girls just wanna have pho
Checking in to the journalive on this fine and windy Sunday, because I'm in the mood to pull another entry from archive and analyze.
This month five years ago, I had one lonely entry to sum up the previous month and the three relatively uneventful weeks of November that had already passed by that point.
If I remember right, that was my first fall season without class. I was finally too old to qualify for my parents' insurance, so the pressure was off me to keep the student discount going for them. Ironically, two years later Obama would extend the age of coverage. C'est la vie. Est-ce pas ironique? Don'tcha think? I keep telling people that "I'll go back someday, but I gotta want it" -- and five years later, I still have yet to want it. It isn't without regret, of course, but I can't promise myself I will be any better than I was then if I go back now.
So I didn't go to school anymore, but I wasn't making a ton of money either. I worked about 25 hours a week at Peet's by the beach, drinking some of the best coffee and tea, impressing the boss enough to be given a special title, then undermining their incredibly strict attendance policies enough to be fired prolly about two weeks after I wrote that one entry.
In 2010, there were still good house parties to attend. That year's Dylloween was well-attended and one of the most photogenic HQ parties in the history of HQ parties. Lots of big colorful props and costume pieces made the rounds as two (maybe more?) Team Fortress-themed costumes led people to swap hats and weapons all night. Even *I* photographed well that year. I think that was the year that Dylan went farthest off the edge as far as partying hard. You can do that when your mom is chill and the party's at your house, and you know the people you trust most are the ones who stay the latest. ♥Cam and I bought him a hangover burger.
Tess threw a '90s themed party (in Canoga fuckin' Park! so let's call it The Val Party) for her birthday as well, and what I remember most was drinking too long into the wee hours and not sobering up until halfway through my opening shift the following morning. I didn't mention it in that one entry, prolly because I was afraid of being judged (by who?!?), but I remember still being a little drunk on the long drive home from the SFV -- I thought gorging on greasy appetizers at Denny's had helped, but I ended up pulling over and barfing in the gutter in front of a different Denny's after dropping Cam off at home. That was the night I realized how important it was to heed your body's need to barf in times of alcohol. When I finally got home, I didn't want to fall asleep for fear that if I gave myself an inch of sleep I'd take the whole mile and miss my shift. So I started work on the tail-end of an alcobuzz duking it out with espresso jitters. Yeah, okay, 25 years old is an age where you can still do that. 30 is not.
In 2010 Sierra's birthday was celebrated half at Disneyland and half at Outback Steakhouse. In this entry I apparently felt the need to make annoyingly small-minded comments about the masculinity of steak and the femininity of gingerbread martinis. How embarrassing to read now, a short five years after what I realize in retrospect was a kind of dark and blind time emotionally and spiritually. *cough* I mean come on, food doesn't have gender attributes. #unlearning
In all seriousness, though, five years ago was a gross time for me. I was just as dumb as I was at 18, but I was far from that level of "alive." I didn't meet people who inspired me and I failed to inspire others, instead forgetting important wisdom and wallowing in toxic, negative patterns. I didn't grow much as a person in that time; if anything I shrank -- desiccated, become harder and drier, bitter and tough.
In retrospect I must thank whatever it is that left, or that came into my life, sometime after 2010. Maybe 2012, "End of the World," a purging or a rebirth, most likely both. The desiccation process has seen a reversal in the last few years, a rejuvenation like the rain after a drought, plumping the landscape with colors and fruits and blossoms. It's kind of hard to explain, but I feel more like a person and less like a vessel for the passage of time. I'm not fully out of the woodwork yet, but at least I know there's somewhere else to be besides "here" -- wherever it was I was stuck.
Novembers are still my least favorite month, and I'm not quite sure when it started but it gets truer every year. This year, no different. I think it has to do with me always needing more money than I have. I'm broke from birthdays or Halloween -- or, in the case of this year and last, not recovered enough from a bout of unemployment/underemployment. Damn, I need a holiday side-hustle. Maybe I should set up a shop and sell my old collectible toys?
My November blues may also have to do with the stress of the "holiday season" which hits hardest in the service industry, but plagues all of us who are living in a ♬ capitalist consumer-based economy to trade, market and sell commodities we don't need ♫♪ and frankly I'm very disappointed that my first November not in the service industry is still unpleasant and uncomfortable.
This year I feel like the throat of Thanksgiving is giving gently, getting crushed between two muscular thighs called Halloween and Christmas. "The Natives are growing restless," the holiday's last words will be, and Food Network and Butterball will mourn it. Guess my cranberry sauce and cornbread sausage stuffing are year-round food now, hm-hmm.
* At the Mediterranean cafe where I trained before abandoning them altogether (see previous entry), I boasted about my espresso skills and said I could run a bar easy. They scoffed at me skeptically because I had Starbucks and Coffee Bean on my résumé. Motherfuckers better know I pulled a flawless espresso and made a flawless latte the very first time they let me at the machine -- the first time I'd touched an espresso machine in four years, by the way. GET TO KNOW ME, BITCH! I'M AMAZING *singing* I'm beginning to feel just like a coffee god, coffee god *rapping really fast because I'm hella caffed*