#docaday

[abillionrejectedideas]

Wide Awake

It’s been like ten years since I’ve had a good night’s sleep I think. Wow that sucks, now that I think of it, but it’s real.

Remember when you were like ten maybe and you forced yourself to stay up long enough to spend some time with your parents after they got home from work, back when spending time with your parents was something that you really wanted to do and didn’t avoid at all costs? They’d get home and you’d run into their arms and you’d stand there as they ate their dinner standing up in the kitchen, picking from the casseroles in the fridge or that were left out on the stove after you’d eaten at the table. You’d follow them up t their room while they went and changed into their pajamas, though of course you’d talk from outside of the room because they’re your parents and you might accidentally see them naked and that’s gross because they’re old. When they we’re finally ready you’d sit down together on the couch, you by their side between them and the pillows, and you’d watch the primetime television together, covered your eyes when they told you to because the raunchy shows were on and you just wanted to spend time together so you listened. By eleven your eyes would be closed and you’d try to protest that you weren’t tired yet but it’d fall on deaf ears and your father would pick you up in his arms, carry you upstairs, tuck you in. Mom would kiss you goodnight, though often you wouldn’t be conscious enough to remember. The next morning you’d wake up before your alarm because that’s what little kids do and you’d wake your parents up because that’s what little kids do and they’d pretend they weren’t annoyed because that’s what the parents of those same little kids are supposed to do. You’d feel refreshed because you hadn’t a care in the world and so had slept soundly; you didn’t know there was any other way. Those were the goddamned days.

These days it’s not exactly the same. These days I worry.

I worry about my future. For four year in college I thought that I wanted to be a doctor, just like some people think that they want to be lawyers or businessmen because they seem like set career paths that have guaranteed success, but now I’m not so sure because I don’t know if I actually care that much about people. I mean, I definitely care about people, don’t get me wrong, but am I willing to give away, no actually pay for, the next ten years of my life in training just to be able to write prescriptions and diagnose people with some things that I can treat and even worse, so many things that I can’t? Am I willing to give away any and all self-esteem that I was able to conjure for myself these past 22 years just to get beaten down, starved, deprived of sleep, stripped of confidence, and otherwise debased, just to be built back up again as a servant of the people, on call at every hour of every day for my patients that will probably still badmouth me behind my back if I do everything right, let alone if I ever make a mistake? Then again, I’m completely aware that I could do the job, so will I be plagued with wondering whether I’ve made the right decision or not either way? Probably. Fucked if I do, fucked if I don’t it seems.

I worry about romance, because, well, I’m twenty-two and that’s what twenty-somethings do. Hell, it’s what everyone does until the day they die. Sometimes I worry that I’ll die alone, but then I remember that in the past year I have picked up two guys by dancing, once on a bar and once in a bar where no one else was dancing, so maybe there’s still hope for me yet. I worry about the correspondence I have with people that I’m interested in because I tend to be too forward for my own good and there’s a real possibility that the people I’m trying to woo are going to get the wrong idea. I have a problem with honesty. I don’t think it’s a problem, because if you don’t like raw thoughts that are happening in my mind then you won’t like the real me, and I’m nothing if not myself. Other people think it’s a problem something though because apparently there’s this game that people play during the beginning stages of things where they’re supposed to pretend that they can do no wrong but I don’t understand how that could ever work because I’m human and so inherently flawed but I guess I wouldn’t mind someone thinking I was their Prince Charming, if only for a few days. I’m not though. Charming is way better at keeping his mouth shut.

Sometimes I worry about politics, but only if it has something to do with me. Or the life of my children I guess, because they’ll exist one day and I don’t want things to ever suck for them like that have for me at certain points in my life. Obviously I care about gay rights and the whole equal marriage thing a lot, partly because one day I want to stand in front of an altar and tell some guy that I love him and not have some Fred Phelps shit going on outside, but more because I want my kids to never have to explain anything but have their parents “arrangement” accepted as normal, like milk and cookies or General Tso’s chicken.   There’s also the environment, which we should probably stop fucking up if we want to have a planet for any reasonable period of time. I don’t want any Lorax shit going on; if my kids, or my kid’s kids, or my kid’s kid’s kids grow up not knowing what a tree looks like or what it was like to be able to go for a run and not wheeze because of the pollution, or if they don’t know that Long Island was a thing because the entire damned place is underwater, then I’m going to look down or up form wherever I am and have a goddamn fit. I’m just saying. Of course, taxes and shit are important, but I’m not really losing much sleep about that now, with the lack of income and everything.

I worry about my weight, but I think that one is tied in with the romance thing, so I’m not going to go into any more detail I don’t think.

Once in a long while, I worry for my safety. Generally, its after I’ve seen a slasher flick, maybe Alfred Hitchcock but more likely some crappy “the-girl-in-the-white-tank-top-gets-rained-on-and-then-her-head-cut-off-while-the-music-cues-up-the-next-death-and-lets-me-know-I-should-be-scared” piece of shit. Jeepers Creepers. House at the End of the Street. I Know What You Did Last Summer. Self-loathing always follows, and even though I know that they’re made for football jocks to bring dates who will be scared enough to grab their hand I still think I see an axe murderer around every corner for the next seven to twelve hours. What can I say, I have a vivid imagination and a heart murmur and I scream like a little girl.

