Many Atlanta homes and businesses don't have properly insulated pipes in exterior walls or under houses. As a result, water/ice/slush coated many streets after the hard freeze, and repairs are slowly starting. Don't expect every business or government office to be open this week, even if that was the plan.
I had a small water event in the basement bathroom of our rented townhouse - luckily I was home to catch it.
We had a large water event in the vacant unsellable house in Lake Claire. Neighbors let us know water was pouring off a deck. Insurance was contacted, but I'm not going to touch the place. There's nothing I can really do by myself (the husband and kids are out of town for the holiday). I was lucky enough to be with friends when the news of the problem got to me, so I could have a good hard cry in someone else's bathroom for once. It was a nice change of scenery in which to sob.
The realtor was actually the one who managed to get the water shut off at disaster house. I had called the city emergency line, but with pipes popping all over the city in Christmas Day, we were just put on a list. City of Atlanta water meters are the special fancy locking kind, not the old curb key kind, or I would have killed the water supply before the cold reached us. Instead I had just turned on the heat, set the taps to drip, and hoped for the best like everyone else.
It's just busted pipes. No one I know died. Things will get better. My friend's house is big enough that I could take 15 minutes in a back bathroom to collect myself before going back out to snack and play boardgames with friends. I didn't talk about the problem, and everyone there was considerate enough to not ask how selling the Lake Claire house is going.
This all reminded me of when I was pregnant and would have to leave group settings and vomit. Everyone knew I was leaving the party or work meeting to go be sick, and it wasn't remarked on except in a supportive way. As we continue to go through the journey of losing the house, sometimes I have to leave whatever I'm doing to go emotionally vomit in the back bathroom. I try to go out and have fun or be productive, but at this point I never know when the nausea of the bigger thing happening to me is going to sieze control. I was supposed to have four days off for the holiday. I spent at least a few hours of each of my days off dealing with problems caused by the weather.
Luckily, I got a text the next day from work management letting me know we have tomorrow off as well. A pipe popped at work, too. No telling what the damage at the office will be, and maybe they'll allow me to work from home later in the week.
One of my best friends gave me supportive hugs at the holiday party while I sobbed. I had tried to go to the party to forget for a few hours all the weather problems, and the call about the water cascading off a deck in the vacant house came in right as I arrived. Actually, the call came in to my friend's phone, because of course mine had been destroyed in the water event at the rental house the previous day.
As my friend gave me a ride home later, I emotionally vomited all over his car during the trip, because I'm sick. I'm sick with the consequences of the last two years. My friend understood, and we caught up a little. I hadn't seen him in months, because I've been busy with all the things that are making me sick.
It's difficult to go anywhere or do anything with friends while you're experiencing a disaster. I never know when my own pipes will burst, sending gross, unwanted water everywhere. I imagine losing a house must be like going through a divorce that way. Maybe losing the house is less like vomiting from morning sickness, and more like being divorced by the place where you used to live. I don't want to live with that house anymore, but the actual divorce proceedings are dragging on, and putting me through the wringer. The house keeps calling me with problems that have to be fixed. Lawyers are involved, but think we're both boring, and by the end, neither the house or I will have any money.
Which is a long way of saying that there's ice in the streets, and Atlanta has so much water damage we might as well have had a flood. Repairmen will be busy. They'll get to the rental, and the vacant house, and my work eventually. Don't expect a lot from those of us down here for a week or so.
Thursday, December 29, 2022
Thursday, December 22, 2022
Another lie I wish I hadn't told
Earlier this year I lied to a dying woman. I didn’t mean to lie to her, when I said that I would attend her funeral at the Jewish cemetery in Nashville’s West End when she passed. Sharon had been dying for the last eighteen months, and was looking to me like she’d make it to January at least. Instead she passed away in November, right after the house sale failed and the car started having problems. I had used up any credit card emergency reserves on that stupid work trip to Jekyll. I didn’t make it to Nashville to see her burial.
Sharon Doochin was one of our neighbors while we lived in Lake Claire. She was older, she had a terrifying dog, and we were friends. Before she got sick - before COVID came for her in the summer of 2021 - she would park herself at the top of the lawn of doom we had in Lake Claire, and talk to me while I was gardening or landscaping. Sharon wasn’t an easy person to get along with, and in that regard she reminded me of older members of my own family. I helped her a little around the edges of her life, because at some point someone will have to help my parents, who are both just as difficult as some people found Sharon to be. I haven’t talked to my father since 2004, and I cut ties with my mom after her father died. I hope both my parents have good neighbors in the end. Just because I can’t be around them doesn’t mean other people can’t find value in relationships with them. Sometimes people and places just build up so many negative memories that it’s best to stay away.
