Life is Weird

20. AT&T sent me a weird bill.  Apparently they charge for all that drama—it’s like a play!  So I called them and got it all sorted.
21. I paid my bills like a responsible person.  Go me.
22. Okay, weird, but my landlords never told me I had to set up my gas and electric.  Since lots of my utilities are included in rent, I figured it all was.  But long story short, it’s not.  I resolved the mystery today by setting up my gas and electric payments.  Still, totally strange that I’ve lived here two months without knowing I needed to do this.  Yet now I did.
23. I looked at my closet the other day and I have some fabulous outfits, but sadly, many of them are not suitable for work.  Or at least they aren’t professional.  I love my skull-and-stars t-shirt that hangs just so that one tattoo shows and another barely peeks at (I have more than two, kids!).  But the world doesn’t really support these kind of fashion in the workplace.  So I did it.  I broke down and bought normal shirts.
24. Washington state sent me a juror duty questionnaire.  I got to write “I no longer live in Washington” about a billion times.
25. My bike is now here in California, so I finally bought a lock and locked her up in my building’s secure bike location.  She’s so happy to be with the other bicycles!

Organized, eh?

17. I let people know about my blogs, which I guess is publicizing them, but is also just letting people know what’s going on with me.  I’m not sure where to classify this, so I’m putting it under “Life.”
18. I opened a local bank account.  I decided that it was time to have some in-state checks.  Totally confusing process by the way.  Good, I think, but I felt overwhelmed with choices.  I wish piggy banks were a legitimate money management strategy.
19. I organized the files on my computer, so now my list of fiction markets is in a file labeled “Fiction Markets,” in a “Markets” folder, instead of scattered throughout six different files with names like “Things to do this week” (from July) or “Nov. Due Dates.”  Organization?  Shocking, I know, but there it is.  Labeled, filed correctly, and (hopefully) easy to find.

I get internet. Finally

10. I went to the AT&T store and picked up my modem for my (hopefully) soon to be up and running internet.
11. I sent up that modem and it’s not working.  But that’s par for the course, eh?  It’s not broken, I don’t think, it’s just my internet isn’t happening.  Magical and mysteriously not working.  I did set it up though.  Points for that.
12. For many job applications, I need to be able to scan and print documents.  So I went out and bought a printer/scanner.
13. Tried my internet again.  Again “the page is not responding.”  Oy.
14. I bought paper so that I can use my printer.
15. I set up my printer and scanned things that needed scanning.
16. My internet is working!  I tried once more to no avail and finally called AT&T.  A very nice woman named Cheryl talked me through it, confused as I was, and bam, working internet!  Working internet!  I haven’t figured out the wireless part of it yet, but this is enough for today.  Internet!

The daily stuff

My “Life, etc.” activities continued:

1.  Did practical, get-people-to-my-blog stuff: updating my info, commenting on someone else’s interesting post, etc.

2. After my credit card was declined for an online purchase, I checked and released I’d entered the expiration date wrong.  I went back, re-entered it, got declined again, and naturally freaked out.  It took 17 minutes on the phone with 3 different people at my credit card company to figure out that it was declined because I’d initially entered the expiration date wrong which flagged something.  Seventeen minutes.  But they told me that there’s a fraud protection website I can go to next time, so maybe I learned something.  Or maybe it was just one of those annoying things you have to do in life, and I did it and get to count it.
3. More laundry.  Maybe it doesn’t sound like it’s that big a deal, and normally it isn’t, but let me explain my current laundry situation.  Instead of a hamper and detergent and all that, I have suitcases from which my clothes overflow.  I separate the dirty from the clean as best I can, and when I run out of socks or underwear, I dig through the clothes, stuffing the dirty into a way too small bag.  I rifle through my purse for quarters and if I don’t find enough, I grab my smallest bill and head to the nearest laundry-mat that has a change machine.  I borrow my sister’s detergent, invest a good hour and a half in the whole process, and lug it all back to its place in my backpack.  It doesn’t help that I packed light in my travels, so I currently have, oh, two pairs of pants.
4. My boxes of stuff, all the way from Washington, are on the way.  Or more accurately, they were outside my building today.  It’s just that no one told me at the time.  I got a little UPS “failed to deliver” note on the buzzer outside.  What’s weird is that I was home at the “failed to deliver” moment, as well as the rest of the day, waiting for the boxes.  The buzzer on my building is more complicated than some, and possibly isn’t working at the moment.  In any case, nobody let me know they were right outside.  So I got upset but finally called UPS’s central number listed on the little note.  The man there was polite but useless, suggesting only that I could pick up the boxes.  But he did give my number to the local office, who had several suggestions and were very helpful.  Hopefully the boxes and I will meet tomorrow.  And if we don’t, well, hopefully I’ll get a little less overwhelmed about it.  And anyway, I attempted to solve the problem at least.
5. I called about setting up internet with a place that looked great online.  And they do seem great.  It’s just that their equipment fees are hundreds of dollars.  And, well, I don’t really have hundreds of dollars left.
6. But some things are free—like the library card I got today.  I love libraries.
7. Okay, I had one of those days.  I spilled orange juice all over my bed and had to get quarters in order to wash my sheets.  I tried to buy a phone and they were out of the phone I wanted.  I tried to get a landline and internet connected and the internet bit didn’t go through, but when I went to the store to ask, they told me I had to have my reference number, which I of course didn’t have on hand.  But I washed the sheets, got the reference number, and I have faith in my ability to get matters sorted.
8. I called AT&T about my phone and internet quandary.  We (maybe) sorted it out, so hopefully I’ll have a landline this week and working internet 5 business days later.

