To Care or Not to Care

My bio-mother called last night and left yet another drunken message. We weren't home, but truth be told I wouldn't have answered the phone even if we had. Thank goodness for Call I.D. It has been almost 14 months to the day since the last time she called, drunk. In fact in the last three years, all three phone calls have been while under the influence. My theory is that it takes enough alcohol to get this alcohlic drunk enough (to slur) before she can summon up the nerve to pick up the phone and dial in a vane attempt to reach out to her oldest child. She has said to me a number of times over the years, "Remember, you're my first born, Ginger." Clearly she is implying that first born means something special. But I have no real memories of feeling the kind of special she wants me to feel.

Those Silly Pheromones

There is an article, more of a blurb really, in today's Press Democrat that supports about half of what I already believe about personal scent. According to a study done at UC Berkeley, "A chemical in male sweat can boost mood, brain activity and sexual arousal in heterosexual women…"

I realize that science has a compulsion to take perfectly logical ideas and prove them, but all they had to do was ask any woman who loves the way a man smells, and they possibly could have saved some money. And the scientists who conducted the study didn't even let the women really smell the "guys." Women were instead instructed to take 20 whiffs of a chemical with a hugely romantic name, androstadienone, from a bottle and then had their vitals checked. The chemical is a compound "found in male perspiration and other bodily secretions." Lovely.

I once had a crush on a guy who always showed up at the bar we were hanging out in after work smelling like he had been working all day. He had B.O. It was borderline unpleasant, but it still turned me on. There was something about him that really got me all hot and bothered sitting next to him, his androstadienone wafting off his torso and drifting toward me in my chair. I found myself leaning in toward him and inhaling deeply. It reminded me a bit of a food that on first taste isn't great, but once you chew on it awhile and let the inner flavors permeate your taste buds, it is really great and you forgot that the first taste wasn't so great. Come to think of it most alcohol is like that as well. The bitter or biting taste of the fermented grain or grapes that precedes the warmth spreading down your body as the first sip makes its way into your system eventually starts to taste good because you associate it with a pleasant feeling. That is how this guy smelled to me, I got used to the unpleasant outer shell of his end-of-the-day scent because embedded in each scent molecule was some chemical that made my heart race, dilated my capillaries and got my juices flowing.


Conversely, I have seen this phenomenon have the reverse affect on a heterosexual male. My fifteen-year-old daughter went to the movies with a new boyfriend. My hubby and I liked him fine, we had met him and spent a bit of time with him. We weren't eyeing him as potential son-in-law material, but basically he was okay. We offered to give him a ride the few blocks from the movie theater when we came to take the daughter home from the movies, to the restaurant where his parent was waiting and would take him home. As soon as the kids were inside and the car door closed, his scent filled the car. I looked over my shoulder at him in the backseat with my daughter, they weren't even touching, just smiling and chatting. But boy, did he smell great. Whatever he was wearing filled the car. Wow. As covertly as I could, I inhaled deeply and thought briefly about Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson. This kid was much cuter than Dustin Hoffman.

He was only in the car a few minutes, we let him out, the kids said a quick goodbye, he thanked us for the ride and sauntered off as we pulled away from the curb. The usual parent-child chit chat ensued.

I said "Boy, Joe sure smelled good, what was he wearing?" Whatever cologne that was, I imagined, was rivaling Ralph Lauren's Polo from my youth.
To which my daughter replied, "He wasn't wearing anything."
"He sure smelled good."
"Yeah he did."
To which my husband responded, "I thought he was just irritating."

What? Mother and daughter were stunned. What had this kid done to irritate Dad? He had said almost nothing, but not in a surly, dark teen kind of way. He's just kinda shy around adults and was making small talk with the daughter. He hadn't done anything overt to irritate Dad, just being in the car made Dad feel annoyed and irritated. Could you smell him? No. Didn't smell a thing. Ah. The androstadienone was a welcome addition to the car air for us girls, but for the man, it was all about irritation.


Those silly pheromones!

Sense of Accomplishment

Yesterday I:
1- Worked on my book proposal.
2- Submitted an essay to a contest (to Missouri Review It Started with a Kiss and Ended in Silence).
3- Finally got an envelope to Susan Cohen for letters of recommendation.
4- Receive a very nice rejection from Sara Lawrence's publication Lumina thanking me for my submission, but regrettably they can't publish it.
5- Did lots of practical chores and errand running (including buying blinds to put up in my office).