I don’t go to Nashville for the holidays anymore, not since a therapist told me in 2020 I don’t ever have to go back to Nashville again. I kept revisiting the place on holidays because the husband’s parents are there. Every year the city became less and less recognizable, and in 2019 I found myself just driving to the parking lot of the UU church in Green Hills and just sitting in the parking lot alone. It was one of the few places that still existed in the city that I once knew, even though I was never a member. Later, my friend Jeff - the last really close friend I had in Nashville in 2019 - told me I should have gone to his house off Granny White Pike to try and chill out. It was good advice and I should have gone to hang out with Jeff that year. He moved to Chattanooga during the pandemic, and so using his house as a safe place in Nashville is no longer an option. I still know people in the area, but not in a “can I hide at your house from the goddamn holidays” kind of way.
When I told Sharon I would go to Nashville for her funeral, I saw my husband’s eyebrows go up. He knows how much I avoid the place now, and that I hate lying. I really did mean it when I told our Lake Claire neighbor I would attend her burial, but then she passed quicker than we could unload the house that made her our friend. Her family was from Nashville, and we never discussed our reasons for disliking the town in any depth. She arrived in Atlanta thirty years before I did, and neither of us ever planned on returning, and that was enough on that subject.
The house we still own in Lake Claire sits empty, and has to be winterized today. A new appraiser was engaged (again) last week and came back (again) and said the place was worth 200k more than anyone is actually willing to pay for it (again). This means that our current hopes are pinned on something called a deed-in-lieu, and that we won’t be rid of the three story disaster until 2023. The pain just keeps coming from that place, and the only neighbor I really got close to is now dead. I still have friends on the street, but not in a “let’s sit on the porch and talk shit” kind of way.
Besides, anyone in the Lake Claire neighborhood would just want to talk about what’s going on with the empty house, and the topic now makes me physically nauseous. When you tell people “We bought the place as a fixer-upper nine months before the pandemic hit, and then we couldn’t afford both repairs and the mortgage”, no one really believes you. I know they think they could have done better, that we must have fucked up royally to be in the position we’re in now.
Sharon caught COVID from a repairman who came to her house coughing just a month after she had completed the first vaccines. He gave her a variant she never really recovered from, and during her treatments the doctors found the cancer that finished her. Maybe Sharon was always going to die from the cancer she inherited from a lifetime of cigarettes. Maybe we were always going to lose money on the Lake Claire house. COVID just sped up the inevitability of Sharon’s passing and our fiscal losses, I suppose. Maybe without COVID Sharon could have lived to see us try to sell that house when the kids graduated High School, like we planned. Or maybe she was always going to die before we could sell the house that made us neighbors.
I’ll be celebrating the days off this week by going to a party with my chosen family, while the kids and the husband go to Nashville. As the only business I have in the town four hours north would be visiting Sharon’s grave, I’m happier to be in Atlanta. I will go to the Jewish cemetery in West End, the next time I go up there. But right now, I feel like Sharon would understand I want to spend the holidays in the town I made my home with my own decisions, not somebody else’s decisions for me. Sharon fought to the end to live her life her way, and succeeded. We should all be so lucky.
Sharon Doochin was one of our neighbors while we lived in Lake Claire. She was older, she had a terrifying dog, and we were friends. Before she got sick - before COVID came for her in the summer of 2021 - she would park herself at the top of the lawn of doom we had in Lake Claire, and talk to me while I was gardening or landscaping. Sharon wasn’t an easy person to get along with, and in that regard she reminded me of older members of my own family. I helped her a little around the edges of her life, because at some point someone will have to help my parents, who are both just as difficult as some people found Sharon to be. I haven’t talked to my father since 2004, and I cut ties with my mom after her father died. I hope both my parents have good neighbors in the end. Just because I can’t be around them doesn’t mean other people can’t find value in relationships with them. Sometimes people and places just build up so many negative memories that it’s best to stay away.
