Episode 100 of The Mildred: Drinks with a Friend

This is the 100th post on the Mildred. If this were a TV show, it would mean syndication and lots of money for me--and for Agnes, too, I guess, even though she has abandoned the project. Maybe that's an idea: turn each post into the episode of a TV series called The Mildred...

No, Madeleine, focus on the stories!

We had someone over for drinks last night, and she was talking about a visual artist she knows who has not been as successful yet as she could have been, because she has not focused on one medium, her interests are too diverse, etc. etc. Draw whatever conclusion you can, Readers, from that little anecdote...

So where am I now in this project? What has happened since I last posted?

I am applying for another residency. I am writing the application at the office so as not to take time away from writing my stories. I did write some of Story #3 yesterday--I think it's Story #3, I am still confused about that--and I am going to write more of it today.

I am going to work only one day a week at my office in January--did I altready mention this, Readers? It is slow at work right now, and I want to get away from there a little and have more time to think only about my stories. (Last night, our drinks friend also made the point--but not in a mean or deliberate way, by which I mean that I drew this conclusion from what she was saying, so I made this point, she was not talking about me, etc. etc.--that working only three days per week leaves a lot of time to write. That is true, I said, from the outside, but when you're working there every week, even three days seems like a lot.)

I am not liking this post at all.

If this were episode 100 of a TV series, I feel like it would be a turning point, a psychological cliffhanger. The friend comes over for drinks and makes Madeleine feel bad or at least like she was not living up to her potential--Agnes would insist that that's NOT what the drinks friend was saying at all, that "Madeleine, everything isn't always about you!"--and so Madeleine decides, that's it! She is fed up and she is going to focus and she is going to change everything and she is going to shock everyone with her productivity next season!

Madeleine Makes an Early Resolution

I will write on the Mildred at least once a week from now on until my project is done. So forever, then. Ha ha.

Our Dear Reader complained recently that I am not writing on the Mildred enough amd she is right. But it--I mean, keeping up with the Mildred--takes time and energy and given the choice between writing on the Mildred and writing my stories, I will choose my stories every time. Actually lately I have chosen to do neither, which is making me feel bad--and making me re-commit to the Mildred once again.

I can't believe there is only one entry for November. I remember writing at least four.

But I have a schedule which I wanted to share: finish one story by the end of December (2010), rewrite another story and complete that by end of January, and have a third story finished by the end of March. I can do it. And if I miss the first two deadlines (i.e., Dec., Jan)--well, the point is that I want to have these three stories finished by end of March 2011.

That's my plan. And now it's on the Mildred so, I don't know, I'm feeling nervous all of a sudden.

Madeleine: Neither Upbeat Nor Downbeat But Perhaps a Bit Full of Herself, or Candid Madeleine

Here I am again.

I felt like I should write on here today, though I don't really have anything to say.

I am thinking about the stories I am writing, i.e., Story #2 and Story #4 (I think--I am starting to confuse myself), and have been thinking about stories I've been reading lately, i.e., published stories that are not my own. In short, what I 've been thinking is: my stories are better.

I am wondering re: my long headline today: should the comma have gone after "or" or is my placement correct? I should know this.... I guess I'm not so great after all.

It is November. November! I just ordered our turkey today. In two months time, I will have finished Story #4 and Story #2 (or is it #3?).

Upbeat Madeleine

I am feeling energized and upbeat! And yes, readers, I read Agnes's lovely post. While I am sad that she is leaving, she is right to do it. She met her obligation, after all. If I had met mine I would have stopped writing on the Mildred a long time ago...

I do hope, however, that Agnes will continue to post from time to time, or at least comment on my posts. It's sort of exciting, actually; this new development could boost my readership to three.

But let me say again--and it's true, readers: I am feeling energized and upbeat!

What happened, you ask?

I don't know for sure. Perhaps it's just the excitement that comes when one starts writing again after a period of NOT writing. It also has to do with my writing what I want to write and not punishing myself (by not writing at all) for not writing what I should be writing, i.e., the stories.

Anyway, I feel like something is loosening in me, does that makes sense? Perhaps I'm not trying to control everything like I usually do? (Surely Agnes would not agree.)

Why Agnes Worries: The End of an Era?

It has been a very long time since I have posted, but there has not actually been that much going on in my life. I have been sick. Sick, off and on, for six weeks which is far to long a time to be sick. Especially for someone like myself who has sworn off la vida loca for, like, la vida conventina and doesn't deserve to be sick. And there is something about illness that puts things into strange perspective and a false consciousness arises.

Being unemployed and unwell is not the best combination (though I did, during a brief lifting of the veil of utter exhaustion, manage to find myself a couple of jobs neither of which has started yet.) It brings out an amazing voluptuousness that sees nothing wrong with lying in bed all day long—though the final effect was marred by our rather conspicuous lack of servants. I thought about making a list of received Proustian revelations for the delectation of our readers, but upon actually getting out of bed these realizations fell off like crumbs and I now realize that being sick only makes me stupider and ornrier and more bourgeois. It exacerbates my fears of the outside world and makes me feel simultaneously pressed for time and completely unable to accomplish anything, indeed even to figure out what exactly it is that needs accomplishing. It is a kind of being drunk—one is able to postpone responsibility. This feels amazing for three of four days. After three or four weeks, however, it begins to burn. Bed sores, I suppose.

With the above preamble in mind, it is time for me to rethink my relationship to The Mildred. Madeleine has been on my case to post for some time (remember, dear readers, that our home does not have internet access which makes posting from bed impossible not to mention Netflix on demand) and it has become more and more apparent to me that this is, after all, her party. I have not smoked now for over four and a half months and though I do have the odd smoking dream, I haven't slipped even once since I quit. New York City's continued program of health fascism combined with my own stinginess means that $12 for a packet of cigarettes is probably enough to stop me late night at the bodega even at my most drunkest. I'm not out of the woods forever—I will always be addicted to cigarettes whether I am smoking them or not—but I've definitely reached a plateau plot-wise. There are things that I do want to write about, however, and it is important for me to focus on those things. I am certain that writing is going to play a larger part in my art practice than it has up to this point; I have always written but I have never published any writing relating to my own work.

