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This morning, a longtime friend of mine (Art / Penny) was sentenced and sent to prison after … what, three years or so since this all started? And I haven’t been as ‘there’ for her as I should have been, and I really wanted to go to the sentencing, if only to say goodbye in person. So I woke up this morning, barely in time, double-checked the message she’d sent with directions, and drove the 31 miles across town to the court in Mesa where it was taking place. I even managed to be 20 minutes early, despite the traffic and the rain. And I didn’t see her, or anyone I knew, and I tried calling but there was no answer, and the courtroom she gave was locked until 8:30 (the official start time), and she wasn’t in there… but three of her friends were there, too, and we all went in together and waited … and proceedings started around 9, but … she still wasn’t there, and we didn’t know what else to do. Around 9:30 I went out into the hall to try all the numbers I had again, but no go, and there wasn’t any signal in the courtroom, so that was my first chance to get on the internet and try to look up the court schedule online… maybe it was in a different room? And I got the information I needed. It was one room over. 203, not 204. I ran in, literally seconds too late. She had been sentenced and taken away, and everyone who’d been in the right room was crying, and … what? What? What was I supposed to do?

And I went to the other courtroom and got her other friends out of there, and we all talked in the hallway for a while, gave her father our contact info… And she got the low end of sentences, and with good behaviour could get out early, and may even have the possibility of being transfered to a prison that would be less dangerous to her chances of survival… And I tried. And I know they say it’s the thought that counts and at least you tried, but … I wasn’t there to say goodbye. I missed that. I said goodbye on the phone the other day, but …

We’ve been friends for about 15 years, she deserves better than that.

I’m going to try to visit her in prison. The lawyer said that she might be able to have visitors in a couple of weeks. I feel awful about missing this. Hopefully we can get the communication about location a little more accurate for that. Hopefully I won’t be a complete fuck-up next time.

Continue reading Miscommunication plus plus

You know how December goes. Now add a wedding, a honeymoon, massive housecleaning, (to make room for) a move across town, (Mandy moving in here)… Two work Christmas parties with the requisite introductions – at one party I’m not Teel, I’m “Mandy’s husband”, at the other she’s “Teel’s wife” – and one big family Christmas party to go… Well, not counting the immediate family’s inevitable gathering on Christmas. And I have a crunch at work, Mandy is a teacher, so it’s finals and term papers for her, and we have somewhat non-overlapping time off for the holidays, so she’s also going to WY after Christmas without me, to… In case December didn’t feel full enough, yet.

Figuring out the money, paperwork for name changes, apartment changes, bank changes, figuring out closet space, bookshelves, duplicate DVDs, what to do when suddenly we’re being bad Americans and producing twice as much recycle as garbage (and if dad weren’t here, it would have been something like 10x recycle v. garbage this month). It’s challenging, but luckily I’m not actually overwhelmed. I had a little anxiety attack last month (sorry, that was a friends-only post), but almost everything has gone smoothly, or at least not debilitatingly.

Oh, plus spending time being the geeks we are, and doing things like watching I Am Legend Thursday at midnight in IMAX, and then seeing Blade Runner Final Cut at the Valley Art Friday night… Plus playing Super Mario Galaxy together. Because being geeky is important, but it’s a time-sink sometimes, too. BTW, the first six minutes of the new Batman movie (attached exclusively to I Am Legend in IMAX), bode very well for the rest of the movie. Awesome.

Okay, I have to go do more laundry, but wanted to make a post. So here you go: a post.

I haven’t been this totally bi-polar since I was a teenager. Mood swings are one thing, but this is getting out of hand. Luckily, in a way, my manic is suppressed enough that I don’t literally tear down walls or quit jobs in it, and my depression isn’t suppressive enough that it can break my intensely conditioned rut of a routine life. Which is somewhat to say; I’ve carefully crafted a life, selected a job, where I can be totally non-present mentally and still semi-functional, and I’ve got myself so well trained that I don’t even show up late for work when I’m in the middle of a suicide, I just mosey on in and do my job all the while. Heck, while I didn’t exactly “hit my goals” for the day, neither did anyone else, and aside from the one employee I know isn’t actually doing the job right, I’m the only one who even came close on Sunday by about 33%. To re-iterate, and clarify: while in the process of actively killing myself, while so dead and low and depressed that I couldn’t find a reason to stay alive (Sara didn’t help – she just said no again), I still did about a third more work on Sunday than the other people who were there. The people who weren’t experiencing hyponatremia or major depression. Because it’s rote, it’s repetitive, and I can practically do it in my sleep.

