The one about the deaf prostitute

Hello there! See I almost did the thing where I overthought a blog post to the point where I end up never writing it. This has been the death of many, many a blog of mine going back to my personal site at UMich back when that was quite the novel thing. There weren’t even load balancers back then! I found this out when the traffic to the porn site I was running took down the CAEN server hosting engineering student personal space. Whoops. Sorry guys. (I am not.)

Anyway, the point of this post (other than what is the point of anything, really?) is that looking back over the years I have spent quite a lot of time by myself. From growing up just me and my Mom who through my formative years worked two jobs in order to keep my ungrateful keister clothed and fed (thanks Mom!) to undergrad dorm life where I lived in a single for three unceremonious semesters before being flung out into the wilderness of full-time work, borderline poverty and a string of one bedroom apartments. I have always (with several exceptions we will cover later – again, the sad shit can wait) spent most of my time alone. What have I done with that time? About what you would think, give or take. Regardless of the “why,” the “what” here is that I have accumulated a body of stories the past few decades. Not just stories that people tell in bars to enthrall strangers (though I actually have a story that starts that way and ends with dancing bachata and a couple rekindling their relationship) but stories that you keep to yourself because no one would ever believe them. The sorts of stories that only you and the person (or people – yes this is a threesome joke, no none of them are actually all that interesting) involved even know about, and sometimes those people don’t speak any English so you have to rely on your three semesters of community college Spanish to keep you out of a Costa Rican jail. As one does.

I lost my point again. That happens. Stream-of-consciousness, you know? I’ll go back and edit this at some point. I don’t know. Oh right: stories.

The thing about getting up there in years with no sign of having people in my life with whom to share these stories is you start to think things like “Man if I dropped dead right now no one would ever know about

[Editor’s Note — At this part of the blog I spent a solid fifteen minutes trying to think of a good example story. What it boils down to is that all of my stories basically fall into one of three buckets: 1) I was drunk 2) I cheated/was cheated on 3) I did something so awesome that no one would believe to the point where I don’t want to repeat it because it sounds like I’m bragging. I am not sure what that says about me. Hm. Back to blogging.]

the time I was on a date and legit stopped in the middle to help an old lady across the street. That one was so ridiculous that if there had been a such thing as TikTok at the time someone would have recorded it like “POV: WHEN U TRY BUT THE FRIENDZONE JUST KEEP CALLING” Something like that. I speak the language of the youth dem.

By now you’re wondering why you’re reading this and to be honest with you I don’t know why I’m writing it but we’re both here so let’s just finish so we can watch the latest episode of insert popular TV show here, OK? OK.

MY POINT. People tend to think you go through life with friends and loved ones you can share things with so that you have their perspective on your shared experience to remember. But what if you don’t? If you don’t, you end up with a bunch of stories like the one with the deaf prostitute.

Jason Rashaad

Don’t threaten me, Al! You’re out of shape; I’ll kick your arse.

P.S.: Almost forgot to do Things I’m Proud of. I told you this was stupid. Anywhoots:

• I am proud of myself for finding a balance between sound financial decisions and gratification as reward. I am coming off of a long streak of living like everything is about to burst into flames – because it did – and it is very important to manage that anxiety into cautious optimism tempered with pragmatism. This will mean nothing at all if you’re reading it but whatever, this is for me, right? Right.
• The diet is going well, building off of the pride point above. I’m in the kitchen more, remembering that I like being in the kitchen and managing down some trauma-based anxiety that exists there. It’s a process. What isn’t? That aside this is one of those things where I’m doing something I enjoy (cooking) and instead of it being something else I do to please another person I’m doing it to keep myself alive. And that can be a good thing.
• My professional confidence is increasing. This is perhaps completely unfounded given circumstance but I know who I am, what I know and what I can do. The next part is just getting everyone else on board because this train is leaving the station. Ha. I did a metaphor thing. Oh! That’s something else I’ve been doing related to the previous pride point (I’m all about iteration) which is using food metaphors in the workplace instead of sports metaphors. I don’t really watch or understand sports and my knowledge of sports extends just far enough to start a conversation with someone I don’t know and keep that conversation going, but food? Food I got. So in this case I’d say “The kitchen is prepped and our menu is focused. It’s time to open for dinner.” Ha. I like that one.