Oops I’m Being Earnest

(I still can’t upload pictures due to lack of storage on my computer: an ongoing and loyal issue. Instead, just imagine that there is a picture of an old car in a field. The car cannot be red and the field must only contain native wildflowers. The field’s location, and thus the wildflower makeup, is completely up to you. Oh, and the car can at most only have a half-tank of gas because pay day isn’t until next week.)

What happens on a train car if someone has a severe dog allergy but someone else has a service dog? The person with the allergy would obviously attempt to change cars, but what if they realize too late? I asked others if they ever thought about this. One person said they did. It’s nice to know that others have the same thoughts as you but still be so different from you. I still think my thoughts are special even if others call them their own as well.

I think that I’m talented but I often think I don’t have the “right” talent. When people enjoy something I create, I’m confused. Don’t they know so many others do what I do and do it better? But I suppose they’re just doing it differently. It doesn’t mean better, per se. I keep telling myself this but I don’t seem to listen. Listening to others is so easy, so rewarding. Listening to yourself is a challenge, a bore, and not something I’m too interested in doing.

The city health inspectors came to my place of work this past week. They talked to me despite my being firmly in the middle of the corporate hierarchy. As corporate as a bakery can be, anyway. After the inspection (we passed with flying colors!) I had to sign some papers. Watching the city official use a portable printer, which apparently exists, I thought about how funny it is that I may be famous one day and yet here I am, just giving my autograph away to the Department of Making Sure Restaurants Are Clean-Ish. How quickly my brain leaps from unwarranted self-doubt to delusional ego.

If someone’s license plate has the same first two letters as mine, I’m convinced they got their plates the same day as me. That we stood outside in the August sun, maybe even right beside each other, enduring a bureaucratic society together. I’m constantly conjuring up connections. When we are driving on the highway, we are all in this together. But there are, of course, those who don’t see it this way. Those who want to stray.

I don’t want to watch the people I love leave, but I don’t always do a good job of giving them a reason to stay. Recently a friend told me I’m a “canceler,” which I pushed back on gently in the moment. I have gotten a lot better at letting myself live, at actually going through with plans, and I want recognition for that! Everyone cancels and that’s the truth some aren’t prepared to face. Sometimes loving and being loved is exhausting, and it’s easier to just stay in your little bubble and try and finish reading that New Yorker article that you’re pretending to understand.

Since graduating college, it’s hard for me to feel like I have a “purpose,” which is a silly concept inherently. I’m terrified of being myself sometimes, but if I submit to an institution, I am hidden. A name on a paper that receives a grade. A good grade. What does purpose mean, anyway? Don’t even respond, because I’m be convinced I’m never spending my ever-decreasing time on Earth correctly to begin with. I once watched all of Friends in less than two weeks — I’ll never get that time back. Nor my heart (Chandler and Phoebe ripped it out and share equally large halves).

Creating art for oneself is almost a lost idea at this point. It wasn’t ideal, but art couldn’t be even remotely revered until its creator was long dead. Now every new TV show on HBO has an accompanying podcast. Speaking of podcasts, Alec Baldwin is the host of a new one? Weird redemption attempt for him. Perhaps it will be better understood in a few decades.

I feel like I was harsh back there, with the art for oneself thing. I do enjoy creating for myself, but I often fear the views of others. Is this trite? Is this unoriginal? Is this going to be bad for my career in the future? Will I have a career in which I can even be canceled? We should open up the possibility of cancellation to more work fields, by the way. But seriously, my mind has become all-consumed with the idea of “making it” in my desired creative field that I am paralyzed by fear (and stress dreams which make me sweat pls tell me I’m hot pls remember this is my online diary).

Speaking of work, but in the day job variety, I am considering making the switch back to office job life. There is no greater luxury to me than having only half an idea of what your job actually is. And that’s office life, baby! Also I’m seeing more and more offices get these fancy water machines. As someone who has accidentally given herself water poisoning several times, I’m interested in these machines. But it’s also hard knowing what to do when you wake up (covered in sweat) wanting something different every day. It’s like I’m constantly straying away from who I’m about to be. In a car of my own indecision, driving around recklessly. I’m just looking for a parking spot.