I hardly listen to albums anymore, just streaming music, randomly shuffled.
Artists and genres all mixed up.
But lately I have been gravitating towards whole albums again.
Tonight I decided to listen to Theatre is Evil by Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra.
I haven't listen to it all the way through in very long time. I usually can't because there are a few songs that really ruin me emotionally (Bed Song, Trout Heart Replica, etc).
Amanda has a really good knack for writing songs about things a lot of people, especially women, go through, that are so easy to find personal meaning in but also very original.
I experienced my early 20's with The Dresden Dolls as the dominant soundtrack of my life. Bad relationships, hookups, anxiety, self loathing.. it was all in there and more.
When Amanda did her solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer, I was actually reluctant to listen. I never thought anything could come close to the brilliance and relatability of their songs.
As luck would have it, right when I decided to give it a listen (via the collection of videos Amanda created for nearly all the songs on the albums on youtube), I got dumped by the man I thought was the one. I got deeply invested in the songs on WKAP after that. They are some of my favorite songs ever.
You would think I would have learned my lesson, but I went through the same reluctance when Amanda formed her new band, The Grand Theft Orchestra. I wasn't desperately awaiting its release. Neil Gaiman posted the entire album streaming on his Tumblr blog and I decided to give it a listen.
At first, I didn't feel much. I recall vaguely blogging about it as I did so. I had already recognized the connection between my emotional states of mind and my deep relationship to Amanda's songs. I was fully aware that my profound appreciation of them was probably due to the state of my emotions at the time I was exposed to them.
When first started listen to Theatre Is Evil, I thought about this and wondered if I would have to go through some awful emotional upheaval to be able to really appreciate these songs. I didn't want that to happen. I was reasonably happy at the time. I was happily married (to the above mentioned the one. He changed his mind after a few months and we've been together ever since), I was finally working full time again, we have some extra money every month, we lived some place we really liked.
It wasn't until I listened to Bed Song, in the dark, late at night, while my husband was sleeping, that I felt that familiar pang of familiarity and sorrow. It's pretty obvious that it isn't about her marriage. They seem to be very happy and in love, and Bed Song is definitely about a pair that have fallen out of love and hardly recognize each other despite the time spent sleeping side by side.
Slow tears turned into open, ugly sobbing. It's very sad all on it's own, the story is heartbreaking. But this line murdered me: you said all the money in the world won't buy a bed so big and wide to guarantee that you won't accidental touch me in the night
I felt that. I knew that. It was shame and sadness and regret that filled my heart. I felt that my marriage was already walking down this path. We kiss each other good night and we roll off and sleep back to back. I feel like I hardly know him sometimes. I feel like we never talk.
It was only later how it struck me how Amanda's own personal growth as reflected in her song has given me the opportunity to reflect my own growth and life events within them.
Early twenties filled with self doubt and unfulfilling relationships, late 20's and beginning my 30's with something resembling adulthood. All the good and bad that comes with it.
Here are my favorite pictures from when I got to see Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra almost 2 years ago
I feel unfulfilled.
I don't feel like I'm being the person I want to be.
I put off so many things.
Boring and exciting things.
Chores and going out.
I want to go to the museum. I want to watch more movies. I want to do my laundry and organize my apartment. I want to make things. I want to exercise. I want to learn how to play guitar. I want to cook good food. I want to grow things. I want to read and learn. I want to take more photographs.
But I don't . I do none of it.
I sit on my bed and look at my computer whenever I have free time.
I keep saying I'm going to put myself on an internet diet.
I will only give myself so many hours per day or per week of internet time, and the rest has to be used for other things. Give myself a quota or something.
It'd be easy enough to make a list of things I need to get done, and I can get motivated to do those things a lot of the time, but when they're done, I just end up in bed on the internet. I need to use that time better.
My life is running away from me faster all of the time.
I've wasted all this time.
There is a big part of my brain that refuses to accept the fact that one day I will die.
I will run out of time to do all the things that I keep telling myself that I'm going to do later.
I am sitting up right now, nearly 3 in the morning when I have to work tomorrow because my husband has a cold and is snoring like a fucking freight train.
I am nearly in tears over it. The sound of someone snoring literally drives me up the wall.
I am filled with the desire to crawl out of my skin right now.
I know I shouldn't be, but it's always the reaction it's inflicted.
My mom was always a really bad snorer too.
And my husband never used to snore, but he has more and more lately. Usually it's little huffing or sucking noises in his throat as he sleeps and if I jostle him gently, he'll rearrange himself in his sleep and usually stop.
Not lately though. And the past two nights have been unbearable.
