Category: ultrapersonal

One of the things I really like about the Cracker Factory is the privacy. It’s got thick concrete floors and brick walls (mostly), so I don’t hear my neighbors (much — although the guy upstairs using the power saw at midnight recently is a notable exception). I have big windows, but they don’t face anything except some abandoned buildings across the street (one under renovation, in case anyone wants to be my neighbor eventually), so no one can really see inside and play Peeping Tom.

Except for the guys who showed up on scaffolding outside my big, curtainless windows this morning. I guess they’re sealing the exterior brick, judging by the fumes and the paint rollers. That’s awfully nice to see (the Swanktuary had many charms, but the landlord’s attention to the health of the building itself was not one of them), but it’s very, very unnerving to turn around and see two guys suddenly appear outside my second-story windows. My desk faces away from the window, so it’s a creepy feeling to have them watching my back while they putter around. Granted, it makes me focus on my work, like having the boss stand behind you urging you to be productive, but still…

Of course, those guys are my new best friends, and not just because they saw me in my underwear this morning. (Are you jealous?) No, just as I started thinking about this entry they tapped on the window to offer to fix my heater, with which they noticed me struggling this morning. So now I have heat, waterproof exterior walls, and two new friends who speak Russian and look like the Super Mario Brothers. Awesomeness! (No sarcasm there, by the way — it’s awesomeness!)

It’s time for me to start thinking about grad school applications again, since I still have a glimmer of hope that hasn’t been crushed yet. (It’s amazing how much mileage my morale got out of making it onto SVA’s waiting list this year.) Trying to get my act together, I’ve been sending away for course catalogs of new possibilities, and calling places to whom I’ve applied before to find out what I need to resubmit.

Now, if you’ve been following these adventures for a while (a sure indication that you’re a relative, have a high tolerance for boredom, or both), you know that I moped a lot when I didn’t get in last time, so it’s taken some pluck to give them a call again and set things in motion once more. I wanted to make sure they still had my transcripts and stuff on file, and whether anything I previously submitted would still count toward a new application. The very helpful lady on the phone pulled my file and said it was all in order, but I was free to resubmit anything I’d like to update. While she was checking through the recommendations, though, she mentioned that there were only two of the manadatory three. It seems that my boss from my old job never sent in her recommendation letter, which means my application never got a fair shot. Good grief.

OK, maybe the letter just got lost in the mail, but still…

That pisses me off, but at least it lets me believe that it’s less my fault and more someone else’s, and so I feel a little more confident about applying again. And I’m also reapplying to SVA, since I got as far as I did last time, and I’m looking at some programs in England and the Netherlands that just teach typeface design, because I need to embrace my true geekitude once and for all.

Going to conferences like TypeCon or the AIGA conference are always good for pulling me out of the day-to-day doldrums and reminding me just how passionate I am about all this stuff. Aside from the more pragmatic benefits of grad school (the pedigree will help my teaching career, and it’ll give me access to bigger jobs and better connections, blah blah blah), I get giddy thinking about grad school as a way to totally immerse myself in design stuff for an extended period of time, and worry about my own goals and parameters and interests instead of whether a client likes blue or feels like taking a chance on something.

By the way, if I get into a program this time, holler if you have an extra few tens of thousands of dollars lying around that you don’t need.

Oh, Ikea — how many visions of domestic bliss have been nurtured along your twisty pathways lined with plastic, particle board, laminates, and veneers? And how many more have been mourned later on, when all those things are nothing but reminders of the stuff left behind when those visions have faded?

Yes, I know that’s a bit melodramatic. It’s what we gays do. Seriously, though, I’ve been to Ikea more times than I care to recall during the last few weeks, and it’s always a little bittersweet. I don’t have much choice, though, since our Swedish Overlords are the most brutally efficient way to fully stock a brand new apartment when all you really own is clothes, comic books, and art supplies. (I own some bookcases, too, but they’re mostly hand-me-downs that originally came from Ikea in the first place, so they’re about to fall to pieces if I so much as look at them the wrong way.)

I’ve been wandering around the new apartment thinking things like, “Gee, I know I used to own some sheets,” or “What’s the best way to stock an entire kitchen all at once?” I’ve been running on nothing but stress, fumes, and sugar for the past few weeks, so I’ve tried to address those issues with as much one-stop shopping as humanly possible. Moving on Labor Day weekend didn’t make things much easier. I managed to survive a trip to Ikea on the Saturday morning of the long weekend, but I finally lost my cool at the Target in Downtown Brooklyn later that day. I had to abandon my very full cart in the ladies sportswear department and get out before I cracked. If I hadn’t had someone urging me to just walk away from the chaos I’m not sure how far I would have let it go.

