Gilmour's Diss on Girls

When I was in school, it was a point of pride that I took damn near every genre literature class they offered. Science Fiction and Fantasy? Sign me up. Horror? Sure. Carribean lit? Uh-huh. The Canadian Short Story? It was only a semester, but okay! Wading through piles of weird, unusual, and non-canonical literature had the effect of elevating oft-ignored writing into something worthy of our consideration. And while it was a shame that each class existed in its own little bubble, the end result of taking many, many genre lit classes was that I had a broader understanding of what "literature" actually means.

Enter David Gilmour.

Yesterday, Hazlitt posted an interview with the author; it was a tour of his bookshelf, the one in his University of Toronto office. Gilmour, who teaches English and cultural studies at Victoria College, was being interviewed as a teacher and a writer; his novel, Extraordinary, has recently been long-listed for the Giller Prize.

As an interview subject, Gilmour was exceptional: lauding Proust one moment, then telling his interviewer that he only teaches "guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth." Roth, he explains, necessitates a late-semester introduction, because, you know, scenes of middle-aged men eating menstrual pads require worldlier students. "I save it ’til the very end of the year because by that point they’ve got fairly strong stomachs, and they’re far more sophisticated than they are in the beginning. So they can understand the differences between pornography and great literature." So sayeth Gilmour, who is also no great fan of women writers, Canadian writers, Chinese writers, and men who aren't strapping lumberjack-ish men—Proust aside, of course.

I never had the pleasure of sitting in a Gilmour classroom, although I did encounter my fair share of shoddy teachers at my alma mater. And he's since gone on record as saying his words were taken "out of context," that the interview was second on his mind to a conversation he was simultaneously having with a colleague (that started after the interview began), and that he teaches big, muscular writers because he identifies with them the most. (For what it's worth, Hazlitt's transcript holds up just fine in the face of Gilmour's blustery non-apology.)

The whole thing reads like a slick parody of dude-writer culture: from the women-don't-matter dismissal, to the pricky middle-aged sexuality, to the odd specificity of not teaching Chinese writers (are Japanese writers okay, Gilmour? How about Thai authors?), to the monomaniac belief that one's own worldview is the only one that could possibly matter.

I know that writers need healthy levels of self-confidence and self-belief in order to succeed. To this end, Gilmour is fine, if utterly obnoxious. If he wants to immerse himself in a literary culture that's a warm, wooly, just-like-me blanket, he can go right ahead. Never having read any Gilmour, I can't tell you if the effect of reading his library creates sparkling innovative, or derivative same-old.

But inflicting that same culture on his students is irresponsible. He says he can only teach authors that he loves, and he happens to love mostly male writers. ("Not my fault, bro! They speak to me!") But I don't think he's trying hard enough. As an instructor, he may feel most comfortable talking about books he likes, written by men he wants to emulate, featuring characters he identifies with. But teach those, and those alone? Laziness. Solipsism. Shameful.

Worse, it reinforces the notion that dude-writers (and by extension, dudes) are the only types that matter. When we repeatedly see, in media and academia, a narrow representation of existence, we assume that things outside that narrow slice are somehow not-good, or defective, or worthy of dismissal. See: size-ten women; women of colour; queer people of both genders; trans people of both genders; old people; immigrants; overly sexual women; asexual women; unattractive people; and people living unusual, non-rat-racy lives. Part of me understands what Gilmour is saying. It can be difficult to identify with people who are different from us. But that's how literature works: it connects us to people who aren't like us, and lifts us to a place of common understanding. How low-reaching do you have to be to only want to appreciate folks who are just like you?

When I was in school, my Contemporary American Literature class could have been populated with Roth, Emore Leonard, F. Scott Fitgerald—all of whom are name-checked by Gilmour as being particularly impressive—but instead was thick with unusual choices. The Book of Salt, by Vietnamese-American writer Monique Truong; "America," by queer poet Allen Ginsberg; Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, a deeply troubling short film about the singer "performed" by Barbie dolls; and many more. The literary landscape we worked through was varied and challenging, and my professor was knowledgeable about their various forms, authors, and influences. It was a difficult class to pass, since the writing was challenging and the focus was kaleidoscopic. But I still think of that as being one of the best, and most comprehensive, moments in my education. By exposing myself to a rich, varied, and unfamiliar territory, I became a better writer, a better student, and a better human. Perhaps Gilmour should check that class out. After all, it's just down the hall.

