April 2007 Home
Was there a
day, exhausted and weary, dragging home food, arms
cut and scarred, that you saw yellow flowers and,
not knowing what you did, picked them because I
love you? - Jeanette
Winterson
April 23 2007 8:22 PM It seems tedious to write about why I haven't been writing but it also seems wrong to not say anything. In January I was determined to write something every day on the blog. I didn't care if it was short. I didn't care if it was stupid. I was just going to write. We'd been working 10 hour days in December and when we got back from a long New Years weekend we began working Saturdays. Six days, five of which were ten hour days and then the commute. By February, when our schedule dropped down to normal, I was wiped. I got a bronchial flu for most of the month. I coughed so hard I tore a muscle in my shoulder blade. And then came March. I thought I was going be laid off in the middle of March but it's the middle of April and I'm still going to work. So. Now what? I don't hate my job. I don't love my job. The hours have been normal for awhile now. I've been given a few interesting assignments and now I'm working in a different building. It's all OK. I don't actually play the game all day but I do play. It's very different than the way I play at home. It is cool to see new stuff. I worked on Seasons, which really does add a dimension to the game. I worked on Celebration, which is really just clothes and some new furniture but fun if you like to have weddings and parties for your Sims. I can't talk about what I'm working on now. Well. I could. But then I'd be unemployed again. Heh. I don't play at home much but not because I don't still love the game. Many of the people at work play WoW and were kind enough to buy me a gift subscription. I wanted to understand what they were talking about and so began my new game addiction. It's really just too funny. I did not think I'd enjoy it but I do. It's kind of like having a Sim in the middle of a Tolkien novel. It doesn't engage my imaginative inner world the way the Sims does but it makes me laugh sometimes. I have a few characters. The main one is a gnome named Moti.
Isn't she cute? Moti was my name in India and means fat one. What's funny is that I am so far behind the game curve in terms of everyone at work. Everyone there plays two or three or more games regularly. People play at work, play at lunch and play when they get home. It's wild. They play on more than one kind of system. Some of them play games on no systems. I don't have a lot of criticism for all this playing. It seems creative and fun. But I'm not enough of a game player to get into that many. Most of the people I know don't play any games so my WoW and Sims playing must seem crazy to them. It seems crazy to me. But what about writing? I am reading. Lots. I spend so much time on some kind of public transportation or waiting for some kind of public transportation. So I read. I watch movies on the weekend. I talk on the phone. The days go by. I'm neither happy nor unhappy. I have days when I can't stop crying because I feel so far away from my life. Which must sound like I'm sad. And I am. But I've almost always been a little sad. It is what it is. I also laugh. And play. And delight in small things. I am grateful. I am angry. I am often thrilled by things that I cannot explain. It's all in the mix. Blogging always got me to think "like a writer" and when I was going to try and write every day I noticed a shift my thinking. Everything becomes fodder for a post. I do have a distinct piece of writing that has come together in my head and fallen apart and come back together. I need to and want to make the time to put it on the page. And I need and want to make a blogging practice again. I had a particularly wonderful dinner with Paul last month. It was just so much fun. I have a great chair at work. For the most part, I fit in the seats on the bus and the train and the shuttle. There is the occasional occurrence of diet talk around me and it works my nerves. Being with Paul was such a relief. Because he gets it. We talked about issues in the fat community and the state of fat politics. I could write a post about all that. And we talked about life. Just life. I've only had Internet access at work for about three days. I always get there early and now I can read blogs while I drink my tea. I did just that the other day and it brought tears to my eyes. My blog life was so important to me. I need it. I want it. I need to communicate. I need to feel words forming. I need to talk about it all. And I've been pretty quiet for most of this last year. Work has had an impact on my language. I now use the word dude. A lot. Sigh. So. Dude. I wrote and rewrote the first paragraph of this post. I felt embarrassed and uncertain. I am afraid that I can't do it. I can't write. I can't write regularly. Now I find I am struggling to end the post. There is no neat summery. There is no explanation. I keep saying I want to and I need to but I don't. And now I have.
April 25 2007 6:03 AM Marilyn often says she is a fat activist not a food activist. I think she makes the distinction because food activists too often use fatness as sign of the food apocalypse. I wouldn't call myself a food activist. I do call myself a food snob. I'd rather go hungry than eat crap. I care about how food is raised. Generally I'd rather eat locally produced food but I like brie from France and Greek olives and you know, stuff like that. I care about family farms because I think they make better food. I prefer food that is in season. Right now I'm eating piles of asparagus. In the summer I'll eat peaches every single day. In the winter I want warm food and more carbs. There are two cafeterias at work the larger of which has a great salad bar. There's a guy who comes in a few times a month to make sushi. The hamburgers aren't bad. I carry some stuff down with me: almonds, apples, good chocolate. It works. But there's this funny thing that happens on the train. We eat lunch from 1:00 to 2:00 and leave at 6:00 or 7:00. I try to eat most of my food in the morning and at lunch because I get home so late and I hate going to bed on a full stomach. But sometimes I get hungry on the train. I become obsessed with odd things. I become convinced I want fast food. One night I wanted sweet and sour pork. It was all I could think of until I got off the train. And then I just forgot. It's funny. I've been watching Bourdain eat crazy food all over the world. Food that scares me. He's critical of fast food but loves street food. If I could stop at a samosa stand in the train station I probably would. One day I ate a Snickers from the vending machine at work because I remembered that I liked them when I was young. It was cloyingly sweet. Not as chewy as I thought it would be. It made me a little sad. My ideas about food have sometimes been problematic in the fat political world because I am critical about food. Most fat people have had way too much food criticism in their life. The fastest way to get me to crave something is to tell me I can never have it. The years of diets and restriction raise up a rebel without a clue. I lose track of my true desire. So I have learned to stay open and be as respectful as I can be about what I want to eat and what other people want to eat.
