We're having spaghetti tonight. I don't even have tortillas.

 

I was but an idealistic little whelp when I failed to vote in 2000. My mother, dear she is, was going to pick me up at college and drive me to the polling place, then back again, so I could vote. All because I couldn’t get my shit together enough to apply for an absentee ballot, yet I was insistent on voting in my first ever election. 

I was frustrated and crestfallen when mom's 1990 Honda Civic ran into difficulties and neither she nor I got the chance to vote. Just as well, as Ralph Nader and the Green Party failed to reach their minimum percentage which was critical and would have allowed them to... something. I don't know. It was do or die at the time but I barely remember it now.

Four years later I had grown out of the "both sides bad/lesser of two evils" equivocation used to justify so much apathy. Only cowards remain eternally cynical, and I was nothing but heart half gone at the bar with my crestfallen friends in slurred and slack disbelief that so many could be so foolish as to give that warmongering global embarrassment four more years.

2008 felt far less dire, and instead of fear I watched with hope as the results came in. But, as hope is a far fuzzier key to the table of memory, I have no clue what I was doing that evening. Likely a burrito was involved. I remember how I resonated with joy and appreciation at the historic moment I participated in.

In 2012 I was exhausted and busy, putting a roof onto our home in the hours before I'd go to work for my second-shift factory job. In my rush I'd managed to split my pants, and having lost track of time I had to rush off to vote with some breezy britches. But I also don't remember much from the evening. Likely a gin and tonic was involved.

2016 was a different beast altogether. I clung to a balance that required holding disbelief that such an obvious fraud could win and horror at the prospect that he could. I remember well how I sat on the floor at a gathering in a friend's house, all of us bringing snacks and drinks while we watched the results. It was still light out when the first unexpected state fell red. Was it New Hampshire? No. North Carolina. I knew everything was about to go sideways. One of the other guests spoke of firewalls and kept shifting the goalposts of hope in his heart. Our hosts, a gay couple, visibly shaken, opined over what would happen to their marriage? My partner and I, we left early. 

I didn't sleep for hours into the night, clinging to my phone as if the next time I checked it I would realize that I'd just hit my head. I was in the hospital. This was all a bad dream. At work the next day someone brought in victory donuts. I refused to partake on principal. I started what would be a four-year habit of checking the news constantly. What would our new world look like? How bad could things get?

I'm struck today at how traumatic that night was. How deeply I've internalized this lingering uncertainty and dread. Nearly everything in my life has changed since then, mostly for the better, yet I feel both tender and numb from what our nation has been and is going through. It has changed me, and likely most of us, in a deep and hard to articulate way.

It's nearly six in the evening, not yet time to even fret over returns. My household voted weeks ago. At the moment I'm at the mercy of inertia. I pass beads on a string one by one through my fingers. I check the news again. I remind myself that dread is grief borrowed from a possible future. I don't feel the same fear as 2016. The horrors are no longer unknown. In that, I find a strange comfort, at least.

Yet I am restless and wary of hope. And fuck if I don't want a burrito right now.

Absurdities in Dream, No. 2

 I awoke angrily from a dream in which tonight's presidential debate was going to be moderated by Al and Peg Bundy. Not from the show as they were, but as they would be now had they aged. I was furious about how lightly the survival of our democracy was being taken. 

But, being awake, I realized I would absolutely watch that. I also was compelled to search to make sure it wasn't actually true.

They Face the Storm with Sticks all Raised and Voices Hoarse

What happened to September?

If there’s balance to be had, I’m not sure where to find it. Is balance a privilege? 

Three weeks ago I felt called and compelled. This is the most important election of my life. I fear it may be the last legitimate presidential election of my life, depending on how things shake out. I decided to put my money where my mouth is. I decided to volunteer for Biden/Harris. They said their most valuable/needed area was phone calls so I signed up for that. 

Even though I hate phone calls. 

