The Release

Thanksgiving Break: day nine

After Thursday night's 13-hour paper session, I slept Friday afternoon until 2PM. It was hard-earned. I deserved it. Yet it was fitful sleep, and I was unable to get any real, substantial rest.

I had a dream that I was married, happy, and driving a Honda. "A Honda? Wait a minute," I said to myself in my dream, and then I woke up.

One must find the humor in the fact that I didn't question being happy and married, but being affluent enough to drive a Honda was enough to make me question the dream and wake up from it. You'd think it would be the other way around: "Happy? Married? Wait a minute." At least the Honda is somewhat plausible, eventually.

Because, again, I am a horrible person, and don't exactly expect myself to be happy or married anytime soon. But then again, you probably already knew that.

Last night offered me a little scary excitement; at 9:45PM, as I had just stepped out of the shower, I heard someone pounding loudly on my door (which door, I'm not sure, as I was in the bathroom). I threw on my clothes, as if someone is pounding on the door that late at night, in the middle of a rainstorm, no less -- it's probably important.

I was at the door roughly fifteen seconds after the last knock. And nobody was there. I went out onto the balcony. Nope. Nobody anywhere around the house. Not a sound, nothing.

I went back inside and went to the downstairs door and went out. Nobody around anywhere. Car appeared to be fine, as well. Strange. And the driveway's motion light was off -- if someone had come up the driveway, it would've been on, as it stays on for about five minutes at a time. I thought it may have been the neighbors on the other side of the duplex who had knocked to ask something, but if it were them, they would've heard me come to the door even if they'd gone back inside.

Needless to say, I was perplexed and a bit confused. I wondered if I'd just imagined someone banging on the door, at least for a moment. But it was loud. Loud enough for me to hear through the bathroom door with no issue. It wasn't the cats; this was definitely distinct banging on a door, though where (or who) it was coming from was unknown.

Also needless to say, my gun spent the rest of the night with me on my desk. Yes, I do own a gun.

Interestingly enough, this exact same scenario also happened to my friend Justin a few nights ago, and he lives about 40 miles or so south of me. He owns bigger guns than I do, though.

I just found it interesting, that's all. That sort of thing hasn't happened before.

Regardless, things quieted down and I never heard any more knocking, so about two hours later -- as the rain had stopped for the moment -- I put on clothes that I could actually leave the house in, and went to Walmart to do my weekly shopping. At around midnight. I figured that around midnight on Black Friday, it would be "safe" to actually get my normal shopping done, as there was much less of a chance that I'd be run down by ham-fisted midwesterners and an even smaller chance that I'd be stuck waiting an hour in line to check out, my cold things in the cart getting warm.

I was right; midnight on Black Friday at Walmart was much like a normal night at Walmart at midnight -- namely, the place was mostly deserted. A few ladies I ran into who were stocking the shampoo section told me that Black Friday at that particular Walmart hadn't been bad at all; it was Thanksgiving night at 10PM, when the massive sale started for them, that was terrible. I found this amusing, as that was -- earlier in the week, before I had decided to write my Mrs Dalloway paper that day -- when I had originally planned to start my shopping. As I'm incredibly out-of-the-loop, I knew nothing about any special early Black Friday sales.

This is despite the fact that the Newton Kansan, the town newspaper (and the one I worked at as a reporter for over a year) gave everyone in town a free sample issue of the Thanksgiving paper, which contained all of the Black Friday ads. It was in my home for approximately one hour before one of the cats -- probably Pete, as he's an asshole -- vomited violently all over it, and it was ruined. I threw it away.

Anyway, by the time I arrived at Walmart on Friday night, there were some deals left, but not many; all but about fifteen of the $1.96 DVDs were gone, and the ones remaining didn't interest me (or I already owned them). Most of the household appliances were gone as well, but they had one singular remaining Blu-Ray player, from a reputable brand (I believe it was LG or Samsung) for $49. As much as I desperately wanted it, I could not justify spending the money on it. I am on a budget, and I need to stay on said budget. That $49 may end up being the difference of whether or not I can pay my car insurance on time and in full this time next month. So, sadly and regrettably, I did not purchase it.

