Screw everything, I’m running away and joining the circus.

.

  First I think I need to put everything in to perspective, I graduated from college with BFA in studio art back in December 2011.  My plan was to get a job for months, work, apply to grad schools and start school fall. I applied to several to graduate programs in my field of printmaking, but things didn't necessarily go to plan.  Every school I applied to rejected me. I wasn't crushed; I flattened by steam roller in to a little pancake. To add insult to injury, I watched a good number of my friends move off after graduation and go on to start successful lives in other part of country.

   I was jealous, depressed, and most I just felt like a big fucking failure. I worked at my office job for over a year and it got the point where Id often consider ramming an ice pick into my orbital lobe rather than going in to work. I applied to smaller schools the following December and promptly went back to my woe-is-me life. 

   In June of this year I received notification that I had been accepted in to Georgia Southern University. It isn't on the top Art schools in the nation, but it is 45 minutes away from the top art school in the nation *cough* SCAD *cough*.  You’d think I’d be more excited than what I was when I found out about it, but the school was not going to offer me any form graduate assistance.  Basically I would have to take out loans to cover the base tuition and out of state tuition and I was already in student loan debt from my undergrad study.  When you get a degree in the liberal arts, just bachelors isn't worth it anything, if you want to stick in the field you need to a Master’s degree and hope you can get a job in academia, but there is not guarantee that you will. It’s a lot like gambling, and I decided to go all in.

   I also began to realize how much fool I was being jealous of my friends who left home. It’s not easy to leave all your friends and family behind and go in to some alien territory.  The hardest part for me was leaving behind the guy I had been seeing. It took a long time to find someone that really meshed well with my personality. All I ever wanted was someone that I could sit around and drink beer while Star Trek and Mystery Science Theater with and that person it was a lot harder to find than I thought it would be.  I am struggling with the thought that maybe I have blown my chances for a successful relationship.

  I had to take this position though. I know couldn't have survived in cubical land much longer and if I had passed up on the opportunity I could never live with myself, so here I am.

   The thing I hate the most about the move is my apartment. Back home I had a nice one bedroom apartment, newly remodeled with nice furniture, and lovely back patio. Here in Georgia the price gauging on apartments is completely insane. For more than I paid a month back home Tennessee I have 300 square foot efficiency that is a total shithole.  The apartment complex performed a bait and switch on me; they showed me a display model and said that my apartment was currently available. The day I moved in my apartment was completely trashed. The complex didn't even bother to clean the unit after the previous tenant moved out.  My new apartment has a giant gap between the door casing, and the door were mosquitoes come in,  the wash cloth bar in the bathroom had ripped off the wall and was just lying on the back the toilet,  there is no freezer door in the mini fridge so everything in fridge freezes, the bathroom floor sags,  stains all over walls, roaches and silverfish, and the thing that simply just kills every time I use it, the kitchen sink handles are reversed so the cold water tap sprays out hot water and the hot water tap sprays out cold water.  This is the closest I have ever been to camping and sometimes I think I would be better off sleeping outdoors.  As of the day I write this, I have only managed to get my apartment complex to spray for bugs, nothing else has been repaired.  My grad program is three years long, but when I lease I can assure you I won’t be living here.

So here‘s to strange new adventure in strange new place.

Adventures In Employment: Fear and Loathing In The Corporate World

From K.L. Hawkins to Z.E.

This morning I was woken up by what sounded like jackbooted Nazi’s stomping around in the overheard apartment. There isn’t enough coffee in the world to prepare one for dealing with the SS before 10 am, otherwise I would have flown up the stairs screaming, “QUIET YOU RAT BASTARDS! I’M A DOCTOR OF JOURNALISM AND IM TRYING TO READ MY TUMBLR FEED IN PEACE!”   

                Sometimes, here at work, I contemplate shoving my fingers into my eye sockets and peeling my face off. Just to have something to do, you know?

Sudoku?  Crunching numbers? Bah! You don’t work in the corporate world long before The Fear starts settling in and then you’ll try everything to wash that stain out of your head. Uppers, downers, grass, mescaline, and a bottle of Patron Silver that’s what you need to get through the day here.