Sometimes it's intermitten and I can utilize 30 or so minutes of quiet to try and fall asleep.
But tonight it's been non-stop hardcore log sawing.
Listening to this sound drives me absolutely crazy and I am filled with rage.
I know it's totally selfish and irrational, but knowing that doesn't change anything.
I have to suppress the urge to elbow him in the face or violently kick him in the knee. It's so unkind to even let it cross my mind.
Some sounds just do that to me.
Crickets chirping. Clocks ticking. Faucets dripping. Dogs barking. Birds singing. Car alarms. Leaf blowers. Bad hip hop or dubstep with the bass turned way up.
Hearing these sounds fills me with dread and if it goes on long enough I start to feel like I'm actually going mad. Like, if a cricket is chirping somewhere outside and I'm trying to sleep, sometimes I can't even tell when/if it stops because I can hear the sound ringing in my head. I really have to concentrate or plug my ears sufficiently well in order to tell.
I just want to be able to sleep in peace.
Now I'm going to write about what I had originally meant to earlier tonight.
On Monday I left work early due to feeling like I was on the brink of a major anxiety attack and promising myself I could leave at my lunch hour was the only thing that got me through that first part of the day. I ended up having a good night because when I got home, me and the mister went and had dinner at our favorite Italian place, DeFalco's (an amazing joint in Scottsdale that is also a full deli and sells a small variety of imported groceries). I had stuffed shells and we shared a chocolate cannoli. Then we went to the nearby 'fancy mall' as I put it, because they have high end stores like Louis Vuitton, Prada and a Tesla dealership right inside the freaking mall. I only wanted to go because it is also the nearest Lush location and I wanted to give myself an inexpensive treat. I ended up buying a bright pink Rose Queen bath bomb and then we went to the Microsoft store where my husband decided he needs yet another computer (this would be his 4th functioning PC. He has a big powerful Vaio laptop for work, a smaller laptop that is just for running his soundboard and junk, and finally his Surface RT).
By leaving work and actually giving myself a somewhat nice night that I really needed, apparently I left the TTY station unstaffed.
For those of you who don't know (as if anybody is even reading this), TTY is a system that lets hearing impaired people call places like my work and communicate via text. It's exactly like instant messaging actually, just a bit more complicated. We only have two stations at my center and no on hardly ever calls it. But they're still required to have at least one open at all times. The TTY stations in my building are not for the Health Insurance Marketplace though. They're for our other major contract, Medicare. I came from the Medicare contract so I'm trained to use it.
I am rarely ever scheduled to be there, but this past Sunday I was scheduled for the entire day, which was amazing. No calls ever came in the 8 hours I was there, so I was just able to chat with my co-worker or play in MS paint all day. I was also scheduled to work the last two hours of my shift on Monday at the TTY station, which I was also looking forward to because it meant I'd definitely get to clock out on time for once.
Unfortunately, my stupid brain had different plans for me on Monday. I got to work and felt so completely shitty and anxious and just out of sorts that I could hardly bring myself to get on the phone. I was scheduled to do a few things right when I got there that weren't on the phone so I was able to put it off for a little while, but the time came for me to hit that stupid 'available' button and I was almost in tears.
I am relatively confident in my job, I feel pretty good about my knowledge level and think I usually do a good job. But most of the issues aren't in my or anybody else there's control and it gets so frustrating. You'd have to be living under a rock to have not have heard all the issues going on with the ACA Insurance Marketplace. The site is truly light years better than where it was on day one, but it's still not free of problems. The problems we're currently having have been really persistent and extremely hard to overcome. It also doesn't help that a lot of the temporary CSRs they hired are really shitty and stupid and refuse to do their job. I am internal support for them and have to take on calls when the caller requests a supervisor. So the majority of the callers I speak to are really pissed off for various reasons, and I'm usually pretty good at deescalating these types of calls, but as time goes on and only the really persistent problems remain, it gets harder and harder to make these people happy. A lot of the time, the call gets transferred simply because the CSR doesn't want to deal with them or doesn't know how to fix it and doesn't bother trying, OR they sound so ignorant that the caller just doesn't want to deal with them anymore. It's incredibly stressful.
Now if I had some kind of power or authority to fix these issues, I think I'd be a lot better off. But I just don't . They give us pretty much no authority even though we function as base level "supervisors" as far as the caller is concerned.
Just for example, today it took me over 30 minutes just to try to reset someone's password because the system is so cocked up and overloaded. It should have taken a regular CSR 2 minutes. Instead we wasted this person's time for probably close to 45 minutes at least (I don't know how long they were talking to the original CSR before they incorrectly dumped the caller on me).