As an aside, it wasn't until I got home when I realized I had already received my Amazon.com-branded Chase Visa card in the mail, and could have easily purchased it without a second thought had I taken it with me to Walmart. But I'll cover that later.

This was not an ordinary shopping trip for me; sadly, I'd run out of many things around the house in the past several weeks, and I'd put off buying them because they were either too expensive or I needed to save the money I had (because, as you recall, at the time I had no clue what was going on with my rent check). This means that not only was I out of basics like bread and milk, but also out of every conceivable form of meat in the house aside from the ham I baked earlier this week, all of the cats' stuff, every possible vegetable (canned and fresh), any sort of pasta or pasta sauce, coffee, cigarettes, allergy medicine, dishwasher detergent, and was very close to being out of soap and hair conditioner. These items, for the most part, are the mere basics of my survival as a single guy, and I've been making do without many of them -- or using them sparingly as they slowly ran out -- because of the budget I've been on. Therefore, I was determined that as long as I had a little extra money in my bank account this week (for I just got paid) these were things that I needed to get now before I could no longer afford to -- say, around this time next month, when all the bills are due as well as my car insurance.

Again, as an aside: doing rough calculations and shopping only when absolutely necessary, I should be able to squeak by through the end of the year and survive into the first week or two of 2012, after which the other half of my student loan money should come through and I won't have to worry as much about staying on an incredibly tight budget anymore. Hopefully.

So. After midnight at Walmart, I went down the list I'd written and began acquiring items. Most of these items weren't small purchases. I couldn't really help that, to be honest. Halfway through my trip I began rationalizing about what I really needed and what could wait until I had more money. It sucks that I have to do this, but I'm poor. I ended up only getting about 2/3 of the items on my original shopping list, resigning myself to the fact that some of them I would be forced to simply do without for the foreseeable future -- which, if I didn't feel poor and pathetic enough already, that made it worse. My grand total, when all was said and done: $170.14. And that hurt. Really it did. But it also means I won't have to do any grocery shopping for another several weeks, aside from small things like cat food/litter (which they go through quickly) and cigarettes (which I go through even more quickly). But I now have enough food and other household items on which to survive for a long time, which is good in some sense, I suppose.

I did splurge on one item that I probably shouldn't have, but it's the only thing I've done for myself in months -- Walmart had the new Shout Factory-produced 15th Anniversary reissues of Beast Wars on DVD, seasons 2 and 3 (read: the ones I didn't have already), and I bought them. I spent hours last night, until almost 5AM, watching the entirety of season 2, and started season 3 this afternoon. Haven't seen the series in probably ten years or so. It holds up, and holds up well.

Why was I able to do this, you may ask? Well, aside from the whole I just needed to get myself something that would make me a little happier in my life thing, it is because after finishing my papers for the semester, I have little-to-nothing left to write, or do, in regards to my own coursework between now and finals week. This leaves me with a grand sense of release, more than anything else. Of course, I'll still have to study for my Middle Eastern/Asian lit final, and read the last two books for both that class and my Fiction class, but other than that, there's virtually nothing of importance left for me to do this semester aside from grading my students' stuff. This afternoon, I used some of my Papa Points and ordered pizza, and took great pride in doing little but being fat and nerdy for several hours. As you probably know if you've been reading this blog for any stretch of time, free time for me is very rare, and very prized when I have it. This week, as you know, I have earned it.

I've had very little contact with the outside world since break started aside from a few short emails back and forth with Suri and one or two from my parents. Most of my friends are still out of town -- hell, Zedral's been in Hawaii all week -- and have been offline as well. The few I've talked to online are either undergrads with horrific retail jobs (especially horrific this week), or are friends back home who are no longer in school, like Andrea. I think I'm becoming increasingly isolated and hermit-like as a person, which doesn't necessarily bother me as much as it probably should.

