On the last day of the exercise in masochism challenge that has been NaBloPoMo, may I present one of the more popular photos from my Flickr photostream:

It’s a near-exact replica of the “Post No Bills” notice the City of Oakland sticks on light posts and other items in danger of defilement.

Photo Credit: ehavir

As noted in the post “Someone Give Me a Job,” I am between careers. If I were the résumé-padding sort, I might argue that I am working as a “consultant.” Since I’m not, I’ll claim a recent work history of admin support temp work and contractual employment ranging from data entry to web design. These circumstances often lead to interesting small talk scenarios, as most conversations veer quickly toward the money question: what do you do? I’ve found that an honest response raises eyebrows among those who think a well-established, high-powered career defines one’s self worth.

Two years ago I had a solid foundation in the social service & social justice field. I realized this was driving me absolutely batty, and decided to get out. What was the problem? Well, my former job at a rape crisis center serves as an excellent example of How To Go From Mostly Sane To Totally Not In No Time At All. I was responsible for two 24-hour sexual assault crisis services; planning and conducting biannual 50-hour volunteer trainings; volunteer supervision; and reams of paperwork covering every minute detail of the job. When I took the position, the program was in shambles after a series of major agency upheavals, and there were very few volunteers. Nonetheless, the services had to be covered 24 hours a day, no matter what. I ended up taking enough shifts that I was on call an average of 84 hours a week, in addition to my regular work schedule.

I loved that job, but it took over my life. This is represented symbolically in my answer to the “Where were you when” question of this era, i.e. 9/11: I was picking up the Hotline pager from a volunteer, and she told me about the Trade Center attacks. In a more concrete sense, I vividly recall what I came to identify as “ghost pager syndrome.” This is the feeling that you must be on call, because you’re always on call, when in fact you are not. The most memorable of these experiences came when I was on vacation, on a plane to Berlin, clearly incapable of making it to either of the local hospitals in under half an hour, and sat bolt upright in a panic to loudly exclaim “Oh my God, where’s the pager?”

Realistically, I might still be doing this work if not for the fact that larger problems in that particular agency exacerbated the stress of an already intense work environment. Regardless, that position sucked the life out of me to the point that, three years later, I am only now beginning to recover. On the other hand - would I do it again? Yes. The job left me traumatized, but it also taught me lessons valuable enough to make up for the scars tenfold. I learned more about sociology working in that field than I did in the fours years I spent getting a Sociology degree, and I now have a clue as to how to respond to a person in crisis. I also found that human beings are capable of healing from atrocities that would give pause to a combat soldier. I can honestly say that I became an adult in those two years.

A telling perk to this job, even years later, is that it highlights people who judge others solely based on external measures of prestige. Lately, when pressed as to what I “do,” I toss out a quick soundbite about taking classes, exploring new career options, blah blah blah. The response - accompanied by a air of judgment and barely feigned interest - is “what were you doing before?” As soon as I mention social service work, particularly the rape crisis position, a palpable change occurs. Suddenly, the person who was slowly inching away is now animated and curious as to how I managed to keep it together under so much stress, encouraging me to take a long, well-deserved sabbatical, and wondering whether I’m on the short list for canonization (posthumous, of course).

I guess I picked the correct wrong career path.

Witness the aesthetic abomination that is ALL CAPS CURLY FONT, triple exclamation points!!!, a sign encased in a sheet protector, and leggings.

Window shopping on Valencia:

I have calling cards, and they’re way cool. So cool that mine inspired Brooke to start using her Flickr account so she could get some too. I will leave you mostly in the dark about what they look like, so that you’ll click on the link for moo.com, the company that makes the cards. Moo are so rad that they will not only make you 100 full-color cards for $20, they also quite charmingly refer to themselves in the plural. Their FAQ page features such delightful gems as this:

Can I contact MOO by telephone?
The phone sometimes rings but MOO are always too busy to answer it. Your best bet is to use the online contact form. We’ll reply to your query as soon as we can. Phew!