Introduction to a Project

Me

When I was graduating from college my professors gave out gag awards in our department.  I got, “Person Who Succeeds Despite Never Looking Like She’s Trying,” or something like that.  Whatever it was, I complained about it both angrily and tearfully to several people.  “I try all the time,” I grumbled, unable to take it as a compliment.

But I know why I got that award.  A lot of my life has happened without apparent effort on my part.  I have a friend who applied at 30 schools for her first teaching job.  I, meanwhile, misunderstood a message on my answering machine about an aide position, arranged an interview, and I talked my way into a teaching job.  More often I don’t have to talk my way into anything.  An opportunity presents itself and I just say yes.

This has worked because I’m open to some truly weird experiences. At 26, I’ve been to nearly 20 countries on four continents.  I’ve been paid to teach Kindergarten, assist teachers of children ages 18 months to 8 years, substitute teach every grade K through 6, sell overpriced baby clothes, cook for Buddhist meditators, organize an anarchist library, answer phones, stack bookshelves, teach two Spanish kids English, dangle off a trapeze, model for art students, and sometimes, write.  I’ve made friends in several languages and many, many situations.  My exes span races, religions, nationalities, occupations, and genders.  Counting my six-days-old move to the Bay Area, CA, I’ve lived in eight cities over three continents and four states in the last nine years. There are two ways to look at this: either I’m annoyingly lucky or I’m shockingly aimless and, heavily stamped passport and adventures aside, still have no job, partner, permanent address or clean socks.

Honestly, though, I’m not aimless, though I wouldn’t say I have a plan.  I think not having a plan requires more work than it looks like.  I am semi-secretly a to-do list queen.  I give myself excessive assignments and embark on neurosis-inducing self-improvement campaigns for no clear reason.  And I do this while packing and unpacking all my belongings, working full-time, and breaking plenty vegetarian hearts.

Not this year though.  2010 is a year without to-do lists.  Instead, I’m writing down all the little and not-little things that make up making a life.  I figure every aspect of life is made up of a hundred little things.  So over the next year I’ll do a hundred things in ten areas of my life and write them down, and see where I wind up.  These aspects are:

1. Spirituality.  I try to live with faith as the center of my life.  At least theoretically.
2. Home.  As in: a place that I don’t pack up within a year and couldn’t exit at a moment’s notice.
3. Money.  Like maybe I could earn some.  I’m not in debt and I’d like to keep it that way.
4. Community.  People I share connections with and talk to (without the conversation always including, “Where exactly are you now?”)
5. Creativity.  I want to create art in many forms, and I’d like people to see it.
6. Romance.  I’ve been single for awhile and I’d like to try that whole dating zaniness again, even if it only reminds me why I wanted to be single in the first place.
7. Health.  Because it’s cheaper to buy good food than medicine, and less time consuming to get exercise than to get sick.
8. Activism.  I want to put my beliefs into action.  It’s the difference between being an idealist and an annoying person who talks about political theory in coffee shops.
9. Life, etc.  You know, stuff you just need to do, like getting your driver’s license changed when you move to a new state.  What if I could treat it this as a chance to be mindful and kind rather than a hassle that keeps me from the “real” stuff?

10.  Joy.  Joy needs attention.

Let’s see how it goes.  But first thing’s first.  Under “Life, etc.:”

1. I did laundry.  Now I have clean socks again.  Finally.