My journey through my own mind continues when I have time off, of course; like it or not, I end up thinking about all sorts of things. This you already know. I think about family and friends, about loneliness and my capacity for love. I let potential dating interests wander in and out of my mind, weighing pros and cons against each other. I think about survival, I think about my creative work and where I'm going with it, and I spend way too much time thinking about my financial situation and my very, very unstable future. I think about my grades. I think about the fellowship positions that will open up in the spring. I think about my beautiful Dean electric guitar that I haven't touched in months, sitting across the room from me. But mostly, I think about things that I wanted to be doing, or wanted to be, as I rapidly approach the end of my twenties.

I'll turn 29 in less than a month. Most of you know this; it's not exactly a secret. I am, all at once, older than most members of my MFA class, and less experienced in life than most of them. Most of my classmates are married (or are otherwise headed that way soon enough); several of them have children. Most of them are there because they want to be, or to get a second degree as a backup to their primary life goals (or as a supplement to the jobs they already have, as some of them aren't GTAs and attend school part-time only). Very, very few of them are there because they're out of options and have no other marketable skills. Almost all of them have some sort of game plan they intend to enact once they graduate.

I am out of options. I have no other marketable skills. I have no set-in-stone game plan. There is, in fact, a good chance that I could end up homeless less than a year after graduation. When I realize this, I don't even necessarily realize it in fear -- more like resignation. As if I am saying to myself, Yep, that's definitely a possibility. Can't do much about it either, can you? You lose, buddy. Start selling your stuff now; All you need is a few sets of clothes and some blankets to be able to live out of the Monte Carlo.

Despite this, I have never felt that what I'm doing isn't important. It is. The MFA program is my chance to make something of my life, to create a future career for myself, and to get a higher degree to get me towards that goal. I have never regretted going back to school and never will, regardless of what happens after graduation. In my life I try not to have regrets about anything anymore. 2011 has been a horrible year, a year wrought with monetary troubles, car issues, a breakup, and an overwhelming, crippling sense of despair. Yet I power through it all and keep my head held high, as I have learned not to let these things affect me as much as they used to. A year or two ago, if I had been faced with the same problems, I would have collapsed under the strain long ago -- I would have packed up everything I could, sold the rest, and would have silently moved back home to my parents' place to live out the rest of my years in an even more hopelessly-drifting, useless fashion. That is why I don't go back now. That is why I never will go back. I have drive and determination in my life; I have goals, and none of them involve me letting life figuratively, and literally, pass me by. Whether I fail or succeed at those goals will be by my choice, and by my actions, alone.

To this end, I have been doing research into Ph.D. programs, and have also been researching teaching requirements at small and/or community colleges around the area as a backup. This probably comes as no surprise to you. As much as I'd rather not live in Kansas any longer than I have to (for reasons that should be apparent to you, as it's fucking Kansas) after I graduate, in the short term it may be a necessity; Flat State University may ask or need me to adjunct as well, and there's not really any way for me to monetarily leave the state until I a) get a good job and build up some savings, or b) win the lottery or Publisher's Clearing House prize. As the latter is considerably unlikely, that leaves the former as the most likely scenario. While I've heard about adjuncts getting paid decent money -- much more decent than what I'm getting now -- it's still not a career I could live on much more than I'm living now, much less a career that I could start a family on.

Ah yes, back to that again. As I mentioned before, there's a lot of things I thought I'd be, or be doing, by the end of my twenties. About the only one of them that's come to pass is that I'm still writing. I always wanted to be in a band. I always wanted to be a stand-up comedian (something that my friends frequently tell me I should still do). For the past five or six years, even, I've wanted to have my own podcast and generate a fanbase of loyal supporters.

And finally, I figured by the end of my twenties, I'd be married with children, and that I'd be happy.

That's the one that hurts the most, by the way. In case you couldn't guess.

