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Fear of writing

Every once in a while I get afraid, like that’s it, like I’ve written all that I’m ever going to write, that the best is behind me, and that from here on out, it’s all going to be derivative nonsense. And this fear is always with me to some extent, I mean, I’m not doing this professionally yet, I’m still for the most part writing during my free time, before work, after work, on my days off.

And I’ve been doing it long enough that, well, hopefully I’ve improved somewhat, just through the day-to-day practice. Yeah, I know that I can put words down on a page on a regular basis. But is what I’m doing any good? That I can never really tell. I know that I’ve had stuff in the past fly out of my fingertips, stories that I don’t even know where they came from.

And I’ve had stretches of time where that mysterious sense of creation happened on a daily basis. Of course there’s the flipside to that, where I go on and on for days or weeks and I feel like I don’t have anything new to say, kind of like right now. I’ve been sitting here at the computer since last night. I was committed to writing something, anything. And now it’s the morning and I have nothing to show for it. I don’t know why. Everything was coming up empty.

Finally I decided to just get anything down, which is this, I’m really just kind of going off on how I can’t think of anything to write about right now, about how I’m worried that I’ll never be able to get in that groove again. It’s crazy because even when I don’t have anything specific to say, I still have that feeling inside, like I need to be sitting down at my computer, like something’s about to bubble up, right below the surface.

But, and I don’t know if this is going to make any sense, a lot of the time I’ll feel the ideas down there, but they never breach through to my conscious mind. And so I’m left just kind of sitting at the computer, ready to write, willing to put words down, but unable to make that first step. It’s very similar to that feeling when you have a sneeze coming, you feel it, you scrunch up your face and bring your hand to your mouth. And then nothing. That’s it. It goes away and you’re left with a sense that you just missed out on something.

There are so many more things that I want to do. I’d love to write a comic book, to write a longer short story, eventually a novel. And then I get to days like this where I can’t even get a page down to put on my blog, and that feeling is just so frustrating. Maybe I’m putting too much weight on this blog. I’m conflicted, because I haven’t missed a day in about two years now, and so I don’t want to break that streak. It gives me that added sense of urgency, like right now, when I can’t think of anything, at least I’ll get something, and even if it’s terrible, I don’t know, maybe I need to be willing to just put down something stupid in order to get back to not taking myself too seriously.

I could go on and on forever, overanalyzing this, rationalizing that. I have no idea what’s going on. But it feels like working out, like when I’m training for a race. Some days I’ll go out there and the runs will be so easy. Other days I’ll struggle just to get the bare minimum done. There are so many different factors that go into exercise, writing, working, everything. There’s the time of day, how much I’ve eaten, am I well rested enough?

I don’t know. I’m glad I got this out, because even though it doesn’t seem like much, it was a big deal for me just to get some writing done. I’ve just got to chill out. I’ve just got to ignore that fear, the voice telling me that I don’t have what it takes, that maybe I’ve written some cool stuff in the past, but that was it, and now it’s just going to be boring paragraph after boring paragraph for the rest of my life.

Networking with my old friend Bret

My friend Bret from high school sent me an email out of nowhere. I hadn’t seen him in years. It’s not like we cut the chord or anything, but it went down like most high school friendships went down. We went away to different colleges, sure, I think we might have hung out a few times over the course of the next year, the first Thanksgiving back, stuff like that. But after that, that was it. Facebook wouldn’t be around for another two years or so, and by the time it became massively popular, it wasn’t like I was sitting around thinking, you know what I should do? I should send Bret a friend request.

But that’s how it happened a few months back, all of the sudden I got this friend request, it was from Bret. I said yes. And then the next day he sent me a message. “Hey Rob,” he started off with some introductory remarks, stuff like, “It’s been such a long time. How are things with you?” which, I never really got the whole asking a question via long Internet message. Yes, it’s a mostly nice thing to do, and if we were standing face to face, say we’d just bumped into each other randomly, all right, I can see it happening, “How’s it going?” “Great, you?”

Anyway, after he got all of that mandatory chit-chat out of the way, he got to the crux of the problem. He needed a job, badly, and he was wondering if my company was hiring. And I always kind of clench up at request like this, which is crazy, because how else are you supposed to get a job? It’s not like sending your resume out to the Internet is ever going to work. You have to like know people.

