me today, trying to see photos on my super dark work computer, taken by coworker
real talk tonight with logan, where she suggested i quit my job, NO SECOND THOUGHTS. heart contracts in both excitement and fear. but what if this is just a pattern? what if i’m just someone who’s perpetually dissatisfied, what if i can never be happy? because isn’t my job so cool? (on paper? in real life?) only a fool wouldn’t love my job? people would die for my job? it’s so cool? (actually is so cool about 10% of the time?) is that enough? what do i want? do i want health insurance? do i want to be my own boss? do i want to write a book about donuts? (YES) do i want to be nervous about money? do i want to be nervous all the time? WHAT DO I WANT!!!!!!
The first guitar I bought was a Silvertone. Later I bought a Fender Telecaster, but it really doesn’t matter what kind you buy as long as the tuning pegs are on the end of the neck where they belong. A few years back someone came out with a guitar that tunes at the other end. I’ve never tried one. I guess they sound alright but they look ridiculous and I imagine you’d feel pretty foolish holding one. That would affect your playing. The idea isn’t to feel foolish. The idea is to put a pick in one hand and a guitar in the other and with a tiny movement rule the world.
“I remember when my parents moved out to California—I was about eighteen. My folks decided that they were going to leave New Jersey, but they had no idea really where to go. I had a girlfriend at the time and she was sort of a hippie. She was the only person we knew who’d ever been to California. She’d been to Sausalito and suggested they go there. You can just imagine—Sausalito in the late sixties! So they went to Sausalito, three thousand miles across the country, and they probably had only three grand that they’d saved and that had to get them a place to live, and they had to go out and find work.
So they got to Sausalito and realized this wasn’t it. My mother said they went to a gas station and she asked the guy there, “Where do people like us live?”—that’s a question that sounds like the title of a Raymond Carver story!—and the guy told her, “Oh, you live on the peninsula.” And that was what they did. They drove down south of San Francisco and they’ve been there ever since.”
i have watched this clip, like, 8 times. i do not know why these animal control guys on parks and rec get me so much. i laugh and laugh. they so smiley. goat in background. showing chairs. jamaica!!!! oh is that what you said!!!!!
from the grub street interview with james murphy, where he details his meals over a week:
On the plane home: warm-esqe nuts, sweaty chicken salad, and a pretzel roll. The pretzel roll is my weakness. It’s like a warm roll and a pretzel. Together. With butter. Let me know if you hear what I’m saying.
thought i was just really really tired (strangely so, like bone tired, like can’t sleep enough or get rested, think it was new york? but it’s continued?), but guess it’s moved beyond tired into “outwardly grouchy to strangers,” because this just happened with the alarm guy, who was here all day investigating our alarm problems (it’s been going off accidentally and frequently):
EDDIE: miss, can you set the alarm tonight?
ME: do i have to?
EDDIE: [pause] i’m sorry you’re having a long day…or week.
so much good in the new york magazine interview with michael pollan:
I also had an aunt who lived up the street, two doors away, who was a really good cook but was afflicted with a family who didn’t like to eat. The entire family would subsist on coleslaw for years at a time.
I started gardening when I was very young. I had a grandfather who had a huge garden. It was enough to feed a town. I don’t know why he grew that much stuff, except to show that he could, and he loved giving it away. I loved spending time in his garden, and then I made my own garden in our house on Long Island, which I called the farm. I only grew stuff that you could eat. I didn’t see the point of anything else. I grew peppers, and melons, and strawberries. And when I got a couple of strawberries together, I would put them in a Dixie cup and sell them to my mother.