"The Young and the Jobless" — Afterward

I’m too tired to write tonight.

I went to bed at 11 a.m. and woke up at 2 p.m., at which point I proceeded to do the dishes, clean the kitchen, knead dough and bake a spinach pie, then organize the living room.

It’s a tough Sunday when you’re on three hours of sleep. Night night.

Ah! It’s 10:30 almost, and I haven’t gone to bed yet.

Well, I had an amazing night, and lucky for you, I’ve decided to tell you all about it before I go to bed.

First off, I went to salsa class with my roomie. A nerdy guy asked me to dance afterward. I thought it would be lame, but I was blown away by the passion in his dance moves. And quite turned on, yes. That’s it, I decided as he twirled me around again and again and the way he smiled made me feel beautiful: If a guy can dance, he needs nothing else. Until the music stopped and the guy could barely ask me for my number. Then I realized that social skills are just as important, actually.

After that, I left to meet Randy. He was downtown, angry that he’d been waiting for me and two others for an hour and a half due to a miscommunication. I sucked it up and listened to him vent for what seemed forever, and then I apologized, even though I felt I didn’t do much wrong. But by the end of that conversation, I realized I had wronged him with thoughtlessness, and then I really did feel bad.

But thirty minutes later, after dancing in one of our favorite bars, we were laughing again. “I’m sorry again,” I said outside and hugged him. We were starting to make up. “It’s OK, I too will take into consideration what you said,” Randy said. It was quite cute, and to this day I’m a huge fan of fights and the way they make you bond when you make up.

We went back into the bar soon after that, where I ran into boy’s bff. I entertained the idea of talking to her, but seeing as to how I only knew her through facebook pictures and I don’t really talk to him anymore, I chose not to. It’s so strange though when you recognize people through facebook.

Randy and I danced, danced, danced, then a mutual friend and Lin showed up. After a while, we left and went somewhere else, where more long island ice teas followed, and suddenly I realized I was dancing too well — and feeling quite tipsy.

So I stopped drinking, and we left. On the way to nowhere, we ran into two guys our age singing and playing guitars on the street. They were really good. Their voices were amazing and reminded me of my own. So I did something extraordinary: I asked them for their email so I could send them my voice clips so they’d consider me for singing together. OMG. I don’t know if I’ll actually do it, but I do think it was cool how I proposed that out of the blue.

We ended up at their place around the block, having more beers and listening to music and attempting the moonwalk over and over again.

Finally, Ricky and our mutual friend left. And so soon enough, Lin and I left too. I munched on a whole-wheat cracker on the way back, and then we stopped for some food. The food was probably the best ever only because I was starving.

And that was the night. I’m about to go to bed, and I just got a text: “So I’ve decided you have to let me take you to dinner tonight. …” This came from a boy whose birthday party I skipped out on just last night. I’m flattered, and I think it’s cool that I don’t even have to do anything, and these guys just want to hang out with me. I mean, it’s always flattering when anyone wants to take time out of what they’re doing to be with you … but when you do nothing at all to earn it … well, that’s just even cooler.

Good morning and good night!

I’ve been putting hope into action lately, doing things on purpose.

These are things that usually scare me, and mind you they still scare me when I do them but I do them anyway, because somewhere one day a few months ago, I read some of the smartest advice of my life: The best way to get over your fears is to fall into them — over and over again until they’re not scary anymore.

Scary, and it is, and I imagine that it will be for a long time. But I have to do this for myself. It’s always been a big problem, and I’ve always hoped it will go away one day. But this is the first year when I’m actively taking steps to reduce it. It hasn’t completely worked yet, but I do feel more comfortable. And I think about it when I find myself in applicable situations, and I try to stay aware and fix it.

I guess I was always a shy kid. Even in elementary, I barely had any friends. I was shy because my mother at home was way too tough — she always gave you tests that you would fail. She made you question everything, until you picked up the tactic and  began to question things in your head before you even said them. And then to avoid conflict, along with yelling and screaming and beating, you began to not say them at all. And so I lived in constant fear around my house for the whole duration of my childhood until I left for college.

In middle school, I had no friends. I was the new kid in the school, the kid that was always just a little too late, whether it had to do with the latest teen trends or with friendships that had taken place before I got there. Those three years were probably the most miserable of my life, and with mom unable to adjust to the new changes and slowly losing it at home, I found myself escaping to my own world: I spent every Friday holed up in my room reading a new book and the rest of the weekend holed up in my room writing a journal, pretending I was normal.