As a present for my graduation Madeleine gave me a gift certificate for a psychic reading (the psychic was a recommendation of Our Dear Reader.) One of the things that she said to me was that I didn't like to talk about my own work. This is true. I hate talking about my own work. I get mealy mouthed and want to change the subject. This is a problem and she said to me “THAT IS A PROBLEM.” The point is that I don't think that I want to spend time writing for the Mildred anymore because I am not sure what exactly I should be writing about and I'm not sure exactly how I should be writing about whatever it is. It is clearly important to Madeleine that our identities be somewhat obscured here. I can understand that from her perspective, but I guess it leaves me wondering a little bit what exactly my “hidden perspective” is supposed to be. I started writing on this blog in a show of support to M and because I really was struggling with smoking. Ironically I think it made for a much better blog when I just kept falling off the wagon every other week. Now that I am doing better I feel very constrained by the format of The Mildred and by its low profile. Maybe Madeleine and I can have a come to Jesus session and figure out what the future holds—but until then I think that I will be on hiatus. I will still be around, just very, very quiet.

Where Art Thou, Agnes?

Agnes has not posted on the Mildred since August--and things have gotten so much better for Agnes since then! When Agnes is doing well, I guess, she doesn't post--just like me.

I am going to talk to Agnes about this. We need to hear from you, Agnes.

Madeleine Posts for the Second Time This Week

I woke up this morning, early this morning, with dialogue from three different plays running through my head. It was all very confusing but I think it's a legacy (if I am using that word correctly in this instance) from NOT having finished these plays in the past. A teaching moment, readers!

And that's why I am writing plays right now, readers, if there are any readers left.

Still I feel guilty about it. I should not be writing plays, I should be writing my stories. But then stopping myself from writing plays right now would mean no writing at all.

Then of course I start thinking that I am writing the WRONG play. I should be writing this play, not that play, and on and on, and then I think that all these plays are stupid. And then I think that all the new plays I've seen this season are stupid, so maybe I'm onto something.

Then: with this attitude, i.e., everything is stupid, how will anything ever get done? (This is always my struggle.)

And let's not forget, readers, my penchant for unreasonable expectations, as I answer that question above, i.e., how will anything ever get done?, by thinking, I'll just finish all those plays this week and feel so much better! Then back to the stories!

Anyway, back to work. I just thought of an ending for one of the plays!

Incidentally, when I went to find the Mildred just now to post on it, I typed the Mildred into my browser and a google search ensued. We are on page 10 of the google search, so on the one hand we are not so popular, I guess, but on the other, page 10! I can't believe it! There are so many other entries for the Mildred on google that come after page 10!

This Is What Madeleine Sounds Like When She Is in Her Office

It is 7 p.m. and I am still at the office, but it is a Thursday so that is all right. I have decided that it is okay for me to work as many hours as they need me on the days that I work at the office--i.e., Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday--because those days I don't get much writing done anyway. But then I refuse to work in the office anymore on Friday or Monday (or the weekends), though I occasionally will do some work from home. Boundaries! Plus having office days and writing days means less guilt, i.e., guilt that I am not working more hours and making more money to pay my lawsuit debts and guilt that I am working in the office too much and not writing, which is really what matters most to me.

It strikes me that this entry is sounding like one of those dumb Poets and Writers essays that I hate so much (and eat right up!). Something about how to make it as a writer, how to divide your time and not feel guilty, etc., which always translates into "this is how I do it, so this is how you should do it, too." As I said, I love to rail against those essays and note how they're always written by writers I've never heard of (snark!).

This whole entry is sounding like my office: dry, hemmed in, dull. I never write on the Mildred in the office for fear of someone catching me writing on it (i've talked about this in the past). I am also paranoid that someone somewhere in this office is monitoring my Internet usage. But it is late and most of my coworkers have left for the evening so no fear, though still there are holds barred. (Did that make sense? Is holds barred the opposite of "no holds barred?" Again, this entry sounds so stiff.)

I meant to say, too, when I wrote that "I never write on the Mildred in the office," Readers, that yes, I know what you are thinking: she never writes on the Mildred PERIOD. That is fair and I am trying.

As for my writing, I am still working on plays and Story #4. The plays are crazy, no structure, freeing. I am writing them the way that I want to write fiction (and occasionally do write fiction): I sit down at my desk and start typing dialogue. It's so enjoyable! And when I wake up in the morning I find that I am thinking about my writing again which makes me feel good; during that month or so in August/September when I was working in the office all the time, all I thought about was the office. Now I don't.

Also, going back to my statement that I refuse to work in the office on Mondays and Fridays, I am working in here tomorrow (Friday) morning from 9 a.m. - noon. But after I am going straight to my studio.

Madeleine Back on Track

Well, here it is October and two weeks (or more?) since my last post. It was not supposed to be this way... And I thought Agnes was writing on the Mildred! Where have you been, Agnes? What's your excuse?

Okay, let's move on.

I was in a holding pattern for awhile, sliding back into my old, bad patterns of: not focusing on one thing (i.e., the stories); wanting to write plays when I shouldn't ever be writing plays because writing a play is just a way NOT to write what I should be writing (i.e., the stories); getting caught up in having something to show to people (i.e., that I've published a story); fretting about my career or lack thereof which is a complete waste of time for many, many reasons but primarily because I shouldn't be thinking about that until I finish my stories; looking for the satisfaction that I wasn't getting from writing my stories by earning money and working at my office too much and getting involved in the intra-departmental fights there so as to allow them to suck out all my creative energy.