I can’t get myself to shave or shower or brush my teeth or even eat or masturbate (two things I enjoy quite a bit) on any continuous schedule. The “Eat Only/Whenever You’re Hungry Diet” I am a proponent of, I thought up because it is somewhere between “don’t eat unconsciously or as something to do when bored” and “don’t forget to eat because you’re too depressed / manic”. I have trouble remembering to do my laundry, water the trees, whatever. But work. Work I can show up to on time, consistently. Or school, which was just another job. Repetitive. Familiar.

It’s pretty easy, actually, for me to show up to (nearly) every Write-In for NaNo. it’s almost as easy as work. I can even go when I’m depressed, when I’m feeling terrible, suicidal, happy, horny, whatever, it’s a repetitive, set schedule, out of my hands, it’s easy to show up. I don’t really understand why. When I set a meeting time with someone else, that’s easier to show up to than just making plans for myself; perhaps it’s my overblown sense of responsibility. When I say I’m going to meet a writing group at Willow House (or wherever) twice a week, every week, to write and work on writing, that’s easy — Heck, it’s hard to stop, even with good reason. When I tell myself I’ll work on writing at least 8 hours a week, or when I tell myself I’ll go to the Willow House (or wherever) once a week or twice a week or twice a month (that’s harder than ever week, for me, btw), and force myself to sit down and work — I peter out, quickly. Sometimes before the first time I go. If there were even just one other person I was meeting, I wouldn’t miss it. I’d probably be early.

Continue reading swingin’ round again

I am somewhat stuck, here. I want this to be written. Until I write it, I will want it to be written. The ideas, the story (the memories), will be with me and torment me, begging to be let out of my head and put down on paper until I give up, give in to it. Yet for some reason, this part of it comes slowly. If it all comes this slowly, it will kill me, it will drag out for months, more years. On the other hand, I want to “succeed” at NaNoWriMo this year. To prove that I can do it. That I’ve still “got it”. All I’ve finished since the last year I succeeded at NaNo is … wait, well, two novels and two poetry books and the bigger step of actually going ‘legit’. I guess I can’t really discourage myself too much; I’m not as much a failure as I’d like to be able to tell myself I am (for whatever reason). One of the novels was written in a couple of weeks, the other in ~3 days work, and the first poetry book was composed in less than a week. I have 22, 23 days left in the month. Several long weekends. I can do this. Don’t give up.

Started NaNoWriMo tonight. I’ve never done the whole “start at midnight on 11/1” thing before. Went to the IHOP, met with the other novelists, totally had a great time. Especially nice seeing a couple of (hot) friends from the old days who apparently didn’t turn on me, and in fact were very happy to see me NaNo’ing again. Being liked is so much better than being loathed. Hooray, social!

The novel I’ve started (500 words so far, and yes, I ended on a complete sentence) is … well, I’m writing another NaNo novel where the main characters are participating in NaNoWriMo. But… They say “write what you know” and I’ve been doing NaNo since 2002; I know this. Plus, it’s a great story. or, I think it is, based on hearing myself tell it over and over again in the last few years. I’d thought it would make a good graphic novel (it still might), but I’m going to try to write it as a “regular” novel for now. I’ve been putting it off, but it seems totally appropriate to write a NaNo novel as my NaNo novel. —On the other hand, many central elements are inspired by real life events (but highly fictionalized and in some cases people and events are combined to enhance the storyline, based on my rough outlines), and there’s the possibility that it will be too emotionally difficult to write at this time, on account of I’ll inevitably be rememberizing the actual events that it’s inspired by… and if that’s the case, I have plenty of other books to write. Worst-case, I grab my partially written Sin Eater story I didn’t finish last year, and try to finish it this year.

Okay. Sleep. Have to get up tomorrow and go to another write-in.