April 25 2007 9:36 PM The piece of writing I have tumbling around is about commuting. If you could listen to what's in my head during the commute most days you would hear all of the worst of who I am. And, for some unknown reason, I want to make a record of that. Now that I'm making this big push to write I've been thinking about it more. Serendipitously enough I read an article on the train tonight about commuting. I liked it very much.
Gotta love that. But it isn't the piece I want to write. Mine is really a confession. I am always pondering why I think or feel what I do about people, particularly strangers. I was talking to someone who said they judged people's clothes and shoes and the way they walk. I barely notice those things. I notice energy and the way people take up space. And I am critical in truly unseemly ways. I've always resisted the utilitarian relationship. The sales clerk, post man, conductor, I want to move past the purpose they serve in my life. My commute is full of those kind of relationships. Lots to think about and write. I'm like the little engine that could right now. Except I haven't made it to the top of the hill yet.
April 28 2007 12:56 PM About a month ago I felt something inside me shift. I couldn't name it. I just knew it had happened. Things have been shifting on the outside. I moved from one project to the other. And then moved again. For most of the time I've been working at EA I've been in a row of desks, elbow to elbow with other testers. I moved desks a few times and finally got one of the much coveted corned desks. Corner desks are just a little bigger. More room for your stuff and the illusion that you aren't sitting right next to someone else. Then I got a cubical of my own. And now I have another, this one with walls. Sitting in a room full of people who are talking about games you don't play, or the superiority of the Hulk over Batman, can be alienating. Sitting in a little room with walls can be too. I can't tell if the changes in my space have been improvements. My hours have changed and I can go to the early swim again. Thursday morning was the first time. So good. And kinda hard. Which surprised me. I've always been pretty good at articulating my inner world. I think that's because I use talking to process. But I have been so quiet. Quiet on the blog. Quiet at work. Quiet in my life. Not a good quiet. Not bad either. Just lacking voice and will. I mean, I'm not silent. I laugh with people at work. I talk on the phone with friends. But there are parts of me that are lacking language. And that's new for me. I went swimming this morning. Being back in the pool is great. Slipping through water. Returning. Or something like that. It's good. This quiet uncertain thing. I think. I'm pretty sure. Heh.
April 29 2007 12:18 PM I'm having trouble with Firefox. My page won't load on it. Not sure why but it adds a /. at the end.
April 29 2007 4:38 PM The first thing I wanted to do when I began trying to blog regularly again was to redesign. I resisted the urge because I had a feeling I'd run out of energy after designing and then not write. I'm still feeling shaky about being able to keep it going. Slept badly last night. I hate when that happens because then I want to sleep all day. I kinda want a cup of coffee right now but I'm worried about not being able to sleep again tonight. I'm listening to Moyers and picking through a bunch of grapes trying to find the ones I still want to eat. Some of them are pretty icky. And eating the fortune cookies from the pile-o-Chinese food I ordered yesterday and am still eating today. I need to vacuum and write my rent check and wash some dishes. Yadda. Yadda. Instead I'm playing around with ideas from Mandarin for the banner. I decided to clean up my blog roll. There were links to people who are gone, links to things I don't read, links to people who delinked me before I stopped writing. I can hardly blame anyone for having delinked me in the last year and I have links to people who don't link to me. I have a hard time letting go of a link because I want to have it just in case. Just in case I suddenly have tons of time. Just in case they come back. Blog rolls have always felt a bit fraught for me. I have been overjoyed to see myself on some and hurt when I never appeared on others. It's one of those meaning makers that throws me into fits of distortion. There's never been anyway I could get through my whole roll in one read. I usually got through it twice a week or so back in the day. Blogging is many things. Sometimes it's about community. Often. I tried to be good about linking other people and I'll try to get good at it again but I don't use a blog tool that lets me post from anywhere. I have to be home. And I almost never am. If I think about it too much I'll panic. There were links I couldn't delete because of sentiment. I should say more about that but ... um. Maybe not right now. To do this I am having to go through the whole roll. I see I am not the only one who hasn't been blogging because of life and work and work and life. Others have continued. It's a little overwhelming because I have so much to catch up on. So, I did vacuum. Although I could do it again. The first time is really just pulling up hair. I have SO much bleeping hair. And, of course, I took a bite out of a cookie and dropped a chip on the rug. I'm finishing up the beef chowfun and sauteed dried green beans. Listening to a replay of the Dem candidate debate. Nothing too interesting.
|