Let me back up for a moment. In my last post--and I haven't reread it, by the way--I recall saying something about the upset I would cause Our Dear Reader by saying that I was thinking about writing plays again. Sure enough, at a lunch date with Our Dear Reader shortly after that post, ODR did comment on that, saying, basically, that I was foolish, foolish, foolish to even consider writing plays again and especially at this juncture and especially given the Mildred project.

But later I was telling Agnes about said desire to write a play and my struggles not to and how the two (i.e., desire and struggles) canceled each other out and made me not write anything, and Agnes said, well, you should write what you want to write. You are making everything worse by fighting it.

Well, readers, they were both right, I think.

So I have been writing a play--secretly, quietly, freely (i.e., with no plot outline or schedule or career-building motivation)--and this has allowed me to get back to writing Story #4. I am doing both and thus not fretting about not doing either. It keeps me writing and gets me out of the dreaded holding pattern. (I keep getting an error message as I am writing this post. I don't know why. Maybe a metaphor? Maybe a message from someone, somewhere? Anyway...) So, yes, I am writing again and enjoying it.

The holding pattern also coincided with a month or so of too much time at the office, as I have described, and some minor family emergencies. (Everyone is fine.)

Also, I have always found fall to be a good time for writing.

My point is, all of these things should be considered when thinking about why I am writing again. (Error message again! What am I doing wrong?)

My goals re: stories for the rest of the year: finish Story #4, hopefully before a short, very-excited-about trip at the end of October with ODR, then edit the quick, long draft of Story #2 before the end of the year and be well into Story #3 as 2011 begins. That should set me up to write and finish Story #5--and meet my Mildred goal (only) one year late--in the late winter/early spring of 2011.

At Long Last Madeleine or Yes & No!

I have been putting this off--this being "writing on the Mildred"--because... well, I don't really know why I have been putting it off. I would think about it all the time, almost every day, i.e., I have to write on the Mildred today, and then I wouldn't do it. Probably this should be explored further at some future date or was explored sometime in the past...

ERT! I'm bored with this entry already! It is reminiscent of so many other entries!

Anyway, I got thrown off my schedule a month ago. I am still off my schedule. I went away for a week in August and then I worked a lot. They kept asking me to come in to the office because it is our busy season and I always said yes because I need the money. And so they kept asking and I kept going in, and I became more and more angry, more and more impossible to live with (ask Agnes!) and more and more dissatisfied with myself and my progress and my priorities. And then all my money went to taxes.

I decided to rededicate myself, to re-prioritize, to get things back in order, especially since I will always need the money, etc. etc, and it is always easier to choose to go into the office to make money instead of going to my studio and not necessarily making anything...

So yesterday when my boss texted me to ask if I could come in today, I felt guilty, and thought about the money, and mentioned it to Agnes, and dear Agnes, thinking, no doubt, about how difficult I have become to live with, how dissatisfied, etc. etc., said, "Tell them no!" Our Dear Reader, when called, said, "Maybe it's a test from the universe!" I said to them both, "Yes!" and then to my office, "NO!"

I have been thinking about Story #4, is it? Even I am confused... To recap: Story #1 is finished! Story #2 long, quick, unedited draft is finished! Story #3 is begun, but difficult, and needs to be completed after Story #2 is edited for reasons I can't recall at the moment, so Story #4! Yes, Story #4, that is what I am working on. Sweet, simple Story #4!

Also, as an aside, and at the risk of upsetting Our Dear Reader, I have been thinking about writing plays. I always think about writing plays at this time of year, the beginning of the season, and I love writing plays, and plus the deadlines for play-things are coming up so I should write a play, and also all the plays i see are bad it can't be so hard to write a play.

I have nothing else to say about that at the moment, but I will say that I will be back on the Mildred this week.

Agnus Weekus Horriblus: Oh! What a wretch I art!

The heading for this entry, though dire, is hopeful insofar as it presumes that the horriblusness is limited to a week rather than a fortnight, or a month, or a season, or—G*d forbid—a year. I have been victim of a sequence of events that have threatened to rob me of all equanimity, forbearance, and once or twice even my lady, Mlle. Madeleine. Our dear reader provided the cause for this mayhem: Mercury is in retrograde. I remember when I was working in a very small business in 2005 and it seemed as though Mercury was always going in and out of retrograde and I remember distinctly thinking “Mercury is in retrograde for Nancy Reagan and my boss, perhaps, but for nobody else.” I feel ready to revise my opinion, however, and have come to one conclusion: Fuck You Mercury.

I suppose my story begins, like all good things, with a wedding. Madeleine's sister Marthe was getting married in the wilds of Pennsylvania, not too far from where the groom had spent some of his childhood, in a town called Danville. The wedding itself was lovely—the rehearsal dinner was entertaining with good, simple food and an open bar with good liquor, the wedding took place on the lawn of an old barn nicely refurbished to serve as a dancing pavillion, and buses were provided to and from so nobody drunkenly plowed themselves into trees. The town itself was dreadful—as some towns used to be factory towns Danville is a hospital town—in addition to being poor it was also filled with the maimed, afflicted, and morbidly obese. Like Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, Madeleine and I are set apart from the general stream of mankind by our exceptional literary abilities and small towns tend to get us down by freaking us out. Danville: no exception. So by Sunday she and I were ready to pack it up and drive back to New York with her brother Pip and his daughter. Here is where our troubles really begin (I am not counting the hour and a half it took us on foot in Danville Saturday morning to try and find the Perkins to get some breakfast.)

Although I am a very good packer, and despite Madeleine's and my determined search of the hotel room before we left we somehow left behind a pair of shoes of mine. This pair of shoes was the only one I own which could be properly deemed “fashionable.” They were also the only thing of consequence I had to remember the summer of 2007 which I spent in Berlin (well, them and the laptop purchased in New York to replace the one that had been stolen along with my external harddrive and six months worth of photographic and video work from the studio I was sharing in Kreutzberg... ) I had just gotten them resoled, and inside of them were the custom-made, foot orthotics which I need to wear in order to prevent major muscle pain and general skeletal deterioration. Of course I don't realize they are missing until Monday evening and when I call the hotel they are not in the lost and found and it is suggested to me that I call back during the day when housekeeping is present so that we can all “be sure.” I do so the next day and the woman I speak to is an inexplicable bitch to me. I'm sure this isn't the first time that a guest has left something in a room there that is very important to them; maybe that was the problem? Maybe I was being blamed for the retrogradation of her life? Unclear. What was clear was her profound contempt for both me and my shoes.