Let's Play Ball!

Cheering for a professional sports team is weird. Even the idea of professional sports — grown men and women who get paid handsomely to wear strange clothes and chase balls around — can only be the product of a society that has enough leisure time and money on its hands to spend some of it in rooms large enough to seat an entire small town, paying $10 for beers they wouldn't otherwise be caught dead drinking.

I'm not going to pretend to be anything other than some Jilly-come-lately to baseball. Oh, sure, I "played" baseball as a kid: slow-pitch softball, where I was terrified all the time that someone was going to hit the ball to me and I might actually have to perform. I struck out constantly in games, which confounded my relaxed (and therefore more successful) at-bats during practices. In my worry about messing it up for everyone, I stuck myself way, way out in left field, where no ball could possibly reach me. I could never muster the graceless talent of, say, an Amish ballplayer, who plays just for the sake of playing. Needless to say, as I got older, I realized that the pressure of team sports wasn't really my thing. I played squash, danced, and ran, and those solo or semi-solo pursuits were much better for my soul.

On the other hand, I do remember the 1992 and 1993 World Series of baseball, AKA the ones where the Toronto Blue Jays won and everyone went berserk. I remember the ambient excitement in my family: watching one of the games up at the cottage, where we dropped my great-aunt's place on some bogus pretext that was discarded as soon as my dad snapped on their TV. Having a team in the playoffs was a big deal, since Canada's baseball landscape was pretty arid. Plus, the Jays are my dad's team. I remember car rides with him up to the beach, when he would tune into the dense, impenetrable chatter of radio baseball announcers; or games watched at home, him alone in the darkened TV room, letting out gusty cheers when they did well and stomping upstairs to bed when they performed poorly. Just as golf is my grandfather's sport, baseball is my father's: they're experts in the art of watching.

For me, the thrill of the game is different. It's less about standing by the team (although, since the Jays are the only professional Canadian ball team, it would feel odd and turncoat to root for an American team; at least with the Jays, I can say, "I'm from here, what's your excuse?") and more about the ritual. Going to the SkyDome —excuse, me, the Rogers Center, barf — is a process: negotiating the throngs of people massing on Front Street, climbing the endless concrete ramp up to the 500-level, then settling down into the blue plastic seats. Listening as the announcer calls out each player's name with theatrical panache, saving his heartiest readings for the home team and coolly underplaying the visitors. Grinning as the Japanese fans behind us lose their minds equally for both the Jay's Munenori Kawasaki and the Yankee's Ichiro Suzuki, team allegiances be damned because one of their own is up at bat.

The gameplay itself is long stretches of time balancing between boredom and engagement as the teams glide through inning after runless inning. The sudden snap of excitement when something, anything, starts happening: a pitch beans a player! A bat breaks! A mini-drama of a runner getting chased down the baseline by a ball-wielding third-baseman, or the sudden heartbreak of a dropped flyball. The roar of the fans as someone expectedly smacks the bejeezus out of a ball and sails it over the fence, and their slow jog around the bases to score that point. Baseball, like opera, creates an air of general theatricality without a lot of actual action. It's perfect for summer, when just complaining about the heat is its own recreational activity.

Last night, we went down the Rogers Center, sat ourselves down in the cheap seats, and watched as the Jays beat the Yankees. It was a fine game: a few laggardly moves by the Yankees and a couple nice runs by the Jays meant the game had the slow, loping pace of a large savannah animal. The Jays are doing terribly right now, and so being a fan is basically just an exercise in morale. "Next year is our year," we said to each other, ignoring the rest of the 2013 season as so much administrative work to be filed. There was a baby there, a six-month old with a button nose who was grabbing at the man in front of him's blue baseball cap, grinning like a tiny maniac. The Japanese fans waved signed with the Japanese flag on side and a maple leaf on the other (my heart!). The Yankee fan to my left clapped futilely as the rest of the stadium booed A-Rod. We ate sunflower seeds and drank beers. It was the perfect time to be a sports fan.

A love letter to my pregnant friends, or: why getting fat is always hard

I've never been pregnant. I've never really wanted to be pregnant; wanted to have kids someday, yeah, but the few pregnancy tests I've taken in my life have all been accompanied by nervous stomachs, crossed fingers, and a three-days-late start to my otherwise clockwork-like period. But each time I've peed on those innocuous-looking sticks, I've gotten them back negative, and been much relieved.