I took the training. I was nervous and excited. Stick to the script, they say, it’s tested and proven. You’ll get a lot of hang ups and a handful of hostile calls. That goes with the territory, they say. And though I wasn’t excited at the task, for the first time in over half a year I didn’t feel helpless. I had a touch of control. The smallest mote of influence. 

I swear the first ten hung up on me just based on my voice alone. Crack? Meth? Adrenaline. I took several breaths and tried to slow down, but the auto-dialer keeps them coming, one after the other, only seconds between calls. Some were good. Most were short. The script was impossible to stick to. The impatience of a person answering the call of a stranger is the most potent of bouillons, salt palpable on your tongue passed up the waves and wires by the time they’ve asked “who’s this?” The scrip is paragraphs. People want keywords. 

I can’t say it was a negative experience but I left it shaky and sweating and I’ve struggled to motivate myself to do it again. I don’t feel that I was the best fit for that particular job, more likely to dissuade than persuade. 

And with that went the momentary sense of control. 

It felt so good, those few days that I was going to drop my shoulder, straighten my back, dig in, and push. 

So, in chase, I write a bit, but what to write about that isn’t the dire throes of democracy on the brink of global climate collapse? And how to make that a good book or poem? 

I play a video game and I smile a while, but before long the smell of kids in cages sneaks in. I play some music but by song three everything is punk rock broke string and blister bleeding. 

I sit with my family and feel their warmth and love, but the evening sets in and soon I want the biggest stick I can wield to protect them. 

From what? 

We all feel the pressure drop. We all feel the unease in the air. So many of us waving our sticks in the air, not knowing which way the wind is about to bend but ain’t raising your arm in holler better than nothin’? 

My phone rings ten times a day. 

I don’t recognize the number. 

They never leave a message. 

I never pick up.

Probationary

Ninety days.

Three months to determine if I am a right fit for this position. Today finished my first week at my first job in tech. Each day I shadowed the senior DBA and watched as they wove together queries and joined and altered and if begin and end and… and…

I remember when we first covered databases in bootcamp. I was so excited. “It’s like Excel, with extra steps,” I beamed. In group projects I always volunteered to set up our databases and was usually in charge of any scaffolding we had to do. One recruiter asked about my hobbies. Photography. Recording music. Writing. They laughed. “Are you sure you’re not a front-end guy? You sound like a front-end guy.”

Yet here I sit to play among the tables. Some day. But not today. Turns out SQL is Excel with extra, extra, steps. I felt fairly-well prepared by bootcamp. I knew my crud functions. I knew my UPDATE and DROP and INSERT INTO. But this week I was quite humbled. If bootcamp introduced me to cooking and taught me how to make a grilled cheese sandwich, I’ve just been hired to train as a sous chef in a busy kitchen.

Which is not to say bootcamp didn’t prepare me, or that I foisted myself upon them with false promises. This employer knew my skillset and has hired fresh grads from this specific bootcamp before. And, after this first week, I’m all the more grateful to them for being willing to invest the time and money necessary to train someone up.

Eighty-five more days. I’ve got my requisite 900 page book on SQL server administration that I’m four chapters into. Drier than a slice of bread topped with salt and that desiccate packet that’s in the bottom of your junk drawer. Seriously, why is that thing in there? What are you going to use it for? I’ve got my bookmarks to the documentation and to tutorials. I’ve got a study plan and a notebook. And I’ve got eighty-five more days to prove to this company that they didn’t make the wrong decision.

I’m nervous. But, I hope, the right amount of nervous. Nervous enough to keep me motivated. Scared not of failure, but of the implications of searching for another entry level job after clearly failing out of the first one and in this climate to boot.

It’ll be a busy eighty-five days. It was a busy 25 days of job searching and networking after bootcamp. It was a busy 75 days of bootcamp. But it will be worth it, to have started a new career in such a short amount of time. Maybe my perspective on this journey will help others. Maybe it will be a nice memory to look back on some years from now. Maybe it will prove an excellent distraction as we careen towards the most important election in our lifetimes.

Ahem.

What was I saying?

Oh, yes.

Eighty-four days.