check your sugarcoat at the door

mucho gusto, lovely

Dear WordPress,
I’m not cranking out award winning books while saving animals and donning a purple cape, like ten-year-old me thought I might be doing by my mid-twenties. Ten-year-old me had pretty high expectations of mid-twenties me.

I’m getting a grip on this life thing, as a pseudo-adult. While I navigate through Orange County traffuck, pull off the forty hour work week pushing paper and making friends, squeeze in the occasional college course & happy hour and do my damn best to maintain the reverence for humanity I’ve developed in this monster-sized, cruel world, I write. A lot. Way more than is posted here at calamityjill.com. I write because: this. More or less. Mostly more.

And this: “God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.” – Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Though I find this be a hard-assed truth with a capital T, I pay money toward a prescription that makes me see it with a little more optimism than Mr. Durden.

If I don’t reach out into the wide world, I’ll never close my hand around anything that comes close to defining this craziness we call living or motivating me to keep doing it.

I’ve caught some kick ass shit and some incredible people. I’ll do damn near anything for the fodder.

Also of note, I collect argyle knee socks and dark chocolate is life.

Much love,
Jill

 

Cast

• Josh, the father of my child, with whom I’ve grown up. We met in a parking lot in February, 2002, through the window of my El Camino and have spent the better part of nine years trying to figure out how to make the insane passion we have for one another work in the least complicated and most peaceful way. His dry and dark humor is perfectly hilarious and he’s ridiculously handsome. He brings out a better me and he is the love of my life thus far.

• Kiddo, our daughter, born in January, 2003 by way of emergency c-section at seven months. She began her life at four pounds and has since grown into a tall, scrawny, gorgeous little tomboy who reflects her parents’ personalities more and more every day. (This is frightening but fascinating to watch.) She’s a unique, loving individual with a penchant for unicorns, joke-telling and all things Tim Burton.

• Furby & Mo: two Persian cats my love picked up from Craigslist while I was gone for the weekend. Having never been a cat person, I still knew I’d wind up with at least one given enough time, having voluntarily commited to a crazy cat lover (Joshua). We kept their given names though I fought hard for Oscar & Otis. Getting to know their personalities has changed everything. I’m in love with two flat-faced, arrogant, fluff balls and I am not sorry.

• The fam: I’m very close to my parents and two siblings; a younger brother by four years and a younger sister by ten years. They live about twenty minutes away and I’m in touch with one or more of them every single day. When it comes to being guilted into an unfaltering love for a group of human beings just because of your blood line, at least I scored. They all have excellent taste in music and humor and I would loathe my existence without them all.

Recurring characters include a number of friends and family members, both blood and non. My best of friends, Ree, is my partner in crime for the majority of (mostly innocent) shenanigans and shows up in posts more often than she’d like to, I’m sure.

 

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