Monday was a pretty awful day in general, and for whatever reason I just couldn't get anything done. I spent most of the day reading; it was very cloudy and dark outside. When M came home from work she was angry with me because we didn't really have anything to eat and I hadn't gone to the grocery store. She was miffed about that: what a lazy Agnes!

Tuesday was the first day of going to the welfare office to apply for public assistance. I believe I mentioned the extreme depressingness of that experience, and how I was required to return with additional documentation. I finally made it back home and did much laundry; cleaned up the house a bit. And left to meet M in the city to see a play together for which M had graciously purchased tickets. I arrived a bit early and determined to go to my bank and withdraw some money so that I could buy extra produce and cheese at our CSA the following day which I hoped would make M feel forgivey. Upon arriving at the bank I discover that my ATM card is missing. When we were in Danville looking for the Perkins we'd come across a branch of my bank, not at all a common occurrence, and I decided to deposit the check from my previous landlord in New Haven which I had been carrying around with me for a few days. I fill out my deposit slip and wait in line for the teller while excessive amounts of Cohen brothers local color plays out. Eventually I get to the counter only to learn that they cannot accept my deposit because they have no record of my account. This isn't good. I remembered that when I first got the account two years ago upon my move to New Haven I'd been informed that there were New England and Mid Atlantic groups of customers within the bank, but that those two groups hadn't quite been merged yet into a unified corporate structure. Knowing that I was going to be moving back to the Mid-Atlantic designated New York region upon graduation I asked approximately how long it would take for this unification to occur. “A year at the longest!” was the joyful reply and with the assurance that I would, anyway, be able to use my ATM card at any branch I opened the account. Evidently two years' worth of water was not enough to have completed that particular bridge and the Danville teller directed me outside the bank to the ATM to make my deposit. Naturally, when I got there, there was neither envelope nor pen. So here I am in Midtown three days later with no ATM card after business hours. There will clearly be no cash for Agnes. Arg!

After the play we decided not to eat out (I lied and said that I wasn't hungry so I wouldn't have to spend money at a restaurant and M decided she didn't want to go out to eat if I wouldn't be eating with her) and upon returning home there was again a notable absence of grocery shopping having been done. M was working full time plus a half day on Saturday this week—too much for M but there was overtime to be got—and she was upset at the apparent unconcern with which Agnes had approached the food situation. But because Agnes is extremely mercurial these days M was hesitant to make an issue of it. Nevertheless we exchange some words and Agnes ends up having a bit of a breakdown the upshot of which is that because she is home all the time the burden of grocery shopping falls on her shoulders—not something that she minds at all in theory. The problem is that Agnes doesn't have any money, so going grocery shopping has become an increasingly unpleasant experience for her. M reassured her that grocery money would be forthcoming at week's end and peace was restored. Sort of.

Wednesday is the day to go back to the Welfare office. I am there for three hours and count myself lucky to have made such good time. Though that was probably due to the torrential downpours which left me completely soaked from the knees down for the duration of my visit to those windowless and aggressively air conditioned warrens. I also discover that I am still missing some paperwork. I find out, however, that I will be able to fax it to them and despite the fact that I don't know if I have the paperwork they need and have absolutely no idea in hell how I am going to find a fax machine I feel relieved. Wednesday is also the day for provisioning. I develop a plan of attack: first, go to the ghetto grocery store near our house (near means 10 blocks away,) for dry goods, canned goods, and similar rations. Next I bike to Greenpoint several miles away to go to my bank. Then I go to the butcher shop to get chicken. Finally I go to our CSA to pick up our weekly allotment of vegetables and buy extra plus cheese with the cash that I will get from the bank. I can tell you that ghetto groceries, and butcher, both go of sans hitches. I just cover my eyes and hand over my credit card. Bank: not so much. I arrive and blithely fill out a withdrawal slip and go right up to the teller—no line! I'm not sure why I didn't expect this but, as you have probably guessed, for the same reason why I can't deposit a check with a Mid-Atlantic branch I can also not make a withdrawal. But the teller assures that I have nothing to worry about “You need only go to the ATM and you can make a withdrawal there” (she was Indian).

“Ah,” I replied “But I have no ATM card—I have lost it in Danville, PA. I need to have access to my bank account in New York. This is a big problem for me.”

“Oh,” she said back to me, “I am sure that if you talk to our customer service representative Zach he can help you transfer your account to a Mid-Atlantic account so that you can have access to your funds.”