Like I said, worry keeps me up, though sometimes it’s excitement. Those are the best days.

[abillionrejectedideas]

Um...

Today's film: A Game of Honor, about the Army-Navy game. I literally have nothing to say about this, I think because it's about the military and football, two things that have little to nothing to do with my life. I haven't written in forever. I feel guilty. I'll try to find some inspiration and write something now. I just had a glass of wine and now I'm tired. NO, I'M FIGHTING THE TIREDNESS AND WRITING SOMETHING GOOD. Maybe I'll write about Christmas because I bought a tree today. I don't know. We'll see. Give me time.

[abillionrejectedideas]

10.15.09

(Author’s Note: I don’t apologize for anyone offended by me posting this, particularly those who would rather me “keep this in the house”. I promised honesty, and that’s what I will give – an honest account of my experience. I do apologize for anyone offended for not already knowing this story, particularly close friends.)

I wake up in a cold sweat, staring at a ceiling that I did not recognize, on sheets that I did not recognize, in a room that I did not recognize. My heart is already beating more quickly than I have ever felt and even then I feel it thump even faster. I’m flat on my back against the wall and freezing, whether from the actual temperature of the room or the anxiousness that always makes my hands and feet cold I, to this day, cannot remember. My eyes are wide-open one second then pulled tightly closed the next in an effort to wake up from what has to be a dream. There is no way that the person to my right was the person I think he is. No way. No way?

I think back. The night before had started the way I thought it would. We had all met at 9pm in the Brother’s Room at the fraternity I had just joined. Thirty some-odd pledges, me among them, standing around apprehensively, waiting for our next instructions. After a long unaffiliated freshman year we had finally been accepted to join a brotherhood, an honor only available to those at Dartmouth longer than a year, and tonight we would be there for our first “meetings,” the Wednesday event when all the brothers came together and debauchery ensued. Last night had been our night.

When the “pledge educators” had arrived, the three guys that were to safely guide us through our pledge terms in order to become full-fledged brothers in the house, things started to get a little more interesting. We each were handed our MD 20/20’s, known as Mad Dogs to the initiated, each a color unbefitting a bottled drink and with an amount of alcohol by volume that you wouldn’t expect of something that tasted like orange, or apple, or what can only loosely be described as grape. The bottle describes the drink as “fortified wine product.” I could still taste it in my mouth.

After I finished my bottle and a half of the stuff is where my memory gets hazy. And by hazy, I mean nonexistent. Nothing at all until I wake up in that bed.

I lay there silently for about fifteen minutes, trying with all my night to remember what happened to no avail. I few glimmery flashes of memory do manage to push their way to the surface. I remember a back room, the one where we were told a few days earlier to pee in the sink if we needed to and didn’t feel like walking up the basement stairs. I remember a kiss, and someone backed up against a wall; I don’t know if it was he or I though. I remember someone laughing and hands reaching and again I don’t know whose laugh or whose hand but I do remember feeling weird and confused. I remember scratching. I do remember the sound of a loose belt buckle, which may explain why my pants are off but I don’t know where those are for the life of me. My body is tense like a log on the mattress that I’m laying on and at this point I’m acutely aware that the body next to me has awakened and my arms are crossed and I’m breathing quickly and deeply and I’m feeling lightheaded.

He begins to speak to me, and says he had fun or that “boy, we were both kind of drunk” or something, I just can’t remember because all I was thinking was oh my God what just happened where are my pants why is that a he what am I doing. He tells me he has to go to work and I tell him that I have to go to class and I dress more quickly than I ever have in my life. I can’t find my belt. I can’t find my belt. I leave my belt because I can’t find my belt.

We walk out of this dorm that it takes me a minute to recognize and I realize that I am on the other side of campus and feel and smell like fortified wine product and gag as we make our way towards the library where we part ways and I go left and he goes right and I have some time to process what just happened. I tell him as we walk that I had never done anything like that with a guy before, and he tells me that maybe that’s something I should figure out, as if it’s a math problem that needs solving or a something that I can get an antibiotic for and will clear up in 5-10 business days. My heart is still beating. My head is still spinning. I throw up next to that other fraternity, the one next to the library with the lions in front and the backlit Greek letters. I can’t go home yet. I send him an email, no subject line, body reading “I am freaking out right now. Great.”

I knock on the door of a friend who I had told a week earlier that I might be bisexual. She opens it, groggy from her own first sorority meetings and because it’s 7:30am and neither of us have class for another two or so hours. I tell her that something weird happened, and that it was with a guy, and I laugh as I always do to cover up the discomfort and racing heart and screaming headache and sense of guilt and embarrassment. She congratulates me and asks if it was fun and I tell her that it was even though I have no idea. She smiles. I smile back, weakly. She looks concerned but I tell her everything is fine and I leave. I need to shower. I need to shower.