But I think I’m done with the emergency purchases for now, and soon I’ll finish the unpacking and organizing of the books and art supplies. (The comic books were sorted out right away, naturally.) I’m settling into life on the Bed-Stuy/Crown Heights border (I’ve christened the my newly renovated loft building “The Cracker Factory.”), and getting back to mundane concerns like teaching, working, end even dating.

So things seem OK, at least until all the Ikea stuff starts to fall apart.

Just to be clear, I ought to mention that I haven’t been lazy — I’ve been taking a break. When I return to posting, which I expect will be within a couple more weeks or so, things are likely to be a little different. It won’t be a redesign this time, but instead it will be a change of circumstance.

For reasons I don’t plan on discussing, I’m moving back to Brooklyn soon. To live by myself. That makes me deeply sad in many ways, but it’s also the best thing for me to do. It was my decision, and I made it so that I can preserve something with a truly wonderful person who is, I’ve come to accept, more of a friend than anything else. Therefore, I’m going back to Brooklyn so each of us can stop waiting for the other to become a different person.

That is all for now.

It’s hot and gross, and because I ran out of the house before showering this morning I found myself on the subway, hanging onto the rail, and horrified by the intensity of my own stank. If it had been a leisurely weekend spent in the soothing bosom of air conditioning, things would be better, I’m sure — it usually takes a while for me to proceed very far past musky under ordinary conditions. But I spent a good chuck of yesterday in the hot sun, hauling props and styling models for one of my little projects, and I got home slightly before the onset of heatstroke. I spent the night like spent the rest of the weekend — hunched over my laptop designing my little heart out, and I was up again this morning finishing up the work at hand. Before I knew it, it was time to fly and haul myself uptown to teach.

Blah, blah, blah. I’m sure you all get the point: I worked all weekend and forgot to shower this morning and so I’m trying not to pass out from the smell of my own armpits. Mmmmm, the glamor of summer!

It’s comforting to have a pretty serious camera again. Since effectively giving up film photography a few years ago (first by laziness, then officially when I accidentally sprayed WD-40 instead of air into my beloved Pentax K1000), I’ve been using tiny, mediocre digital cameras that could give me halfway decent pictures (compared to what more money might have gotten me), but never the same satisfaction as I would get from a more substantial piece of equipment. Sure, a better camera lets me take better pictures (which is why I got one in the first place), but I’ve also realized that it’s a better prop, too.

By “prop,” I guess I mean “shield.” People take you more seriously as a photographer when you have a less subtle camera, and don’t give you as many funny looks as they do when you just whip out a tiny one and stare intently at its screen. Effectively, you look like you mean business, so people assume you have some business taking pictures. For a wallflower like me, that’s very, very comforting. My social skills are famously ineffective at bars, parties, and other big social functions: I’m shy, I fidget, I get self-conscious talking to people I don’t know. I mingle badly, and have never been able to master the art of standing around and sparkling. I don’t smoke or drink, so those standard props don’t work for me, either. With a camera, I have something to do that makes me feel more at ease. It gives me a way to participate that bridges the gap between my solitary and my social instincts.

Luckily, though, I learned a long time ago to see through a camera lens but not just through a camera lens. The camera may be my shield and my crutch, but I’m careful to look up and experience what goes on around me, too, using all my senses. In that way, the camera reminds me to pay attention to what’s going around me, instead of getting too wrapped up in any nonsense happening in my head. So there’s this strange relationship: it helps me hide but draws me out at the same time. Plus, I don’t have to worry about what to do with my fidgety hands, especially with a camera that’s hefty enough to require them both.

A good friend’s troubles inspired me to spend a chunk of the evening reading through old entries, especially the ones from around the time I had my spectacularly maudlin meltdown a few years ago. In a way, I was looking for a little reassurance, for some proof that the doldrums that have been dogging me for a while now aren’t so bad when you look at the big picture. Well, I suppose they’re not. It’s not very encouraging, though, to realize that I’ve slipped back into some very bad habits I thought I’d kicked. The overall dullness of my posting for so long now is really just a symptom — granted, it’s a real obvious symptom once you notice it — that I’ve gone back to pushing, pushing, pushing my feelings as far down as humanly possible, and at the very least hiding them when I can’t successfully suppress them. The way I feel it, this has led to me becoming the most boring, dispassionate me that I can ever recall being. The last few weeks of sitting around the house more than usual have reminded me how much I’ve retreated into myself over time, making a bad habit out of what once had been an emergency measure.

