So I’ve been puttering around my house, bored out of my skull because winter in Des Moines is about lively as…winter in Des Moines. (Sorry, guess I can’t come up with anything equally boring.) I started thinking about things that I really shouldn’t think about. Things like “What would I be doing right now if I hadn’t skipped college, gotten married, had a baby, and resigned myself to a life of coupon-clipping and Nora Ephron movies?”
In 1993, I graduated high school a year ahead of schedule…my mom had such high hopes for me. She was convinced that I was going to be some grand novelist and poet, and was constantly shoving announcements for poetry and essay contests in my face. She was certain that I would breeze through all the relative college courses and be on bestseller lists before I turned twenty-five. I love my mom…I’m so happy to have had such support from her, and I do love to write, but since I lack confidence in my work and I’ve never been able to actually finish anything…well, what more needs be said? We all know that I didn’t become a famous writer. Or even an un-famous writer, for that matter.
:::ramble, ramble:::
Whatever. Anyway, the point of all this is that I’d like to kinda make a game out of the whole thing. We’ve had threads where we all described what we were wearing, what we were looking at, what was outside our windows, etc. What I’d like to try is posting all that as if we were living the lives that we think we’d be living if we weren’t living the lives we are. Make any sense?
So, the general questions apply:
What are you wearing?
What are you looking at, aside from the monitor or keyboard, as you post your reply?
What’s going on around you?
From whence are you posting (office building in Manhattan, farmhouse in Vermont, etc.)
Here I am, after a very hard day at class, typing at my computer. I’ve got a can of Coke next to me, I’m wearing jeans and a t-shirt, I’m procrastinating from studying. Dinner’s in the oven–tonight I figured I’d finally try to make chicken Kiev, and the ingredients for a salad are sitting in the fridge, just ready to be tossed. The whole place smells wonderful. I’m killing time right now, chatting with a few friends, telling them about the A I got on my latest paper.
As I’m typing, I hear a key in my lock, which can only mean that Brian’s home from work. I turn and throw a smile at him over my shoulder, and as I’m telling all of my friends goodbye, he comes up behind me, puts his hands on my shoulders, and kisses me on the head. I sign off, and we catch each other up on the happenings of our hectic day over a nice dinner.
Forget the dreams of wealth and glamour. This is what matters; this is what I want. Other than this one little thing, the rest of my life is perfect. I love where it is, and I love where it’s going. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’m sitting in my study, looking out the window at the Pacific Ocean which is lapping at the sandy beach below. I’m wearing clothes suitable for this tropical climate. I haven’t owned a pair of shoes for years. I glance at the furnishings. Unpretentious, but tasteful. No one would guess they are fabulously expensive.
My wife comes in. “Honey, those Nobel Prize people are here again. I told them you weren’t at home but they insisted on meeting you. I thought you said the Nobel Prize was a big deal! If it’s so important why do all our friends have one too?”
I sigh. I thought moving to an island in the middle of the Pacific would be sufficient to keep the hoi polloi at bay. But … such is the price of genius. Everyone thinks you know everything about everything, when in reality you only know everything about some things. Of course, they call it “the theory of everything” but that’s just public relations.
It turns out they didn’t want to know about my scientific work after all. They were after my secret for happiness. I told them what I tell everyone. Just be yourself and take care of the people you love. That’s all there is too it.
hmmm, let’s see … wealth, fame, happiness … did I leave anything out? Oh yeah – reality!
(Wakes up.) Hey, where did this crummy cubicle come from? Who dressed me this morning? Why am I working for a soulless corporation? Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to me? This is waaay too depressing. (Nods off again.)
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Where would I be if I weren’t such a fuck up? Famous or dead, I imagine. Hard to even hazard a guess; I’m good at so many things that I don’t know which I would have excelled at if I’d given a shit. Probably be the first NFL running back to win a pulitzer, grammy, and codie all in the same year. That, or I’d be milking scholarships in grad school learning about robotics or genetics something else interesting but useless careerwise.
I share a really small apartment in Manhattan with my friend, Catte. In theory, we’re both writers. In practice, she’s a copy editor and I’m a secretary for a real estate agent. She’s puttering around the kitchenette “inventing”, and here I sit in my little corner, surrounded by overstuffed bookshelves, a small stack of newspapers, scratch paper, notebooks, and two or three overflowing ashtrays. Real estate in New York City is really fun…for the real estate agent. For the secretary, it’s a giant bore, so I’m blowing off steam by perusing the SD boards, comfy in just a pair of sweats and a T-shirt.
