Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 10.0 [Focus.]

I need some ideas: how do I raise $600 in 5 days without resorting to prostitution or say, violent robbery?

With that kind of financial problem you'd think I'd copped some kind of fantastic narcotic habit, but the truth is, I'm just trying to pay my bills.

If I was a heroin user it would give this near poverty lifestyle I'm currently living a much more romantic spin. Then I could sell my memoirs.

I had a chance to finally open up on Saturday. I cried. In fact, I sobbed uncontrollably. But before I could feel any kind of catharsis, I pulled myself back together. I have this intense desire to not burden anyone, so when I am in fact falling off the edge, it feels like no one sees it.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm sitting alone in the dark, crying.”

“Really? Why?”

“I hate my life and I wish I was dead.”

Things aren't like they used to be. My short year where I had a nice, middle-class living feels like a previous life. In that life when I was upset I would go out and get drunk, or buy myself some shiny thing, or treat myself to a dinner out. I know now that those were not much more than quick fixes, but now I can't even utilize a quick fix. Now I know that one night can't fix me. I feel totally damaged and worthless all of the time. It takes every ounce of everything I've got to get myself out of bed. And lately, sometimes even that simple act — the act of pulling myself upright and out of bed — is impossible. There are days when it hasn't happened. The strange thing about being self employed is you can give yourself the day off because you are feeling blue, but you can only do that for so long. I am broke, with overdue projects and no concrete prospects and this feeling of hopelessness permeating everything. I really don't want to go on.

But of course I will, because I don't have the balls to do anything drastic, positive or negative. I always worry about the things I might miss if I make any big decisions. It's why I don't lose the weight I want to lose, it's why I don't tell certain people just how I feel about them, it's why I don't leave Athens, it's why I don't move back in with my parents no matter how much money I'd save, it's why I haven't offed myself even though I've had the desire off and on consistently for the last ten years or so.

Even though I often feel like I don't have any deep relationships, I'd still miss these people. I'd miss the conversations, the dancing, the hugging, the getting high together, the getting drunk together, the high fives, watching people play pool, my nicknames, being loud, being quiet, watching movies, exchanging mixtapes, telling stories, and most of all, laughing.

These are the things that keep me going, when I think I've got nothing to live for.

If you're seeing stars, I can tell you that you're probably not looking at my work. I upgraded my Movable Type installation today, and while I get some things worked out I dropped in the RAWK! style by Liz Lubowitz. This is mainly to gain a fresh start, but it's entirely temporary.

Why did I choose to do this today? I have plenty of work to do, but I'm also having one more bad day in a series of bad days lately, and as a result I'm procrastinating. It's unwise and irresponsible, but I think I'm doing it because this is the one little corner of the universe that feels at all under my control at this point, where everything else — and I mean everything — feels utterly unmanageable.

Only Jenna Tollerson would put off working on websites by working on a website.

“You sent me a text message yesterday, right?”

“Yeah... about the dream I had. You and I were shopping for ice cream. We were going store to store looking for some specific flavor.”

“Damn Rocky Road or something?”

laughing. “I don't know what flavor it was. But that was the whole dream. You and I shopping for ice cream. For a long time. It was weird. I don't know what it was about.”

“It's because I'm so damn sweet, ain't it?”

Last night I had a dream that I lived in a large houseboat with a couple dozen other people. It wasn't really like a houseboat but more like a small steamship that had been converted on the inside to house people. The bedrooms were long and narrow, with a dozen people in each one, kind of like what you might imagine an orphanage might look like, but with bigger beds. I remember havings the distinct feeling I was living here because my parents lived just up the dock, on land in an actual house, and even though I had to share a bedroom here I actually got more privacy. I have no idea where that idea came from but to my dream self it made lots of sense.

When the dream opens up it's night, and I'm walking into my bedroom, and getting into the first bed, my bed. A tan heavily tattooed young man is lying next to who I presume is his sleeping girlfriend in the next bed, and he watches and smiles as I get into bed and then take my clothes off once under the covers (apparently, I sleep naked even in my dreams now). Then I turn over and go to sleep. Read More »

When I was a kid, I loved October for the sophisticated reason that my birthday was in the middle of the month, and just when I was coming down from the presents and cake, two weeks later came the sugar-coma-inducing, best-holiday-EVER, Halloween.

Over the years, however, October lost its charm with me. Birthday celebrations in offices were pathetic disappointments compared to elementary school birthday parties, where instead of distributing cupcakes with sprinkles to all of your eager classmates, you get to eat cake at a staff meeting on a random day of the month co-celebrating your birthday with three other schlubby Libras.

(Wood at Sweet Juniper)

Back when I worked in an office, all of the birthdays for a month would be celebrated with a single cake, and everyone born in that month would have to discuss the type of cake to get over a long, slightly jokey email chain. I rarely ate the office birthday cakes, even when I had skipped lunch, because white sheet cake or ice cream cake or cookie cake are all rather unexciting, and I was usually caught up in actual work.

The man who would eventually become my manager shared my birthday month. All I wanted was to get carrot cake, a cake that was exciting enough to eat, and each year this man vetoed my humble suggestion, so we'd have to get another boring sheet cake that I would not eat. I understand that my lack of carrot cake was more or less in the spirit or compromise, but in the context of all the other crap I had to put up with, it usually just felt like he was pulling rank, that I had to compromise even when he didn't, ever.

I know I sound bitter, and that's mostly because I am. I will never get back the time of my life that I spent fighting these petty corporate office politics. My only regret is that I didn't leave sooner.

For kicks, or maybe because I'm just feeling beat down by the world today, I headed over to OK Cupid and retook The Death Test. The last time I took it was ages ago, back when OK Cupid was still wet behind the ears and was a place people actually visited. At that time, The Death Test predicted I would die at the age of 24, with the probable cause “sealed for privacy”. (The only reason I even know this is because OK Cupid saves your results; I had remembered it as 35 years old or so. Boy was I off.)

Since I took this test those many years ago, I have stepped up my drinking habits to a near alcoholic level, I became a smoker instead of someone who smokes sometimes, I've engaged in some lite but nevertheless illicit drug use, I've partied hard and all night, I've left my drink unattended in a crowded bar, I've driven drunk, I've kissed more people than I can count, and I've gotten into a few sticky (ahem) situations with men.

I took the Death Test this time around fully expecting at the end a fullscreen pop up that said something to the effect of OMGWTFBQQ How are you not dead already? flashing at me over a chorus of moaning evangelical Republicans.

Wait, are you maybe writing from the afterlife? 'Cause that would be so badass.

But this is not what happened. Instead, the test now says I'll die at the ripe old age of 28, of cancer. So I managed to add four years to my life, despite all my less-than-wholesome activity, but I don't get that fun feeling of wondering what cause would warrant a “sealed for privacy”. So I get to live longer, but I no longer have, say, the distant possibility that I'll die from drowning because I fell off a diving board where I've been straddling a hot Cubano pool boy, you know what I'm saying?

Did I just get more or less interesting as a person?