I get back to my room by 8am and thankfully my roommates are still asleep; I need more time to think. I get my towel that I haven’t washed in way too long and I go to the bathroom with the three stinky shower stalls and realize I forgot my shower sandals but decide I don’t care and I get into the shower and turn up the water to hot. It takes about seven minutes for the water to heat up but I take that time to wake myself up. Brush my teeth. Twice. Three times. Till my gums bleed. I get into the shower and steal someone’s salicylic acid facewash because I like the way that the little crystals feel on my face and wash the smell off of my body with the chemicals of Irish Spring’s unnaturally green bar of soap.

Though my mother always told me that it was trashy to leave the house in sweatpants, I take that day off from my propriety and wear the Kenneth Cole pajama pants that she bought me for Christmas and a cashmere sweater.

When nine o’clock rolls around and its time for class, I drag my feet to the stunningly white building across the street from my dorm and sit in the uncomfortable chairs with the just-too-small desks attached and don’t hear a word the professor says as she mutters to the class in Spanish for the better part of an hour. A question or two gets pointed in my direction but I can’t seem to get the right answer today. Why can’t I get the right answer? I know how to say shoes. I know how to conjugate the verb so that it means “I wore” instead of “I wear” and I open my mouth to let Señora know and all that comes out is a jumble of letters and syllables that roughly translates to “She was wearing yesterday shoes.” I shrug it off. I’m just tired. It was a long night. I wanted that to happen. I was in control. I am in control. Always.

I get up to leave class and my feet bring me to the periodicals room in the library, with its empty shelves and vaguely utilitarian, vaguely classical architecture and the private room in the corner with a door that you can close and lock from the inside. There are two chairs inside, worn-in armchairs that look more comfortable than they would ever be and I sit in the one closest to the window and standup and sit down again and stand up to close and lock the door from the inside. I take my computer out of my backpack and plug its broken power cord into the wall and wiggle the little magnetic piece until the light comes on and I know my computer is charging. I sit back down in the chair and put one of the wood planks that turns the chairs into desks across the arms and put my laptop on top and open it. I put in my password and the screen comes to life, a Google search for mac and cheese recipes open in Firefox. I close the browser and reopen it. Up pops the Dartmouth homepage.

I can’t tell you how long I stare at that Dartmouth homepage. All I can say is that when I stepped into the locked room with the two armchairs it was just after 10am and when I leave it is dark outside and I realize that I haven’t eaten since dinner the night before and my eyes are feeling heavier than the weight settled on my shoulders.

I drop my backpack at my dorm, where I run into my two roommates, the messy one and the one who snores. They stop me before I can hurry out of the room and the one who snores winks and ask me where I was last night. I hadn’t thought of an answer to this. I meant to think of an answer to this. I stall, ask how their first meetings went, ask how I know it wasn’t them that didn’t come back last night. They ask me if she’s cute. They ask me if she is someone that they know. My eyes dart to the ceiling and I say I don’t want to jinx it, though I do want to jinx it, though I want it to have never happened, though I need to escape, I need to escape, I need to escape. I say I’m meeting our friend, the one with the curly hair from Jersey, and that she has to talk to me about something that they can’t be privy to. They let me go. I breathe out.

Dinner is short and alone. Pasta with meat and alfredo sauce because I think I deserve a day’s respite from my perpetual diet. Two meatballs. A regular coke, you know, the one with the red label and the real sugar. I sit in the back against the wall, sweater still on despite the red-sauce risk and lack of dry cleaners in Hanover, New Hampshire.

I try to start my readings for the day after dinner, back in the room with the door and the lock and the two armchairs that aren’t comfortable. It’s in a big book about healthcare policy and the chapters are long and the material is dry so it doesn’t go very well, especially after my eyes close and I slip into a fitful upright slumber that I awaken from an hour later with a jolt and a shriek that leaves me so embarrassed I leave the library with my head parallel to the ground.

I go to my fraternity, play a game of pong. Play two games of pong. Play three games of pong. Stumble home to the messy dorm room where the messy roommate and the one that snores are both snoring. I check my email for the first time that day, and amid the endless campus promotions for plays and a capella showcases and sports games I see one with “PLEDGE” in the subject line, sent only to me.

“how you doing?” it reads. “also, you still need to have a heart-to-heart to me if you want me to sign your pledgebook.”

I respond, feigning coolness, then lay my head on my pillow, attempt to rest. The next morning I wake to find my own ceiling above me, though it just doesn’t look the same.

Xx,

Stephen

[abillionrejectedideas]

Perfect (Inspired by "First Position")

Some people say that everything in the world could be predicted by math, if only there were a computer that could handle the algorithms. These same folks would say that me hitting these keys could be predicted to the second, that the nerve impulses from my brain to my fingers could be timed to within the trillionth of a second by simply determining the myelination of my axons, the frequency of sodium and potassium pumps, the probability of receptor recognition in the post-synaptic cleft. They’d believe that the probability of my getting a job, or a date, or a muffin could be predicted by understanding my thought patterns and the way that they statistically affect those around me. These people are the perfectionists, and life isn’t particularly fun for them.