And even though I wouldn’t really say that I knew Bret, certainly not anymore, even though I hadn’t actually clicked all the way through his Facebook page, I was more than certain that, had I given some time into finding out what he’d been up to, I would have totally been surprised as to how different he looked after all these years.

Still, I thought back to all of those times that I needed a job, how I would’ve loved some random acquaintance from way back when to have pulled some position out of nowhere for me. So I said, “Sure, I’ll definitely pass it along.” And I hoped that would have been the end of it, I could have walked in to HR, dropped off a resume, done.

But it wasn’t done. I forwarded Bret’s email to the HR lady, and she wound up shooting me a response right away. “Rob, did you even check this guy’s resume?” And I didn’t, of course I didn’t. I’m not a resume guy. Whatever got me to where I’m at right now, it certainly wasn’t because of my resume. If anything, I’m currently gainfully employed in spite of my resume, that trivial obstacle that I always wind up tripping over as I make it a goal to figure out how to get work.

The back and forth emails were constant, like every two minutes or so, to the point where I clicked print and took the elevator up to HR, maybe see if we couldn’t iron everything out face to face. “Hey,” I told Sarah, I think her name was Sarah, she interviewed me when I was applying, but I don’t know, I hadn’t really been up to this floor in a while. And I could never really gauge how to approach HR, like what was the relationship? Back when I was still a potential employee, she held all of that power over me. It’s not like she was my boss, but that feeling of seniority still felt very present, whenever there was an email, or a face to face, like right then.

“Yeah, sorry, look, I haven’t seen this guy in like ten years. So I didn’t really feel right going through his resume. I kind of just wanted to do him a solid, pass along the document. You know what I mean?”

And she shook her head no, like she didn’t know what I meant, “Rob, look, if you want to network, and I get it, OK, I get the whole networking thing, it’s really important. But if you’re going to do someone a favor, do them a favor. Look at the resume. Do you see all of these typos? It looks like this thing’s current as of 2012. If you’re going to pass along a document, if someone’s reaching out to you for help, you should try to help.”

And this is exactly why I didn’t want to get involved in the first place. Like I said, what was I going to do? What if I tooled around with his resume and it wound up backfiring? What if whatever skills I brought to Bret’s resume wound up negatively affecting whatever chances he’d have not only at gaining employment here, but everywhere? Especially since he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that actually updates his resume, I couldn’t bear that, the idea that I’d be permanently hindering this guy from getting a job, all based on good intentions, it doesn’t matter.

Sarah looked at me, she was still kind of shaking her head back and forth, but eventually she did this sigh before looking up at me and saying, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to call your friend Bret in for an interview, but you have to spend some time helping him with his resume. OK? When I see this guy next week, I want to see something polished, is that cool?”

“Yeah, that’s cool,” I didn’t know what else I was supposed to say. Maybe she was doing me a solid, but she definitely felt like a boss in this situation. Worse, when I got back to my desk, there was another email, it was from LinkedIn, a message from Sarah, she wanted me to join her professional network. And that sigh that she did when I was up at her office, I was doing it right now, I tried to log on to LinkedIn to accept her friend request or whatever, but I couldn’t remember my password, or my username, I couldn’t remember which one it was that I couldn’t remember, it had been so long since I’d signed up for that site.

A week later, Bret shows up for the interview. I had to meet him for coffee and we had to go over his document and it was just like I knew it would be, I barely recognized him. And the part that I did recognize, it just sort of jostled in my memory how Bret and I, we weren’t even like direct friends. We hung out with the same group of people, but I never did anything with Bret one on one, it was always within the context of the larger group.

Even weirder, Bret wound up getting the job. Sarah made a comment to me, something like, “Nice work!” And I couldn’t tell if it was my resume-building advice, or if she meant like nice work on finding such a great hire. But Bret got hired, he was joining the HR team. And so now, I mean, I never see Bret, he works on a different floor. But every time I run into him, that thin veil of old friendship, it’s totally overpowered by the slightly thicker veil of is-this-guy-my-boss? And I don’t know? Is he my boss? What’s the HR relationship with the rest of the company? I wish we had a flow chart like I see at other agencies, like an organizational hierarchy, because it’s so weird, I don’t know how I’m supposed to address anybody, and I worry that I’m constantly coming across as too standoffish, or not serious enough.

