Productination

Frank Fairfield was born in the wrong century.

Watching his performance is like being transported back in time and place to the dust bowl. It’s incredible that a man only 22 years old, a full year younger than myself, is able to compress so much exquisite suffering into his music.

For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure, Frank Fairfield plays old folk songs in a manner that is both reverent and authentic. The look of constrained anguish on his face while he sings perfectly captures what it must have felt like to come home from a hard day’s work at the railroad or plantation.

The first time I saw him, he opened for The Fleet Foxes at The Echo. Like most everyone there (including, I believe, The Fleet Foxes) I was completely caught off guard by his set. People were chatting, laughing, generally having a great time before the show, but when he started playing the place went silent, save for his soulful fiddling and crooning.I could not look away.

When he was done, I picked my jaw up from the ground and the crowd exploded in applause. The girl I was with whispered to me, “he’s amazing,” and I concurred.

Tonight, he opened for the Fleet Foxes once again, this time at a bigger venue, the El Rey.

I was sad to see the crowd jabbering away during his entire set. I still loved it, as did my cousin, but frankly, he deserved better.

In one of my recurring nightmares, my teeth are falling out.

They’re not just coming out neatly, retaining their shape. No, they’re splintering like the shrapnel from a fragmentation grenade, and my mouth feels like it’s full of sand and pulverized seashells. I want to spit, but I also want to save the pieces in the hopes that someone can put them back together. I eject great handfuls of pebble sized shards into my waiting, cupped hands. After several rinses, I’ve finally cleared my mouth of the smaller bits. When I’m done, my jaw is lined with the jagged remnants, still set in the gums.

The dream ends with my hope that I can get a superhuman set of dentures, better than what nature gave me.

Waiting for my x-rays to develop afforded me plenty of time to contemplate this and what it could possibly represent.

“I can see why your tooth chipped,” he said, x-rays in hand, “There’s been extensive decay from the inside-out.” My new dentist seemed a little overly enthusiastic about this news.

My mind flashed back to that day I chomped down on a piece of ice in my horchata and noticed a sharp pain and what felt like chunks of gravel in my mouth.

“We’re going to have to perform a root canal right away, after which we can restore the tooth” he said, “Can you come back tomorrow?”

My throbbing, exposed nerves thanked him silently as I lined up my next appointments.

I looked happily at my new, awesome, alarm clock. It read 10:15. Wait, what? Was that right? I checked my cell phone. 10:33?!

Fuck!

The clock was slow again, and after only a week of being home!

I was so excited when I found it at the store, as if I had gotten a new puppy. When I brought it home, I lovingly wound it every day, and I often looked over at it while reading on my bed. For our blind readers, it’s one of those wind-up clocks with a great old-fashioned look. Circular with two bells on top never goes out of style!

Fortunately, I kept the receipt, but am I really going to make a special trip twenty-two miles, fourty-four miles round trip, to return a goddamn eight dollar clock?

I know, I’ll wait till I have some other reason to go and I’ll combine my trips! I do need a new comforter to match my new dark red sheet and pillow shams, and I might as well pick up the non-fitted sheet while I’m there, and I would like some new ceramic containers for lunch…

Wait, was this their plan all along? Had I been grifted?!

Now it makes perfect sense why there’s no IKEA in the heart of LA. None of their shit works, but in order to return it, I’d end up spending more money.

“You will rue the day you crossed me, IKEA,” I said, “rue it hard.”

Sitting in the drive through at my local McDonald’s at 9:08PM, haunted by Regina Spektor’s painfully beautiful harmonies, I wondered just how the day had gotten away from me. What series of decisions had led me to this situation?

Every morning starts off so productively, so full of potential. By the time I go to sleep, though, I’m always disappointed with how much more I could have accomplished.

Maybe I’m too hard on myself.

The day started off promisingly at 6:30, the earliest I had risen all week, and without an alarm! inspired and armed with my hot new keyboard, I tore through my morning pages with gusto, leaving a path of burnt hyperbole and bad puns in my wake. I rewarded myself with some oatmeal, meatballs, and lingonberry sauce (IKEA, you are good to me).

Satisfied, I resolved to clean up four of the blog posts sitting on my docket, edit/upload some pictures, and work on a programming project. I set about the first task, and with a loud “pop,” my computer suddenly and unceremoniously turned off. The last time this happened, I had to replace my motherboard and CPU as a result.

I cursed aloud and booted up my laptop. I wasn’t about to let a dead computer stop me!

But in addition to not having all my tools available, my time was now split among my aforementioned tasks and the new task of fixing my desktop.

Oh well, even the best laid plans of mice and men…

I’m sitting here, no more than 20 hours after declaring “The Anti-Social Streak is Over,” in my sweats and video card giveaway t-shirt, putting my Dell 6780D through its paces.

I draw my strength from doing things by myself; that’s a benefit of my introversion. The downside of course is that it takes effort for me to be social.

Upon first moving here, I forced myself to go out pretty much every night. I knew no one and had to build my social circle from scratch. School hadn’t started yet, so the bars and clubs were my dungeons of choice when it came to finding encounters a few levels above mine.

And so I did, shaking thousands of hands in the process. But after the filtering process was complete, I made about 5 solid friends, and a bunch more buddies/acquaintances. Added to the friends I already had from San Francisco and other places, I have about 30 people in my phone book who are in some way or another waiting for my call.

I’m doing a shitty job of keeping in touch with the people I actually care about, and here I am thinking about adding more to the pile?

Goddamn, I need to reexamine my priorities.

And so, I will compile an ordered list of people and start them this Sunday evening, when I’d most likely get a chance to talk to them.

Shoot, when put that way, I guess that doesn’t preclude me from going out tonight.