I am one frustrated motherfucker. I’m frustrated with myself, and with lots and lots of things about my life. I’m keenly disappointed about a few things, and mad at myself for not doing more to make them happen, or keep them from happening. For instance, I seem to have shut out most of the people who would have intentionally or accidently called my bluff. After all, if you’re trying to avoid the obvious, you probably avoid the people who know you best. Even worse, you probably don’t even notice you’re avoiding them until you realize you’ve already alienated them.

Which is stupid. And cowardly. And fucked up.

I’m not sure when a touch of reserve gave way to my being an impassive asshole. I’m sure it was just a slow accumulation of teeny decisions. Cue the development of my internal monologue: “No, I have a lot of work to do.” “No, I don’t have the energy to go out and be cheerful.” “No, I don’t wanna explain what’s on my mind.” “No, there’s so much catching up to do.” “No, I really owe them an apology more than dinner and a movie.” “No, we haven’t talked for so long that I can’t just call and pretend I haven’t been a jerk.”

Suddenly, I notice how lonely I am, and what an insensitive idiot I’ve been. But I don’t wanna face up to it, so I shove it all down a little further and move along. Of course, I definitely don’t write about anything that I ought to talk about first, so you the public get another post about TV or current events or something. Remember when I has stuff to say? I do.

So, I’m sorry. I’m sorry in a general to way to anyone who still bothers to read this nonsense, but mostly I’m sorry to a particular handful of people I love for not talking to you in a long while, or for making you think I didn’t want to talk to you. I do — desperately — but I’m pretty ashamed that I dropped the ball so often and let things deteriorate so much, especially since I want so badly to know how you’re doing. If you have any forgiveness left, I’ll try not to be such an insensitive/oversensitive jerk anymore.

Last week at this time, I was starting to shake off the anesthesia from the previous night’s emergency surgery. I’d been waking up up every now and then since about 2 a.m., when I first had a few minutes of consciousness in the post-op area. It was still too hard to keep my wits about me then, but by morning I was feeling normal again. You know, except for that sharp pain where they cut through my abdominal wall to get at my appendix.

The doctors all agreed that they cut me open in the nick of time. It seems that any more delays and my appendix would have ruptured, with all the resulting hilariousness of that. The real thing that saved me then, was that I happened to score a last-minute appointment with my doctor the day before, thinking that maybe the previous day’s two-hour cramp with the stabbing pain and the vomiting might be more serious than a reaction to some bad leftovers. I thought it would be a good idea to act early in case last year’s mystery stomach issues were returning, but the doctor was pretty sure that I should just walk myself over to the emergency and plan not go home that night. If I hadn’t gotten an opening in his normally tight schedule, I probably would have stayed home chugging Tylenol and Pepto Bismol, waiting for the pain to go away until I keeled over or something.

I’ll admit that I received excellent care from everyone at the hospital, but overall the system is pretty screwed up, especially in the emergency room. As a general rule, all the nurses there were jaded gossips who were easier to find clucking away in a huddle at the desk, rather than — let’s say — noticing the patients piling up around them. When I first got there, the triage nurse disappeared for about 20 minutes, leaving me wondering who was supposed to check me in and read the “I have appendicitis so look at me immediately” note from my doctor. The staff of young internists and residents, though, were all amazingly friendly and helpful, and as attentive as their workload could allow. Interestingly enough, they were all movie-star good-looking, so I can’t roll my eyes when I see the casts of TV medical dramas anymore. Apparently, young doctors are dazzlingly beautiful these days. Who knew?

I was in the hospital for just over a day, and then went upstate for a few days to recuperate under my sister’s watchful eye. I came home last Sunday, and have been slowly getting back to normal. I taught a little this week, ran an errand or two, checked in with the surgeon, and generally felt more like myself again. I can handle a few hours of activity a day, and then I’m forced back to the couch to wonder, “Wow, they cut right through me, didn’t they! Hmmm, that smarts. And itches.”