My love affair with perfectionism started, for better or for worse, during second grade, as I sat on the ground of the den of the house that I lived in until age 8. It was there, while copied the letters in cursive and print, a through z, hour after hour, time after time, that I realized I couldn’t do anything half-assed. Most kids my age would have given up once they reached the ten-time quota, thrown their pencils aside for video games or footballs or snacks or television but instead I sat there, copying everything, over and over, until I could see no difference from the way I wrote the letters to the letters in the workbook that smelled of recycled paper and cheap ink. My father sat next to me and smiled; he lay there on the green couch that would later occupy the basement of my next-door neighbor slash best friend and continuously told me “there’s no reason to not do more than is asked of you.” The advice seemed simple enough, but little did my father know he had left it a bit too open-ended. He had created a monster.

Two years later, in fourth grade, the entire class took what’s known creatively as the Fourth Grade Math Assessment. The test was very straight forward; a bit on fractions, a bit on standard addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, a smattering of questions thrown in to let those with a higher understanding shine a little brighter. I finished the test within the time limit, not thinking much of it at all; having read a little more, thought a little harder, answered a few more practice questions, it wasn’t exactly brain surgery to throw together a few multiple choice answers in an hour. I’d kept a low profile on my academic exploits to this point but thought nothing of it - I just didn’t want anyone to feel bad. When we got the score back about a month later, however, the final straw of shame and stigma was placed on my perfectionism.

Mr. Daly, the portly white-haired Santa Clause of a man that was my fourth-grade teacher, with his just-too-small shirt pulled taut over his perfectly round beer belly and more-salt-than-pepper groomed facial hair, called me to his desk. His face showed nothing but consternation, he was obviously mulling something over in that head of his, and as my 10-year-old self made my way to his desk I was sure that I was going to be in trouble for something. Not that I had done anything wrong (I never did), but that is forever the concern of the perfectionist; we can find the smallest issue in any situation and abstract the most treacherous of consequences in our heads. Anyway, I reached his desk and he asked my to sit down in the chair next to it, the chair usually reserved for those being punished, those that talked too much or shot spitballs into the girls hair or made fun of that one kid in the class with the squishy face and obvious comprehension disability. He promptly assured me that nothing was wrong, he probably saw the irritation and confusion in my face, but the scowl on his persisted. Calmly and with none of the obvious signs of congratulation he told me that I had scored perfectly on the math assessment, the only student in the grade to do so, and I should be proud. He sternly shook my hand and ordered me to go back to my seat and tell no one, the furrow in his brow enduring. I’ve never been more perplexed in my life, and I sat back down with not pride but shame. This puzzled me most of all.

In seventh grade I was accepted to the IG program at Oldfield Middle School. I forget what IG stands for, but I think it might be intellectually gifted, a name that always bugged me because of the insinuation that those not in the program were somehow lesser than those that were. Regardless. I was accepted to the program, and in the first week we were given a group assignment. Most of these kids had been involved in the program since elementary school; there it was called SPARK and twice a week they met as a class to discuss God knows what, probably elitism or Ivy League colleges or the meaninglessness of the proletariat, but the point is to say that they knew each other already. Being the new kid in the class, it took me a bit of time to find someone to work with but in the end I was paired up in a group of four with one unidentified student, a one Ms. Jennifer Nowicki, and a one Jared Kleiman. I refuse to refer to him as Mr. due to the events that followed.

We split the work up equally: a presentation, a paper, and two artistic portions. Deathly afraid of public speaking and without an artistic bone in my body I took the paper portion, I think it was on space or physics or some other inane topic. I wrote it quickly without rereading, as I had learned at that point, in an effort to quell my obsessive perfectionism, that rereading would only increase my anxiety thousandfold. Sidebar, but that is still a method I use today; I haven’t really reread a paper or even any of these posts for fear of my ever-worsening blood pressure. On this particular occasion however I realized only too late that rereading would have allowed me to see two typos in the first line, two typos that upon inspection by a one Jared Kleiman led to a ten-minute diatribe on the “abhorrent quality of my work,” on how “I wasn’t meant for this class,” and how my “acceptance to the IG program must have been a fluke,” because I’m “obviously deficient.” I don’t think I need to say this, but I fled the room in tears, running into the stairwell adjacent to the classroom and letting loose a torrential downpour from my eyes that rivals anything that and hurricane could have done. Never had I been so humiliated, so hurt, so destroyed by another person. I’d promptly gone from the big fish to the guppy. I’d lost.

I rewrote that paper eight times that night. Eight distinct times, and read them over in a single elimination tournament to determine which would get me the best grade. I handed the winner in the next day, the first day I can remember that I bit my nails to a bloody stump, and Jared Kleiman and I never spoke again after we received a grade of 102 out of 100 on a paper that didn’t have the option for extra credit. If you were wondering, I hear he’s still an asshat.