So I go over to customer service representative Zach and ask him for assistance in accessing my funds. We determine that the best thing to do is to open a new account in the Mid-Atlantic division, transfer my funds, and then close my New England account. I will not be able to keep my account number, yes I will have to order new checks, yes I will have to pay, but only if my balance drops below $500 and only $5/month. OK, not bad, same as my old account. “Great,” says Zach, “Now all I need is $25 to open up the account.” If you were hoping to have the opportunity of imagining Agnes, still ever so slightly sweaty from her bike ride, sitting on cheap office furniture gaping at a customer service representative, now is your chance. I explain to Zach as patiently as I can that the reason why I was there was because I had no cash, indeed, had no access to cash, cash which his bank was essentially holding hostage from me. He then asked me if I had a checkbook. I said that I did, indeed, have a checkbook and that it was at home. He suggested I go and get it. I told him that it was still raining. He said it didn't look like it was still raining and that anyway if it was it wasn't raining very hard. I told him that I lived three miles away. He told me they were open until 5pm. I then told him, a trifle shortly, that I was not going to my house and that he needed to open this account for me right now because his bank had more than $25 of my dollars and I needed to have access to those funds right now. He called the corporate headquarters and they agreed that I could open an account, as long as I transferred the funds right away. I reminded him that I needed cash, and as a result I not only had no problem transferring the funds right away but had, in fact, been fully intending to do so from the beginning. Finally, after full-naming, addressing, and social securing I am the proud owner of a new account. I tell Zach to go ahead and transfer all of my funds from the New England account. He tells me that I need to do it myself, over the phone. I have no idea how much time has passed at this point, but in for a penny in for a pound. I call the number and after the usual automatic menus managed to transfer the funds with the help of a very cheerful woman with a Southern accent. I am happy and mention that I am relieved to be able to have access to my funds now. She agrees with me whole-heartedly, and is excited to let me know that because I have transferred my funds before 3:30 in the afternoon, those funds will, in all likelihood, be available to me the very next business day! At this point I try and suggest that perhaps the bank can forward me some little of my own money so that I can, after all, have the cash that I came into the bank for in the first place, but “oooh, yeah, oh sorry but as this transfer—usually it would be available right away of course—but as this transfer is an interregional transfer it has to be done manually but the good news is that it is almost totally positively going to be available tomorrow morning which is Great!” Zach assures me that I can come all the way back to Greenpoint the next day to get cash at 9am, when they open. Well fuck you very much, Zach. So I leave the bank, no cash which means no extra produce and cheese at the CSA which means no forgiveness.

For Thursday, at least, I am determined to be awesome, have an open mind, and not allow myself to feel overwhelmed. Thursday, at least, will be sweet. I did some horrible drudgery things in the morning that I'd been putting off for months and then in the evening I went on a 34 mile bike ride. M was having dinner with a friend and came home late thus preventing me from making her miserable. “What a succesful day,” I thought, “if I can keep from interacting with any other people and then do something which completely exhausts me physically I might be able to do this thing!”

Friday I spend much of the day writing a letter to an unemployed friend of mine whose wife cheated on him with people from their neighborhood bar to let him know that he didn't have it so bad. Then I decided to make a nice dinner for M because she has been working so hard all week. I very sweetly call her and ask her if she has any special requests. “Only yellow and green tomatoes and blueberries from the farmer's market,” she says. “Wonderful!” says I, “your wish is my command.” It is a lovely day and I ride my trusty bike into the city to do some errands (including going to the fucking bank,) go grocery shopping and go to the farmer's market. Bank is no problem. I even go to the library and check out some things, feeling virtuous. I suspect that I should know by now never, ever to feel virtuous ever because it always, always fucks me. But there I was. Time to go to the farmer's market. And I wander around for at least a half an hour going from stall to stall looking from the glorious produce on offer to my grubby little fistful of painfully acquired bills to the prices of said produce and I simply can't induce myself to buy anything. Finally, as a wave of panic begins to build, I snatch up some yellow tomatoes, a small bunch of bok choy and one of scallions and a few plums and ran out of there. Madeleine and I had made tentative plans to meet for coffee but I couldn't get in touch with her. Her cell was turned off and she wasn't picking up her office phone. This is very unusual and I knew that she must have been called away for a meeting or something but I kept calling. By the time I left the farmer's market my jovial mood had completely dissolved and I left a truly belligerent message on her voicemail. A message that any reasonable person would know would not encourage Madeleine to pick up her phone in future ever again. I did make it home again Friday evening, and the long-suffering M smoothed down my feathers and night drew closed the curtains of the day.

Saturday felt dangerous from the beginning, and as M was working again I was determined to stay at home and organize my filing cabinets. I did this without injury for many hours. M came home and it seemed safe to leave the house, so we went to Greenpoint to look at a shop that was having a sale. It was nice and even the shopowners' excessive adorableness failed to prove off-putting and we went to a nice bar and M had a beer and I, intent on being the (fat) little match girl had a club soda which proved to be only $1 less expensive, but it was still nice. We went home and had a nice dinner and bad things seemed to have dispersed. Hurrah. “Let's go for a night-time bike ride,” I suggest. M agrees and off we go. Lovely! What a nice Saturday!

It is only on Sunday that I realize that during the nice ride we took on Saturday the glass of my iphone was cracked. Who cares! It's still usable! Or would be, if the crack weren't positioned in such a way as to completely prevent the phone from being 'unlocked'. Well Goddamn. Should I wake up Ronald Reagan and be all “welfare queen buys new iphone!?” Of course, that would imply that I were actually getting public assistance which, as of now I am not. And as that phone is not only my only contact with telephonic communications but also for all practical purposes my only email source (no internet at home saves money!) I really need it. So it's another bike ride into the city (saves $5.50!) to Tekserve and $129.50 and hopefully I will have a functional phone in a day or two. The good news is that I got neither run over by a bus or murdered on my way back from the store. Though I don't suppose I should actually say that out loud in case Mercury hears me. I wonder if it can read?

Agnes Sucks and is Lazy

It is true that Agnes hasn't been posting. It is also true that Agnes doesn't have a job and doesn't have an income. Agnes has rapidly dwindling savings whose dwindlement she has attempted to retard by using her credit card instead. This amidst a flurry of summer travel which has been really and truly enjoyable but with an acid afterburn of financial distress.

Agnes has also been trying, and succeeding, to get some of her own, non-writing, work done which hasn't been easy despite the apparent emptiness of her days. What does fill Agnes' days? Sigh. STUFF.

Agnes has to go and fax some documents from the tiny office bodega (God, I hope it's still there--how does one bloody fax something these days?) to the public assistance office right now. Glamorous as f*ck.

Madeleine in Mid-August

I am just going to say that I am annoyed that Agnes hasn't written on the Mildred in so long. It's so much better if we both post, Agnes! It's also so much more updated. We need to keep our readers satisfied! I fear that we have not....