On Monday, the prospect of all this really had me worked up, as it often does. The only way I could make myself get on the phone was to tell myself I only had to get through the first 4 hours and then I could go home. Fuck the 2 hours of TTY, because I'd never get though the first six.
When my lunch time came, I left and used the call out procedure and figured they had a backup TTY operator, considering they way over scheduled the day before and we had 1 - 2 extra people just waiting to cover the two of us who were logged in.
Today, I was walking to the break room for my last scheduled break and was stopped by one of my old supervisors who just happens to know everything there is in that building and is the unofficial point of contact for us TTY trained agents when we're scheduled. He's this somewhat crusty old New Yorker who loves golf and has a really dry sense of humor. He and I get along pretty well and he usually kids around with me. He stopped me and gently scolded me for not alerting him to the fact that I was leaving early on Monday cause they hadn't scheduled a backup. He says 'I know you weren't feeling well, but you have to let one of us know so we can figure out someone to cover you.'
I acknowledge what he says, and just to clarify, say 'I wasn't feeling sick here' as I point to my stomach, 'I'm sick here', I say as I point to my head. I as trying to be lighthearted about it, but letting him now I wasn't sick in the way that he meant, but that it was more of a mental health day.
He just shook his head and matter of factly said 'no you're not.'
'Seriously, Leo. I was on the brink of a panic attack', I tell him, dropping the light hearted tone in my voice and joking look on my face.
He just shakes his head again and looks me dead in the eye and says 'No you're not', and moved on the conversation.
I went to break and it didn't sink in for a few minutes, but it really pissed me off how he just brushed off my mental health. He has no idea what I go through, and yeah I'm not as bad off as a lot of people, and I can usually get myself through from day to day. Anxiety doesn't cripple me completely. But it takes its fucking toll and he has no right to make assumptions about my mental state. I hide my anxiety because I really can't afford to not. I have to do my job and most days I'm miserable and it goes from call to call and sometimes it's all I can do to not break down in tears between a constant barrage of insults and idiocy I deal with all day long.
Just because I'm not medicated or always visibly breaking down doesn't mean I'm ok.
This is my cliche new years post.
First of all, my New Years Eve sucked.
I had to work until 9pm, inhale something resembling food, change clothes, slap on a little make up and trot over to the ever so trendy dive bar, The Bikini Lounge, which happens to be directly across the street from my apartment.
We were there the night before with some of my husband's old friends, one who had come from out of town and he hadn't seen in many years. It was a pretty good night. The out of town friend was very nice, and one of her friends who dropped by to see her before she left town again was cute and amusing and I very much liked her. We convinced them to come back for the next night and anybody who needed could always crash on our couch since we literally live 5 minutes on foot from the bar.
A few of us got drunk and use a Sharpie marker to draw all over everybody willing.
This is what happens when you let drunk people have a Sharpie.
Ok, back to new years.
They didn't show, just to get that out of the way.
This tiny little kitsch tiki bar is stuffed with every hipster for miles. Drinks are had and we try to find a place to stand that is at least some what out of the way. Eventually a little table opens up, but it's right next to the shitty hack DJ who playing the absolute worst bullshit. I would have been way more happy with the jukebox, personally. I get two drinks in and I'm just not having fun. I looked cute though. Wish I had a picture actually. I get up to go to the bathroom and after waiting forever in the tiny cramped, stinky, one stall closet of a bathroom, I finally get my turn... but I'm in for a little surprise. I got my fucking period. I had luckily brought my purse with me and had plenty of supplies on hand. I go to put a pad on and someone is knocking on the door. "occupied!" I shout over the din of whatever lame pseudo-funk song is currently blasting. A minute later, another knock and I yell the same even louder. I still have my tights around my knees, sitting there trying to arrange a mini-pad on my underwear, and then the door busts open. I scream every expletive imaginable and the door slams shut again almost instantly.
I know I shouldn't have been as upset as I was, but it was the last straw. I get back to my husband at the table and announced that I want to go home. But it's only 30 minute til midnight and the bar starts handing out the $1 mini champagne bottles. He offers to get them, but as he stands up he bumps the table and spills his drink everywhere. Again, not that big a deal, but knowing I was already pissed off he freaks out and makes a huge scene about it. Doubly embarrassed now because he doesn't seem to understand why I hate squabbling with him in public and starts to make a scene. I grab my coat and head for the door. After shoving my way through the crowd to the front door, the bouncer won't let me out. Says I have to go out the back door. I have to fight my way through the crowd again and finally exit onto the street and stomp home with him trailing and trying to make the entire thing about him. He can't see why I'm upset over the invasion of privacy, but in typical male fashion thinks I want him to fix it or something, instead of just understanding that something pissed me off, and it wasn't him and no he can't undo it cause it has nothing to do with him. This is something he ALWAYS does and it irritates me to no end, and despite repeated attempts at explaining to him that me being upset or talking about something that bothers me is not the same as me asking him to fix my problems or offer solutions. It's a stupid, annoying guy thing.
