The increasingly atrocious facebook still has the "memories" feature, which I enjoy. I treat it kind of like a horoscope: a few years ago on this day I was thinking about this or that, so maybe today will also be a this or that day. Sometimes it is. 

Four years ago I went to Vienna to do standup, my first time out of town. I was very excited, 7 whole minutes! I invited some of my friends to come — I was doing this relatively new (to me) thing and I wanted very much to have the support of people who already liked me there, one friend from Brno and a few locals as well. Despite not being from Vienna I was a "bringer" and a good one at that, and still am I guess. I think there were six other performers, five men and one woman. They talked about dating, girlfriends, living in their parents' basements, masturbating, fast food, shit. It was… not different from most of the folks doing the central Europe comedy loop. They passed a hat and my friends put in money like the supportive pals they are. At the end of the show the other performers (just the men, if I remember correctly) divided up the money in the hat, and I watched them split it. I stood there awkwardly for a bit, and then left, because I had a bus to catch. My Brno friend told me, as we ran for the bus: Never let that happen again, that they don't pay you.

At the time I tried to justify it to myself: I was new, maybe they thought I wasn't that good. Thinking back on that night, a lot is unclear to me because I've come really quite far since then but what I do hasn't changed much. I was trying, and I am still trying, to do the kind of comedy I think is funny, which is the kind that makes me think. I don't think jokes are bad; I just don't generally like them as much as stories. I'm pretty simple: I like comedy that doesn't make me feel bad (unless I should), that connects ideas in ways that surprise me, and that makes me laugh. I am better at articulating what I want to do and I hope I am better at doing it. But in retrospect, I don't think I was bad back then, not so bad that I shouldn't be paid when people are paid. I was, though, and still am (though in waves, rather than consistently) really uncertain of how others see me and sometimes I'm not sure when it's a situation where I'm supposed to walk away or speak up. 

I am sometimes so angry about how unfair things are in performance and specifically in comedy, but also in life, and that's not new. Sometimes I think about how hard it is for me to ask for what I want, and sometimes I ask and I still don't get it, and I watch the same hands drop what I asked for in the lap of someone else and I have to bite entire holes in my tongue. Sometimes I think that's how the world works and I just want to stay home and never go out again. Sometimes I think that if that's how it is then I have to work harder, so that whoever comes after me will get to keep their tongues intact and be stronger, funnier, happier. 

It was nice, though, to have that memory pop up and think: I get paid pretty well in Vienna now. And I will bet that even if I haven't changed what I'm doing much, I have improved considerably more over the last four years than the rest of the people who performed that night. I think I'm funnier. I might even be having more fun. 

For the last few days I've been feeling something I'd best classify as "low-grade rage" that starts shortly after I wake up and continues through the day. I've been meditating again, thank goodness, and so part of me sits next to this rage and watches it like a dark cloud passing across the sky or more realistically like someone else's toddler, which is to say: I'm disrupted by it, but I'm also disconnected in what I think is a healthy way. "Oh, look, it's rage. Try not to hurt yourself?"

I'm angry at things that are not as good as I think they could or should be. Comedy nights where the hosts are not in control of the atmosphere and it's therefore unpleasant for performers and audiences. Just makes me mad. Yesterday I was extra annoyed Adam Gopnik for writing a crappy article about Joni Mitchell that ran in the New Yorker, a magazine that set my early standards for editing. This morning I was stomping around because there are "holistic" dentists in Brno who offer tooth bleaching and mercury filling removal and they're getting advertised by people who should know better. 

And there's a part of my annoyance that is about why people attend these comedy nights, permit these articles, visit these dentists. I think I'm used to this feeling as one of jealousy: Why are you paying attention to THAT when you could be paying attention to ME? 

Every time I've asked WHY I get told that I don't need the attention and I'm gradually accepting that people perceive that need differently than I do but in any case it's not personal. Some years ago a promoter who I consider a friend came to an event of mine, woke up the next morning and published an article about a competitor. This felt like a punch. And it's happened so many times since, in large and small ways, that I honestly can't count. It stops hurting as much because I can't honestly register that many blows. Sometimes I ask "why" or try to point it out and sometimes even that doesn't seem worth it. 

So that jealousy is a recurring theme for me; I'm acknowledging that. And this may still be part of that, although it's quieter. It's more on the lines of "Why are you, a person/organization I respect, supporting a thing I dislike?" To be clear, it's usually fine with me that people like things I don't like; not liking is different from disliking. As long as things don't actively cause harm I rarely bother to dislike them. I guess you could argue that Gopnik isn't causing harm by being a douchey writer but he gets a platform that other delightful and talented writers then don't get, which is a kind of harm, and I'm mad at the New Yorker for failing to rein him in and thus not living up to my perceived standards of them. 