Anyway, another bump in the long, long road for Madeleine. Specifically that old familiar road called I-Shouldn't-Be-Writing-This-I-Should-Be-Writing-That-Oh-Hell-I-Just-Won't-Write-Anything Road. Yes, I've hit a ditch on that road, or I hit a ditch on that road, readers--past tense--and now I am starting to get out of it.

Here's a hint or a tip or a clue to my psyche/process/Mildred postings: if I am NOT posting on the Mildred, then I am either busy or out of town or I am so angry with myself about how my writing is progressing that I can't bear to write about it on the Mildred, mostly because I don't want my readers to think that I am lazy and/or never going to complete my Mildred mission, i.e., write the five stories. (The mission changed, you remember, readers, after May 2010 came and went.) Here's another hint: I am rarely out of town.

So the fact that I am writing on the Mildred now means that I am coming out of it. In fact, I am out of the ditch. (Okay, goodbye, ditch--and all road talk.) I have relaxed a bit, don't see how punishing myself, how not writing anything is a solution, a way to move forward (office speak), etc. etc. So I am writing again--Story #4, as I said in my last posting--and that's that.

I am also writing out an outline for the novel I've been thinking about. Thinking of the novel helped me to get back to writing Story #4; I felt better writing something than not writing anything.

Madeleine Makes Another Decision

I decided to focus on Story #4! Let me explain...

I have completed the quick, loose draft of Story #2, but I can't revise it. I've tried and it's not happening. I need a break from this story; it's a very long and complicated story, and I don't have the energy for it right now. Plus, Story #2 comes at the end of the collection and involves characters, plots that I need to think about more.

I wrote the beginning and ending of Story #3, but everything in between needs time. This is also a key story in the collection; an important person is introduced and writing that/her is scaring me.

So Story #4: exactly the kind of story I want to write at this moment. It's shorter than the rest and I don't have to go too much into characters or motivations or anything. Something happens and that's it.

But working on Story #4 is making me nervous! Am I falling back into the same old patterns, i.e., starting many things but not finishing anything? Will I be able to finish Story #4 by mid-August? Am I wasting time? Am I working on the wrong thing, making all the wrong decisions?

Why is Agnes not writing on the blog? Today is her two month anniversary of not smoking--hooray!

Choose, Madeleine, Choose!

I have my quick, loose draft of Story #2, but I really want to write Story #3. I can't face going through the quick, loose draft of Story #2 right now! I know both the beginning and ending of Story #3, and it will be a much shorter story than Story #2, and I feel like writing something quick and short right now.

But if I give up on Story #2 now--not give up, but put off writing draft 2--then I might not have a completed story by mid-August, and the most important thing right now for me is to complete a story by this deadline. I must meet my deadlines, plus I have promised to give a new story to someone in mid-August. Will I be able to write Story #3 by mid-August? I don't think so. I know the beginning and the ending of Story #3, but I don't know what comes in between.

But Story #3 is going to be SO good. I love Story #3. Not that I don't love Story #2, I do love it, but it's so complicated. It's so long and winding , which is exactly what I love about it, but also I love the idea of writing a straightforward, shorter story like Story #3. I have had the title of Story #3 in my head and in my notebooks for a long time. It is a great title.

Plus, if I am inspired to write Story #3, then that's what I should write. But when will I get inspired to go back to Story #2? And writing isn't about inspiration; it's about hard work and plugging at it and sticking to it every day.

This is what I'm thinking when I go to my studio. It leads to paralysis. I must choose!

Or, Readers, choose for me: Story #2 or Story #3?

What happened to Agnes?

Agnes: Not a Homecoming

I am on the train to New Haven right now thinking about that place and about my awful graduation and how I haven't finished writing the speech that I intended to write as a riposte. I have been thinking quite a bit about how writing fits into my practice and into my life, and I haven't come up with any easy answers except, I suppose, that it is a part of both. A rather jagged part. The function of this writing continues to elude me, however. Maybe because I haven't smoked now for almost two months. It does get easier as time goes on until eventually it seems like it isn't an issue at all. That I am a non-smoker. And I'm not until I am again.

Madeleine and I both just read A Portrait of the Addict as a Young Man. It does seem a little hubristic for a literary agent to name his drug memoir after the classic James Joyce novel. Maybe it's a joke? I'm not sure as (to Madeleine's abject jar on the floor horror I have not read the latter.) I think she liked it rather more than I did, though I did read almost the entire book (the last chapter had to be skipped by me, unfortunately, as it was experimental or something with irritating babies imagery out of Anne Geddis photographs. I think. It wasn't that bad and I bring it up only because it's an addiction memoir. It's not like you don't know what's going to happen. And I feel a little like that about this blog. At least my part about it (NOT that I'm saying it's not inevitable that M will finish her stories which it IS.) There are some things to which the narrative arc is irrelevant: eating, sex, having babies (or so I'm told), these are things that we do regardless of their banality. This is really a first-world problem, isn't it? At least I can be safe in the knowledge that although there have been times when I have smoked and drunk quite heavily, I have never gone through $70,000 over the course of two months to feed my habit. Huzzah. Is this kind of navel-gazing really that productive? As skeptical of the talking cure as I am, I have gotten something from it once or twice in the past. If this could actually be like that it might help, though the point of therapy/analysis is the neo-parental relationship one develops with one's therapist. Even if I could be totally honest here the idea of a “public”, however small, playing the parental role seems really problematic (which is why I am not the kind of girl who aspires to Lindsey Lohan/Jennifer Aniston -type famousness). Then there's the fact that one pays one's therapist and that they are, after all, one's employee.

I have done away with the data collection projects. It was too much bloody work. Also, it brought out the worst in me. I have a tendency to be a bit extreme. And obsessive. So I think the secret is to do whatever it is that I can to ensure that the changes I need to make (not smoking, eating better, exercising, the usual) are something that I can sustain rather than being very, very good and then horrid.

