CPR Beat

Things that are Deceptively Hard
-Paperwork
-Moving without pause for 5k
-Selling anything in a retail environment
-Consistently practicing any new skill - here I'm looking at my lightly dusty mandolin
-The first day of a new endeavor

The course of true love (and a career you truly love) never does run smooth. Like every semester of school, my financial aid has been incredibly difficult and time-consuming to resolve. I had to prove I'm unemployed. I was briefly coded as not being in my actual surg-tech program. No one knew the solution. It's always a unique experience to stand before a bureaucracy and have no one know quite what is happening or how to fix it, but rather toss you gently from one department to another like a pesky little chick.

Things resolve eventually with an extra $1000 for me, which I won't sneer at by any means. Now I just have to find out what is unacceptable about my immunization records. The paperwork is from the county health department, so I can't imagine what is deficient about it.

It's so hard to want something for years, want it enough to cry and dream and obsess over it, fail, fail again, settle on the backup backup plan, and all the while still wanting so hard. Working so hard towards success and consistently stubbing your toes along the way. I am terribly afraid and excited and hopeful, which makes me feel like antiqued, crackling porcelain.

Year 3

So given a lot of hard work and the passage of a calendar year, and I'll be a surgical technologist. So far it feels like a strange film pressed over me, an awkward hat I'm wearing. Eventually it'll sink in and be part of me; it will be a signature accessory I wear with comfort and style. Right now I'm still arranging and rearranging all the pieces.

There's a strange aspect of identity going on. I have an extensive list of things to do before the program starts. Background check, drug test, disease screenings, certifications and immunizations. On paper, I'm a boring person. Nothing at all on my background check. I'm HIV negative. Things that I took for granted. In getting tested, it's as if I admitted the possibility that I could have something lurking. Now I know for sure. I will know for sure whether I have hepatitis C and tuberculosis. I'll be able to prove I don't do any recreation drugs - Okay, unless you qualify tea. Tons of caffeine and L-theanine in my bloodstream, I'm sure.

There is a person that you need to be in order to be admitted to clinical hours. My classmates with visible tattoos have to buy specific bandages to cover them. I made sure to get all of mine so that scrubs will cover them. I must resist the urge to shave my mohawk back in (I always feel like it's there, lurking in my hair, disguised) or to dye my hair blue. I made sure to purchase black Dansko clogs, though I got a little crazy and got clogs with flowers embossed into the leather. No color though, that would be too crazy. I will strip off all jewelry and wear no makeup or any scented body products for clinical hours.

I had to be a fairly specific Me to have gotten here, and a fairly specific Me to get where I want to go. Right now it still feels like a posture. Like someone will peek behind the curtain and start laughing, find me wanting. And of course it's all rather expensive, but still so much less than if I'd gotten into medical school. It took a Me I couldn't produce to get into medical school it seems, and I've already proven I'm unwilling to change who I am. But I can stand not dying my hair and wearing black shoes and working hard.

I get the feeling I'm going to look different in a year, and more deeply, feel different. I certainly hope so.

On Process

I have never considered myself a business person, a networker, someone much able to start or run a small business.

But I have had conference calls with my fellows every week. I was the one to make sure we all knew that price point depended not on what will make the most money, but on what people will consider reasonable to pay, because if it's not reasonable, they won't pay at all.

I am meeting deadlines and working ahead.

I am brainstorming new content.

I am self-promoting.

We have the point worked out at which profit means it's reasonable to start an LLC as we've passed the hobby threshold.

I am not writing for a personal game or larp, for a hobby, for an audience of one.

We are writing for keeps, and we were too busy to notice the transition. Always easier to see those milestones in hindsight.

Tea Blending

Today is Assam blended with some Twining's loose leaf Darjeeling.  Milk and sugar to cut it.  I needed a pick me up, as it's been too damn hot to sleep.

Watching TV versions of graphic movies is an exercise in memory and frustration.  They've cut out so many chunks of Pitch Black that the plot line, thready as it is, is completely gone.  At least Vin Diesel's character bits as Riddick are mostly intact, and still entertaining.

A handful of today

Today's tea, chrysanthemum tuo cha pu-erh.  I don't have a photo, as I was sharing it at a friend's house who I spent the night with.  He's not a tea drinker, but he has a little gong-fu set because I gave him one I didn't use.

It may not be reasonable, but who doesn't want to grow up to be the most bad-ass pirate who ever lived?

If you care about fashion, make a point to watch Bill Cunningham New York.  It's streaming free of Netflix.  I think his best quote was, to paraphrase, that fashion is important because it is the armor we need to survive in this world.  For me, that is simply so true.  I dress to be the protagonist of my life, and clothing as armor just resonates.

War, war never changes

It seems I still will pick up far too many books if I venture into a library.  I've been reading pretty exclusively on my iPhone for the past year.  I wonder if it'll feel weird to have a bunch of big, physical books.

The tea is a Taiwanese oolong.  I picked it up in Chicago's Chinatown a few years back.  Initially I was worried that I'd waited too long to drink it.  The first infusion was almost hay-like with a nutty under taste.  Subsequent infusions have yielded a very honey and fruity tea with continuing toasty under tastes.  Very nice on this sunny afternoon.