This dovetails with another thing I've been working on. I tend to think that when my friends (or actually anyone) with whom I generally align disagree with me, they've been influenced by someone else and I direct my unhappiness with this disagreement at that someone else. Like: Let's say a friend and I both like the colors yellow and purple. But my friend also likes the color brown, which I don't because it reminds me of poo. If my friend has another friend who likes brown, I am angry at my friend's friend for influencing them to like the poo color; I imagine that absent that nefarious influence they would know what an ugly poo color brown is. What I'm working on is realizing that actually some of my friends like things that I don't like just because they like them; that they do things I wouldn't do just because they do; that the "culprit" is themselves — not that they've been misled from their normal "correct" (aligned with me) path but that they're on a completely different path that only overlaps with mine sometimes. A poo-colored path.

Acknowledging this feels lonely and then of course the other part of my brain chimes in that one was always lonely and that knowing it doesn't make it more or less so. But that may be the source of my anger, actually.

Anyway, something I've been thinking about. 

This has been on my mind and I'd like to write something better but I'm putting it here so I don't forget

I have to believe that people are doing their best. I mean: I have to believe it. Like, in order to get through my day. I have to think that whatever people are doing, on an individual level, is the best they can do. It may be the best they can do at a thing that they are not prioritizing; they may be prioritizing something else and doing a really good job at that, and the other thing that I wish they would do better at, they just don't have time or energy or capacity to do well because they are doing the thing they prioritize so very well. But I still have to think: this is the best they can do. 

I have to believe it because it is a way for me to function in the world with other people's behaviors and not think: this person is deliberately and thoughtfully behaving in a way I consider to be subpar or even unkind. I genuinely cannot exist in the world if I see unpleasant things that people do as deliberately and thoughtfully unpleasant. I have to think: the things that are beautiful are usually deliberate and thoughtful, and the things that are ugly usually are not.

This is a good survival strategy for me, honestly. It might not work for everyone. It enables a great deal of forgiveness. It cuts down on nagging. I used to imagine myself as a wave beating itself on the shore, trying to pull in grains of attention to make piles of things I cared about. Eroding people with my need and my desire for them to change. It was exhausting to feel that way, to feel like if I could just say what I wanted in precisely the right way, it would be heard. I would say: Could you please. Would you mind. I wish that you wouldn't. It hurts me when you do. Now I think: they are doing their best. 

And I hope at the same time that people will look at me, in the ways I disappoint them, and know that I am also really doing my best. I miss birthdays, forget to check in, don't say thank you enough, haven't read the books I was given, didn't answer messages. I am not even living up to my own standards most of the time, but I really am trying to make the butter reach all the way to the end of the bread. 

Of course there are people whose best is exclusively self-serving, I'll call them evil people, and they can be avoided as they're easy to spot. What I sometimes struggle with is when I encounter people whose best is so far from aligning with mine that it looks bad but not evil. It looks maybe just ignorant. I mean generally the safest bet for me is if it looks actively mean, I should avoid that person. But sometimes I struggle with: If I inform this person of how their behavior looks to me, will it result in a change? Like I had a kid, and I had to teach him stuff; I know we don't spring into the world perfect. And I have had friends that didn't know how to do things that I could teach them how to do, and that's okay. But surely by adulthood the information is available of how to behave in the world. Or is it like spinach on the teeth, something that it's a kindness to mention. In any case the spinach isn't there on purpose. I have to believe they didn't mean to leave it there, whether I decide to say something or not.

Sometimes I state my process and it sounds like a thing I have accomplished, and sometimes it is but sometimes I'm just striving. Doing my best. 

Don't get your hopes up. Get your hopes up. Don't want it to be more than it is; don't think too much about what it is; research it and find out as much as you can. 

Maybe it's just a store, maybe it's just the gift shop you exit through, maybe it's a carefully crafted and curated mockery of capitalism. Maybe that's enough. Is it overpriced? Don't think about that. There's a store in San Francisco that sells pirate gear, there's a store in New York that sells superhero stuff, this is a store that sells pareidolia peppers and that's the same thing, except what goes on behind the curtain is different. Well, it's not a curtain. For you it's a gardening section; for your sister it was strangely melted soda in a refrigerator door, and behind that an office full of clues. You forgot to ask your son and your parents where they came through. Later you went out through the refrigerator and up through a t-shirt display that  reminded you of a story (or possibly a thing that happened?) of hiding behind a clothes rack. Probably it was something you read in a book. You climbed the stairs and emerged through a file cabinet and started again.

There's a story that starts in the produce department of a man whose daughter is sending messages from a cornfield except it's not his daughter, it's a manifestation of his wishes. The story continues (after the gardening department) as an older woman (your age) meeting a younger woman in something that looks like a music video or actually more like a Jodorowsky film. There are no words. You want to watch it all, but it is very long and you feel like you'll never see everything if you look at anything too long.

