What was I talking about? Oh yeah. I haven't done much lately. I've thought a lot of things, and read a lot of things, and felt a huge fucking crapload of things, but it's hard to remember the time when I actually did things (unless you count baking things and then eating those things). So I thought I would make a list of things I've done. Awesome things. And I thought I would share it with you because writing this blog entry counts as doing something in a way that writing in my diary apparently doesn't (or at least won't until I'm dead). Maybe this exercise will give me some clues as to what I can do (damn italics!) in the horrible, scary future.
Here goes:
1. I coordinated and conducted a "pit" orchestra for my 7th grade English class's production of Hamlet. First, I wanted to be Ophelia and even sang in front of the entire class for the audition (i.e. humiliation-- the teacher hated me and made it as horrible as possible). I didn't get the part. Then I wanted to coordinate costumes, but I was obsessed with historical clothing and knew way too much and kept correcting the other kids because, let's face it, they didn't know shit. So they kicked me off the team. Then I realized no one was doing music. I put it all together, and it was great. I got to conduct my own orchestra (of five or six kids). A boy even came out at key moments and went "bah-bah-bah-BAH!" on a trombone (no one in our class played trumpet).
This was a long bullet point. They all can't be this long! On to the next thing!!
2. I went to Italy for five weeks by myself (sort of). It was a study abroad trip (with my Italian language class), and I stayed in the home of a divorced woman and her 19-year-old daughter. My parents tried to talk me out of it, but I had my own money, so I went anyway, and even though I was terrified a good deal of the time, it was my biggest adventure so far. Also, my hosts were incredible cooks. Every day I ate a week's worth of food, but I walked so much that I came home nine pounds lighter (and tan!).
3. I became a National Merit Scholar. You've probably heard me brag on this one before. But weirdly, for years, I could barely bring myself to even admit it. I felt weird and horrible accepting $13,000 in scholarships (to a state school--most private institutions don't offer National Merit incentives since they get so many applicants) because I felt like I'd been born to take the SAT's. I loved the SAT's. Doesn't that mean that the other kids were at an unfair disadvantage? But I did it! I took ($100) prep classes in 7th and 10th grade, put in all the work... endured the awful anxiety of testing days. Why shouldn't I feel as proud as the quarterback who scored the winning touchdown in the state playoffs? If my sports metaphor is off, it's because I was reading Victorian novels to learn grammar and vocabulary instead of watching the sports games--although...
4. I went to every home game my junior year in high school. For football. Yeah. My more social doings in this list will be scant, but in 11th grade, the kicker from the football team adopted me as his weird pet. He would lead me up to a group of popular kids and get me to say nerd stuff. That was about as close as I got to having a friend that year, so I went to see him in all the home games. He was an incredible kicker.
5. I painted this picture:
I had just graduated college, and I was so sick from stress that, despite a profound longing to move to Tasmania (for real), I was persuaded to move home again. I tried to make a painting and hated it, so I wiped as much paint off the canvas as I could. Then I realized the canvas looked like a dark ocean at sunset, and painted in the sun, the horizon and the ship. I thought it was unrealistic, but a few months later I saw a photo in a magazine that looked eerily similar.
6. I told those rat bastards not to use our fucking ink. In architecture school, we learned hand drafting first, then CAD. Hopefully nowadays students can just project their drawings, but "back then" we had to print them out on gigantic printers that used gallons and gallons of crazy-expensive ink that we had to pool our money to pay for. One day, some grad students were in our studio, printing out reams of pretentious shit. No one was saying anything. I said, "Um... what are you guys doing?" and they came back at me with a bunch of bullshit about how [professor] Dean [something or other] said they could print in our studio. They kept coming up with whiney excuse after whiney excuse, so I interrupted them and said, "I don't GIVE A CRAP what Dean said. Our studio PAID FOR THIS INK and unless you want to give us some money RIGHT NOW, you had better pick up all your shit and GET OUT OF OUR STUDIO!" They did, right away. The room was completely silent. I immediately felt horrible. I do not yell at people. I'm the one who gets yelled at and then cries alone in her room. But then this awesome boy (man? he was 26 at the time)--who was hot and smart and funny--walked up to me and literally shook my hand. "You've got BALLS, Diana!" he said. It turned out everyone had been silently seething about the ink thieves for hours, hardly able to focus on their work, before I walked in and bitched those bastards the fuck out of there. So yeah, I think that counts as doing something.
7. I ranked 93rd (or was it 63rd?) in All State. For Viola. It was some ridiculously low ranking or another. I didn't get placed in the All-State Orchestra. But I practiced some hella-fast notes and went to a far away school and waited for hours and auditioned for anonymous judges, all so that I could tell you that I was once the 93rd-best (or was it 63rd-best?) violist in the enormous state of Texas. (I could link to the video I made recently that shows how rusty I've gotten, but I like you, so I won't. I mean, you're already reading this crap, right? Right? Are you still here?!)
8. I sat on a hotel dresser in New Orleans and drank whiskey from a silver flask with a bunch of strangers. I like thinking of it in those terms because it sounds so raunchy. It was weird. In college I randomly ran into a girl I knew from grade school, and she randomly asked me to come to New Orleans with her and her friends for the weekend before Mardi Gras. I said I couldn't go because I had an architecture field trip to Houston that Friday, but then I realized Houston was on the way to New Orleans, so I called her up. I had the nice boy who had driven me to Houston abandon me on the Rice University campus. I waited and waited. Buildings closed. I ended up sitting on a landscaping boulder by a busy intersection in the dark, watching helicopters land and take off from the roof of the hospital across the street. Eventually, these kids picked me up. The flask was brand new, otherwise I wouldn't have drunk from it. I'm a lightweight now, but that year I was kind of fat and as abstemious as ever, so I managed not to get too drunk. Just drunk enough to deal with it all, not drunk enough to barf my guts out like everyone else. Also, it turned out I was the only one with balls enough to have told my parents that I was going to Mardi Gras (we were only 20). It was a bizarre weekend, full of hazards and horrors and wonders, but I survived!!!