However, much like pregnant women, I do have vast and varied experience with gaining weight. So I can talk about that.

In 2009, I was the fittest I'd ever been in my adult life. I was commuting twenty kilometers a day by bike, I was running three times a week, and lifting weights twice a week. In August, two friends and I biked to Guelph, a day-long trip that was challenging and exhilarating. I was also sticking my fingers down my throat to throw up meals I had just eaten, and I was taking laxatives to shit out what I couldn't purge, something I had been doing off and on for the past twelve years. I weighed 108 pounds. I hated my body, but I looked amazing.

In the fall of 2009, I threw a house party where I drank a bottle of wine for dinner and blacked out well before ten PM. I woke up the next day and I had no food in my house. My parents were coming over to take me out for dinner, and I spent the entire day shaking on my bathroom floor, trying to throw up and having nothing. When they arrived, I tried to stand up and nearly fainted. My disapproving mother found a bag of pasta somewhere deep in my pantry and made me cheesy macaroni. I was so embarrassed.

I got help. I never know what to call it: "rehab" sounds so dire, and "treatment" is what my sister calls the six-month period when she was receiving chemo. For eight months, I went twice a week to CAMH's Eating Disorders and Addictions program: once to a group therapy session, and once to meet one-on-one with a counselor. The program was successful enough, I guess; I stopped binging and purging, but I never figured out why I struggled with those problems in the first place.

I also started gaining weight. A little, at first: chalk it up to quitting my job and losing my commute. Then more: blame that on actually keeping my food down. Then more and more, until three years later, I was 158 pounds.

I was humiliated. My BMI was at 29.9; for all intents and purposes, I was obese. I was horrified. I was wearing sizes I had never worn before. I was bloated. My skin was gray. I cried every time I got on the scale, every time I tried on old clothes, every time I went to the gym. Nothing seemed to work. I wasn't bulimic anymore, but I didn't want to love this big body of mine. I felt like I couldn't.

Everywhere we go, we get messages about how we're supposed to look. We get them from the media, sure — pregnant and ballooning celebrities are a specialty of judgey tabloids — but we also get them from our friends, families, and partners. We hear from a friend about how cutting out Coke and fast food made them lose fifteen pounds, how going paleo made their skin clear up, about how they stopped losing weight once they figured out they were lactose intolerant. We hear from from our parents, who compliment us on weight loss ("I had the flu, mom."), or who offer diet advice followed directly by cookies. We hear it from our partners, who love our bodies, but who sometimes say boneheaded things about other women's bodies, either in admiration or in disgust, that we internalize.

Everyone knows it's hard to lose weight, but it's a little-discussed secret that gaining weight is also tough. It comes up in small ways (sleep positions change dramatically when you're carrying an extra forty pounds, for instance), and in large ones: emotional health, self-perception, self-love. I have nothing but sympathy for pregnant women, especially those balancing between the first trimester and the day when your bellybutton pops — the women who aren't always obviously pregnant; who might have just, you know, stopped running, or decided that cupcakes are an all-the-time food. Trying to remember that you're growing a whole other person inside your body is hard when you can't get your pants done up and you want to throw yourself down on the bed and cry. And, because the universe is a bully sometimes, it's the thinnest women — the ones who work hardest at keeping tiny and toned — who invariably end up showing first.

My weight gain was the result of some pretty bad depression, a total rewiring of the way I looked at food (friend! Not enemy!), and maybe some genetics. Your weight gain is the result of some cray-cray hormones, and the desire to make a family. I'm well aware that pregnancy comes with a host of other bummers, like nausea, exhaustion, constipation, and yeast infections, on top of gaining weight. There's also a certain pressure to pretend like every step of pregnancy is a moment of growth and gentle, maternal love, when I'm sure all some of you want to do is weep angrily while burning down your local fat-unfriendly LuluLemon store.

I don't know what to say except: I feel you, girl. I know that weight changes aren't easy, either going up or going down. I know what it's like to look down at a stomach that wasn't there a few months ago and despair, and to dislike the change even when it's a result of something positive. Hang in there: in a few months, you'll get to meet the reason for your new waistline, and something tells me it might be worth it.

