In a recent blog post, the author stated she was sad. Upon further reflection she has decided it would be more accurate to describe her emotional state as “mean red” as defined by Holly Golightly in the book (and movie, which the header quote is from, the book mentions sweating and the author believes that we don’t need to talk about sweating at this unprecedented moment in our history where were all in this together during this trying times) Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote.

The author would also like you to know that she is addicted to The Zoo on Animal Planet, which she can watch because her youngest sister shared her cable password and it’s pretty much the best thing to happen in all of 2020. The authors would also like you to know that she has a super crush on the Animal Keeper who says, “This is how we do it in the boogie down Bronx” in the intro to the show. His name may or may not be Juan, the author forgot. But she does remember that he has a twin brother who works at the Queens’ zoo.

That is all. The author sincerely regrets the error and is gonna go make a taco salad for dinner now.

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First, I had a rough crying jag kind of night last night brought on by something I read in Gina Frangello’s A Life in Men. This led to some bad dreams and a generally unpleasant night of sleep.

Second, because of all that I need to make myself some soup. This time it was broccoli cheese (made with a potato and carrot puree instead of a buttery, creamy roux).

Third, I’ve watched the Jason Isbell & Neko Case episode of “Austin City Limits” three times in the past twenty-four hours. I’ve come to two conclusions: 1.) Jason Isbell looks like a cross between a young Bill Clinton and an old Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver; 2.) I will jump into bed without a second though with any man that can sing this song. It makes me want to be the kind of woman who wears boots and/or dresses.

All these things have to do with what happened last night and I tried to get into it by typing and deleting and typing again, but it all came out poorly and made me frustrated. No worries, Darling Ones, I have mostly recovered from the horrible night thanks to liberal applications of soup and Jason Isbell.

Instead I will tell you that I am wearing the worst pair of underpants in the history of underpants. They are awful and I’ve been meaning to take them off and throw them away all day, but I keep forgetting. Also, that would involve doing laundry and clearly I have decided wearing the awful underpants is better than doing the laundry.

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Long about July or so, I stopped watching the TV news. All the economic doom and gloom was causing anxiety attacks. As Labor Day grows ever closer the anxiety has increased and I’ve given up most all network TV-watching lest some sort of news sneak in when I’m not paying attention. This leaves me with “A Different World” reruns and not much else. I still tip-toe around online news sources, and they’re about to get the boot too — but that has more to do with the impending Republican National Convention than anything else.

Oh fuck it. I can’t even craft a coherent narrative. I’m anxious and scared and that’s making me cranky. So cranky that I’ve taken to calling myself Captain Crank. Today has been a rough day. The mean reds have swept in and set up camp here at Supergenius HQ.

Way back in March when I lost my job I decided that I’d be working by Labor Day. I didn’t need to worry until Labor Day. I could take the summer off and be okay as long as I was pulling a paycheck by Labor Day.

Labor Day is upon us and I don’t have a job. I don’t even have any prospects. Hell, it seems that I can’t even get any callbacks anymore. It is terrifying.

But what’s more terrifying is my inability to make a damn decision. I am standing very firmly at the proverbial crossroads and my indecision has left me frozen and fearful. I simply don’t know what I want to do. And, if one more person asks me what I want to do I am going to punch them in the neck.

I keep saying that if I knew what I wanted to do then I’d go do it. But am I just using my indecision to not do anything? And more than that, what is a job anyway. I keep telling myself that I need to redefine what I think having a job means. I’ve said that what I really want to do is cobble together a living writing various things for different people who are willing to give me money to do it.

Yet there’s that nagging doubt. The worry that maybe I’m not good enough to do that, or that there will be no money coming in and then I’ll have to go work at SuperAmerica and Supergenius HQ will get forclosed on and then I’ll live in my parents’ den and turn 40 and then need to shove my head in an oven.

I just don’t know what to do and I can’t seem to work through this or get past it or, well, fucking do anything at all besides lay in my bed reading short stories and intermittently crying.

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A few days ago I made a passing snark on the concept of oversharing. It wasn’t meant to be snarky, but I can see where people who don’t live in my brain would see it as such. I think what I meant to express was frustration in the fact that oversharing is not new but now that a bunch of NYC hipsters are doing it and have coined a term for it, it’s the next big thing.

Fuck that, I thought, I’ve been oversharing on iwilldare.com for nearly eight years. But I don’t think that’s necessarily true anymore. I stopped oversharing long ago but didn’t realize it until last night before bed when “Dear Chicago” shuffled through iTunes and emotionally leveled me like it always does.

“Dear Chicago” is a song that fills me with loneliness and sadness and heartbreak. It reminds me of the foolish things I have done in the name of being loved, or a chance at being loved, or at least fooling myself into thinking that love is possible for me. It makes me wonder about what I say I want and what it is I’ll settle for. It makes me wonder if I say I don’t want to be married because I don’t actually want it or if I say it because I’m afraid to admit that I want something I can’t have.

This song never fails to open an emotional Pandora’s box and 8 out of 10 times that I listen to it I will be reduced to tears. This is not a complaint, only an observation. But it was this song combined with the e-mail conversation that got me thinking last night.

I stopped oversharing long ago, my self-censorship is rampant in these parts and I think it’s what led me to start writing in an old-fashioned paper journal (I’ve just discovered that I can’t use the word ‘journaling’ without stimulating my gag reflex). There are myriad reasons why I stopped oversharing. One being that it’s easier to share the bad, the fear, the loneliness than the good, the wondrous, the beautiful. This led me to worry about how people were viewing me based on the little bit of my life I shared on iwilldare.com. I had more than a few readers worry about my mental health, if I was a danger to myself, and a lot of whom suggested I start taking anti-depressants soley based on what they read here.

But more than what people thought of me, I worried about how people were viewing those that I wrote about. Sharing the TTHM relationship here taught me a lot. I still worry that he has been unjustly vilified for not returning my affections the way I wanted him to. It’s weird because the relationship after the TTHM got nary a mention because I didn’t want that man to suffer the same judgments or deal with the random e-mails the TTHM had to deal with and it upset him that I never wrote about him.

Anyway, as the number of people in my life started reading about my life on the Internet I stopped talking about fear, loneliness, and the mean reds. People in my life are selfish and tend to get offended when you pour your heart out to a computer rather than to them. People in my life are also kind and generous and want to fix whatever it is they perceive as the problem.

The problem is that I don’t want to talk about my loneliness or my fear, I want to write about it. Writing about what is bothering me has been my coping mechanism since I was thirteen. I’m not gonna change it now nor do I want to. Writing about the yuck is not a cry for help, I’m a grownup and a smart woman when I need help I ask for it. I’m not looking for a solution, I’m looking for an outlet.

This not a complaint, only an observation.

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but and still, i have like four boxes from last year and i have about 16 people to send cards to. sadly this number is way down from last year, which makes me sadder than you can imagine. if i have your address you’re getting a card. if i even think i might have an old address, you’re getting a card. if you think that i might want to send you a card (and i probably do) then you should give me your address. i mean, do the math. i got like 50 cards to get rid of, and probably three more boxes that i’ll be compelled to buy.

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