Perfectionism, as anyone obsessed with flawlessness knows, often doesn’t only stay in one arena of our lives once we are infected with its insidious claws. Academics, though a major outlet for my energy, could not contain my anxiety. It was at around this point that beauty, and my undying quest for it, entered my psyche.

A little backstory: I’ve always been the skinny one in my family, and I’ve always been reminded of that. My mother, a beautiful woman but also a Greek woman, has always been obsessed with food and its effects on our bodies. My brother, a little overweight has always received the brunt of the attention, something that I think has taken a toll on him over the years, but through seeing the vehemence of my mother against his less-than-ideal waistline, I have always been conscious of what is going into my body. I could probably tell you the exact number of chips I’ve eaten on a given day, mainly because that number is generally zero, but also because I worry that when it’s not zero it’s too high.

It was not until puberty hit and girls entered the picture, however, that my perfectionism took my body for a target. The models on television had perfect abs and perfect arms and perfect bosies as a whole, and I could not make myself be the tallest or the fastest or the most athletics so the least I could do was work out. At the height of my obsession I was doing a hundred sit-ups twice a day, and if I ever knew that I was going to be taking my shirt off you can tack another 200 hundred onto that total without question. I needed to be the best. I couldn’t just be the smart kid and go on that alone; James Bond and Ashton Kutcher and a whole slew of other media icons, plus the hundred or so jocks in my grade that didn’t give a shit about school, worked out, and got the girls, made sure that I knew that brains were not the whole package. Looks were almost more important. Looks were everything.

I thought when I got to college everything would change. I thought that being away from the ever vigilant eyes of my parents, away from the kids that made everything hurt and didn’t think I was strong enough, smart enough, funny enough, manly enough, that my perfectionism would let up. Oh how I was wrong.

Getting to Dartmouth and entering the high anxiety world of old money and new clothes and good grades and deep thoughts I was lost. The smallest fish in the biggest pond, my grades suffered and next thing you know I needed a new outlet for the anxiousness. Good grades weren’t an option; there would always be someone better to skew the curve against me. A healthy love life might’ve worked, but I screwed that one up pretty quickly with a politically incorrect offhand comment that I didn’t even know I said; plus, there was the confused sexuality bit so that wasn’t going to work out. Social life and physical appearance were the only choices.

I’m not going to go into the issues with my collegiate social life here. That’s a story for another day and I’ll get there I promise.

I hit rock bottom when it came to my quest for bodily perfection my junior summer. I was taking organic chemistry at Harvard, something that I didn’t expect to be good at but shockingly was, and living in a creepy sublet with a bunch of dirty hipster motherfuckers in Cambridge. With no regular social outlet and a goal, let’s just say there became an unhealthy situation dealing with food. I never vomited, because that’s gross, but let’s just say intake was few and far between. This shit is hard to write about, and I promise I’m over it, but just know that it happened. Perfectionism can be scary sometimes.

At this point in my life, I think my anxiety toward imperfection and I have come to an understanding. In the professional realm its allowed to run rampant, because to be honest most employers seem enjoy it and can’t get mad at me if they know I’ve done everything in my power to make it right. In the personal realm, however, I have come to terms with my humanity. I’m never going to be as buff as Daniel Craig or as smart as that guy in the wheelchair that talks about the universe. I’m never going to be able to predict what’s going to happen without the shadow of a doubt and I’ll never be the best at understanding everyone’s problem and I’ll probably never get over being insulted by Jared Kleiman. Everything will be fine though. I do know that. And you know what? That’s perfect.

Xx,

Stephen

[abillionrejectedideas]

Why I Write (Inspired by "Page One: Inside The New York Times")

I write because I don’t speak good.

I think over my entire tenure at Dartmouth, I raised my hands a fewer number of times than I have fingers and toes. This sucks, obviously, because I’m sure if I had raised my hand more, asked the questions that I needed to ask more, and wasn’t afraid of sounding stupid then I would have gotten better grades, gone to med school, have security in my future. But I didn’t. Why? I didn’t raise my hand because when I try to make my tongue and lips make the sounds that I hear in my head go together in the way that I want them too I end up sounding like a precocious twelve year old with a stutter and a thesaurus.

When I speak I’m not taken seriously. This is most likely because of the nonchalant tone I often have to my voice, but I’m never going to sacrifice that because I sincerely believe that it has a lot to do with my ability to relate to people. Let’s be real, are you going to open up to a person that seems as if there is a pool cue perforating their rectum or some guy that sounds like he might actually and nonjudgmentally listen? Unquestionably the latter.

Thus, I write.