9. I sawed up some GD tree branches, and boy golly! A few years ago when I was living in my own apartment in my hometown, I noticed that my dad had gotten extra lazy about his property. "I told your mom I'm too old to trim those trees and she'd better call some Mexicans, but she won't do it!" My mom wanted my dad to do the calling so she wouldn't get ripped off. Stalemate. So I got out a good ol' handsaw that used to belong to my mom's dad and went to work. Sawed branches thicker than my waist even, all under my own power. Speaking of, you wouldn't believe how many men will pull over, get out of their trucks, and straight-faced offer a woman "a power tool". "Looks like you could use a power tool." "I don't want you to hurt yourself--here's my card." Even, "I've got a power tool you could use--come over any time." I dug up some enormous saplings too--one was 24 feet tall. Dug it up by the roots just for the hell of it. I did this for months. In the end, my parents bought me some groceries, so that was nice. Plus, I got some crazy-awesome arm muscles without having to give my money to an evil gym!!
10. I got one of my short stories published in a university journal. I got word that it was being published while I was in Italy. When I told my host family, who had been telling me I spoke Italian "molto bene", they couldn't believe it. "You?! YOU wrote a story that got published?" The implied subtext was, "But you're a total idiot who can barely speak Italian!!" This "publication" is probably the most official thing I've ever done. Like, I could put it on a C.V.--whatever that is. It's even bound. And sitting on my bookcase. With my books. And yet I just put the word "publication" in quotes. One day at a time, Diana. Self-acceptance comes one day at a time.
11. Oh, right. I learned Italian. My proudest moment was when I went to the Pallazzo Barberini and asked the ticket seller about the collection and then said, "It's five euros, right?" or something to that effect--in Italian--and she said, "Oh! No! Not with your European Union student discount card!" or something to that effect, and I said, "Oh, no--I'm American!" For an unguarded second, her jaw dropped, and she looked up at me in horrified astonishment. Like: "Oh. My. GOD. There is NO WAY this FILTHY AMERICAN just TRICKED ME into thinking she's European." But it happened. BOOM! Take THAT you pretentious Euro-jerks!!! And then she just sold me a ticket and looked away. The collection was really nice, even though most of it was in storage because of the renovations. They even had one of my favorite paintings:
Carlo Saraceni's Saint Cecilia and the Angel
12. I learned to drive a car. This was quite an accomplishment considering my mother was against me the whole way, and my driving school was run and staffed by insane people. Seriously, I could write 8 blog entries as long as this one about how crazy those crazy folks were. CRAZY! I'm lucky to be alive. But think about how awesome it is to be able to drive a car. Those of us who can tend to take it for granted after a while.
13. I gave up meat. I have a hard time counting this as an accomplishment since it's something I don't do. But it's something I don't do every time I eat. Which means I have to do a lot of other things to make that possible. Like defend myself to aggro crap-heads who think I'm a threat to their entire worldview and try to sneak meat into my food so they can be like, "See? You ate meat! You're a hypocrite!" If me not doing something is a threat to your worldview, then maybe your worldview is fucked up. But you'd be amazed at how many people want to tell you what to eat. I don't think it's a big deal. It's hard for me if someone's having a cookout or if there's a hot, greasy Thanksgiving turkey right in front of my face, but otherwise I don't even think about it! Really! But maybe the animals think it's awesome? Do animals think? Does a fish worry that it will be swept up in a net to suffocate in a boat rather than getting snapped up by another fish to suffocate inside its stomach? Okay, maybe I do think about it.
14. I saved this dog. I've written lots of blog entries about this dog. Right now she's sleeping under the ends of blankets that pool up at the foot of my bed. (That's where she chose to sleep once I quit making her sleep under a basket. She totally hasn't eaten my face off yet! It's great!) Maybe she would have ended up with someone else, but on that cold, dark night--no takers. So I feel like I'm making some small contribution. I hope. I still feel weird about it. Everyone has a fucking opinion. They can all can it. I love this dog.
15. I've twittered. And I've blogged. I hate the self-obsessed nonsense that I spew all over this blog and sprinkle across my twitter page. But these are the steps I'm taking to bridge the gap between my mountains of journals and my scant published writing. It's absolutely as horrible as I imagined it would be: this trying. But at least four of you have been supportive, which is great. I've gotten over 800 pageviews on my blog so far which is RIDICULOUS. ...-ly many. I can't believe it. I know only a fraction of those people are actually reading the first paragraph, and a fraction of a fraction are reading the entry through, but you're real people. Which is weird, and awesome. I'm communicating to you. And maybe it's dumb, but it's one step closer to actually doing something. And maybe I'll end up with one of those "lives" I'm always hearing about.
BONUS: I volunteered. I don't want you to think I've never "given of myself" just because I'm burned out on it now. During high school and the first two years of college I did a lot. Food pantries, tutoring, teacher's aide, fundraising, Habitat for Humanity, animal shelters. No nursing homes. Uh-uh. (Well, once, against my will.) I was an expert at libraries. My mom used to volunteer at my elementary school library, so I was shelving books for free from age 8 to 18. I was even an officer in my high school Key Club. (So there.)
Thanks!
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