Personal Culture

Culture is more than beliefs, practices, and values. Culture has commonly been defined as the worldview, lifestyle, learned, and shared beliefs and values, knowledge, symbols, and rules that guide behaviour and create shared meanings within a group of people.

— F.E. Racher & R.C. Annis, Respecting culture and honoring diversity in community practice. Research and Theory for Nursing Practice 21

This past year, I've been thinking a lot about how I define myself: what's important to me? What values do I hold dear? What traditions make me cringe? And how do I feel about myself when I choose to diverge from the choices around me?

It's complicated stuff, yo! And just to make things more bananas, there are personal cultures, family cultures, religious cultures, and professional cultures, each with its own set of values, symbols and worldviews. For example, when I was growing up, my family culture was semi-nomadic: we moved from city to city every few years. As a result, I looked with suspicion on people who had spent their whole lives in one town — in one house, even! — because it was just not how things were done in my house. Even smaller family practices have influenced me: sitting down to dinner together is important, as is mixing a can of tuna into a box of Kraft Dinner. But to other people, that's crazytalk.

It's important to identify the things that are important about your own personal culture, I think. For example, my boyfriend loves all things horror-related. Horror movies, bands who use Dias de los Muertos imagery, action figures wielding knives, and jump-scare video games. And when I ask him why, he tells me that fear is cathartic and he likes being scared. Now, to me, fear is something to be avoided, and cathartic feelings spring from heartfelt emails to long-lost friends. Different personal cultures makes for different responses to common emotions. There's no real right answer; I leave him alone when he's watching C.H.U.D-centric movies, and he listens to my nervous self-talks before I hit the reply button.

When I moved into a housing co-op, I felt like I had found a culture that really spoke to me. Here was a housing situation that let me have a say — I sat on the board of directors for four years, which set  the co-op's direction on issues like rent, community spirit, and food — but it also exposed me to a huge range of people I otherwise would never have met. There was a DIY spirit to the place (the stove is filthy? Clean it! And then go talk to the bum who dirtied it in the first place!) that fed me. I'm not saying it's all sunshine and roses. For instance, most people get to choose their roommates, which wasn't my experience, and interpersonal conflict ran rampant. But there was a ramshackle loveliness that colours my memories of the place and my time there.

When I left the co-op, I moved in with my boyfriend. I encountered a bit of culture shock. He's lovely, and his friends are lovely, but they're kind of different from my hippie love tribe. Hell, even my own friends are changing, even if they're originally from the hippie love tribe. Many of them are married, for instance. Some of them own their own homes. Families are getting started. And without the comforting struts of my co-op lifestyle, I was left wondering, is that what I should be doing too?

I don't have an answer. I want to get married someday. I want to have kids. But today? Not today. As the culture around me changes, I have to wonder if I'm capable of figuring out who I am, and where I fit. The values and lifestyles of my friends are shifting — I'm making new friends, and my old friends are making Big Life Changes — and I've never done the work of sitting down to figure out which parts of their culture appeals to me, and what I want to hang onto from my younger, wilder, less traditional days.

It's funny to think of a bunch of strangers together in a house as having any particular form of "culture," but that's what we made for ourselves to bind us together. There were family breakfasts on Sunday mornings, communal meals for sixty people, shared laundry, and drunken spin-the-bottle. These are things I missed when I moved away. Furthermore, they're things I'd love to give back to my friends and family someday (especially those makeout sessions....wink!)

I was kind of hoping that this thought process would happen on a subliminal level, but I don't think things really work like that. Cultures are not preserved by ignoring them. I think people need to choose to hang onto the useful parts of their pasts, and be selective about what parts of the evolving personal cultures around them we choose to adopt. I'd love to live in a co-housing development, for example, even if some of my friend would die before sharing an oven with anyone else. Some of my friends will choose to remain childless, while I definitely want to have a family. And there are personal choices — raising a paleo kid? renting v. owning? long hair v. "mom hair"? therapy v. drinking my emotions? — that we'll encounter only in the future. It's all a part of it.

Over the next while, I'd like to set down a vision of my life: things from my past I want to preserve, and new ideas I want to explore. Nothing too intense: it'll be less of a five-year plan, more of a dream board. The best thing about this process will be that it's happening at all. Paying attention to how I live is part of my personal culture is something that I definitely plan on hanging onto.

Orange is the New Black is the New Must-See TV

So, uh, raise your hand if you expected your favourite shows this year to come from Netflix.