I almost just wrote that writing gives me a minute to think before I act, but that is just the opposite of what I believe writing does for me. Writing, as an act, allows me to act before I think. I grew up a self-conscious kid, and before I used writing as an outlet I thought about everything that came out of my mouth at least seven times before I said it. I went over word choice, syntax, rhythm, timbre, everything before I could say a single word. When I write, however, I’m able to just put down whatever my brain tells my fingers to type and then look back and make sure that it’s what I want to say. Many times it’s not, don’t get me wrong, and so I either have to go back and change it, or even better yet maybe just accept that maybe I don’t know what I want to write and that the process of writing is itself helping me to figure that out. Writing is transformative. Writing, at least for me, is liberating.

Now, that’s not to say that I’m not still terribly nervous when write. Once a self-conscious teenage in jeans and a nondescript white teeshirt hoping to not make a slash in the sharktank that is high school, always that same self-conscious teenager. Let me give a few examples, eh?

First off, there’s this blog. I’m basically writing whatever comes to my mind and posting it on the internet to be taken up by a terrifying collective internet consciousness and mulled over for quality of information, writing, and a thousand other things. I’m a human being. I’m sure that a good number things I’ve said on this worthless piece of web-garbage have been not politically correct, factually correct, or any other measure of correct, and could appear out of nowhere sometime in the coming months to years to lifetime to bite me on the ass. Is that a risk I’m willing to take to maintain my sanity? Of course it is. All I can do is cross my fingers and hope I guess.

Next, there’s the advent of goddamn text messaging. I love it, be sure to know, but never has there ever been a more double edged sword that could so swiftly kill me than the sending or receipt of something so little as a text message. I read each on at least three times before I send it out. The first time I read it is for spelling, because nothing makes you look dumber, or drunker, than sending a text message that has an unintentional typographical error. Ending a word in extended stretches of repeated letters to show enthusiasm is one thing, but using the wrong iteration of “there,” “their,” or “they’re” could make a recipient mentally chop twenty IQ points off of me right off the bat. The next check is for punctuation, and how that punctuation changes the tone of my text message. So often do people make broad assumptions of people’s moods simply because of the placement of an errant period that it could very easily keep me up at night. The final check, of course, is for the overall message of the text message. Is the text I’m trying to send saying, “Hey, I really like you and our date earlier was really fun and I want to get to know you better by spending more time with you,” or does it accidentally say, “I’m a drunk, horny slut that only wants to kiss your face, regardless of whether or not you think I’m an interesting person and worth your time”? Almost always it’s the former, but sometimes it accidentally comes off as the latter. It’s so important to keep that shit in check.

Last, but more than certainly not least, is that beautiful but ever-fleeting wench that we all know affectionately as Twitter. Twitter can be one of two things: a beautiful platform for getting your thoughts or wit or comedy or news or artwork or networking abilities or whatever out into the universe to help your career and aspirations, or a nail in the coffin to your irrelevance. Many times I’ve been trying to execute the former and ended up with the latter, especially over the past however many months of unemployment, that the importance of proofreading has become abundantly clear. My heart beats like a bass drum every time I press send tweet, so much so that I haven’t done cardio in weeks and still I’m losing weight. There’s got to be something to say for that kind of pressure.

Like I said, I write to be free. Sure it takes it’s own toll on my psyche, more than I thought that it could to be honest, but at least I get to know that anyone that reads what I write is learning about the real me. Not the censored version, the one that’s approved for network TV and general consumption, but the raw, real, only available on Showtime guy that has lived the past twenty-two years with passion and more flaws that he would like to count.

Take me or leave me, but at least you’ll know me.

Xx,

Stephen

[abillionrejectedideas]

The Parts of Himself

A little over a year ago, a kid I went to high school with died in a motorcycle accident. About six months after, another schoolmate released a film in his honor entitled “The Parts of Himself,” (http://vimeo.com/41398301#at=0) with interviews of family and friends on how this kid, Jake Neumann, impacted their lives. I didn’t know him at all, but I watched the film anyway. Then I wrote this.

  A Letter to Someone I Never Knew

Hey Jake.

Let me preface this with a confession because, while this blog has been in existence for only two months and no one reads it and no one would ever know otherwise, I have always been honest and I think that for everyone’s sake I have to keep it that way so here it goes:

  I am terrified to write this piece to you right now.

Actually, terrified does not even begin to cover what I am feeling right now; my pulse is racing and heart is beating out of my chest and I might be having a panic attack because though I’m sitting here, safe in my bed, I can barely breathe and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I just spent the last forty-nine minutes watching some people I hoped to never see again talk about how much you meant to them but truthfully, I don’t think that’s it. I think it instead might just be that there’s the distinct possibility that those same people are going to read this.

I have spent the last four years running away from high school. I fell out of touch with far too many of my childhood friends and never went back to visit Harborfields and spent any time not at Dartmouth either avoiding Greenlawn or out of state. I tried to escape the nervous kid I was that walked the halls of that architectural nightmare of a school, but tonight, despite my best efforts, I find myself meeting him again and having to reconcile him with the man I see in the mirror. This will be my greatest challenge to date. From what I just saw however, it seems like you lived your life by facing each day knowing that each challenge was worth its pound of flesh, so I’m going to try. I never knew you Jake, but for you, this once, I’ll try.