So here we are walking down the street, and it's 20 til midnight and he's shouting and there are people on their patios and balconies and I am hissing at him to shut up and 'fuck you' and all that but he just keeps yelling. I can't fucking stand this. Add that to the heap of embarrassment I already feel. I storm inside and throw my coat and purse on the floor and lock myself in the bathroom, having not really planned this out very well. He's still yelling and I am shouting back at him, and I decide I'm just going to take a bath. I start running the water and he's still yelling but I can't really hear him anymore. It goes quiet as I get into the bath and I hear the front door shut.
I am really crying at this point and before too long I hear the sporadic cracks of fireworks and party poppers. It's midnight. And I'm alone and crying in a bathtub. I can only cry harder.
It's quiet again, except for sporadic fireworks and my own ragged breathing and that quiet sucking sound a bath tub makes when its drain doesn't have a good seal and the occasional dog barking.
Blessed quiet.
I start thinking about resolutions. Cliche as it is. I almost get up to grab the only writing implement in the room, an eye liner pencil, to write a few things on the shower wall, to remember them.
I can hear my phone ringing in the other room. I ignore it.
This is how it always goes. We get into a big fight, one of us storms out (usually me, as I appreciate the value of space and time to cool down and clear one's head during this sort of thing) and 20 or 30 minutes later, he's blowing up my phone with calls or texts. It's always sweeping apologies and 'everything I do is to make you happy' and blah blah blah. It's always the same. I always want to say 'maybe you should reevaluate your methods cause they clearly aren't working', but I never have the heart. I know he means it sincerely and he really does try, but he never actually listens to me. If he did we wouldn't always be having different versions of this same fight over and over again.
After the 5th phone call, I get up and fetch my phone from the other room.
I don't even remember what was said. And it doesn't matter cause even though we made up and he came home, I know he didn't listen to me. We're going to have this same fight in 6 months.
He comes home, bringing me my favorite bottled ice tea and a tiny bag of beef jerky (one of my guilty pleasures). I ask him if he wants to watch a movie in bed, and we settle on Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing (I got him the dvd for xmas).
We watch the movie and go to bed.
And that was my new years.
The next day I wrote down some of the resolutions I thought of, and my best friend stops over to drop off her dog's old x-pen so my rabbit can finally have a larger living space. She also gave me a second Christmas present, two of those cute POP figurines, Bilbo and Gollum from The Hobbit. 😍
I don't know why she did that since she had already given me a really cute Threadless t-shirt with a panda on it.
After eating half the chocolate in our candy dish, she's off again. And the husband and I go to Shortleash, a gourmet hotdog restaurant near our place. I have the beloved Mac Daddy, which is a hot dog (or bratwurst in my case) on naan bread with what they say is mac n cheese, but is really penne alfredo. On the dog. It's fucking amazing (It also normally comes with chili on it, but I opt out of that).
In closing this post, here are some of the resolutions I wrote down on New Years Day:
Take better care of skin, hair, & nails
Lose some weight
Play more racquet ball
Make doctor's appointments
Take more baths
Paint nails more often
Get around to dying your hair like that picture you saved (dark turquoise kind of ombre)
Ok. So here we go. But first a little background:
I used to be a regular blogger. Really. I posted regularly for years on Suicidegirls.com... I went for the tits and stayed for the community. I lost touch with the site a long time ago, and although I rejoined, I just can't get back into writing everyday. I reread a bunch of my old posts, and I didn't write about anything particularly interesting. Just my boring life; living at home, working part time at a department store, random hookups, and then I would talk a lot about movies I watched, like full on reviews, and then wax philosophical about music. Some how, people actually read it. I think joining Tumblr is what screwed me over in this department. I love it for the most part, and am fully addicted with multiple accounts and several secondary blogs. It's gross actually. But as a result of the constantly updating, streaming images and information, my attention span has shrunk to nanoseconds. It is painfully difficult to concentrate on anything anymore. I cannot collect my thoughts whatsoever. And I hate it.
I decided to create this blog in an attempt to force myself to learn to focus again. Even if it's just on documenting my still boring, but slightly less so, life.
So onto the proper entry.