I don’t go to Nashville for the holidays anymore, not since a therapist told me in 2020 I don’t ever have to go back to Nashville again. I kept revisiting the place on holidays because the husband’s parents are there. Every year the city became less and less recognizable, and in 2019 I found myself just driving to the parking lot of the UU church in Green Hills and just sitting in the parking lot alone. It was one of the few places that still existed in the city that I once knew, even though I was never a member. Later, my friend Jeff - the last really close friend I had in Nashville in 2019 - told me I should have gone to his house off Granny White Pike to try and chill out. It was good advice and I should have gone to hang out with Jeff that year. He moved to Chattanooga during the pandemic, and so using his house as a safe place in Nashville is no longer an option. I still know people in the area, but not in a “can I hide at your house from the goddamn holidays” kind of way.
When I told Sharon I would go to Nashville for her funeral, I saw my husband’s eyebrows go up. He knows how much I avoid the place now, and that I hate lying. I really did mean it when I told our Lake Claire neighbor I would attend her burial, but then she passed quicker than we could unload the house that made her our friend. Her family was from Nashville, and we never discussed our reasons for disliking the town in any depth. She arrived in Atlanta thirty years before I did, and neither of us ever planned on returning, and that was enough on that subject.
The house we still own in Lake Claire sits empty, and has to be winterized today. A new appraiser was engaged (again) last week and came back (again) and said the place was worth 200k more than anyone is actually willing to pay for it (again). This means that our current hopes are pinned on something called a deed-in-lieu, and that we won’t be rid of the three story disaster until 2023. The pain just keeps coming from that place, and the only neighbor I really got close to is now dead. I still have friends on the street, but not in a “let’s sit on the porch and talk shit” kind of way.
Besides, anyone in the Lake Claire neighborhood would just want to talk about what’s going on with the empty house, and the topic now makes me physically nauseous. When you tell people “We bought the place as a fixer-upper nine months before the pandemic hit, and then we couldn’t afford both repairs and the mortgage”, no one really believes you. I know they think they could have done better, that we must have fucked up royally to be in the position we’re in now.
Sharon caught COVID from a repairman who came to her house coughing just a month after she had completed the first vaccines. He gave her a variant she never really recovered from, and during her treatments the doctors found the cancer that finished her. Maybe Sharon was always going to die from the cancer she inherited from a lifetime of cigarettes. Maybe we were always going to lose money on the Lake Claire house. COVID just sped up the inevitability of Sharon’s passing and our fiscal losses, I suppose. Maybe without COVID Sharon could have lived to see us try to sell that house when the kids graduated High School, like we planned. Or maybe she was always going to die before we could sell the house that made us neighbors.
I’ll be celebrating the days off this week by going to a party with my chosen family, while the kids and the husband go to Nashville. As the only business I have in the town four hours north would be visiting Sharon’s grave, I’m happier to be in Atlanta. I will go to the Jewish cemetery in West End, the next time I go up there. But right now, I feel like Sharon would understand I want to spend the holidays in the town I made my home with my own decisions, not somebody else’s decisions for me. Sharon fought to the end to live her life her way, and succeeded. We should all be so lucky.
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
My Pants Were Not Alight, So That's Something
Monday morning I was chased by a woman with no pants out of the Circle K where Monroe turns into Boulevard on Ponce. This was, as my teen daughters pointed out to me later, entirely my own fault.
I always forget something on the way to work on Mondays, and this week it was my frozen waffles left in the toaster. After dropping the girls off at school, I asked the husband to pull into the Circle K so I could grab some mini donuts and other horrible to eat things that could get me through the day.
The woman with no pants was huddled on the concrete outside the Circle K and asked me for a donation. We just made last month’s rent, and the car needed repairs, and we’re in foreclosure on the house that won’t sell, so I did one of those white lies and told the beggar I had no cash.
Then she evidently saw me pay for the junk food breakfast through the window with a twenty.
Full on, in the store, “MA’AM AS YOU SEE I HAVE NO PANTS, CAN I PLEASE HAVE A DOLLAR FOR BREAKFAST.”
I panicked. She chased me to the car, where the husband was waiting, oblivious to the entire conflict. We got out of the situation without harm to anything but my sense of self. It was a hell of a Monday though, starting raw with conflict. I admit I lost my temper a few hours later when an accountant at work demanded to see my credit card statements PROVING the receipts, the ones I had provided for the Jekyll island trip (the one with chemical plant explosions, a hurricane, and goddamn studies on domestic terrorism) came from my own funds. Of course, the receipts came from my own funds and if my employer had paid me back in a timely fashion, I wouldn’t be short on rent, but I couldn’t say that.