Like I said, though we were in Harborfields for four long overlapping years, we did not know each other. That’s not to say we did not know of each other; with a graduating class of 273 (some numbers you randomly can’t forget), it’s impossible to believe that we could have not appeared on each other’s radar at some point or another. I always wondered where the hell you came from and how you got everyone to like you so damn much. You probably wondered how I landed such a cute girlfriend. I don’t think either of us could have articulated answers to each other’s questions, but I just spent the better part of an hour listening to people answer mine and may I just say, well done sir.

First off, it takes a lot to make the average Long Island boy cry. I’ve only seen it happen a handful of times in my life and a number of those times involved a swift kick to the nuts by a pair of high-priced heels, so when I just witnessed at least three men’s eyes glaze over with tears and anguish at the thought of you not being in their lives for another day, I honestly didn’t know what to do. There’s often this level of machismo and explicit, overbearing, archetypal masculinity that doesn’t allow guys in our generation to show what’s really on their minds, but despite all that I just heard a distinguishable quiver of sadness in a football player’s voice at the very mention of your name. Like I said, you must have been doing something right.

On a similar note, I sincerely hope you know how much your brother loves you. It takes a lot of balls to get in front of a camera and willingly and knowingly and courageously bear your soul to the world, especially about something as personal as losing a brother, and he spent more time on that screen than anyone else by a long shot. Make sure to put a good word in for him wherever you are. He deserves it.

While it takes a lot of courage to openly cry about someone you’ve lost, there’s also something to be said for facing the memory with a smile - that said, your mom is incredible. It’s safe to say that a tragedy of this caliber would leave most people in a ball on the floor, hands covering their ears and tears streaming down their face, with nothing in the world able to comfort their tired souls, but not your mom. She appeared on screen a pillar of hope, with a comprehension that the life you led was full, and that though it was cut short before its time by fate you had lived the years you had without regret and with a grace that many people spend their lives searching fruitlessly for. She spoke with poise and humility, as a woman robbed but with an understanding that the thief knew better than she what to do with her stolen treasure. If you can, maybe take the time to let her know that her faith is warranted? I’m not sure how that would work, but I’m sure there’s a system in place.

While you’re at it, could you maybe let me know how to get adults to like you so much? It seems as if you convinced your friends’ parents to see you as an extension of their own bloodlines, and despite my best efforts I don’t think that I’ve ever been able to do that very well. Then again, it might have just had something do with your general ability to relate to adults in a way that many of us still struggle with because Dr. Bennardo, our principle from high school, was able to give a nice little speech about you and I’m pretty sure  that guy wouldn’t recognize me if I ran into him on the street. Then again you were the school president, so maybe you just spent more time with him. I don’t know. I guess I’m just jealous is all.

You know, right about now I wish that I had more to say. I wish that I knew more about your life than what these people could tell me about it in their beautifully cut-and-pasted soundbites but I can’t. I can’t because I didn’t know you. You had a whole lifetime of experiences that I’ll know nothing about because in our high school graduating class of 273 I knew some people and you knew others and the Venn diagram of our acquaintances didn’t overlap and that sucks because apparently you were so worth knowing that your friends were inspired to make a movie about it. A movie that I watched. A movie that inspired me to write this. A movie that made me cry, despite all my intentions not to.

Maybe we’ll meet sometime later on. Hope then I’ll think to introduce myself.

Best,

Stephen

[abillionrejectedideas]

It's been a crazy week and I'm not sure I'm going to have the time to write #DocADay soon, so here's a video! I made it for an application years ago, but it's kind of my own little self-documentary. Enjoy!

[abillionrejectedideas]

Darkness is Terrifying

Today’s post is inspired by “High Ground,” a documentary that followed a group of Iraq War veterans on a trip to summit a mountain in the Himalayas. Climbing the mountain in an effort to heal their pain both physically and emotionally, this diverse group included amputees, patients suffering from PTSD and TBI, and a broad swath of other physical and emotional disabled. One particular veteran, a man blinded in combat by a piece of superheated shrapnel that pierced his right temple, I found particularly fascinating. What compelled this man to join a group and summit a mountain when he would never be able to see the view? Would it not prove torturous to make such a journey, overcoming steep cliffs and altitude sickness, uneven terrain and unbearable cold, only to reach the peak in the same blackness as at the base? It’s inspiring, really, to see him do it, but I just can’t imagine.

I See Pretty Things

It’s the little things, you know?

  Every morning I wake at 9am to the sun streaming in my window. I’m there, lying on my 500-thread-count sheets, aching for just 5 more minutes of shuteye, and this one bright-as-all-hell beam of light weaves its way through the stained bamboo blinds to land directly on my right eye. I always try to be annoyed, because what business does that beam of light have trying to wake me up before noon when I have nothing to do but fill out dead-end job applications and painstakingly exercise? I always try to be annoyed, yet I never succeed; the way that same light refracts through the clear acrylic lamp so I see each red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet as a beam of its own always catches my eye. Most days it’s not enough to stop me from turning over and falling back asleep; sometimes it is. It’s the little things.

