different from things I have seen before. Some of the items on display could easily be found as reproductions for sale on internet sites. However, after the official class tour was over, I decided that I would stick around and see the rest of what the museum had to offer and that part was much more interesting. I met up with the foreign exchange student and we took a leisurely walk through the rest of the exhibits. It was nice to have a companion as we walked past famous, and not so famous, works of art. I liked the Kenny Scharf and the Basquiat works, but the classical impressionist stuff was pretty cool too.

And, of course, on the next day, I got sick. My head is killing me, and the chills I had earlier in the night have been replaced by a fever and the sweats. I really hope I feel better soon. I have too much work to do to be sick for very long.

Famous Designer

Designer Presentation

Tonight, I went to a presentation given by a famous designer about her work. You might be able to tell from the image who it was, especially if you're familiar with the work she's displaying, but then again, you might not. I am not going to say who it was just because this is my personal blog, and I wouldn't want keyword searches on her name directing people here. I am still not sure if I care if that happens or not. Whatever. For the time being, in my uncertainty, she'll remain a mystery (unless you already know.)

So, at the beginning of school term, the instructor in my layout class mentioned that the famous designer you see in my photo here would be appearing in our state in two places: one place in the state's biggest city, and one at the state university about forty minutes away from where I live. I'm intrigued by successful people, so I knew that I wanted to go, and the state university one sounded like my best option.

Normally, I have another class that meets at the time when I should be getting in my increasingly elderly car to drive the forty minutes to this presentation. And this other class is about forty minutes in the totally other direction. It seemed crazy to drive forty minutes to class only to spend a half hour there before having to leave to go to the presentation that would now be eighty minutes away. Staying home from school seemed like the only sane choice.

In my typical fashion, I wasn't sure where I needed to go, so at the last minute, I called this other school's library. A student worker answered the phone and introduced her self with an unusual name. Although I had already thought about the question I had planned to ask her, I was thrown off. My question came out in chunks, and finally I stopped in mid-sentence. I stammered, "excuse, me. I am sorry. What is your name?" She repeated it, and I replied in what I hope was a friendly tone, "wow, that's an interesting name." It was very stupid thing for me to say because I should have said "nice" or "beautiful name" because interesting is what people say to be polite when they actually hate something. Of course, I didn't hate her name, I was genuinely impressed by it. It was totally out of my character to ask people personal questions like these, but for some reason, I did it. She was very friendly and answered the questions I needed to ask.

Even though I had planned to leave much earlier that I did and visit the art gallery, I only managed to get out of town with just enough time to get to the presentation a few minutes late. My first problem was that I took too much time getting dressed, and my second problem was the unexpected difficulties with parking. The school was packed with cars, and navigating on these gigantic campuses are always trouble merely for the sheer amount of student pedestrians and cyclists milling around and in the streets.

The venue in which the famous designer was presenting was entirely inappropriate for her for the simple fact that the room could not hold everyone who wanted to attend. I had overheard from another person that she was visiting from yet a third college. There must have been many other people, like me, who had come in from other places. I stood in the hallway in the back and strained to hear what the famous designer was saying. It seemed like she was presenting her works and talking about the concepts that they represented.

I had hoped that she would have talked about her background and creative process much more, rather than her somewhat mechanical cataloging of her work. While it was interesting to hear her representation of the subjects of her work and what she intended their thematic meanings to be, it wasn't as insightful as I had hoped.

The thing about works of art, any work of art, is that interpretation is such a personal thing that anyone can come to their own conclusions fairly easily (if they are thoughtful and rigorous thinkers.) The work, to each of us in its own way, speaks for itself.

As a student of design, it would have been more helpful to hear about her approaches to her subjects, how she tackles the visual problems and themes she encounters, or how she solves the problem of typography in her work. I felt that her presentation was essentially like looking at the vacation photos of another family. Yes, I am sure it was a nice trip, but can you give me any advice about how to go on my own adventure?

After the last slide, the lights in the room came on, and a representative of the college, a balding professorial man in an argyle sweater, announced that there were refreshments in the lobby and that the famous designer would be signing copies of her portfolio. The portfolio cost fifteen dollars more than I had with me, and I did not have a checkbook. Nevertheless, I intended to stick around and ask her a question or two if I could. I met up with some of my fellow students in the lobby who, like me, had driven from far away to get there. I was surprised to see one of the students who had graduated from the program a year earlier there. I nodded hello to him, and while standing behind a crush of people milling around both the designer and the snack table, we made polite conversation.