I did calm down and hopefully didn’t damage my rep at work too much. I then had to download credit card statements, redact all the personal info, and reload them into a computer system, all so I could get paid back for a rental car, gasoline, and two trips to Arby’s. I need the money spent on the work trip paid back to me. I’d hate to end up outside a Circle K with no pants.
“You shouldn’t have lied to her, mom.” Said one of the teens when I explained my hard day over dinner. “That whole thing was on you.”
“Yeah mom,” said the other. “If you hadn’t lied, she wouldn’t have chased you.”
Fuck me, I’ve raised them with my bizarre attachment to truth, and the teens are right. I shouldn’t lie to anyone, regardless of their personal dress code. It was my fault for telling the pantless woman I had no cash. It was my fault for taking on debt for the work trip I couldn’t really afford. If I had been honest and admitted up front that I was struggling to make rent to both the beggar and my employer, both these situations could have been avoided. I had too much pride though and lied to both.
This was my weekly reminder that nice white lies – the kind some still insist I should use to just “get along” don’t really ever actually help me get along. By telling the truth to my employer before the Jekyll trip, I could have avoided that strange conference all together, and an awful lot of stress. By telling the truth to the beggar, I could have avoided being chased out of the circle K clutching nasty snack food. The last I saw of the pantless woman, she was stumbling across the crosswalk to the Dunkin’ Donuts on Ponce. I hope someone there gave her a better breakfast than the one I crammed down in the car.
One baldface lie (I have no cash) and one lie by omission (not speaking up about my personal financial situation) hurt me Monday. I’m writing this as a reminder to myself about being more truthful in the month of December, the month when white lies and omissions are expected. Some people live their whole lives lying through the holidays, but it’s never worked for me. So if you wonder why I might not be at your holiday party, or why I stayed home from the gathering you invited me to, know it’s because I didn’t want to lie to you, or risk a lie of omission. The parties I attend and the people I visit are the ones I know who can tolerate honesty. It’s not a big group.
I always forget something on the way to work on Mondays, and this week it was my frozen waffles left in the toaster. After dropping the girls off at school, I asked the husband to pull into the Circle K so I could grab some mini donuts and other horrible to eat things that could get me through the day.
The woman with no pants was huddled on the concrete outside the Circle K and asked me for a donation. We just made last month’s rent, and the car needed repairs, and we’re in foreclosure on the house that won’t sell, so I did one of those white lies and told the beggar I had no cash.
Then she evidently saw me pay for the junk food breakfast through the window with a twenty.
Full on, in the store, “MA’AM AS YOU SEE I HAVE NO PANTS, CAN I PLEASE HAVE A DOLLAR FOR BREAKFAST.”
I panicked. She chased me to the car, where the husband was waiting, oblivious to the entire conflict. We got out of the situation without harm to anything but my sense of self. It was a hell of a Monday though, starting raw with conflict. I admit I lost my temper a few hours later when an accountant at work demanded to see my credit card statements PROVING the receipts, the ones I had provided for the Jekyll island trip (the one with chemical plant explosions, a hurricane, and goddamn studies on domestic terrorism) came from my own funds. Of course, the receipts came from my own funds and if my employer had paid me back in a timely fashion, I wouldn’t be short on rent, but I couldn’t say that.
I did calm down and hopefully didn’t damage my rep at work too much. I then had to download credit card statements, redact all the personal info, and reload them into a computer system, all so I could get paid back for a rental car, gasoline, and two trips to Arby’s. I need the money spent on the work trip paid back to me. I’d hate to end up outside a Circle K with no pants.
“You shouldn’t have lied to her, mom.” Said one of the teens when I explained my hard day over dinner. “That whole thing was on you.”
“Yeah mom,” said the other. “If you hadn’t lied, she wouldn’t have chased you.”
Fuck me, I’ve raised them with my bizarre attachment to truth, and the teens are right. I shouldn’t lie to anyone, regardless of their personal dress code. It was my fault for telling the pantless woman I had no cash. It was my fault for taking on debt for the work trip I couldn’t really afford. If I had been honest and admitted up front that I was struggling to make rent to both the beggar and my employer, both these situations could have been avoided. I had too much pride though and lied to both.