I will tell you all how New Haven went.

Madeleine in Studio and Writing Is Still Hard

I am in my studio right now, readers!

You know how you always think, well, if I just do this one thing, then X will be so easy?

As in, if I just had a place to go and write, a place separate from my home, a room of my own in a building near my apartment, then I would go there and write and do nothing else and I would get so much done!

Well it doesn't always work that way--at least at first.

Today, my fourth day here, I finally refocussed on Story #2 and wrote. (I am spelling "refocused" wrong. Both ways, one or two esses, are wrong, according to my computer. Esses is also wrong.) But it is daunting! Even with my quick, loose draft in hand, I feel like I am starting all over again. So I stopped writing it to write this post to keep my fears, my anxieties, my self-criticalities (Sarah Palin says that's a word) from getting out of control.

I will let you know next post, readers, if this worked.

Madeleine Gets a Studio

Yes, I got a studio! It all happened out of the blue. I had not been thinking about it recently, but I had thought in the past about how nice it would be to have a place to go to write--not a cafe--and I wondered if I would get more done that way. Of course, I assumed that I would--and now we'll find out...

What happened was this: a friend (let's call her Cindy) was leaving town for two months and needed to sublet half of her studio. She mentioned this to Agnes, thinking that Agnes might want a studio, but the space has some restrictions, i.e., no oil paints, no plaster, basically no working with any material that Agnes might want to work with. Also, Agnes is not employed at the moment, so paying for a studio right now is sort of a stretch. So Agnes mentioned to me that she had heard from Cindy, that she was back in town (after months away) only to be leaving again this week, and that she was trying to sublet her studio, which is two blocks from our apartment, but that Agnes couldn't take it for the reasons listed above. I said, "I should take it." The phrase slipped out of my mouth; again, it was not something I had been considering, and then Agnes said, "That's a great idea." And then I started to think that it was a great idea, so we emailed Cindy, and I walked over that night to see it, and here I am in the studio right now writing this blog post.

So now in addition to the blog, which was set up as a way to compel or force or shame or (you choose the verb) me into writing/completing my stories, I also have a studio space for two months (or longer, if I like it) which I am paying for, which is to say that if I don't get a lot of writing done in these two months I will feel rerally bad. This is good for me! Shame usually works, or guilt. The same reasoning/method applies to joining a gym; I am going to join a gym soon (I have been talking about this since January). I hate going to the gym, but then once I pay for it I will go to the gym, because I paid for it. I am writing in circles, it seems.

I must say, though, I enjoyed packing up some of my writing things and walking around the corner this morning (afternoon, actually) to go to my studio to write. Agnes, too, is happy to have me out of the house. But some pitfalls: 1) the studio has Internet. I have been on the Internet since I got here, taking care of business, but that must be limited if I am to get anything done; 2) I share this studio with someone else whom I don't know--we each have our own spaces, though, and there is a wall between us, and he is not coming here until August, and he is supposed to be nice and quiet and we will probably be here at different times, but...

I am excited and inspired.

Agnes' latest episode of self-improvement begins murkily

I will note, about the vacation that Madeleine mentioned, that although she did not write anything, I did not smoke. Naturally I won't put a value judgement on either of those things; that's for you to do.

Since our return I have been self-improving with renewed zeal because, among other things, my head is far too small for what seems to have happened to my tshirts in vacation photographs. The good news is that it has been effective, and I have now lost a total of 6 real pounds since I began this whole ordeal almost a month and a half ago. The bad news is that while this change is visible, I'm afraid I am going to have to revise my weight loss goal to an additional 15 pounds as this first 6 is definitely not having the desired effect. The truth is that what they say about quitting smoking has in general been true for me: every time you quit you gain 5 pounds. And those 5 pounds seem to be very “sticky” and they also don't go away when you start smoking again. I am also beginning to feel like I am on the wrong side of the age line to be messing around with my no-longer girlish figure. I remember looking at my mother and thinking to myself “she used to be so athletic—how could she let herself go like that?” For me, evidently, the answer was graduate school. The point being that I know now that I am really too old for a “diet” to work for me. If I don't want to continue to look like a marshmallow with toothpicks stuck in I am going to have to make significant, consistent, long-term changes to my diet and to the amount of exercise that I get. Unfortunately for me, I have never been very good at long-term projects. I am more of an “intense focus” kind of person rather than a “slow and steady” kind of person, and I would take this opportunity to request that the race be made shorter, only I know that it won't do any good.

This week I have started a new tactic of self-tracking everything that I eat. There is a website called Sparkpeople that has an iphone app with which you can input all of your consumption. I think this might be a bit more practical to do if I had internet access at home, which I do not. Trying to do this on the iphone every time one has a handful of peanuts is bad enough, but trying to figure out exactly how much rice/chicken/onion/zucchini/egg/oil/soy sauce one has eaten in a plateful of homemade fried rice is a fucking nightmare. Self-tracking is fucking tedious, and added to its innate bloody fucking tediousness is the impossibly annoying slow fucking NYC iphone 3G connection. In the end it's no wonder that the people who do this (according to the “user-entered” items that pop up everytime I do a food search) end up eating all sorts of unsavory Heathy Choice meals and individual fat-free yogurts, and endless amounts of “baby carrots.” It is time-consuming enough to make a tasty, healthy meal with fresh ingredients; to then have to try and figure out exactly how much of whatever it is ended up on your plate and to try and guess how much by volume was, for example, that extra scoop of salad greens is simply too much. Cooler heads might argue that since salad has only somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 calories per cup that an extra scoop here or there is mathematically negligible—and I'll agree that is true. But it is so fucking TEDIOUS! I will admit that it is satisfying at the end of the day to be able to tot up all the calories/carbs/proteins/fats one has eating and then to counterbalance that with the amount of exercise one has gotten. It's great, and I have decided that if a team of nutritionists and a home chef want to move in and cooperatively strategize with my personal trainer, massuese and teeth-whitening consultant I would totally be down for that. But it is really a very had thing to be able to do on your own if you don't have lots of (or any) money. And this is from someone who a) has a gym membership and b) IS NOT CURRENTLY WORKING. And if it makes Our Dear Reader feel any better: Agnes has not been getting any work done lately. Though her studio is kind of set up and she has started working a bit today and will be full steam ahead tomorrow.