In ninth, my parents bought me a graphic calculator for Algebra. The first thing I did on my shiny new gadget was to multiply the number of days in a year times four — that’s how long I had left until graduation, the day of freedom. Home was still miserable, but school was at least better for a while. I actually had a few friends now, though not great yet, and I still constantly glanced back behind me to see if people were laughing at me for some odd reason like they had in middle school. But all I saw was blank faces: I was now just another kid in just another flocked high school hallway.

A bunch of things happened in high school that led to my depression toward the end of it. But all you need to know about that is that I was depressed, very depressed for a long time. Then I got to college, and finally I knew I was free. Things would only look up from then on. After all, life owed me freedom, I thought then.

Four years later, I discovered life owed me nothing — only the school owed me my diploma by mail, in about a month. That’s what went through my head as I went up on stage to receive a placeholder diploma and glanced up to see my best friends quietly cheering me on. I wanted to cry at that moment. I wished I had parents there. I was the one who’d told them not to come, knowing just how dysfunctional we’d be anyway. But when they weren’t there, I realized that I really had nobody in life but my fake family, the ultimate duo: the then love of my life and the girl he’d cheated on me with. I felt so alone then and in those days after. Like a girl lost on a raft in a black, indifferent sea. …

In conclusion, life has taken a much better turn ever since, but I feel that my life’s circumstances and the time I spent during most of the aforementioned period (the majority of my life) taught me to doubt myself constantly and internalize the “fact” that I was not good enough for my parents and did not deserve love from neither parents nor friends or boys. Thus, I believed that I was doomed to a life of … well, um, doom. And as you may imagine, that may have given me a bit of a boost in the wrong direction when it came to interactions with people.

These days, I see myself as a diamond in the rough and not as the rough anymore, and I still treasure the hope that got me through life. I still hold onto it, but as I grow, it grows with me: It grows more positive and wraps itself around me and the things I do, inspiring me and charging me onward. I often stop by a little church on some days — there, I ask God for courage and strength to help me get through whatever I fear that day, week or month. That helps me.

As I said yesterday, I feel that you really have to find what helps you and then follow it. You won’t find it by waiting for it to fall in your lap; you’ll have to try different things, fail and give up at most of them before you finally stumble on a gem. The gem too may be a diamond in the rough, so when you see it first, you might just think it’s a piece of broken glass and keep going.

But I have faith you’ll be back. Somehow, somewhere, whether it’s hope or some other kind of motivator, the thing you cherish the most will end up being your rope that will pull you to the answer.

And that’s why wise counselors tell young minds who don’t know what they want to do in life, “Do what you love, and money will follow.” Because if you follow your heart’s hints, no matter how small or insignificant they may seem, it’s a step in the right direction. And as we all know, the journey of a 1,000 miles can never be completed in a day, and it always starts with the first step. And you can be sure that the journey and the destination will look nothing like the start.

My fear, you ask, then? Finally, I’ll tell you: people. There. I said it. Sometimes, I’m scared of interacting with people. Irrational, but it’s the same kind of fear I felt at home when I was little. Scared that I’ll say the wrong thing as I often seemed to do then, and scared that what they say in return will sting, bringing back memories of all my mother’s lacerations on my tender, young heart. Scared that they’ll laugh, and their laugher will echo as it did in  all those years of school. Scared that I’ll get hurt, in friendship and in love, as I did so deeply in college.

All insecurities. All fears that hold me back. And that’s why I’ve adopted this belief this year, that by putting myself in various social situations — whether it’s volunteering, persuading people to vote, having a regular conversation with higher-ups or strangers — is a step in the right direction for me.

It’s a tough path at times — especially when it’s Thursday and it’s cold out and you don’t feel like leaving the hearth of your home — but it’s necessary. And I don’t mind it so much anymore when I come face to face with awkward silences, or when I notice myself rambling out of nervousness or when I fumble my words and feel like an idiot. Sure, I blush then and feel uncomfortable, but I always remind myself: In not even a year, how much will this moment really matter? And the answer is always the same: In a month, I won’t even remember it, but that moment combined with all those other moments will have made a transitional difference in my personality. Because each moment of discomfort pushes us toward a step in the right direction, and sometimes issues reach far too deep within us for us to be able to pick up our feet on our own and run.

I cooked lentils tonight.

*angelic music plays*

And just like that, the curse of the chef’s block (and by block I don’t mean cheese) has been lifted from my shoulders.

*angelic music heightens then drops off slowly*

It wasn’t even that hard. I just diced some onions, garlic and carrots; sorted and rinsed the lentils; sauteed the aforementioned onions, garlic and carrots; poured 4 cups of water in the pot of lentils; dropped in the rest of the ingredients, and voila!