This was my weekly reminder that nice white lies – the kind some still insist I should use to just “get along” don’t really ever actually help me get along. By telling the truth to my employer before the Jekyll trip, I could have avoided that strange conference all together, and an awful lot of stress. By telling the truth to the beggar, I could have avoided being chased out of the circle K clutching nasty snack food. The last I saw of the pantless woman, she was stumbling across the crosswalk to the Dunkin’ Donuts on Ponce. I hope someone there gave her a better breakfast than the one I crammed down in the car.
One baldface lie (I have no cash) and one lie by omission (not speaking up about my personal financial situation) hurt me Monday. I’m writing this as a reminder to myself about being more truthful in the month of December, the month when white lies and omissions are expected. Some people live their whole lives lying through the holidays, but it’s never worked for me. So if you wonder why I might not be at your holiday party, or why I stayed home from the gathering you invited me to, know it’s because I didn’t want to lie to you, or risk a lie of omission. The parties I attend and the people I visit are the ones I know who can tolerate honesty. It’s not a big group.
Thursday, December 08, 2022
Wednesday is for Working Drafts
Monday a cold rain moved into Atlanta so suddenly that my oldest texted me after school, not feeling safe to finish the walk home by herself. Worried about both the kids – the youngest was in an after-school activity and unable to use her phone until it was done – I spent money we didn’t really have to catch a ride share to a restaurant across from the High School. There the oldest and I shared an appetizer and passed the time working on a college scholarship entry while we waited to hear from the youngest.
I worried. It was dark, and in this time of constant communication, being unable to contact a kid for even a couple of hours was nerve-wracking. Kids get hit by cars on the edge of their High School campus at least once a year. But of course, she was fine, just late. The youngest hustled into the restaurant, and because it was pouring again, I paid for another cab to drive us the mile home. Money flows away from me constantly, and I feel powerless to stop the losses. I did gain some unexpected precious time with the teens, so that was something.
The fog rolled in on Tuesday, covering all of us in Atlanta in a blanket to dampen the anxiety around the run-off election for senate. I tried not to hold my breath all day, waiting for word of a line shooter or other violence, but Georgia made it through with no big incidents. An awful lot of people worked hard to make sure we can still vote without stabbings or gun violence at the polls, but that’s never felt like so near a thing in my lifetime as it did this week. I expect the violence now will come this weekend, or over the holidays. The idea that there will be no political violence over a contest so close is laughable. There’s too many guns, and too much rhetoric in the air.
I told the girls via text Wednesday to make sure that if they must stay after school to leave campus by 4:30 or call for a ride. It’s the darkest part of the year, and I’m preparing them to move around the city as grown-ups do, but they aren’t grown-up yet. The oldest has probably reached her adult height, but still has that lean look of a person not yet fished in her maturity. The youngest is growing very tall like me, taller than her sister already, but has the movement style of her age, easily identifiable as a very young person from a distance. They don’t behave like targets but could be mistaken as vulnerable if alone in the dark. Their walk from school is along a path with lots of traffic and potential help, but I have to worry when there’s not so much light.
When I post this, it will be the second Thursday in the month, and rent still isn’t paid in full. A friend recently offered me a spot in a great burn camp in February, and I know I should tell him I can’t go. I want to go, but even if everything else about the trip was free, I couldn’t afford the transportation. The burn is in Miami, besides. I’ve tried to have fun on Miami before – it never works out, probably because I don’t do the kind of drugs that seem popular there. I could use a week near a beach without the chemical fires, hurricane threats, and homeland security lectures I had on Jekyll, but it’s not in the cards right now.
We’re eighteen months out from the oldest child going off to university, and thirty-six months out from having both the babies be legal adults. I’m not ready for a trip to a burn in Miami, but I might be in a few years. It’s strange to be in this holding pattern, still circling the nest even while the kids get ready to fly, aware that at any minute a careless driver or domestic terrorist could set all our futures back and away after so much work. It happens every day, in this neighborhood – a hit and run, a rapist, gun violence. I have to make an effort not to think about what could happen and focus on the good things. It isn’t easy. It’s 2022, and the world is on fire. We’re all just doing our best.
I worried. It was dark, and in this time of constant communication, being unable to contact a kid for even a couple of hours was nerve-wracking. Kids get hit by cars on the edge of their High School campus at least once a year. But of course, she was fine, just late. The youngest hustled into the restaurant, and because it was pouring again, I paid for another cab to drive us the mile home. Money flows away from me constantly, and I feel powerless to stop the losses. I did gain some unexpected precious time with the teens, so that was something.
