Blood: Birthdays

I reached a milestone last week with the plasma donation. I've donated 50 times, which at one time was going to be my stopping point. This means I've been at this for right at 6 months.

I've gotten past relying on the money. It never gets figured into my budget. I have stopped counting on it, stopped cashing the checks the second I get them, but it's still nice to have the extra few bucks around --just in case.

But I feel like I can start planning to quit. Once I'm done, I'm done. I'll get the tattoo and that will technically finish me off --though as I've learned, short of shooting up in the lobby, engaging in anal sex with a Belgian male prostitute or eating a hamburger that says "Made in England" on the wrapper while the staff watches and takes pictures, there isn't much that would actually disqualify me from donating, provided I don't tell them.

I'm always learning about the ways you can be disqualified from donating --the ones they don't ask you about but are hard to hide from.

"Somebody is having a birthday," she said.

"It's not me," I said and she smiled. She had my chart. Of course, she knew it wasn't my birthday, which would be a pretty miserable way to celebrate --though once, I did sort of plan to do that, but didn't.

"No, it's not your birthday," she said. "But we do something special for birthday people and for when you hit 100."

I knew I'd just crossed 50.

"What happens?"

"Oh, we give stuff," she said. "Sometimes it's a water bottle or one of those drink cozies."

However, sometimes, the gift is a kiss off.

"We had a client come in on his 60th. We really loaded him down with a t-shirt, a gym bag, the water bottle, the whole thing." She seemed sad. "The company changed hands a few months ago. They won't let us take anyone over the age of 60. So we gave him all the stuff, then someone had to tell him he couldn't donate any more."

So he came in for 20 or 30 bucks and left with a t-shirt, a gym bag and a water bottle --along with the message, don't come around here no more.

I hoped the guy needed the money less than I do. Odds are that wasn't the case.

Open casting call

Well, as part of my new "let's help other writers" thing, I'm starting on the basic level. If you're a blogger who reads my blog and want to be identified with me, I'm willing to add your blog to my blog roll.

Not everybody wants this. Some people dig the sordid, car-wreck-in-progress posts that I occasionally conjure up, but wouldn't want their name attached.

Others might be fine with it.

No big promises that this will increase your traffic. I blog because I like to, not because I get a lot of visitors. 5th Column still gets waaaay more than me, even on old posts. If you've been here before, you know I don't really host a forum that leads to a lot of discussion. Comments are welcome, just not really necessary --I mean, what do you say to a guy who spends money he earned selling plasma on a Christmas tree?

What kind of lights are you going to use? I just don't leave a lot to work with.

Anyway, if you want me to add you, I will --provided your blog isn't about promoting the master race, toppling the government or gathering people to do things that would lead to felony convictions. Everything else is mostly fair game, I think. I'd prefer local, but whoever is interested, I suppose, is good enough.

Just send me a link to your site.

pennies: mood ring

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been grappling with a couple of personal failures and rejections. The most significant has been the loss of a couple of friends.

Nobody died. They just went away.

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine called me from the road and told me she was through with Charleston and heading home to Texas. It was shocking and disorienting. We'd gotten close and I'd come to rely on her for moral support, as a sounding board for my writing and just someone to kind of get me out of my dull, gray brain.

Her own story is complicated and difficult, but the move wasn't entirely unexpected. She always planned to go. The timing was what was off. I just expected later rather than sooner.

A few weeks ago, she decided that things where she was weren't working the way she'd hoped they would. I really don't know what she thought, but she abruptly stopped communicating.

It scared me just a bit. In the weeks leading up to her dropping out, she'd filled my head with fears about old enemies, talk about a stalkerish new guy she'd sort of been seeing and even her own depressed state.

I imagined all kinds of things. I asked around a little and eventually found out that she was okay, but it hurt. I felt discarded and abandoned.

In the last couple of days, I lost another friend. This one, I've known for years. With him, it's the usual. We've always had a kind of adversarial friendship and snipe back and forth for laughs --sometimes to the point where it ceases to be funny and becomes kind of merciless. On some levels, we're very much alike. We have similar temperaments and ways of thinking, but I have a gift for cruelty. When provoked, I can be particularly hurtful and without really trying.

He can be a bastard, but he's really out of his weight class when it comes to me. I'm just that much more awful.

Anyway, I pissed him off --possibly because he pissed me off --and that was it. He cut me loose. It is probably for the best.

It may be that for my friend who fled to Texas, cutting me out was the best thing for her to do, too --to maybe cut some of the things that tethered her to a specific time in her life that just didn't work. Sometimes maybe you have to get rid of some of the old things to make room for the new in your life.

I've taken the rejections hard. Lately, I've been blathering almost non-stop about change. Well, there you go... change, right there. People change. Sometimes they change because they want to and sometimes they change because they need to. Sometimes it happens because of something you did and sometimes it happens because it happens and it has nothing to do with you at all.

I'm trying to find my peace with this. I've lost people from time to time, but I don't quit anybody. I do give them their space, however. Sometimes that's what they want in the first place --space away from me. I don't chase. I don't beg and I don't plead, but I keep a place open in my life for them in case they should want it.