Once you spent 30 of your 120 Scottish minutes very happily puttering about in empty rooms on the wrong floor, wondering vaguely where everyone had gone, enjoying yourself very much but kind of missing the point. No regrets because you had another 120 minutes later and however you spend your time you usually have a good time except when you don't, and this was a good time. This feels like that. A vagueness, a sense that there's more that you should be doing but an overall contentment with what you have. There was a pharmacy with herbs in jars there, and you stole a piece of candy.

There are projections. There's a teenager's bedroom with pictures of cute boys on the wall and through the wall a passageway with a rope you use to climb up the rocks. There's a hut with herbs in it and this also reminds you of that wrong floor. There's a factory worker with a flashlight who tells you there's a knock knock joke with seven parts. Well that happened later. There's a room with a strobe light that takes your picture and you remember one of the last times you saw John and there was a strobe light, you were throwing water and watching the droplets caught in the air although of course they fell to the ground in puddles and you slid and danced in them. You stay alone in the room, disconnected with memory for a minute, and a woman comes in and dances and it feels like someone's reading your mind but of course everything is coincidence. Later you think she may have worried about you. Later you think you should have danced. There's a room where you can make music by interrupting light.

There are places where you can converse with a program and you type questions but you know they're the wrong questions. Someone before you has written FARTS FARTS FARTS and that is also the wrong question but worse. There are more and more people and it's stressful. There's hand sanitizer dispensers at every doorway and you put your hand under all of them, rubbing your hands together like a hopeful minion as you move from room to room. A henchman. A particular kind of supervillain.

There are letters to read and you read them with the same mild anxiety that you watch the films, with the pleasure of enjoying a particular medium and the concern that you're maybe supposed to be doing something more interactive. It seems like there's a story being told and you can get the point just by paying attention to the right text, the right visual images. It's possible you're missing the point. This seems like a pretty solid metaphor for how you live.

You run into your sister, who is on a quest to find someone who is missing. Your son is on a quest to find out how to be part of a corporation, or maybe destroy a corporation. This also seems like a metaphor. You meet your parents in the bar because you agreed to do so, but it is not enough and you leave again. They also have missed the part about interaction. A man handed your father a clue and your father handed it back. The amount that you are overthinking this is impressive. There is so much to think about though. 

Once a woman tore out a chunk of her hair and threw it at your feet and you couldn't speak. Once a woman held your hands and made you pour poison down her throat, and her eyes rolled back in her head and still you felt like you couldn't speak. Once a man touched your cheek and went through a doorway with someone else because you didn't know to push for what you wanted. People speak here, and this is somehow more disturbing. You still don't know how to get what you want, or what you want, and whether that's more than what you have. You leave when you can't take any more.

Back at the bar, you drink gin and chew on acmella oleracea and it is numb and wonderful, you feel numb and wonderful, stunned beyond sensation. Four hours of beauty and creativity, beyond what you had expected, and now you can admit that you expected a lot. What more could you want? When you walk outside, it is like walking out of a matinee, the shock of the sunshine, except more so: the sun is hotter than it has ever been, and brighter, and still the shadows of what you wanted and what you got cling to you, days later.

I actually started making notes of things I wanted to write about which is the saddest way to write I know. And yet here we are. I'm leaving for the US next week and I probably won't write what I want to write before then and past experience shows I'll collect a whole basket of new things to write about after. Going off my notes and the top of my head, let's do a little brain dump for 30 minutes. Break in the ol typity fingers.

I want to write about "fear of missing out" or "FOMO" and how I don't have it and how I wonder whether that makes life easier or harder. I want to write about the levels of discomfort I will endure before I realize I am uncomfortable and launch myself at apparently insane speeds towards comfort. How that has to do with FOMO and not. I am afraid of being forgotten or unwanted but that's different. I'm not afraid there's a better party somewhere than the one I'm at.

I've been thinking a little about my arrogance but I'm not sure it's arrogance.

I took a personality test that was interesting in that it was presented like a Likert scale but instead of opposites it was like "On a scale from 0 to 5, would you rather be alone (0) or eat ice cream (5)?" I gotta say the results seemed pretty accurate for me and in a real way, not a horoscope-y way.

There's a thing you do where you answer increasingly personal questions and stare deeply into the other person's eyes and then you're supposed to be in love; I first heard of this 5 years ago and despite my enthusiasm and curiosity nobody's wanted to do it with me which I guess is one way to keep from falling in love, to not even try. I try not to take it personally. Sometimes I take it personally.