When I tried it a half hour later, it was a tasteless mass that burned my tongue. An expected failure, I told myself. Serves you right for taking forever to pick up the ladle again.

But I wasn’t really mad. That’s because aside from a productive day, I already had a plan: dress it up with herbs and spices and voila once more … no need for cooking skills!

So, there I was, standing over the pot in my kitchen, juggling glass containers of bay leaves, parsley flakes and red pepper (the latter was thanks to my dad who I remembered added chilis to make his lentil soup spicy three years ago when we lived together in the summer…holy crap, has it really been three years already since then. …) and planning a Broadway show outing with my roommate at the same time.

Another half hour later (or maybe 15 minutes — I don’t remember, time is always on my side, but I never look in its direction), and the lentil soup was ready. My roomie had retreated to her room, and the kitchen was warm and quiet. *angelic music starts* Carefully, I scooped up a little with the edge of my spoon and raised it to my mouth. *music heightens* It still burned my tongue *falters*, but now it tasted like molasses in January *heightens*, a plot full of daisies *heightens*, a mouthful of olives *stops*.

So, it was all right. Not the best, but flavorful enough, actually. But it wasn’t the flavor of home. Well, just wait till December, I thought to myself. Mom will make you everything you want for two whole weeks … that’s 42 whole meals. Wow.

Although I’m sure her lentils will taste nothing like mine, yes, it is a fact that I’m looking forward to them — despite them being one of my least favorite meals of youth. But unlike in the ’90s (the decade of my tender years), Mom now cooks like Grandma. And when I taste my own food, sometimes I taste a lot of what she made back then — a memory overpowered by the savory tastes and smells emanating from the hearth of grandma’s kitchen.

They were happy-go-lucky women, middle-aged moms working on minimum pay — or maybe even volunteering to fill up their time.

Their blond hair bobbed lightly around their face as they moved, and their flashy smiles and cashmere sweaters were all the same. As they held the pen and made a perfectly round signature on my tardy slip morning after morning, I noticed that even their perfectly trimmed and lacquered nails did not have a touch of uniqueness. Same old, same old … day in, day out.

This was life every morning in the PPO Annex, a minuscule, windowless front office on the side of the building, greeting you as you walked in. There was a narrow space for you to stand if you were waiting — and if you happened to have stopped in the Annex, trust me, you were always waiting.

The wait times meant you were forced to listen to the women’s senseless banter. It was the kind of chat that was pleasant, calm and predictable, and I often felt my mind turning off under the soothing drone. Sometimes they spoke about their kids, other times about new recipes they’d tried out last night. This is it, I thought then. The apex of life in the suburbs.

Or perhaps that thought didn’t cross my mind then, as a young impressionable 10th grader, but rather I ascribe it now to my then self, now that I’ve moved out of those suburbs  and into the city and cannot imagine life back there again. And so I make it up.

Either way, there I was one morning, waiting for Peggy Sue or Grace to sign my tardy slip so I could head to class with an excuse, and their topic of choice that day was gum. “Can I have a stick?” one asked the other. Her wish was granted. As they chewed noisily, one noted how gum makes you hungry. “Why is that?” asked the other. “Well, probably because it gets the stomach juices going, and then you want to eat.”

I’ve always remembered that sentence, because even as I stood there quite accustomed to their thoughts and only half-consciously listening, I wondered if that was true. Of course, as a high schooler, I couldn’t care less when it came down to it and didn’t think twice about it when I left the Annex a few minutes later. I had bigger fish to fry back then … or bigger issues to resolve.

But I’ve always remember that moment. My thoughts have drifted back to it multiple times over the years as I’ve felt the gnawing for sustenance coming from my own stomach after chewing a fresh piece of gum. Is that really why? I wondered.

You’d think I’d have looked it up by now, but I never did. Instead, I stumbled into the answer by chance last night, while I sat at my kitchen table reading up on more nutrition last night at 3 a.m. And now I know better.

Were one of our fellow humans to discover a time machine one day, I’d probably choose to go back to that day one afternoon when I had nothing else particularly interesting to do. I’d walk in the Annex then and stand in the narrow space once again and wait for  to Grace go on about the stomach juices. And right when she makes her infamous remark, instead of standing meekly in the corner half-lulled by the commonplace conversation, I’d step forth and raise my hand. “Actually,” I’d offer,”It’s not the stomach juices. Have you checked the label? More likely it’s ‘aspartame,’ an artificial sweetener that causes your pancreas to release insulin, readying the body to receive some kind of sweet. That’s why you feel hungry.”