Sometimes they do come back.

But not always.

Pennies: Resolutions again

My resolutions are coming together slowly and the list to the side is growing. I spoke to a guy about them yesterday, a drummer as it happens, who told me he didn't bother with them. He also said that losing weight or getting in shape was never a problem because he's married to a personal trainer. When he starts getting fat, she lets him know. Problem solved.

This was not particularly helpful.

Still, my little coffee cup reminds me, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

At the library, looking for a copy of the Writer's Market for a friend --she writes erotic/pornographic short stories involving bondage, masochism, etc... and needs help locating magazines that might consider publishing, one of the librarians asked if I needed help. I didn't, but she seemed pretty unhappy to be shelving books so I shrugged and went along with it.

"Are you a writer?" She asked and I said, sure. I'm a writer.

"Are you?" I asked. She seemed pretty eager to help. She worked around books. She was human. All of these things contributed to the possibility that she might like to write.

She nodded. "I write science fiction and fantasy --but just a little."

"Lots of imagination," I acknowledged.

"Well, reality isn't as much fun."

I nodded, but thought that my friend who writes the porn is probably writing from her own experiences to some degree. Of course, not everybody likes sex or wants to be treated as a personal fuck toy.

The pope, for instance... probably... and maybe some of those guys on Fox News.

We looked for a little while and finally I explained what the book could do. It's a directory of where you could get published --if God loves you. She seemed interested, like maybe she'd wondered about that.

Finally, she located the book.

"Oh, it's in reference." She frowned. "You can't check it out. You can look at it, but you can't take it home."

Ah well, I told her. I can always buy it. It wouldn't kill me to buy something every once in a while.

As I was leaving, I remembered how many people encouraged me to write, how many people cut me slack or gave me a break. I've tried to do that with other aspirants. We are many. But I've never nailed it down as a personal policy. For 2011, it becomes policy. I still want to get published. I want that more than anything and I'm still going to try, but I can also do what I can to help other writers get read, too.

For my friend who writes the porn, I promised her I'd share my copy of the Writer's Market when I got it. I'm selling blood on Saturday. It should be enough to cover it.

blood: Oh Christmas Tree...

"Why are you wearing shorts?"

Outside, snow was coming down like paper streamers. The sky was leaden and the technicians working the counter were appalled. Just looking at me made them cold.

"Laundry day," I said. This is my standard line when actually I don't much care what I wear on Saturday. It was enough to get my point through. They understood, but thought I was stupid for coming out dressed for a luau.

"You drove, right?" And I nodded.

"But I've got some errands outside," I said. "My family is getting our Christmas tree."

What I really love about the plasma people is no matter what I tell them I'm planning on spending my blood money on, they never flinch. Whatever I say I'm going to buy never seems weird to them.

"I've got to get my tree out of the attic this weekend," the technician said and checked my blood pressure. "I guess I bought it about ten years ago, spent almost a hundred dollars."

I nodded. "Sounds like you got your money's worth. The fresh cut ones run about 40 or 50 bucks. We go out every year. It's kind of a tradition."

"I like live trees, too," she said. "I just can't stand cleaning up the needles."

It is a common complaint.

"I don't mind the extra fuss," I said. "I wish they were cheaper, but we do pretty good. We always go with a budget."

In this case, my budget was exactly $52, the money from a single week of donating plasma.

We picked the tree out at the market. The snow was really coming down. I was still wearing my shorts. My youngest son found the tree.

"I like this one," he said and it looked pretty good to me. It looked pretty good to all of us.

I shelled out 40 dollars and bought a bunch of mistletoe to hang over doorways and to tie above the stalls in the bathroom at work.

Ho, ho, ho.

punch drunk

The problem with doing what I do (writing for money) is you can never be certain how something is going to be received. You do your best, look to do the story right and sometimes... fuck, who knows? You still end up pissing somebody off you didn't really intend to.

Nobody likes negative feedback. It's draining and certainly I earn a fair share when I do dumb things like screw up the spelling of a name or mistake the time of a particular show. Some of the things I've screwed up are pretty ridiculous. I accept my stripes when I'm careless. I deserve them, but I make a correction, offer an apology, try not to do the same damned thing again, and move on.

The hardest times are when I get called out on something that has nothing to do with an error. It's usually a difference of perspective. A couple of times I've had tense conversations with concert promoters over articles, usually reviews they didn't particularly like. It's always some detail that's been pointed out: a singer has a cold, the sound system seemed off... something.

This is not to say I am a hard reviewer. I'm not. I strive for fair, but forgiving. Putting yourself out there is hard, particularly when you're on the local level.

Anyway, you can't please everybody all of the time --or some of the time, even. Every now and again, regardless of the intent, the story is read completely wrong. Somebody prospects for that one shining nugget of shit out of what is a silver mine of promotion and good will. The mine it then they want to bring it to the window to be cashed for all its worth.

It feels like a gut punch. It makes me doubt my own ability. It makes me try to peel apart my own intentions like layers of onion skin to see what's at the core.