I was confused about whether or not he was going to this state college or had graduated from it years earlier. I tried to ask him about it, and he said yes to something, but I wasn't sure what he was referring to.

Moments before I had gone over to talk to him, he asked the famous designer if she could sign one of her posters with a phrase to the effect of "Go [College Mascot]!" It was silly request, and the designer expressed her reluctance to sign the silly phrase on the poster he chosen, one supposed to raise consciousness about the horror of war. He told her he had chosen it because it had the school's colors. I was little shocked at the frivolity and audaciousness of the request, but then again, that was his personality all over. She had told him that she would "think about it," and suggested that he stick around. I think her artistic sensibility was offended. I imagined someone during the renaissance asking DaVinci to sign the Mona Lisa with the phrase "Hot Chicks Rule!" Wasn't this the same thing?

While he was waiting for her to agree to his silly request, I chatted him up about his life after the school's program. He said that he was freelancing and earning enough money to pay his bills, something I found impressive. He said that he was steadily building up a group of clients. Laughing, he explained that he begins his first client meeting by quoting them a fee for work that is hugely exorbitant. But, as a special favor for them, he would make it cost only a third of that. It was an ingenious way of disarming client's objections about costs before they could even have them. The fact that he had clients with which to pay his bills only a few months after college actually made sense to me because he has an approachable personality that makes it easy for him to talk to anyone about almost anything. He puts people immediately to ease with his disarming, if frivolous, manner. If anyone ever could get the famous designer to compromise her artistic integrity and sign the poster with his silly phrase, it would be him.

We chatted for a handful of minutes more before I noticed that the line to talk to the famous designer had gotten rather short. I excused myself to stand in line. The woman ahead of me was asking the famous designer what software she used to lay out her type on the computer. "Adobe's InDesign" was the answer of course, and again, I was a little shocked. It would be like asking Herman Melville what type of pen he wrote with, hoping if one bought that same type of pen, they'd be able to write a famous novel too. Aside from the fact that any first year design student already knows that InDesign is pretty much the industry standard for this sort of thing, the question is so absurd as to be entirely beside the point. And yet, the famous designer was patiently and politely answering the question, appearing very professorial in her own right. I could imagine her teaching a freshman design course and having to say essentially the same things over and over again.

Then it was my turn. I always feel awkward in moments like these, partly because I feel that my odd appearance puts some people off. I am a bit of weirdo with an awkward manner, almost the complete opposite of the student who I had just been talking to a few moments before. And yet, I didn't feel my question itself was stupid. I first thanked the famous designer for an excellent talk, and then asked "what is your basic approach to typography?" She answered that, for her, she does a lot of hand rendering, something that was already apparent from even a casual review of her work. She also explained that she prefers type to communicate simply and be readable, too many fancy tricks are unnecessary at best and can ruin your work at worst.

I was a little unsatisfied with the answer even as I nodded obsequiously in an effort to appear graciously understanding. I consciously was trying to play the role of earnest student. Her answer was essentially the "text-book" answer I could literally find in most books about typography. Maybe she assumed I was just another idiot asking a stupid question. I had not yet figured out that I wanted to ask about her process.

I quickly followed up by asking what was the one thing, the one "bottom-line" thing, that she thought design students should know about typogrpahy. I said I wanted to know if she had any gems of wisdom about type and type design. She answered that it was important to work with it for a long time. She compared type to jewelry on your dress, the jewelry has to be the perfect complement. On a similar token, a bad piece of jewelry can ruin the whole outfit. It was at this point, I noted that the remaining stragglers in the room with us had stopped talking among themselves and were listening intently. As she explained her answer more fully, she began to address her comments to them as much as me.

At this point, I felt that asking any more questions would have been impertinent and excessive, so after she finished talking, I again thanked her for her answer and talk as a whole, and moved on. After getting a little lemonade from the snack table, I told the other students goodbye and walked out into the dark with them towards the parking lot. That one guy was still hanging around trying to get her to sign his silly phrase one his poster about war.