At their dumbfounded expressions, I’d step even further, take the slip from under their fingers, and say, “And when your body doesn’t receive the sweet it expected — because you’re just chewing gum and not about to wolf down any food — the high insulin levels stay in your body, leading to a condition called ‘prediabetes’.”

And before turning on my heel and walking out of there for once and for all, I’d say: “So, for your children’s sakes, ladies, skip the gum and chew on almonds instead. Good morning.”

I woke up this morning feeling lonely.

I don’t know why.

But I had a strange dream last night, that I was with my sisters, and my parents, and then my sisters again and we were on vacation. But when we got back, my mother died in my arms.

It was a strange sensation, because in the dream, I traveled through it with her, feeling her breath leave her body.

It was odd. So I woke up odd. And stayed odd as I sat in front of the TV and said bye to my roommate, who was leaving once again on another business trip. I watched TV for a while, and the more I watched, the emptier I felt.

So I turned it off, and I sat at my kitchen table, as water boiled for coffee, and read up on more nutrition. I read all about digestion, absorption and metabolism. I can’t believe what a little expert our body is. I absorbed all the information with my jaw dropping with each sentence. “Now I know there really must be a God,” I said to myself. How can there not, how can all this have been created on its own? It’s too smart — it couldn’t have.

I’m going to church tomorrow. Finally — it’s been forever. But I’m not going because of my nutrition-related discovery. I’m just going because I  meant to go for a while. And to meet Greek people. Not necessarily “young single Greek guys” as my mom urges me on every one of our Saturday calls. But just to meet more of the people I’m closely related to … genetically.

“Wanna hang out now?” asks a new guy over texts as a type this. I’m gonna say OK, aren’t I? Probably. Craps. And it’s 1:30 a.m. How will I wake up for church?! Whatever happened to them calling you three days in advance?!!!

It’s a case-by-case basis. Just like our clients ask for when it comes to moderating those message boards.

“Where?” I ask him. “Wherever. You tell me,” he responds. Craps. Case by case … OK.

You may have thought that I gave up, since I haven’t written for the past two days. Granted, it’s interesting that my sabbatical came at entry No. 34 — just under the halfway point, an inch away from dead center.

But my break was no vacation: I worked 13-hour days the past three days! (And sadly, I brought work home this weekend too.)

It would be nice if the company paid overtime, but even though it doesn’t, I actually didn’t mind. I was frustrated — no joke — at times throughout the days, like when people couldn’t get their act together, information was lost, and the inner workings of the company hindered us from reaching our potential, making being in charge of my portion of the project a complicated thing to manage.

But I can honestly say that at the end of these long days, half-asleep on the train at 10 p.m., I felt driven … purposeful. Alive again with energy and creativity.

Yesterday, my boss asked me if I’d like to keep doing what I’m doing or get new creative challenges. (He put it in more basic terms, but this is what it translates to.) I chose the second. Then he suggested I talk to my other co-workers in our department and interview them on the topic of their jobs, to see if I’d like that kind of thing.

So I did that, and you’d be amazed at how different their world is from mine. We have the same title, but in publishing, titles are mostly meaningless. Especially in our company, where work is very hands-on and many juggle multiple roles.

So, I’m looking forward to the near future. It’s hard to put yourself out on a limb sometimes, knowing that it’s good for you but seeing the threatening depth beyond the cliff too. But it’s exciting also, because that’s the only way to learn and discover yourself and what you really want in life — by getting out of your comfort zone. I’ve done that a lot this year, and I can’t say it’s always been amazing and quite easy like they idealists make it sound. Many times it turned out with me flustered and wondering why I put myself out there in that type of activity in the first place. But I can’t say that I regret any of those times. Because the reason I put myself out there each time was simple: to see if I’d like it, and to get the experience.

As a result, I have so many memories now and different experiences. Ask me how how my year was over holiday cocktails, and I can tell you all about volunteering in a music class with the disabled, trying out a Jazz class I couldn’t follow, trying out a Rumba class I couldn’t follow, training and running a 5K (by myself, not in an actual race), canvasing for a political campaign, speaking French to strangers, discovering San Francisco (by putting up with an awkwardly old friendship), taking part in a dance-off, being an usher for an opera, taking ballet, starting my own event planning society for work and trying to update a blog for 69 days straight.

I guess it’s been kind of a cool year. (Even though Michael died and boys are still retarded — but aren’t they always?)

So then, I guess I’ll continue on with this journey, and I’ll see you on here tomorrow.