Today, for instance, I was pissed at an artist. I wrote something I took as positive and more interesting than everything else in the section --at least, the most interesting thing I wrote this week --and they hated it. They absolutely loathed it and read something between the lines I did not write.

And I did the walk through the emotions: shock, disbelief, doubt of my own skills, anger, more anger, disgust then finally... eh (shrug). Along the way, I swear I'm never going to do another one. I swear the ungrateful asshole will not be seeing any more ink from me and they can go fucking hang themselves for all I care. Who fucking needs this? I'll stick with the god damned bass players. They never bitch.

The funny thing is it doesn't matter whether they thought I did a good job or not. It doesn't matter whether I'm hurt because I feel unappreciated and rejected. I don't stay angry and I don't hold a grudge. I let it go because I live in a small town with a small arts, music and theater scene. They can say different, but each struggles to draw a crowd and find patrons.

Maybe they don't need me, but I think they do.

Emo's rambling roundup

Again, we enter the last few weeks of the year and I take a look at that list to the right of the blog I've been ignoring. 2010 was a tough year, not because the money was tighter than usual. It wasn't, really. I managed to get through, thanks to a nearly endless work week and supplementing my income with regular donations to the plasma center.

No, it was tougher for other reasons, I guess. It started hard and it's ending hard. There wasn't much of a gooey center.

But here's the final update on what I did and did not do this year.

1-I did not get published. My first book was ignored and subsequent rewrites have mostly stalled. Book number two is being re-written. Who knows? Either way, it's not getting published this year. Next year, looks particularly bleak.

2-I haven't written to my grandmother in weeks. This has kind of been on again and off again.

3-I've learned very few things this year and certainly not 50. Most of the important things I've learned are not particularly practical. For instance, Larry Groce told me once that there were really only about 300 different melodies. Everything else kind of riffs off that. I remembered that when I started reading about archetypes in literature and sort of connected the dots about people.

There are no unique people. We are not unique little snowflakes. We're all riffs off a set of archetypes. This explains to me why so many think they know me, why I resemble somebody else they've met and usually remember well. They do know me. I'm closer representative to a particular (and fairly common) archetype in the great book of characters that is repeated over and over.

This is the kind of stuff I learned. It's sort of interesting, but not really useful. It doesn't improve my life or the life of anyone else in any measurable way and is a little depressing, actually.

4-Read 12 great books. Never happened. I read mostly pop fiction this year. Some of it was fun, but none of it was what anybody would consider edifying or enlightening. So, I did read 12 not-so-great books.

5-Make enough money. Well, I made enough to survive. My credit rating is up, but that's about it. I get by, but thriving is another matter.

6- Complete Captain America project. Nope. Still working on it. I'm trying anyway.

7-Improve. That's a tough one. I think I'm some better as a writer. I'm stronger and I don't smoke these days. I'm a good father. I think I get better at that every year. I'll rule that as in the plus column.

8- Remember I'm lucky and decent. I'm decent yes and I have tried to be as lucky as a man can be, but I wouldn't say that's true. You can make your own luck. I've read books on the subject that talk about improving your chances for positive outcomes, but that sort of thinking makes luck like of like cooking. Some people can follow the directions of a recipe for a cake and turn in something that's better than you can buy at a bakery. Other people can follow the same directions and create something inedible.

It's not just what you do. It's where you are, who you are and what you have at your disposal. There is a difference in what you have for ingredients, the quality of your tools and even the elevation of where you do the work. Some of these things you can adjust, some of them you're stuck with.

I did not make much luck this year.

9-Escape. I never did. Not once. All year I've been like a chained dog in a fenced yard. There was no vacation. I spent two nights away from home this year. Both of them were at my Mom's.

On the pluses and minuses, I fall easily in the negative, which is disappointing since really the bar wasn't particularly high. I could make excuses on why this or that didn't work. Mostly, it has to do with losing steam, with finding my optimism and drive collapse beneath the everyday struggles of just being me. Some of it was maybe turning 40 or just laziness.

I could have eased up on the cheeseburgers, though, and watched a little less television.

Looking back, 2010 won't be a year I'll miss. There were a few bright spots here and there, but there was a lot of wasted energy, heartache and headache.

But we start over. We start over because that is what I know how to do. I get up and give myself another chance. I do that because despite the periodic whining I like me. I think I'm worth another chance. I am always worth another chance and besides, what else have I got to do?

One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing the same way over and over and expecting a different result.

Maybe I should stop hoping to be published or to travel anywhere farther than Pearisburg, Virginia. It doesn't mean I should stop writing, that I should stop sending my work to people or that I shouldn't go where I can when I can. It just means I need to lay off creating artificial deadlines that do nothing but periodically make me feel like I failure over the course of twelve months.

Making oaths and promises for self-improvement doesn't seem to work for me. I've been waiting to get this tattoo to celebrate the completion of project Captain America for a while. Maybe the point isn't to win, but just to compete.

Maybe this time, the way to do it is to go ahead and have dessert first then move on to the soup and salad. Maybe instead of looking for ways to make more work for myself in order to reward myself at the end I should look for ways to treat myself, then work to pay for it somehow.

It's all a work in progress, I guess.