Even though no one is reading this as of yet, I suppose introductions are in order.
My name is Danielle.
I recently turned 30, which is still hard to believe sometimes. I don't feel much different than how I did when I turned 18. That is actually going to be a big focus of this blog; coming to terms with getting older and how no one really "grows up", we just get older. Being a certain age doesn't mean you know what the fuck you're doing, or ever will. We're all just bumbling around, trying to figure shit out as we go.
I've been married for about two and a half years. We've been together for 5 years, and it's the longest relationship I have ever been in. Relationships are fucking hard. But my mister is pretty awesome, and I never thought I would meet someone who accepts me, even if he doesn't always understand me, exactly the way I am. That itself is pretty remarkable.
We don't have any children, and I don't think I have any of intention of changing that. Pretty much all my friends have kids, and I love them all like crazy. I just like being able to give them back when it's all said and done. I am very selfish with my private time, and I don't see that changing. I'm not 100% opposed to having children, but I think it's more than 50%. Like, I'm on the fence, but one leg is firmly on the 'no' side of that fence, while the other is really and truly still in middle 'I don't know' zone.
While I don't have any kids, I do have a pet rabbit. His name is Dennis Hopper and he's just as surly as his namesake. He is into destroying Amazon packing paper, eating Romaine, and pooping everywhere.
A job? Oh yeah, I have one of those. I work for a large government contractor who does civilian information technology. That is a fancy way of saying they operate websites and call centers for government projects, like Medicare and the Affordable Care Act health insurance Marketplace. I am an internal support CSR for the Marketplace call center, after being a general CSR with the Medicare department for just over a year. What that means, is when the regular CSRs you get when you call get stuck or need help with what they're doing, or you decide to be a demanding tool and request to speak with a supervisor, they call me. And trust me, I am a GIANT bitch when the latter happens, which is far too frequent these days. Oh, and thisdoes not mean you can come here and ask me shit about the Marketplace. I get enough grief and stress at work, and at least they pay me for that.
I live in Phoenix, Arizona. I am originally from Illinois, as is the rest of my family apart from my younger brother.
I grew up in the sprawling suburb of Mesa. There really isn't much of interest there. These days, it mostly consists of dying strip malls and tweeker motel squats.
About two years ago, we moved downtown and I have never been more happy with where I live in my life. I always thought Arizona was completely hopeless and couldn't wait for the chance to get out. But we've found ourselves a nice little niche, in the middle of the art district.
We live in an apartment that started out as a Route '66 era motorist motel, but as the city fell into harder times, became a crack motel / prostitute flop house. A few years ago, during a revitalization jag, the city bought (or possibly seized due to the criminal activity) the property and shut it down. In the time it was vacant, the crime in the area was said to decrease several hundred percent in a year or two. The whole thing was gutted, leaving only the masonry; cement floors, brick/cinder block walls. They renovated the entire structure, keeping the cement floors and exposed brick, and furnishing the rest with Ikea counters and cabinets. Our space was once two motel rooms, but the hallway has been ripped out, so it's like two rooms the same size, with a small hallway connecting the two, a tiny ass bathroom and a slightly larger kitchen space. It is actually way cooler than it sounds.
It is full of artist types, and the management company really tries to foster a sense of a proper community instead of a bunch of strangers who you have to share walls with. That way when you're woken at 4am by your upstairs neighbor blasting some 90's era Madonna, and you trudge upstairs to politely ask her to shut the fuck up, you actually get a note on your door in the morning apologizing for the disruption. True fucking story.
Oh, and there are no kids here. Another major plus after living in a GIANT apartment complex with several huge families with extremely noisy and downright rude little shits overrunning the place.
I used to do spend a lot of time knitting and cross stitching and making collages, but that was before I had regular access to beautiful high speed internet. I tend to leave a lot of projects unfinished once started.
As for general interests, I am into music and film, never finishing craft projects as I mentioned, playing racquet ball with my oldest, bestest friend, and consuming lots of art (either online or in museums. I am a great appreciator of art and I mean that in the most genuine, least conceited way possible). I am a Liberal, a Feminist, and a borderline Socialist.
I am nerdy and obsessive and a little compulsive.
I hate the heat.
I am a dog person.
I am a control freak.
I have a crush on Tom Waits, Richard Dawkins, and Henry Rollins.
I like singing in my car when I'm alone, but I hate driving.
I read Sherlock slash fiction.
My favorite member of the Fellowship is Gimli.
I've only seen a few episodes of Dr. Who (9th Doctor).
I've never seen Titanic or The Notebook.
I don't know how to find a good place to stop.
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