*Since I've never even been to NYC, this is all straight from my imagination. In reality, I have no idea if a copy editor and a secretary can actually afford even the smallest apartment in Manhattan, whether New Yorkers wear sweats, or how much fun it really is to work in real estate there. I'm just guessing.*
Also, keep in mind that I’m only 23, which is why I didn’t paint myself as extraordinarily successful…just trying to stay as close to realistic as possible.
Well, if my calculations are correct it’s now 4:30 a.m. in Spain, so I’m probably stumbling home from the cafe where my friends and I spent hours drinking red wine, eating olives, and talking. The streets in the old quarter of the city are narrow and crooked, with dozens of even narrower alleys. Now and then I glance over my shoulder, wondering if I’m being followed by a mugger or worse. But there’s no one in sight except a street musician playing the flute with a puppy at his side. (They all have puppies. They probably get 'em from a rental service.) I drop a 100-peseta piece into his cup, thinking at the same time that I’m probably a complete fool and wondering where next month’s rent is coming from. Teaching English under the table barely pays. And damn, I’m hungry, too … I wonder if the bar on the corner is still open, and whether the coins in my pocket will cover a bocadillo de tortilla. I can taste the crusty bread and garlicky potatoes already. But I’m already at the door of my building, and it really doesn’t make any sense to stay out longer, what with the bills due and a student coming at the ungodly hour of nine in the morning … Before I pass out, I wonder, just for a moment, whether I’d have to worry about these things if I’d taken that fellowship and gone to grad school … Nah. The orange trees are heavy with fruit, and there’s a new Goya exhibit at the Museo de Bellas Artes, and the Mediterranean is only a short bus ride away. I wouldn’t trade this for the world.
And I am probably wearing the nondescript slacks and sweater I’m wearing right now. Sorry, I’m boring that way.
Tsk Tsk I also am sitting at home in Iowa looking out the window. Damn IT’s dark. If I remember correctly the snow has nearly all melted leaving MUD .Can’t go outside because if i track the mud in wifie will give me one of those looks. :{ Unfortunately I’ve got 3 months of this to go since next month I have a hip replaced. Hell I can hardly walk now anyway.Think you feel trapped? Not only that,I don’t type very fast.
forgive my lack of capitalisation… one of my more irritating quirks…
my vaguely realistic otherlife?
my darling husband actually finished college, and makes enough to support us comfortably. we probably still live in our 110 year old building in the middle of nowhere, but it is remodeled as it should be, rather than being a work-in-progress. still have 4 kids (couldn’t give them up even to live in a fantasy world), but they are well-mannered at all times, and i have a live-in nanny with whom i would trust with my life. i while away my days painting with something other than crayola watercolors, and having Catte and Chris (with their children in tow) over for coffee and idle conversation, without without having to keep track of whose child is kicking/biting/taking-toys-away-from whose (all due to that fabulous nanny and the fact that they are all well-mannered, as opposed to just normal kids between the collective ages of 6 months and 8 years)
hey… that sounds pretty good. can i trade?
“…for i am always a lady, archy… always a lady. i did not do anything vulgar. i simply removed his right eye with my left claw.”
mehetibel the cat on the subject of marraige
If my life was perfect, and it had worked out just the way I had hoped, this is how things would be:
I’d be sitting in a studio, back in New Zealand, sharing the floor with several other creative artists as we work on a movie. Some of us are artists, drawing, sculpting, painting. Some are writers, throwing ideas around, figuring out problems, sorting out plots and characters. We’re all sharing the burden, the fun, the creativity.
It’s nearing evening, and I know that my loved one is waiting for me at home, having just returned from her job as a stage actress in a local small professional theatre group. She’s auditioning for a semi-recurring role in a new TV series. She’ll be right now rehearsing her lines, speaking to our cat like it’s the lead actor from the show.
Our plans for travelling through Europe and Africa are coming to fruition, and soon we’ll be finally buying the tickets. We’ll be taking four months off to have the adventure of a lifetime.
As the sun lowers in the sky, and I watch the birds fly from the trees, darting across the clouds, I reflect on how perfect life is, and that the future is nothing but bright.
(sighing) There’s Real Life and then there’s Parallel Universe Life and then there’s what’s in between.
Dreaming sure as hell helps (it’s gotten me through many a soul-numbing meeting) but I strongly suspect nobody lives the life they’d script.
Mine would be a quiet cabin, w/ my dogs and lots of books and good music, and time to write, tend my garden and tend to others. Okay, it’s lame fantasy, but it’s mine; I’d love to raise therapy pets, critters that give love and joy to old and ill folks. I like old people; they hold worlds in their heads and mostly get discounted.