Today I:
1- Submitted an essay for a fellowship contest (Writers at Work Dust and Dried Blood).
2- Trimmed the rose bushes.
3- Scooped the yard.
4- Checked on my dossier at AWP.
5- Printed out as essay to submit tomorrow (Lessons in Love to The Sun).
6- Did some laundry.
7- Worked 1/2 hour and got paid for 1 hour evaluating essays.
8- Remembered that I will likely have a job before all the big bills come due. I'm not lame, I'm not lazy, I'm not unemployable. I'm just getting started. (hold that thought!)

The Heart of the Matter

What is it that holds an individual back from personal success? Yes, I understand that fear of success is in serious competition with fear of failure. But what is it, specifically, that nurtures those fears? What in our psyche, personal experiences, thought processes, or individual temperament that build the foundations of these fears? Foundations that are so strong, we have to find a way to move completely out of the neighborhood in order to dwell in safer, stronger, healthier homes whose foundations are built on solid beliefs, personal integrity, strength of character and are tall enough to take us to the pinnacle of our dreams?

I have spent so many years looking ahead to someday, that I'm having trouble adjusting to the concept that someday has become today.

Someday I want to try to sell my book proposal and use the advance to pay the bills while doing research and maybe having some other part-time income. So why is it so hard for me to open the damn thing up and work on it? To put the thought and effort, and research time into honing it, moving it toward the agents' mailboxes. I have and I do. But–damn is it hard. The opening part, the wrapping of my own head around part, the settling down and closing off all distractions is the hard part–the really heavy lifting. The work itself is great. I enjoy the research and being distracted by interesting tidbits that I know will further the proposal, and ultimately the story itself, along. I enjoy working the sentences over and over again, until they are molded into exactly the form I want them to be.

But when I'm not working on it, when I'm fretting about money and wondering where I can find a big enough paycheck to meet all of my upcoming obligations, when my head begins to hurt from the worry, I look past my goals and my dreams, toward what I believe to be the more practical. And who defines practical? The voices in my head. Gram and Grandpa. Their worries have become my worries. The shoulds that I fought so hard against while the Grandparents were alive are making a stealth attack comeback.

Don't get me wrong, these aren't their worries about my potential failure I'm talking about, it's theirs. Their fears that were at times projected onto my life. They always made it clear they felt that I was smart and could do whatever I set my mind to. They were from the generation that foresaw my potential to include beauty school or flight attendant school, or working for myself doing housecleaning, or secretarial work, or even a supervisory position in a bank (but not the manager). I'm not sure that they believed enough in themselves to have far reaching dreams, or consider that I would either.

When I got my substitute teaching credential, I was terrified. I wondered if I could have success one day at a time in someone else's classroom. Once I did, I found that I didn't really want to do it, I didn't enjoy it, it wasn't the kind of intellectual challenge I thought it would be. I surpassed a goal. The next goal isn't into my own primary classroom, but into a college level one.

When I try to see myself as a published writer, it is easy for me to forget that I have in fact already been published in local publications, and all I need to do to stretch that out to something larger, is to write. And submit. To take myself seriously and not allow the non-creative issues to cloud my perception. To not see myself as a failure because I don't clean house as thoroughly or often as I believe I should. Or to beat myself up because I want to write instead of scooping poop. Or to dive headfirst into volunteer work, and put aside the essays that only need a few spelling corrections and a couple of addressed envelopes.

I have put into place so many of the pieces needed to move myself towards my goals, but I have to admit that I am too afraid to move toward them. Yet I know that financially and emotionally I need to. When the financial motivates me, instead of sitting down and working on the practicals of publishing and writing, I start looking at full-time jobs in Marin county posted on Craig's List, trying to see myself 8 eights a day writing marketing material, or updating databases, or researching real estate, or watching the alcohol industry, and if the bottom line, the takehome salary, will meet the financial goals I believe I need to reach. On those days, the financially motivated days, I spend far more time fretting and surfing job sites than working toward my writing goals.

I think that I am as afraid of success as I am of failure. There are really many more reasons for my fear than a couple of voices in my head. Like everyone else, I am me because of dozens of experiences over a lifetime. I am afraid because I sometimes don't like being out in the open, being seen and noticed. Which makes if difficult to be successful, doesn't it?

As always, writing helps. It is at the heart of the matter. I am and have wanted most of my life to be a WRITER. Writers write. Writing helps. By writing, I am fulfilling goals. Which is a very large chunk of my reasoning behind starting a blog. I don't really expect anyone to read this, but I'm not posting anything here that I wouldn't willingly talk to someone about in person or on the phone. No big secrets, just working through life by writing.