Pushing Through

So I am working on an essay for a job application. I sort of thought essays were just for school applications, but apparently I was lucky enough to select a job that also requires essays. Some of you may recall from my attempts at law school applications that I am not very motivated about writing essays. In fact, it might be said that I am not very motivated about writing at all (if you were to judge by, for instance, how often I update this blog). It's sort of a mystery to me. Because I really do love to words and writing and reading. I don't know if it's just like exercise (something I'm also unmotivated to do) and all one needs to do is get into the practice of doing it. Maybe I just need to push through the awkward sentences that don't lie flat on the page like they do in my head just like I should push through those uphill steps on a run when my legs feel like they're forty pounds heavier than when I started and my lungs tighten up in my chest so my shoulders touch my ears. And if I can't push through this two page essay how am I ever going to write the things I secretly hope to say?

What Not To Do: Late Night Messaging

As many of you dear readers have experienced, I have a penchant for late night, less-than-sober, text-based communications. It's something I am certainly not proud of, but it's who I am and I don't know what I can do about it short of developing breathalizer software for my phone and computer (hear me Steve Jobs?). Normally message recipients are good friends and occasionally *cringe* former lovers. Last night, however, I managed to send the following message to a Facebook friend who I went to KINDERGARTEN with (and haven't seen since I was fifteen, probably):

I noticed that you're currently employed by Legal Seafood. My sister has been gainfully employed at the Park Square location of that same chain for the last three years... I was thinking you might be unwittingly working side by side for the last several weeks without even knowing your connection! But, basically, if you're working with a girl named Molly who looks uncannily like me, you should say hi, cause she's my sister.....
Late'
Rose

My concern is not really that I said something stupid. The content isn't particularly damning. I just think about how it must look to recieve such a random and syntactically quirky message with a 3:47am date stamp. Not good. Not good.

One summer I did this writer's workshop at UMASS Boston. I was turning fifteen and my parents didn't really know how to handle the too old for camp, too young to let loose balance. I didn't produce anything so fantastic (except perhaps that poem about bathrobes that I might be able to recite to this day), but I wrote this one essay that was published in the magazine at the end of the course about writer's block, pasta salad and my toes. This post is basically a rehash of that story, ten years later (oh god, I am so old. Pour me a metamucil). Also an excuse to mention my fantastic sneakers.

Sometimes it seems like social interactions are comprised of exposition ("I have done x, y and z things since we spoke last"), debate ("Obsessive attention to capitalization is NOT a valid reason for disliking e.e. cummings as a poet") and advice. I think I might be really into advice. Both giving and receiving. I don't know that I'm good at it, but there's something rewarding about the exercise of figuring things out through conversation. Lately whenever I am giving advice, even to myself when sitting on the couch wearing one shoe, the word perspective comes to mind. I feel like I use it so often that it is becoming meaningless. But when I look at things objectively it becomes clear that the only reason I feel a certain way so strongly is because of the circumstances around me. Give it a try. Is there really any problem you have, like something that's bugging you or unsatisfying, that couldn't be changed with a shift in perspective?

When I was talking to my mom the other day I came to realize that it's probably impossible for a single person not think about her love life. Even if you aren't really wanting to date or meet people, if you aren't with someone part of you is probably looking. It's a strange cycle and it makes things sort of annoying. I don't want a boyfriend but being single is kind of a chore. I wonder if people who have taken religious vows of celibacy are really completely free of this. Or if it's more an exercise in pushing away thoughts of sex and romance. I actually can't remotely comprehend the cloistered lifestyle. It's awful but my life is completely selfish in ways. And selflessness on that scale is... something other than what experience as life.

To be frank (because who really reads this anyway?) I feel a little bit funny about what I write on this blog and how personal I get and what the real purpose is. That last paragraph is probably the most I've ever written about my love life. Sometimes I have ideas for posts that would betray a specific event or feeling I'm having and I get nervous because I think that someone else will feel betrayed or that my exboyfriend will read it or blah, blah, blah. But I was thinking about the last few months and from my usual perspective (visualized as a stick figure on a director's chair in my brain) I haven't been doing much. But when I looked back at an old email I wrote in March (and never sent) I realized that there are a lot of things that are pretty different now. I was fatalistically perceiving time since I broke up with Josh as a flat line of events (work, walks and whiskey). But actually I'm in a totally different place now. And if reading something I wrote could make me realize that, could alter my perspective if you will, then it really is important to keep writing regularly and hope that the self-involvedness will dissolve eventually. Phew.

FIN

Grammar Rant

Remember how I was talking about the somewhat counter intuitive writing style empolyed by publicists pitching books? Well at the risk of being repetitive, what the hell?? A couple of weeks ago I asked if I could write a pitch letter for a book. Basically just to get a little practice and have a sort of writing sample for applying to other jobs. So I read this book (not so good) and wrote this letter and today I went over it with the publicist (whose name ultimately appears on it) so it can be sent out next week. Among the many silly changes like loading up the first sentence with participals and adding the phrase "ensued upon a freight train," was the completely erroneous decision to change "She expertly employs the first person..." to "Expertly, she employs the first person..." WHY????? In what way does that make anything clearer? Why would you take an adverb away from the verb it modifies? It's just senseless!

Really. Every day. Like flossing.

Hear yee! Hear Yee! I just filled out the registration for National Blog Posting Month. It's basically an agreement with a nebulous internet entity to write a blog post everyday during the month of November. And even though I am pretty busy right now, writing is important to me. And even if it's just a group of 2000 anonymous bloggers, I figure a little pressure is just what I need. So hopefully I will write at least one more entry before next Thursday when it becomes compulsory (or strongly recommended). And I am going to think of fun column ideas (like Friday Pie-day?). So hold on to your hats. You'll be giving thanks everyday this month for new blog posts on Eating Pie Elsewhere.