I’m great, I’m terrific

When people ask me how I’m doing, I always tell them, “I’m great,” bare minimum, I’m doing great. You know, you like positivity, right? Well then why settle for anything less? I tell people how great I’m doing and they like it, they appreciate the jolt of good vibes I’m sending their way. I even like to say it aggressively, like, “I’m great!” but short, like a really intense response, I’m staring at you directly in the eye, that hand shake we’re engaged in, doesn’t it hurt? Not a lot, but just a little bit, right? That’s because it’s a great handshake.

But like I said, that’s my bare minimum. So actually, if you ever run into me on the street, and you say, “What’s up Rob? How’s it going?” and I’m telling you that I’m great, well, honestly, I’m not really doing that well. Because that’s my bare minimum, that’s the basest level of interaction I’ll allow myself with another human being. If I’m just great, yeah, I’m glad that I got to maybe spark some positivity with my left hand, as it smacked your right shoulder while we were in the middle of that ultra-firm handshake. But your great, that’s my not-so-great.

And things aren’t usually that bad in my life, I don’t have too much to complain about. Which is why most of my day-to-day interactions will fall more “terrific” on the scale than they will merely “great.” I say it like an affirmation, “I’m terrific, how are you?” with added emphasis on the “rif.” Ter-RIF-ic. I might forgo the handshake for a high-five, not a regular five, OK, my hand is all the way up here for a reason, and if you present an outstretched low open palm, don’t expect that I’m going to come down to make contact. No, I’m going to stand here with my hand all the way up, and if you don’t make a move, eventually I’ll force it, I’ll say, “Come on man, high five!” and then when we make contact, I’m looking for an audible slapping sound, all right, yeah, it might hurt, but it’s not real pain, that’s the feeling of you not having experienced a real high-five in quite some time, so you’ll get used to it, all right? Terrific, I’ll repeat it again after that slap, it was loud enough that everyone around turned their heads in our direction, and I’ll extend that spotlight to you, I’ll say it a little louder, “We’re doing terrific over here.”

And again, I don’t want to get too hung up on levels and scales, my terrific equals your OK. But that’s exactly what it is, if I’m terrific, I’m just OK. And I don’t know about you, but I really hate settling for just OK, no way dude, life’s too short to go around feeling just kind of all right. Which is why, don’t get too hung up on the high-five thing. Yeah, it’s a little aggressive, and definitely loud, but I try not to really let myself get too comfortable feeling simply terrific. I’d say that the majority of people I run into say hi to me, and when they ask how I’m doing, I’ll tell them that, “I’m better than ever.”

Now we’re getting into some genuine good emotions here, some truly positive positives. Just embrace it, I’m not trying to rub it in your face, because, again, don’t read too much into it, all right, this my way of how you would say that you’re doing fine, everything’s fine, I’m fine. But I’m better than ever. Just hop on, there’s plenty of room on my express bus to outstanding good feelings.

Just don’t tell me that you’re doing well. I hate it when I ask someone, “How’s it going?” and they’re like, “I’m well.” I’m just like, man, what a buzz kill. Who says well anyway? Like I know it’s correct, and I know it makes sense to write it out that way. But to say it? In actual conversation? You’re well? You sound like a textbook. And now I’m just of great again. And I won’t even say anything, I think I see my friend Jim over there anyway. Maybe he’s got what I need to recharge the batteries here.

And no, I don’t think it’s disingenuous, trying to come across as better than I actually am. I’m just constantly reaching, like maybe if I tell you that I’m better than ever, maybe you’ll light up a little inside. Maybe I’ll inspire you to a higher level of however it is you’d describe yourself at the moment. And then I look at your eyes widening, I can see all of that positivity weaseling its way inside your head, I think, I did that, that was me. And I get pumped up. So when I said I was better than ever, maybe I wasn’t. But now I might be.

And so I’ll correct myself, I’ll add something like, “You know what? This is one of the best days of my life!” (emphasis on that life.) And then a high-five isn’t going to do, OK, I need something better, maybe I’ll get up real close and I’ll shadow box, like I’ll give you two or three fake punches to the gut before letting out a really intense laugh, “ha HA!” and then sidle up next to you, my left arm wrapping around your neck, like a noogie without the actual noogie part, and with my right hand, I’ll pat you on the gut, like we’re brothers, like we’re two guys just horsing around, reveling in the unlimited potential of our out-of-this-world dispositions. Hey come on, let’s go get some ice cream. Yeah, the ice cream place two blocks down, come on, I’ll race you! Let’s go! Ha HA!