As you may know, my (biological) parents divorced before I was five. Both of them later remarried. I never liked either of my step-parents, but luckily that wouldn't be a problem for long; my father cut me out of his life completely by the time I was ten (the less said about that, the better), and around the same time my mother divorced my stepfather (and again, the less said about him, the better). My "dad," and I do see him as such, has been with my mother for almost twenty years now, and they've never married. Despite my tumultuous early childhood, as I grew up, my parents raised me to be the upstanding individual I am today; my sense of humor, as well as basic male life knowledge comes mostly from my dad and brothers, and my sense of everything else -- including knowing and admitting my faults, my flair for the dramatic, my potty mouth, and my brutal-in-the-face-of-everything honesty all come from my mother.

Who knows where the hell my writing talent comes from; something had to come from the genes of my biological father, though I hope it's not that. I already carry his gene for horribly-patchy facial hair. Can't that be enough?

Anyway. I'm getting off-track.

My point is that when my parents married, they were barely over twenty. My mother had me when she was 22, and was divorced by 27. Again, I will be 29 this year. Never married, no children (that I know of, anyhow; my college days are hazy as you know). I'm not saying that I would have done the same, especially not in today's world, but I at least thought that as I approached thirty I'd be done with school and at least married, if not with children.

I will be 30 when I graduate from Flat State University, and the only children I have are the cats.

My ruminations on this subject probably awe some readers of this blog, or at least mystify them. After all, it's supposed to be "normal" for guys in their twenties to be running around, dating multiple women, avoiding commitment at all costs. None of that is appealing to me, and hasn't been in many years. When I met the former girlfriend, I was already ready to settle down, and for over six years, I did. And I waited. And when we both realized it wasn't meant to be, we both moved on, amicably. My viewpoints have not changed in that time; I am a sensitive, introspective man capable of great love as well as great patience and understanding. I am getting old, and as we all know, with age comes wisdom. I therefore can and do see through the superficiality of running around and dating multiple women, avoiding commitment, etc. I saw through it ages ago. It's not for me. But then again, if you know me, you already knew that.

This puts me in a weird spot, especially when it comes to my age and life experience levels. I am surrounded by, in a word, children. I don't necessarily say that in a bad way, but it's true. I spend large amounts of time standing in the front of classrooms, teaching English lessons to freshmen who -- for the most part -- have no idea about what real life is like yet. When I'm not in front of a class, I am surrounded by fellow students who, again, are as much as five or six years younger than I am in some cases, and these days, that is a massive generation gap. I have nothing against any of my colleagues as people, obviously -- there are many I like, if not feel an outright kinship with (most of whom read this blog) -- and there are several I dislike or feel indifferent about, just as I am sure there are some who dislike me or otherwise can't stand to be around me for various reasons. I've accepted that, of course. But my point is that most of them are still young and idealistic (or, conversely, young and extremely jaded), and there are many of them I simply cannot relate to on an emotional or idealistic level.

Some would probably say I'm a bit jaded myself. I prefer the phrase "bitter and realistic."

For example, I'm sure I'm going to have several conversations like this next week:

THEM: "I had a blast over break! I went back home to [state and/or city] and I got to hang out with [beloved family member(s)] and we ate [list of Thanksgiving-related food, usually with a reference to pumpkin pie somewhere]. Oh, it was so great, I wish I didn't have to come back to Wichita; I hate this fucking place. What did you do?"

ME: "I, um...wrote about fifty pages' worth of papers and downloaded a fair amount of porn off the internet. Alone."

...because that's what really happened.

That's also probably why I don't have a wife or children, though I'm sure the beat-up car and incredibly small bank account isn't helping my chances any. Now that I think about it, I'm not exactly sure the Honda is even really plausible.

Again, at least I'm honest.

The rest of my break -- all two days of it -- will be spent taking care of a bit more housework and laundry, as well as casually reading the last books I need to read for the semester (so that I can be, y'know, insightful during class discussion). It may be a lonely life with my kitties, but at least it's quiet and uneventful. And I like quiet and uneventful.

To all of my friends and family traveling today and tomorrow, I urge you to be safe in your respective journeys. It would really ruin my day if any of you died.