  Every day I walk my dog, a beautiful black thing the size of a beagle that looks like a shrunken Labrador and whose breed we’ll never quite pinpoint, down to the park a quarter mile from my house. A sign says that no dogs are allowed in the park but she can’t read that and I disregard it because I pay taxes and taxes fund the park so technically I’m a part owner and can do whatever the hell I want. Anyway, we take two laps around the pond, a pool that must have been there for a century because there are these beautiful broken cobblestone bridges to these adorable little islands where geese congregate and swans occasionally linger for the facetime. Lucy, that’s my dog’s name by the way, sniffs and sniffs and pees and sniff and sniffs and pees and sniffs and sniffs and sniffs and sniffs and poops and then I have to pick it up with a plastic bag which is gross, but all the while I just take in the scene. Little kids play on the playground right beside the park, swinging too high and sliding too fast and spinning so much they’ll probably barf like I always used to. Old people sit there being old and staring at nothing and I always wonder what’s going on in their heads because after that much time there must be so much to remember. The sun reflects off the water on the sunny days, dancing on the trees to the west, and on the rainy days the drops send ripples through the water that crisscross nimbly like the threads in the scarves my aunt weaves on her loom in her living room. My aunt has a loom. That thing scares me. Regardless, it’s the little things.

  Every day when I finally muster up the will to be productive, which believe you me is a feat of God in itself, I go to the Starbucks in town to sit amongst the hipsters and high schoolers and failed businessmen to either write or fill out job applications or tweet more than any human possibly should. When I order my grande medium roast, which isn’t a fancy coffee drink but is cheaper and has far less calories, I notice the satisfaction on the barista’s face when I’m not an asshole but actually thank them for the boring miserable work that they do day in and day out to provide me with my requisite caffeine fix. This satisfaction comes in the form of a blush and a smile for the girl barista with the pigtails, a slight raise in the left corner of the black eyelinered girl barista’s mouth, and a “right on” from the boy barista with the beer belly and too much gel in his hair. When I sit down at my regular spot at the table in the front, facing the windows to see the men and women in black and grey and blue who pass by going about their day, the sad man with the briefcase and the sweatshirt who’s always sitting diagonally from me seems to perk up, as if we have this tacit understanding that misery really does love company, and I feel like I’ve done my part to make his day a little better. You know, it’s the little things.

  Every night while I’m cooking the dinner that Pam said she would but then decided that she had too much work and that I could do mine later and that I should cook for her, I soak in the smells and sounds and combinations of flavors that sizzle or bubble or steam or otherwise. I notice the way that when you finally get the right mixture of spices or herbs or seasonings on the meat or fish of tofu (on the bad night) that you can always tell by the way it looks. If you’re cooking chicken, when the outside is brown and crispy the inside is perfectly cooked and juicy as can be. When you’re cooking fish, just when the edges start looking like eggs cooked in a little too much oil, crispy and brown against a backdrop of undercooked, it’s time to take the fish off and let it cook itself until perfect. Steaks, well, you can’t tell by looking at them but they’re done when you know they’re done. It’s a feeling. Besides, steak can’t really be undercooked. When you finally plate all the food, like a nervous chef of Chopped about to learn that they’re going to win $10,000 and a lifetime of bragging rights, you know the meals going to be good and delicious if the plate looks good and delicious. Maybe it’s all psychological. Maybe not. It’s the little things either way.

  Every night when I’m watching TV on the couch with Pam and Gregg, whether we’re watching Modern Family or the Voice or How I Met Your Mother but definitely not Two And A Half Men because that show has sucked ever since Ashton Kutcher came aboard, I think it’s funny the way Pam falls asleep the minute it ends and the news comes on. Generally she’s on her back on the couch, in her red chenille robe that looks so damn comfy that I’m jealous that boys aren’t supposed to wear red chenille robes, so her mouth opens a little bit and Gregg looks over and chuckles and then falls asleep in his own right. That little look of love in his eye makes the fights they have not so scary because then I know it’s all because they care too much, give too much, love too damn much. It’s things like that; it’s the little things.

  Every night before I go to bed I sneak downstairs while all the lights are off, through the hallway from my room to the 22 steps that lead down to the kitchen, where I open the cabinet next to the stainless steel gas stove to find the Ghirardelli chocolate squares in crinkly plastic bag with the green ribbon. I search through the bag for the ones with the baby blue wrappers that mean that they have a thin layer of sea salt caramel amid the crisp dark chocolate and I carefully take one out of the bag so it doesn’t crinkle too much and Pam doesn’t call down from the top of the stairs to check if I am a burglar even though I never am. I take my one chocolate square and I eat it on the banquette near the front window and look out over the neighborhood, quiet and serene with crickets chirping and not a single thing moving to change the scene. Depending on the time of night, sometimes I wait to see the sun begin to lighten the dreary scene and signal me to bed.

  It’s the little things, you know, that make the world beautiful; now imagine you couldn’t see them.