You know what sucks? The lunch rush

I hate waiting tables during lunch. It brings out the worst in me, in the guests, in my coworkers. It brings out the worst in all of us, really, as a species. And I’m not just talking about my restaurant, I’m talking about the lunch hour, as a practice. If you’re lucky enough to be able to take a lunch break at all, it’s generally never more than an hour. Come spend eight hours a day working for us, and by the way, that doesn’t include a lunch break, that’s on you. And don’t take more than an hour.

As a waiter, dinner’s pretty easy. People start rolling in around five or six, and the dining room stays pretty full until closing. That’s plenty of time to make money, to let people eat, finish chewing their food, the whole restaurant experience. But lunchtime, nobody’s cutting anybody any slack. We’ve got to do the whole restaurant thing, but it’s got to be over in an hour. Everybody got it? Hostesses, you ready to seat all of these people? Cooks? You guys all set?

Because it’s noon and there’s already a line out the door. And parties of business people get sat and they want their Diet Cokes and unsweetened ice teas immediately. And you know what? We’ll just give you everything right now, we’re ready, burger, boom, salad, got it, let’s go, get it in, if we get our food quick enough, maybe we’ll have ten minutes or so to spend outside before filing back into the offices, another five or six or seven hours of sitting down, pouring whatever reserves of energy we have left out to our jobs, so even though, yeah, I guess we could technically go out for a walk at nine, or ten, we’ve got to eat, and we’re so tired, it’s been such a long day.

So yeah, that lunch hour, that’s a lot of pressure, sixty minutes to try and feel like a normal person sandwiched by two stretches of productivity. Why can’t we figure something else out? Wouldn’t two hours be cool? Or three? Sure, that might eat up into a company’s bottom line, and yeah, what would the shareholders say? But then again, might not a shorter workday lead to less stressed out employees? Shouldn’t that be a goal?

But that’s not the way we do business, and so we’re stuck with the lunch hour, way too little time for everybody, especially if you want to sit down at a restaurant and enjoy an actual meal. “Hi, we’re actually in a little bit of a hurry …” Of course you’re in a hurry. Everybody’s in a hurry. I’m actually in a hurry too. I only have about two hours or so to make money today, so I’d like to get you fed and out of here in as little time as possible. And look at that, everyone else is saying the same thing to their server, that they’re in a hurry. And the whole restaurant staff, we’re all racing to the computers, trying to get your lunch in before everyone else gets their lunch in, before the window gets immediately overrun by orders. The first few plates are out in eight to minutes, but after that, well, even if nobody on the line makes any mistakes, we’re talking sheer volume, OK, you can only cook a hamburger so fast, and you can only fit so many burgers on the grill.

Even worse though, every now and then I’ll approach a table just as the lunch rush really gets rocking, and the businessmen and women at my table dismiss me with a wave of the hand, “Actually, we haven’t even looked at the menu. Why don’t you come back in ten minutes?” And that’s when I have to get a little aggressive, which I don’t like, but I mean, I need to eat, OK, I need money in my pocket. I’m not going to waste my entire lunch shift waiting for you guys to get your act together.

It’s like seriously, OK, order, eat, pay, and leave. Do you see the line out the door? And I get it, OK, it’s not cool to feel rushed. But that’s because there’s nothing cool about the lunch hour. Everybody’s feeling rushed. Do you see that swarm of bodies jockeying for position around the hostess’s podium? Yeah, they’re all waiting for your table. And so when I come over and start bussing everything off, your empty coffee cups, your empty water glasses, yes, I can see you rolling your eyes at me as I wipe down the table for the third time, like I get it, that I know that you know that I’m trying to get you to leave, and it’s not just me, OK, my manager’s like, “Hey Rob, how’s table eleven? Did they leave yet?” and I’m like, “No, I just wiped down the table again and they still didn’t leave,” and she’s like, “OK well, go wipe it down again,” and I’m like, “For real? Again? I just did it.”

And so I have to go over, again, and I have to wipe the table down, again, and they’re all visibly annoyed by my presence, and maybe one of them starts to take out some business documents, like a bunch of printed out spreadsheets. And I just want to be like, come on everybody, I don’t barge into your office and start asking people if they want more Diet Coke, OK, wouldn’t that get in your way? Wouldn’t that disrupt the flow of you trying to do your job, to make money? Yeah, so don’t sit here and bring your business to my table. I need customers to sit here and buy food and tip me so I can go home and go out to eat and buy food and tip people.