I can’t quite wrap my brain around another human to tend and pamper at the moment, but that’s okay. There are too many people who have no one at all, so right now my ideal would be a useful, worthy life “giving back”. (Critters are warm love on 4 paws and do it by nature; I’d just share it.)
In the meantime, I’ll hassle the nonsense and hope it helps in the long run.
Truest thing I’ve ever read: from Studs Terkel’s “Working”, a compendium of interviews of regular folks: Jobs aren’t big enough for people".
Well seeing as how I’m only 20, any alternate future at this point would involve lots of studying and being a poor college student So I’ll jump ahead a little and give my perfect future for that alternate life.
I’m in a lab working for a major biotech company. I’ve been working tirelessly for weeks on locating the gene that sets off all the reactions that cause cancer to develop. I’m taking a break, eating a soft taco from Taco Bell I had a lackey run out to get, completely not thinking of the subject of genes - and the answer hits me. I go down in history as the woman that finally figured out what was going on and saved a lot of people so much hardship from having cancer.
Oh, and as much as I love my little boy, I wouldn’t have him. I would have gone straight to Indiana U like I planned and double majored in bio and chem. Jophiel and I would have gotten back together, without a baby, and I’d finish my schooling and then move to Chicago permanently to be with him.
When are you going to realize being normal isn’t necessarily a good thing?
I know this is supposed to be a wistful kind of thread but reading these makes me so sad I could cry. I guess I’ll get around to posting mine when I cheer back up and can actual think of something ambitious.
I’d like to tell you guys that it is never too late to accomplish some of these things (except for the not having kids part ) but I can’t even convince myself of that right now. Boy, this thread is a pisser! (Don’t get me wrong, Chris, I like it–it just makes me sad!)
I have a hobby. I have the world’s largest collection of seashells. I keep it scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you’ve seen some of it.
Things like “What would I be doing right now if I hadn’t skipped college, gotten married, had a baby, and resigned myself to a life of coupon-clipping and Nora Ephron movies?”
It’s possible what you dismiss as trivial, having a baby, may be your greatest contribution.
It sounds like all your “needs” are met. You have alot of free time. I envy you. Who is to blame if you frit it away?
If chickens could pee, they would be wet on the bottom.
I’m sitting here in my goddamn wheelchair, feeling bitter and wishing to hell I’d made sure that was the DEEP end of that fucking swimming pool before I’d dived into it back when I was sixteen years old. I’ve never gotten to have REAL sex, never been able to drive a Ferrari, never gonna make a baby, never gonna climb a mountain.
I have a pretty rich fantasy life, always have, despite the fact I’m at work, wearing icky work clothes, and looking at the front door to this place, I’m planning on taking a flight of fancy in a bit.
There are a lot of alternates to the Yankee Blue story - reality based ones: could have married the first guy who asked me, but I doubt I’d still be married to him now. Could have majored in something that would pay off in coin rather than satisfaction. I have to say it’s really great when you get through to some one and they actually LEARN something from you.
Some are fantasy based: some unknown millionaire in my family tree kicks it and leaves me buckets of cash so that I can do as I please not as I need.
Discovered and becomes the age’s most beloved character actor.
But like you Chris the most important reality or fantasy based thing I’ve done is make my outstanding contribution to the gene pool in the form of my son. I think I can be pretty smug about that one.
All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.
I have a very active inner world that I retreat into on a regular basis (some might say that I rarely emerge from,) so this isn’t hard.
When I was a junior in high school, I would have gotten that scholarship to do a year abroad in Ireland. I would have found my father’s grandfather’s family, and finally felt like I came from some roots, instead of feeling like a stupid American. I would have stayed there, though it would be hard being so far from my family, whom I adore. But feeling like I came from some tradition would be nice. Right now I’d be a junior, majoring in psychology, trying to decide whether to come home for grad school or stay there. I’d probably decide to come home, and go to NYU, to be closer to my immediate family,and get to know my godfather, who is easily the most amazing person I know. I’d get my PhD in clinical chilhood psychology, and stay in New England, but move to the ocean. I’d help kids regain their happiness and help them find the joys of childhood again, and wake up every morning to the sounds of sea gulls scavenging whatever the tide brought in.
And there would be a TDH fellow in the picture, who knew all my idiocicracies, and just loved me more for them.
Here’s the best part of this game: I can make all those things happen, if I want them enough.
Woke up early just to watch my chief sleeping. Just hours away and he will be headed out to sea. Cabin Fever?? I can’t even see the walls. My eyes are full of tears, my heart heavy, knowing soon it will stop…
So I’ll jump ahead a little and give my perfect future for that alternate life.