Your mission: take some (digital) photos, open a Flickr account if you don’t have one, add me as a contact, upload your pics, and order some Moo cards. Drop by my apartment between 2 and 4 on Tuesdays and leave a card with the butler. I’ll return the gesture sometime the following week.

Wasn’t life weird before IM’ing existed?

Photo Credit: Blueberry; altered, photocopied, and scanned by Grimes

From “Insomniac” (1961):

And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

These lines, along with many others in The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, really spoke to me once. My parents bought me that book, along with The Journals of Sylvia Plath, Letters Home, a hardcover edition of The Bell Jar, several individual poetry volumes, and the wicked cool action figure from the Crazy Women Poets line. Just kidding on the last one, of course, although I would actually buy one now if it existed.

In short, my dad and stepmom were very supportive of my teenage Plath fixation. It was the aspect of my black eyeliner-wearing brooding phase they tolerated best, with good reason. They had finally found a way to steer me back toward actual literature after watching, aghast, as I succumbed to preteen series novels. Thanks to a brand-new circle of friends and a generally depressive outlook, I was reading poetry written by a woman who not only used big words but also won a (posthumous) Pulitzer. My father, who read us Moby Dick at storytime when we were in our mid-to-late single digits and tried to substitute War and Peace for my Babysitters’ Club book when I was ten, was vastly relieved. Although I never finished War and Peace (wholly on principle), I devoured the Plath stuff whole. Mainly in the wee hours, as appropriate.

Why, you ask, have I injected this anecdote into Project Janna? Well, I can’t sleep. At least not at night, as my current job requires simply that I work, with no prescribed schedule. I have slowly made my way around the clock to the 5 AM-2 PM sleep schedule. It’s not a bad schedule, except when I need to be awake in the morning for some reason, and tomorrow is one of those days. This dilemma brought to mind the poem quoted above, and I tracked it down in one of the volumes I have diligently transported from dorm room to apartment to apartment for the last ten years.

I was taken aback by the bleakness of Plath’s words, which you can read online here. The poem is beautiful (those Pulitzers don’t come easy), but, wow, it’s so depressing. My personality has changed dramatically since I was sixteen, and, reading this, I realize that’s a good thing. I do think it’s character-building to have moments of despair, but there’s a limit to how much of this:

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

Lady Lazarus, 1962

is healthy.

Maybe I should have stuck with War and Peace. After all, sometimes macro-crises are better than personal ones. Regardless, I did make it out of the teen years without undue influence by a woman who, though unquestionably brilliant, stuck her head in an oven at the age of thirty. Fortunately for myself and for a few social justice causes, I learned to channel my angst toward fighting problems outside my own mind.

Questionable fashion statement:

Hmmmm.

Setting: A crowded car on the Richmond BART line, Thanksgiving afternoon. An uncomfortable captive audience looks on as a silent man is accosted by a drunk woman whose voice and demeanor are eerily reminiscent of Nancy’s in Sid and Nancy (”but Siiiiiiid! What about the farewell Dwuuuuuugs!?!”). The couple have a perhaps six-year old child and stroller-bound infant in tow.

Woman: I hate you, Larry. You’re such an asshole. Fuck you, Larry.

- Larry studies the stains in the nasty BART carpet -

Woman: I’ve given ten years of my life to you. Ten years of my —-

Child: Mommy?
Woman: (to child) Shush! I hate you!

- Child begins to cry -

Woman: Ten years. You’re such an asshole.

- Larry begins to wish he were a stain on a nasty BART carpet, instead of a human being with the capacity to be humiliated -

Woman: Rot in hell, Larry. Fuck you.

Woman sitting next to Janna: (to Janna) Happy fucking Thanksgiving, eh?
Janna: No kidding.

Narrator: The moral of this story: if no one yelled obscenities at you in a public place today, you have something to be grateful for.

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving from Project Janna. Give someone a hug today, and be glad you aren’t degraded by people you love. If you are, get help.