What really gets me is that a lot of the most guilty offenders, the parties that just don’t care at all, it’s these businessmen working at banks and hedge funds, paying for their lunches on identical corporate credit cards, all of them with ridiculous names like, “Hyperion Capital,” or “Acceleron Associates.” You guys understand business, right? Don’t you get the whole supply and demand aspect of this restaurant? Your table is in demand. I’m trying to get you to leave so I can supply it to a new round of customers.

And now I’m in full rant mode, but this is the invisible hand of the market at work. OK, this is what you want in your job, right, you want the government to leave you alone so you can make your money and do whatever you want, right? And then you go out to lunch and you get annoyed that there’s a whole restaurant full of people trying to get by on gratuity. That’s how it works. More customers, more gratuity, more money. You need to leave. Just eat, pay, leave, and make room for somebody else. Because this is big city, OK, there are like seven billion people on this planet, all right? You’ve got to make room for everyone. There’s a whole lot of people trying to eat lunch.

Originally published at Thought Catalog

I’ve got ninety-nine problems, and they’re all logistical computer stuff

I used to write on my laptop, but after a while, after an hour or two hours, my wrists would get so hot, resting on the computer, right below the keyboard. I could feel the heat irradiating my blood, I worried that it was poisoning my system. So I got rid of the laptop and bought a desktop.

And it was better, I mean, I didn’t have that hotspot anymore. But working with a mouse was so much different than working with the laptop’s track pad. I guess I took it for granted, what with all of the excessive wrist-worry, just how convenient it was navigating my graphic user interface right there, right below my keyboard, I didn’t really have to move my hands.

What I gained in peace of mind, I lost in convenience. Because even though I tried to give it time, to adjust to the new setup, I couldn’t get a good workflow going, I kept having to pick up my hand and put it on the mouse.

And besides, now I’m basically stuck here, upstairs on my desk. I guess I also took for granted just how comfortable my typing setup was downstairs at the kitchen table. Because I just naturally assumed that writing at a desk would be more of an ideal setup. But it’s not. My wrists are just slightly more elevated. And with all of the moving back and forth from keyboard to mouse, it’s exhausting. I can totally relate to people making up all of that stuff about carpel-tunnel.

And this mouse, it’s supposed to be a Mighty Mouse. Like, it’s just a solid piece with a little ball on it to scroll up and down. But I keep squeezing it the wrong way, even though I don’t really feel like I’m doing anything, nothing conscious enough to actually activate one of the hidden side buttons, but it keeps clicking, it switches between windows, it shows the desktop when I’m not asking it to show the desktop.

So I threw that mouse away and bought a Magic Mouse. It doesn’t have a ball, nothing to get stuck and prevent me from scrolling up and down. And I thought it would have worked much better, but, and I don’t know if it’s the mouse, or my computer, but it’s so laggy. Like, the cursor is so choppy, lurching across the screen. I move the mouse, nothing happens, and I can’t click on anything that I want to click on.

And this keyboard, it’s just not as smooth as working on my laptop’s keyboard. I don’t know how to explain it. Like, it feels like there’s a really heavy spring under each key, and if I don’t hit exactly the right spot, somewhere in the dead center of the key, it’s like, boing! It springs my finger onto the next key, and so I’m just constantly making typos.

So finally I was like, you know what? I can’t do this, it’s just not working out. So I sold my desktop at a loss and bought a new laptop. I’m back downstairs at the kitchen table, it’s really nice, to be able to just write, uninterrupted, not having to worry about all of those logistical nightmares that were plaguing me upstairs.

Only, now that the weather is getting warm out again, I can feel my wrists heating up, just like before. And it feels worse. Could it be worse? Could this keyboard be hotter than my other one? Or is that just in my head?

I reacted a little too dramatically, pulling my hands off the machine like I would something that was really hot, like a stove, like if my wrist accidentally made contact with one of the burners, even though that’s totally unlikely. And when I did that, I knocked my cup of iced tea onto the computer. And thankfully nothing happened, like with the computer, everything still works, which is lucky, because that could have killed it.

But now, every time I type, it’s like the keys are all stuck with dried out iced tea, and so it’s just really annoying, I feel like I’m making even more typos than ever. Sticky typos like hhhhhhhhh or ttttttttttt. I just, it’s really getting in the way of my writing. I just feel like, how am I supposed to get any writing done? With all of these computer problems? What’s the solution?