What else? I had an idea for a short story that I really liked (the idea) and then I overthought it and overthought it until it was a rough thing I had sanded to fineness and then into nothingness. I have dreams that people are telling me what they really think of it and they don't like it. And I have to keep going back to the idea of it, how much I liked that rough wood. 

I asked for some things from one client and I got them so easily that it felt like maybe I should have asked for more (even while I am very happy to have gotten what I asked for; that moment of wondering whether that was the right thing to ask). I asked for some other things from a different client and was ignored and that made me pretty unhappy or if we're being honest angry. I'm glad I am self-employed and can now go forward deciding to work with the people who give me what I want and not with the people who don't, but I wish we could all just agree to do things my way all the time since I'd be happier and so would most of the people who deserve to be. 

What's funny is that if you know what I'm talking about you know I'm being completely honest and that I'm also completely right. This is what I mean about the arrogance. I know it comes off like that but it's really not. I know truth is often subjective. I believe there's multiple true ways to look at a blackbird. 

I probably spend two hours a week thinking about people I don't know at all and wondering why they behave in ways I don't understand. I spend more than that thinking about people I do know but that seems reasonable. I think that I will never cure cancer or do anything particularly remarkable so figuring out why people do things and trying to fill the part of the world I inhabit with a little more understanding seems like a "leave only footprints" way to be, I mean it doesn't seem like a waste of time. But the people I don't know at all, there's no justification. 

Although I love people physically, their bodies and how they move, the curves and angles, the way they smell, I cannot imagine loving someone separate from their mind; I can barely imagine feeling a connection to someone's body without their thoughts being there somehow. It's interesting to me that this is cultural, learned. It feels beyond logic; it feels like instinct. 

Good poems. Art painted from joy. Art painted from darkness, reaching towards joy. Days with no or few clouds when it's warm enough to sit on the ground. The perfect drinkable temperature of coffee. How it feels when I remember to take care of my body. Marking things off "to do" lists. Making "to do" lists. The kindness of strangers. There are some people who are so incredibly unreasonably kind to me and I don't thank them enough but when I'm dark and sad and have to count reasons to live they're on my list. That's probably enough for now.

I have probably mentioned that I love my job. I do! I like working from home, I like being my own boss, I like having a schedule that waxes and wanes. For a while I wanted to focus more on medical editing and stop doing academic editing altogether, and I wrote to I think every teaching hospital in Europe and got exactly two responses and that made me sad. But then I started doing some more academic editing that I enjoyed and I am grateful for the variety. Like, I am really interested in neurology and Alzheimer's disease and almost anything involving parts of the brain that sound funny, but I also like getting to do the history of puppetry in Central Europe.

I also really like doing voice work — dubbing and audiobooks. I remember a time when I did not love the sound of my own voice but uh I got over it. It does not sound as good as it does in my head so you'll never get to hear it as beautifully as I do, but I no longer recoil in horror when I hear a recording of myself. I sound pretty good.

It's therefore kind of sad for me that the last month has been frustrating. I assume part of it is COVID burnout. It's also that usually I just work and do what's asked of me and take joy in finding typos and fixing them, and in finding more significant mistakes and fixing them, and in taking a sentence and massaging it into a thing of beauty, and in snipping off the fat, and in reading something incredibly difficult and then reading it again and understanding it. I like doing what I do so much that I don't need praise, so when I do get it, it's like: ahhhh, nice. But the project I've been working on for the last month, in addition to being full of grammar/ spelling/ syntax/ style errors, which is fine, that's what they pay me for… it just seems pointless. And sometimes that happens; sometimes the work I do feels like the author wasn't interested at all. It's hard, but I get through it; work isn't fun all the time. But this is nearing 400 pages and the amount of nnnnnaaargggh is taking me to dark places in terms of questioning my own self worth, why I accept things I don't want, can I do this for seven more years, etc etc.

More humorously, I was asked to do the voice over for an ad that the client wanted to sound "like Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings" movie. Which seemed odd, as it was an ad for a tech thing, but you know people can be weird so ok. So I did that, and then the client was like "Ooh, that's lovely, but it sounds too much like a fairy tale. Can you do it like that, but less so?" and we went a few rounds before we landed on a crisp, businesslike voice that was about the furthest from Galadriel as whatever the other end of Cate Blanchett's spectrum is, but without the Australian accent. This would have been frustrating except that the engineer mixing the tape was more perplexed than I was so it was merely funny and in the end I got paid which is the happy ending for all work stories, isn't it.

We've passed the anniversary of the first lockdown, but since we had the "eye of the pandemic" (like the eye of the storm, not like the eye of Sauron) all summer here I can't really say it's been a year of my life sucked away or anything. I'm working hard now so that if there's a chance to travel safely I can jump at it with no regrets. I might maybe take a weekend off soon though, cause nobody loves me when I'm whining, especially not when I actually have it pretty good. I know.