The fog rolled in on Tuesday, covering all of us in Atlanta in a blanket to dampen the anxiety around the run-off election for senate. I tried not to hold my breath all day, waiting for word of a line shooter or other violence, but Georgia made it through with no big incidents. An awful lot of people worked hard to make sure we can still vote without stabbings or gun violence at the polls, but that’s never felt like so near a thing in my lifetime as it did this week. I expect the violence now will come this weekend, or over the holidays. The idea that there will be no political violence over a contest so close is laughable. There’s too many guns, and too much rhetoric in the air.
I told the girls via text Wednesday to make sure that if they must stay after school to leave campus by 4:30 or call for a ride. It’s the darkest part of the year, and I’m preparing them to move around the city as grown-ups do, but they aren’t grown-up yet. The oldest has probably reached her adult height, but still has that lean look of a person not yet fished in her maturity. The youngest is growing very tall like me, taller than her sister already, but has the movement style of her age, easily identifiable as a very young person from a distance. They don’t behave like targets but could be mistaken as vulnerable if alone in the dark. Their walk from school is along a path with lots of traffic and potential help, but I have to worry when there’s not so much light.
When I post this, it will be the second Thursday in the month, and rent still isn’t paid in full. A friend recently offered me a spot in a great burn camp in February, and I know I should tell him I can’t go. I want to go, but even if everything else about the trip was free, I couldn’t afford the transportation. The burn is in Miami, besides. I’ve tried to have fun on Miami before – it never works out, probably because I don’t do the kind of drugs that seem popular there. I could use a week near a beach without the chemical fires, hurricane threats, and homeland security lectures I had on Jekyll, but it’s not in the cards right now.
We’re eighteen months out from the oldest child going off to university, and thirty-six months out from having both the babies be legal adults. I’m not ready for a trip to a burn in Miami, but I might be in a few years. It’s strange to be in this holding pattern, still circling the nest even while the kids get ready to fly, aware that at any minute a careless driver or domestic terrorist could set all our futures back and away after so much work. It happens every day, in this neighborhood – a hit and run, a rapist, gun violence. I have to make an effort not to think about what could happen and focus on the good things. It isn’t easy. It’s 2022, and the world is on fire. We’re all just doing our best.
Thursday, December 01, 2022
The Final Title of My Old LJ Was "I Need To See Your Sources"
After I gathered twenty-two years of Thanksgiving links for the post last week, I had a think. Everything in each of those blog posts was true, but there was just so much missing. The stuff that was missing from the decades of blog posts would make for deeply compelling reading, but I won’t publish it here.
I blog – I have blogged – I will blog – in large part because I still have a childhood fear of my own truth being yanked away from me. I am an inveterate saver of calendars so I can look back at how I spent my days and check my own memories. When your father is an alcoholic and your mother a pathological narcissist, you tend to develop real trust issues. I need documented proof of my own lived life. That’s why the parts that were missing from the last twenty-two years of blogging made me sad. I remember the people I didn’t name for their own privacy. I’ve had intense friendships and more than friendships during that time. My relationships with my sisters and cousins are deeply important to me, and largely undocumented. But I don’t write about those things out of a lot of socially justified fear.
Mostly, I suppose, I worry about losing my current job. I love what I do right now more than I can express, and I have near constant anxiety that I will lose the position out of social awkwardness or other failure on my part. The bigger concern, of course, should be that I could lose the job just because sometimes jobs end for people - that’s happened to me plenty in the past as well. Half of the CNN cataloging staff lost their jobs this week. Much of Cartoon Network, Tru TV, and other workplaces deeply associated with Atlanta have collapsed over the last year. The career prospects in Atlanta right now are terrifying.
I can’t lose my current job. I’m really, really good at what I do, but none of that would matter if the wrong person in my workplace found my blogs and didn’t like them. Georgia remains an at-will employment state; I could be engineered into any of a dozen firable offenses with minimal effort. As I mentioned before, I have deeply rooted trust issues.
Then there’s the consideration of the feelings of those around me. It occurs to me as I type that my best friends would stick by me if I went for radical honesty in my writing. But I actually do worry about the feelings of others who aren’t my best friends but could be hurt if I wrote about, for instance, what the COVID years in the Lake Claire house were really like for me. It wasn’t an easy time for anyone, and I have two teenage daughters.