I was banging out lines of code on my awesome new keyboard, when my boss told me, “Hey we’re heading to BrewCo for M’s last day. You’re welcome to come and raise a glass.” M is my coworker and friend. She found a better offer at another company and decided to take it. From her description, it was a huge step up. I was happy for her.

I was sad to see her go.

My first thought when my boss invited me was, “Why didn’t she invite me herself?” I quickly realized that I never gave her the chance, with my aforementioned introversion this week. She told me when I got back from Seattle that her days here were numbered, and that she had accepted the offer, but my brain did not want to register that at the time.

M had arrived at the company after I did. In her short stint here, she had managed to befriend almost everyone on our side of the building. She is one of the coolest people I’ve met here, and I knew I would miss talking to her.

I contemplated the offer for a few seconds. My options were to stay and work for a couple more hours, or go and be social. It didn’t take me long to arrive at a conclusion.

Fuck work!

Sure, there was opportunity cost, but it was totally worth it to see my friend off, and hang out with my officemates.

I’m looking forward to this weekend.

I came home today and was greeted invitingly by my roommate and her friend. They were laughing, drinking wine, and watching TV. As one trained in the subtleties of the social arts, I knew exactly what to do in this situation. I said “Hello!” and promptly locked myself in my room and read.

I mean shit, I had to find out what happened with those goddamn Morlocks!

I’ve been feeling quite introverted lately. It’s no surprise, really, given my daily routine. Every day I get up, write, clean my room, go to work, come home exhausted, write some more, read, edit pictures, and go to sleep. For better or worse, I’ve been minimizing my contact with others.

I feel good about my choices; right now it’s of utmost importance to me to get my court and mind in order in preparation for the new school year. The rub is, I’m not sure if I could tell the difference between me choosing this lifestyle, or just reacting out of fear and laziness.

I used to be incredibly shy. Thankfully, the last few times I leveled up, I put some ranks in diplomacy, and even a few in bluff and intimidate. This has benefited me greatly, and I feel much more comfortable tackling social situations. But with this ease came complacency, and socializing became a lower priority. But until beautiful women are calling me every day begging me to see them, I know that I have much more work to do.

Goddamn Morlocks.

I awoke with a start. My phone had found its way under my pillow, and now it buzzed with life. I had received a message from my ex-girlfriend and long time friend S.

“Sorry the library was bad. At SC they have a lot of ebook fiction. P proposed to me last night,” it read.

Shocked, I stared at my phone for a full minute, reading and rereading the message over and again.

I’m glad that she related her sympathy for my desire for a more robust branch of the LAPL near my house.

“And…? You said yes, didn’t you?” I replied.

How would she read my message? Would she think my tone was accusatory? Would she think I was happy for her? It’s challenging to clearly communicate emotion in text messages.

“Yes,” she shot back.

I shouldn’t have been surprised; they had been living together for quite some time now. I just never imagined her getting engaged. I certainly didn’t see myself getting married at this age.

I felt sad and worried that she was making a mistake. Was she ready to spend the next 60 years of her life with this guy? Would she get divorced like her mom did? How could she know? How could she be sure?

Besides, we’d probably never have sex again.

I always thought marriage was something that happened to other people. This hit too close to home, and I didn’t like it.

I punched out a response and hit “send.”

“Gratz,” it said.

Red-eyed, dehydrated, and exhausted, I pressed on. Little more than an empty human shell, fueled only by caffeine and an intense hatred for bugs, I cut a swath through erroneous lines of code until my vision blurred and my mind clouded.

You see, I never get enough sleep, I’ve got better things to do.

I like living life consciously. As much as I love feeling rested, when I’m awake, there are just too many damn interesting and fun things to do that sleep becomes a low priority.

I stayed up last night till 4:15 in the morning cleaning my room.

Slumber is like my body’s way of robbing me of valuable time I could be spending on my personal pursuits. Unfortunately, the tragic punchline to this comedy of errors is that by abusing caffeine and scraping by on sometimes four hours or less of sleep per night, I’m robbing myself of quality focus and concentration during the day, not to mention years off my life. In the long run, it’s probably a net loss of useful time.

But hey, those years at the end are crappy anyway, right?

My parents recommended to me a book about the importance of sleep, and I do not deny its scientifically proven impact on wellbeing. I’ve definitely had moments where I will put myself in danger because of my fatigue, but guess what? This information does nothing to quell my fervent desire to do.

Even now, at 11:38PM, I’m sipping an energy drink.

It was an exceptionally beautiful Los Angeles morning. White clouds completely blanketed the sky, and cold air wafted in through my open window. Growing up in San Francisco, I acquired a strong affection for the year-round fog and colder climate. With autumn just around the corner, temperatures were dropping here in LA, and I welcomed the change.

I took a sip from my hot coffee and inhaled the crisp air. Caffeine pulsed through my veins and the blood flowed into my face. I felt good as I sat down at my computer, really good.

I opened up Word and went into fullscreen mode, cutting out all other distractions.

Where would my writing would take me today? Would I make conscious my subconscious? Would I flesh out old ideas? Would I generate new ones? Would I create great expositions of profound topics?

Would my words shine brilliantly with their magnificence, the likes of which mankind has never before known? Or, would I just completely cockblock myself with internal criticism and mockery?

Suddenly, I froze. I stared, paralyzed, at the blank screen.

The cursor blinked metronomically, keeping time to my torrent of thoughts.

A blank slate provides an infinite universe of possibility. Some of those possibilities result in outcomes that most people would define as failure. But in my world, I define success, no one else.

The words of Wil Wheaton rang out in my head, reverberating in my skull: “Don’t be afraid to suck!”

I took a deep breath, and began.