But what can one do? It’s either work this job and maintain a crippling drug addiction or quit and move in to your addict. In the attic I will adapt to the darkness and confined space like one of the fish in the deepest regions of the ocean. I will develop wide luminous eyes and claws for skittering across the floor.  I will find ways to sliver in to crawlspaces and fold in on myself.

                Actually that doesn't sound half bad, compared to huddling in these cubical walls in my tequila stooper , making paper dolls of myself and listening to Russian disco in attempt to look busy should the powers that be choose to stride by.

This is why I found you asking me if I was on any medication “for my head” so amusing. You see, medically speaking  I am mentally sound. No  “-paths”  or “disorders” to added to my diagnosis. That is the frightening part.  It means that I have no excuse for my behavior.

I am a creative mind stuck in an environment with very little stimulation. It is in these moments that I wish that I was insane, because at least hearing voices that aren’t there would break the monotony.  Instead, I feel like my brain is cannibalizing itself due to the lack of any substance.  There is no money in art. No money in the written word, but surely there is something better than this.

I am working on an escape plan. So far I have gotten "escape plan" written down on a white piece of paper, but the rest shall follow soon!    

Dodging Bullets

The advent of social media has turned us in to a bunch of schadenfreude obessed stalkers.  We can now look up anyone who has ever wronged us and laugh at their failures.  If you don’t have a friend on  Facebook who is solely there to make you feel better about yourself, then I will be the first to admit that you are a better person than I.

I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed last week, instead of doing something far more productive which is pretty much the norm when I came across some current photos of the guy who brushed me off last January. My reaction was, "I’m Glad I didn't end up going out with that guy. He is not attractive without the beard.”

                That is the funny thing about rejection.  Sometimes, having a possibility removed leads to the best possible outcome. I think an easier way of explaining it is that idea is the, “Man, I just dodged a bullet there”, feeling.  When it comes to dodging bullets I think back to the last guy I went out with and thank fate, the gods, or the butterfly flapping its wings in Argentina, whatever made sure that relationship never went anywhere.  

                The last time I went out on a date was nearly two years ago. (Yeah I know.) I had gone on one successful casual outing before with this guy, and for our second outing I hitchhiked down to Knoxville to spend time with him. What followed was an awkward encounter in which we sat on opposite ends of his couch, not speaking, drinking individual bottles of schnapps out of paper bags while watching Phantasm. (Not that I have anything against the Phantasm movies. I got lucky once after watching Phantasm II. ) When the movie was over the guy told me he was just not interested in having any kind of relationship because his life was just too uncertain at the moment.

                Apparently, a few weeks later happened to a better time for him because that’s when he started dating this size zero brunette.  I wrote the guy off as a douche bag, went through a stage of “forever alone”-ing and life went on. 

                As time passed, this guy began to remove himself further and further from his friends, turning down invitations for outings and parties in order to spend more time with his girlfriend. It happens, we all know it does, but eventually after that new-girlfriend/boyfriend smell fades away they come back. Only this guy didn’t. He had close friends wondering if they had said or done something to piss him off, but basically he abandoned everyone from his former life in favor of spending more time with his girlfriend. He switched his major to her major in order to be constantly close to her.  His life is a constant orbit around her.  When she is not present, he falls apart. A mutual acquaintance told me that he was incredibly torn up when his girlfriend went to see Lady Gaga without him. He said that he was jealous of Lady Gaga because she with his girl that night and he wasn’t.

                I wonder if Mark David Chapman ever said that about John Lennon.

The more I hear about this guy, the more I feel bad for the girl he’s dating. Now maybe everything is just happy puppy dogs and glittery unicorn farts for them, but to me it doesn’t seem to be healthy to have someone constantly fluttering around you like a moth to a flame.  There are a lot of people I care about, but I also know that the more time I spend with them the more likely they are to piss me off. No two people get along all the time.

                If I had continued to date this guy and he started acting that clingy around me. It wouldn’t have been long before I would have clocked him in the face. So everything worked out in the end, right?