My options for really writing the full truth – or at least the truth as I live it – are to either lean on a pseudonym or thinly veiled fiction. That feels odd, as to me the whole point of fiction that I enjoy is escapism. I want to read about living in outer space, or riding dragons, or having usual powers. If a book is about how people struggle to make rent in a crumbling anocracy, I’m unlikely to read that story unless aliens, dragons, or superheroes show up. Ridiculous humor can work to keep me engaged in a story, as can scandal. I think the best roman-a-clef ever written was Another City, Not My Own. Dominic Dunne wrote that when he was at least twenty years older than I am now, and he still didn’t really tell his truth throughout. Dunne's omissions - his visits to bath houses and with younger men - don't matter to the reader though when he has solid stories to deliver like accidentally introducing Nancy Reagan to Heidi Fleiss.
My own truth, even when I’m near historical events, isn’t as interesting as Dominic Dunne’s, and so could not yet hold up reader interest the way he did. Maybe in another twenty years I’ll be ready to publish some thinly veiled scandal, but not right now. Right now, I have to figure out why we’re $300 short on rent. Right now, I have to come up with funds to help the kids have the best High School experience possible. Right now, it’s 2022, and the world is on fire, and nobody knows anything. Right now, we’re all just doing our best.
I blog – I have blogged – I will blog – in large part because I still have a childhood fear of my own truth being yanked away from me. I am an inveterate saver of calendars so I can look back at how I spent my days and check my own memories. When your father is an alcoholic and your mother a pathological narcissist, you tend to develop real trust issues. I need documented proof of my own lived life. That’s why the parts that were missing from the last twenty-two years of blogging made me sad. I remember the people I didn’t name for their own privacy. I’ve had intense friendships and more than friendships during that time. My relationships with my sisters and cousins are deeply important to me, and largely undocumented. But I don’t write about those things out of a lot of socially justified fear.
Mostly, I suppose, I worry about losing my current job. I love what I do right now more than I can express, and I have near constant anxiety that I will lose the position out of social awkwardness or other failure on my part. The bigger concern, of course, should be that I could lose the job just because sometimes jobs end for people - that’s happened to me plenty in the past as well. Half of the CNN cataloging staff lost their jobs this week. Much of Cartoon Network, Tru TV, and other workplaces deeply associated with Atlanta have collapsed over the last year. The career prospects in Atlanta right now are terrifying.
I can’t lose my current job. I’m really, really good at what I do, but none of that would matter if the wrong person in my workplace found my blogs and didn’t like them. Georgia remains an at-will employment state; I could be engineered into any of a dozen firable offenses with minimal effort. As I mentioned before, I have deeply rooted trust issues.
Then there’s the consideration of the feelings of those around me. It occurs to me as I type that my best friends would stick by me if I went for radical honesty in my writing. But I actually do worry about the feelings of others who aren’t my best friends but could be hurt if I wrote about, for instance, what the COVID years in the Lake Claire house were really like for me. It wasn’t an easy time for anyone, and I have two teenage daughters.
My options for really writing the full truth – or at least the truth as I live it – are to either lean on a pseudonym or thinly veiled fiction. That feels odd, as to me the whole point of fiction that I enjoy is escapism. I want to read about living in outer space, or riding dragons, or having usual powers. If a book is about how people struggle to make rent in a crumbling anocracy, I’m unlikely to read that story unless aliens, dragons, or superheroes show up. Ridiculous humor can work to keep me engaged in a story, as can scandal. I think the best roman-a-clef ever written was Another City, Not My Own. Dominic Dunne wrote that when he was at least twenty years older than I am now, and he still didn’t really tell his truth throughout. Dunne's omissions - his visits to bath houses and with younger men - don't matter to the reader though when he has solid stories to deliver like accidentally introducing Nancy Reagan to Heidi Fleiss.
My own truth, even when I’m near historical events, isn’t as interesting as Dominic Dunne’s, and so could not yet hold up reader interest the way he did. Maybe in another twenty years I’ll be ready to publish some thinly veiled scandal, but not right now. Right now, I have to figure out why we’re $300 short on rent. Right now, I have to come up with funds to help the kids have the best High School experience possible. Right now, it’s 2022, and the world is on fire, and nobody knows anything. Right now, we’re all just doing our best.
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