Raise your hand if you expected to be able to sit down and watch thirteen hours of quality television, on demand, whenever you felt like it. In the middle of the night. When you have the sniffles and need a day on the couch. Maybe, if you're old school, you've been spreading them out, a few episodes each week; if you're really old-school, you might only be watching one episode a week, like they did in the 1980s, those Dark Ages.

We've had Tivo for a long time now (since the '90s = forever), so we're used to being able to pause our shows and come back after we get an ice cream sandwhich from the kitchen. And we've gotten used to paying for must-see TV — HBO has trained us well —and expecting stars to occasionally pop up. Hello, Steve Buscemi! I see you, playing a gangster! You're adorable. (Call me!)

When Netflix said it would begin offering original programming, I was skeptical. Netflix routinely recommends titles like, I don't know, Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned, so I was worried that we were going to end up with some truly execrable television experiences. I've seen Two and a Half Men. I know what television producers are capable of.

I ignored Lilyhammer, Netflix's first original offering. I saw a few print ads for it, and read a couple reviews, but there was nothing that said "Must-See TV!" It was impossible to ignore the next few original series, though: House of Cards was uniformly admired, and the return of Arrested Development was one of the most anticipated media events of the last few years. Suddenly, Netflix was a media darling: innovative, fresh, and catering the type of audience who binge watches entire seasons of New Girl in less than a week.

So, you know: everyone.

Now, with Orange is the New Black, I think the burgeoning...network? media entity? programmer?...is hitting its stride. OITNB is funny, it's well-written and (mostly) well-acted, which are pre-requisites for any classic show; since it was created by Jenji Kohan, the brains behind Weeds, I'm not surprised. And it can't be denied that Kohan has a knack for catchy theme songs.

But OITNB is more than that: while Piper Chapman, the nice white lady who goes to jail, is the series's theoretical center, the show is most effective when it's focusing on the other characters. Why? Because their stories are stories we haven't seen before. (I know it seems crazy, but it turns out there's more to feminism than white ladies! Who knew?!) We get to see a lot of upper-East-Side white ladies who run cupcake shops/artesian lotion start-ups/gluten-free consulting firms in movies (ex: every romantic comedy ever produced), but we don't get to see a lot of Black women, or trans women, or lesbians, or drug addicts, or immigrants. At best, they're relegated to the sassy receptionist/real-talk best friend role; at worst, they're just not in the picture.

So getting a whole bunch of them, in one place? With backstories and everything? What a treat. Seriously. I love Nicki, the mouthy, matted-haired lesbian/recovering junkie; I love the love-hate relationship between Daya and her volatile mother; I love Poussay and Tastee's genuine affection and unspoken, totally heterosexual love for each other. I love seeing trans actress Laverne Cox as trans prisoner Sophia Burset. I love that neither Cox or Sophia's trans-ness is erased or marginalized, but I also love that there's more to Sophia than her being trans: she's smart, and pushes for better health care inside the prison. I love that. And it doesn't matter what colour those characters are. I mean, it does, because, you know: identities and cultures and politics. But their ethnicities and sexual orientations and gender genesis don't preclude them from being interesting to watch onscreen, right? Which seems to be a radical idea, but it shouldn't be.

Piper Chapman is not a particular compelling character, and her hook — how did this nice lady who is Just Like Us end up in prison? — dissolved the second she told her disbelieving mother than she was no better than any other prisoner, and that she actually deserved to be there. True say. Now get out of the way, because there are other, more interesting stories to tell.

Dance Dance Revolution

While I was doing my Nia White Belt, I had this strange moment that I'm going to share, even though it makes me blush.

Nia, which is a dance fitness practice, often focuses on "freedance" movement; that is, dancing in a way that feels amazing in your body. Sometimes this matches with the music; many times, it doesn't. It's pure movement, pure pleasure, and sometimes it can be tough for me to really let go and get into the movement: I try to choreograph my dancing, strive for symmetry, and do other type-A stuff that lessens the pleasure. Sometimes, freedancing is nothing more than sitting on the ground and flexing your fingers: hell, if it feels good, just a gentle sway can be a freedance. Really appreciating the way muscles slide over bone, how fascia creates support, how breath energizes the whole body. It's amazing, but it's also tough. It requires mindfulness and nonjudgement — how often does that come naturally?