                There is one thing, however, that disturbs me to the point where I shudder and again thank the heavens that all I ended up with was an awkward experience. This guy is so creepily obsessive with current girlfriend, should anything ever happen and she has to break up with him he will be devastated.  He changed his entire life plan to sync up with hers. He alienated his former support group. If she goes, she takes part of his identity with him. This guy will be broken.

 Then it either goes one of two ways, he becomes really depressed, or she’s come home to find her pet rabbit boiling on stove.

So the next time you get rejected, don’t be sad. Just tell remind yourself it could have ended up with that person holding a gun to your head screaming, “If I can’t have you, no one can.” 

Just once, I’d like to be hit on by someone who isn’t a Lovecraftain horror.

There is a local Roller girl whose rules of engagement are as follows:

1.       Don’t hit on me.

2.       Don’t hit on me, especially if you have facial tattoos.

It was one of those pieces of wit so good; I had to steal it and make it my own.

When you are single it never seems like you are approached by the people you to be approached by. If that ever happened,then you probably wouldn’t be single. 

I have the uncanny ability to attract Lovecraftain monsters. I am not referring to that fact that these people are unfathomably hideous, they are, it’s just it seems hardly fair to hold against people in East Tennessee, where everyone is an inbred fish monster.  I’m referring to the fact these people I encounter have to be from some dank unearthly dimension where there are no women because otherwise I would have no explanation for the inherent lack of social skills.

     So don’t hit on me if:

1.       You are in a moving vehicle -   I’ve never understood the whole yelling at someone out of a car window thing. Has this ever worked for anyone?  Did anyone’s parents meet this way? When someone in a vehicle going about 45 miles an hour and I am traveling at leisurely pace of 6 miles an hour listening to my slow jams on the iPod, the most I hear as they pass by is, “HEEEEYYYYYY ARRRRRrirorrororgggggggooooooooooooooooo.” Is this a distance and velocity problem?   As far as I know the guy could be yelling at me because his breaks are failing. How would I ever know. Let’s say that I understood whatever the hell you were saying and was flattered by it. What am I supposed to do? Run after the car? Write down a license plate number?

2.         I am with  another man -  When I go out when with my friend Big Daddy, I want to spend my evening with Bid Daddy.  He isn’t my date, but is that something you really want to gamble on when the guy I’m with is over six feet tall, and while I was never good at the “Guess the chicken’s weight” game at the fair, I’d say someone you don’t want to fuck with.

The thing is, he isn’t the one you should be worried about. If you ruin my evening out , all 5’1 of me is going to fuck you up. It’s akin being eaten alive by cute cartoon squirrel.

3.        I am clearly not interested - Here is a pro-tip, If it’s finals week and I am in the college library frantically typing a way on a computer, I don’t want to talk to you. If you strike up a conversation and I don’t make eye contact with you, I don’t want to talk to you. If I pull out my phone and start texting someone, while continuing to not looking your general direction, and making gritting noises with my teeth, just stop.

4.       If you like rape and torture movies - You can look at me and tell I like horror movies. It’s like guessing that my favorite holiday is Halloween, you don’t necessarily have to be Horatio Clark to figure that one out.  It’s great that you think The Human Centipede and Paranormal Activity are highlights of modern cinema. Even if I did 10 Whip-it’s every day for a year, I don’t think I would ever reach that conclusion , but please don’t feel the need to tell me how much you loved Salo’/ A Serbian Film/Cannibal Holocaust/Irreversible, etc. I have seen those movies; I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone.  Telling me that you’ve seen them 17 times doesn’t convince me that you are cool; it convinces me that you probably have a vagina in a box.

5.       If you make animal noises:  It saddens me that this has happened to me so frequently I had put on a numbered list. My name is Kat. K-a-t. The domesticated feline is spelled C-a-t. Hooked on Phonics/The Internet has screwed over a whole generation of people when it comes grammar and spelling, I know, I’m one of them. Still, it doesn’t explain why you would meow at me. It’s about as effective as meowing at an actual cat. I’ll give you a look of boredom and disgust and then go vomit on your shoes.

So to conclude: Don’t hit on me, ever.