I had had a serious sense of deja-vu when I first drove on to campus. It made walking around in the dark after the presentation feel exotic and strange. I had a sense of wistfulness about my lost graduate school career in English literature, but I also remembered that the money I had spent chasing after it was looming ahead of me threatening financial disaster for years to come. I could not afford any more second chances.

Of course, there was the parking ticket pinned to my windshield that I half expected to see on my car when I got back. The talk went longer than the hour I put in the meter, and I did not want to leave to fill it up again and miss something important.

Fifteen bucks.

I could barely afford it, but it seemed somewhat reasonable for all of this. I imagined that if I had to pay for the famous designer's talk at the big city tomorrow, fifteen bucks would be a reasonable admission. After stopping at Burger King for the fattening burgers that I seemed to be eating too much of these days, I drove back home into to the dark, listening to the radio.

At some point, I need to take serious inventory of my life and get everything in order. If I try to look at myself from an outward perspective, it seems to me my life is in a mess. Thanks to medication, my emotions are not mired in the big blue trenches of depression as much as they used to be. Still, while my internal thoughts are not as oppressive as they were a few months ago, my outward circumstances are still in as big mess as they ever were. I suppose it is time I start trying to sort that all out.

Not Enough Sleep

I am walking through the park towards the end of summer. While the park feels remote as it is in the hills and surrounding by trees, brush, and lush grasses, it is not too far away from the town where I went to college to get my undergraduate degree. I am looking at the creek down in a small gully as I pass over an asphalt bridge marked for bicycles, when a car drives slowly by.

A man in the car asks me for directions. I tell him what he needs to know, but then he asks for a big favor. He seems pretty desperate in a polite sort of way, so I tell him that I would be glad to help him out. I get in his car, and he takes a short drive to his house. He is a heavy set man, with cropped dusty blond hair and a bushy beard. He seems to carry around a plodding sadness with him, but I take that as evidence of his persistence and earnestness. He seems like he is a hard worker from who life occasionally demands too much. He says his name is Osbritch.

He explains that he and his wife have just moved out to the west coast from the mid-west. They are obviously mid-westerners as his house is decorated in that mid-west country style and his politeness seems genuinely habitual. He has two babies and he needs help feeding them. He struggles to get each into their high chairs, and it is obvious that he hasn't done this too much as he nearly drops one of squirmy babies out on to the floor. With a reaching strength, he manages to juggle the baby back into a stable hold, and we set about feeding the children.

Once fed, I look around at his house from my seat at the kitchen table. This home is attached to his farm business. The babies happily eat their snacks at the table as I watch him get up and start doing a little inventory at a few of the displays. He's over worked, but doesn't say anything about it.

At this point his wife comes home. Her personality is the opposite of his. While they're both friendly, she seems full of energy, talkative, and bright. He lives his life under the gloomy grey cloud of responsibility; she lives her live in the full, almost carefee, sunlight. Her name is Saija. Again, both of them are mid-westerners, and their Scandinavian ancestry is suddenly and obviously apparent. If he comes from the grainy farm lands of Kansas, she must come from the cold snowy north of Minnesota.

I immediately take a liking to Saija. She introduces herself as Osbritch goes about his business. She explains that she and her husband have moved out here to go to college. I ask which one, and she explains that it is the same one that I went to nearby those few years earlier. "No kidding," I say. I ask her what her major is, and she says "English," the same major I had in college. I explain all of this to her, and we share the common bond of the same interest. I offer my experiences as a source of wisdom about her future path. I tell her who I thought the best instructors were and how I think it best to navigate through the administrative bureaucracy. I offer my general wishes of good luck to her as way of support. I talk all about my experience in the graduate program at grad school, eventually explaining that I am currently studying design. She says she plans to become an English teacher. I really like Saija.

Osbritch comes back into the kitchen and sits down at the end of the breakfast bar. I ask him his name again, and how to pronounce it, as I want to make sure I got it right. I have made two new friends that I don't want to forget. "Osbritch and Saija," he says. I repeat them, but I can't get the handle on the exact Scandinavian pronunciation. He smiles and says it doesn't matter, even after I repeat their names a third time trying to get it right.

And then I wake up.