November Rant
Up to my eyebrows in other peoples' shit
This fall has gone by in a blur that can only be described as warp speed, and I have been the stunned occupant. I am so consumed by a seemingly endless mountain of work that I scarcely come up for air, but at least the work is of a variety to where it gets me out of the house and allows me to chew on the wonderful world out there.
That said, I am largely chained to the computer, desperately trying to meet the biweekly quotas of my main freelance gig, which hovers like a rusty blade over my very vulnerable neck. I sadly need a lot of money all the time and have signed my time away as a scribe to corporate vultures thirsty for words until the robot demons take over completely and liquidate us in mass graves covered up by automated bulldozers.
I’m also attempting to write a whole book on Mongolia based on my notes taken over the summer, but find myself so sapped of minutes and energy that the puddles of concentration I have left have so far proven insufficient. It doesn’t help that my food guiding biz has taken off like a fevered bottle rocket — which is a cool side shot that I never anticipated — but currently requires hours of face time, and drinking to be honest, as the guests all expect their personal Bourdain. Fair play, you get what you wish for and I’m super fortunate to have these crazy quests, but trust me when I say they too exact their pound of flesh.
In the meantime I’m teaching at the university and clearly underwater otherwise, but man, you only get one shot at this shit so why not bite hard? What this means is between now and May I pretty much have no time except time to make my living, build my business, and finish what will be my fifth book. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again which means if you want to do this thing you just have to grind it out and put the tedious time in. This is a writer’s life. The months and years sweating over the keyboard aren’t sexy: they’re desperate and brutal but that’s how you get there.
I’m not bitching, if it comes across that way. I could easily just live the life of a regular cit and not take on all this unreasonable work but this is just where currents of life carried me. I just wish that I wasn’t so nailed to the cross of making money to float the monthly nut of my household to where I could just take a few months to concentrate on JUST ONE project. The money the publisher gave me for Mongolia was immediately eaten by the crazy costs of that project to a degree these bourgie Brits will never understand, that I’m putting out fires just to find time to write the thing after the fact. I may have entered a region beyond my actual class.
I write all the time, every day, but not for myself. I am an indentured servant of bigger money and while I’ve achieved the dream of becoming a professional writer, I haven’t achieved the dream of writing for myself. Tough titty. I once washed dishes at Sizzler, poisoned a lake, stacked pants at TJ Maxx, and loaded trucks at the Target Warehouse. I know what a shit job is. And I get paid for nonsense these days. But time is time.
In the meantime I get to meet people from around the world and really soak up a kind of life I never expected. Beyond that we have a kitten — DUSTY — who makes us unreasonably happy in a weird deep way. The Mariners almost made the World Series. Soundgarden just got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
I thought I’d get to have a bit of turkey this Thanksgiving for the first time in years, but yeah nah. It turns out I’ll be guiding that night, giving someone their first and probably only ever taste of deep Busan seafood. When I crosschecked the dates of the only possible chance for me to have a taste of home on that day and saw that I was booked I went into a bit of a tailspin. I cursed the fact that I’m chasing work to such a degree to where I consistently miss out on the fundamental experiences that perhaps ground me and connect me to where I came from.
But when I jumped that plane 21 years ago I knew there would be trade offs. I knew that diving into this life may have highs and lows, and that they could be severe. I just didn’t know that it may take two decades to deliver these in their purest form.
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4Bee Getz, Kelleen Conway Blanchard and 2 others