While I was taking my White Belt a couple months ago, we did a lot of freedancing. And there was a moment, when the Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes song "Time of my Life" was being played, when I got legitimately teary-eyed. This surprised me: I've never loved Dirty Dancing, and I generally roll my eyes when that song comes on, but in the moment, it struck me in a very real, raw, emotional place. It was unexpected, and very vulnerable.

Part of this is rediscovering my longstanding love of electronic music. Since I first heard "Block Rockin' Beats" at the age of thirteen, I've loved computer-driven music. Sure, I can get down with some guitars, but I'll always love Robyn and Fever Ray more than some arena-rocker or pop star. And Nia often thrives when there's a solid foundation of easily-followed beats. But it's not just Nia, and it's not just electronic music: one of my favourite images of my boyfriend is him singing along, at the top of his lungs, to his favourite ska songs on a tiny, sweaty dancefloor in one of our favourite bars. It's my parents stomp-dancing around the cottage after a wine-fueled dinner, fists pumping in the air to my dad's favourite song. It's my sister twerking in my living, just because she can.

I'm excited to be a part of a practice that encourages people to feel good in their bodies, and to move to music that makes them feel good, too. I love Nia because it's transformed by body, but it's also made inroads in plenty of other areas of my life: my music tastes, my ability to be mindful, my ability to choose joy. It's transformative. 

Doing Nia has allowed my relationship with music to evolve. I've become more aware of my body as I move through space; I've become more confident in my own particular brand of booty-shaking on any given dancefloor; it's helped me forge emotional connections to the music I'm listening to; and it helps me focus on how to lead other people to move, as well. I love beats — I always have — but I'm starting to think of them like clothing hangers: convenient places to hang a particular move, or feeling, or expression of joy.

And I can't deny, I'm excited to build playlists for dancing. Should I lead with some GusGus? Cool down with Massive Attack, and get the blood pumping with A Tribe Called Red? This stuff feeds me.

Jorbs

I was lying in bed last night, and between macabre fantasies of zombies lurking in my halls, and macabre fantasies of what might be slithering around under my bed, I was staring at the ceiling, slowly realizing that I have completely lost the plot on what I want to be when I grow up.

When I was nine, a family friend asked me what I would be when I grew up; I shirtily replied that I wanted to be a political analyst, despite the fact that I wasn't totally clear on what that person would actually, y'know, do. In high school, I raised my hand and asked what someone had to do to become a stay-at-home mom, which gave the teacher only slight pause before returning to the lesson at hand. University was an eight-year marathon of "who the hell knows that this degree is going to get me?" and my post-graduation career has been scattershot at best.

I have no clear idea in my head of what my business card should say, or even what I would want it to say. This is frustrating, because as my friends start businesses/head back to school to get college diplomas/entire second or masters degrees/climb the corporate ladder to a comfortable middle rung/pay off their student loans/start families/be actual, functioning adults, I'm still at a loss when someone makes smalltalk at a party by asking what I do.

What I do, these days, is write. I make crafts. I take baths and read comic books. I spend hours thinking about my stupid reproductive system and the various ways it's going to let me down. I meet friends for lunch and I hang out with my boyfriend. I cook. I job-hunt. I dance. And while it's all soul-nourishing, it doesn't exactly pay the rent.

Realizing I have no professional goals to speak of is terrifying. Unlike my friends in the service industry, I don't want to open my own themed bar. I have a horror of amassing more student debt by going back to school, and I have no idea how professional journalists get paid unless they're Lewis Lapham. I feel adrift, aimless, and worst of all, boring.

Sometimes I daydream about living in one of those dystopian worlds where your profession is assigned to you at birth, or halfway through your bar mitzvah — I mean, those places have some downfalls, but at least people have some focus. I took a quiz online that suggested that my ability to innovate and direct might make me ideal for a job in fields like wedding planning or Chinese medicine, but somehow, those don't really jump-start my engine, you know?

So I dunno. I'm open to suggestions. My boyfriend just came into my office and asked me what I was working on; when I told him about this blog post, he said, "Well, you're a writer!" which is both deeply encouraging and also like, dude: blogging doesn't pay my bills. I need some ideas on how to pay my bills without completely losing my mind (and I think, to the eternal disappointment of my nine-year-old-self, that political analyst is pretty much out of the picture by now. Bummer).