Agnes is toying with the idea of fixing up a “routine” for herself. She has never before had a routine that was not imposed upon her. For next entry, I will write about the one time I had a healthy routine: this was the time that immediately proceeded my matriculation.

Madeleine's Worst Post Ever

That was my worst post ever. I am confident of that.

Madeleine Is Confident, in Third Person

Madeleine is confident that she will finish Story #2 by mid-August--even though today is her day off (i.e., no office) and she has not worked on Story #2. She has been thinking about it, though, and she did finish her first, quick draft yesterday, and she has been working on some other things.

Why is she confident? Just a feeling; something has changed in Madeleine. Or she believes that something has changed. Why is she working on "other things?" Because Madeleine wants to get things done. Other people get things done, so why shouldn't she?

Madeleine remembers writing posts in the third person in the early days of the Mildred. At some point she switched to first person. Today, making one of the sweeping generalizations that she often makes (and that drive Our Dear Reader crazy), she decides that most great works are written in the third person, so, confidence swelling, she decides to write this entry in the third person.

She is not so confident in this entry, though, so tomorrow and thereafter she will return to first person. (Confidence wanes as she reads over this entry....)

Agnes: Hungry = Brittle

Have to post now that Mad has. Will only post until all of my stuff has finished updating though--must get home for lunch. Have not smoked since June 1. That makes it officially more than 5 weeks of not smoking for me. Also have a net weight loss since I quit, which is no small feat.

Hooray. Now it looks like the updating is finished (this computer hasn't been streamlined in a while and I haven't been online in weeks) home for eating.

IT IS SO HOT HERE. THIS ALSO PUTS AGNES ON EDGE.

Madeleine Figures It Out

We were away. That's why I have not posted on the Mildred in such a long time. It was something I meant to do before going on vacation, but I kept putting it off and then I was gone and without my computer and in a remote place where Internet access was spotty at best. So, yes, I delayed and delayed and didn't do it and then felt guilty about it.

"Just like your writing process, Madeleine!" Right, readers? See, I always know what you are thinking...

Anyway, the vacation was great and I feel reinvigorated. We drove far and hiked a lot. I read an interview recently with some writer, a Brit, who said that whenever she gets stuck/blocked/foggy-headed she goes for a long walk, and usually, by the end of her walk (it was definitely a lady writer, and definitely not a poet) she has worked through the block, figured out where the story/play/novel needs to go next. That's what happened to me on this trip. Before I left, I was frustrated with Story #2, lost in it, lost in my process, and beginning to think that Story #2, the hardest story I have ever had to write ever, was actually two stories. (A psychic once told me that the voices were telling her that some story I was writing at the time was really supposed to be two separate stories; I thought Story #2 was that story.)

While I didn't write on my trip (though, of course, I did bring all my notebooks and notes and guilt), I thought a lot about Story #2 and the other stories and hiking around the shores of Lake Superior and driving on the country roads up there and no Internet access and little news and no political blogs (that, I think, is key) cleared my head and helped me work out some of the problems of Story #2. And now I am ready to go on.

I would like to finish Story #2 in mid-August, before Mercury goes into retrograde (is that how you say it?). I can do it; readers, hold me to it.

Also, it's NOT true that Story #2 is the hardest story I have ever written ever--Story #1 and another story I wrote two years ago were much harder to write--so why do I want to insist that Story #2 is the hardest ever?

Agnes: The Inchoate Dissatisfaction Entry

Sunday night

New things are happening for Agnes. This is not an easy thing.

I'm at the Anchor in New Haven, and I feel lucky to have ended up here. I am certainly not brave enough to have gone to Chazmo's in Hamden...

I can't say how little I want to be back here. I shouldn't be back here, and if it weren't for my apartment I wouldn't be back here. (Queen is playing a little to loud on the juke box. I am going to try and power through it, but this entry isn't going to be one of my best.) I have graduated, I should be gone.

When I finished my undergraduate education, I stayed put for another six months. This was not a good idea. I swore I would never do anything like that again. But then I did, though it isn't entirely my fault: my roommate refused to let me know when he was leaving which made it impossible to plan ahead and try and get rid of the place sooner.

Monday morning

I suppose bloggers are supposed to make separate entries when time passes, that being the point of a blog. I suppose those bloggers have consistent internet access, which I do not. This is a strange blog, anyhow. I'm wondering about the boundaries. If anybody really wanted to, they could figure out who Madeleine and I are, so it feels a little bit strange to be so circumscribed about the blog's scope. Especially because I can't imagine it is really possible to sustain interest in my quitting smoking and Madeleine's extended remix. In any event, I have had a difficult time over the past few days with the smoking thing. We all went to a barbecue at Kruger's friends place in Park Slope on Saturday and we had a very good time. Not too much drinking, which makes abstention easier. We caught a corner of the Brooklyn gay pride parade which was fun, despite Madeleine's death hatred of parades of all kinds, and then after all that we went out for a drink at a nearby bar. It was cool outside and we were sitting at picnic tables and Kruger and his friend Boca were swapping smokes across the table and I knew that I needed to leave. I was also hungry again by that point. So we left.

But yesterday was much worse. Getting off of the train all I could think about was how much I just wanted to by a couple of backs of cigarettes and some gin and call up some of the “bad kids” from school and get rid of the time I have to be here. I didn't. Which I am glad about. I have a little card in my wallet that has a long list of reasons why not to smoke. I am supposed to look at it whenever I have cravings. I don't do this, but there you are. I ended up going for a long run/walk after showing the apartment. Then I came back and tried to read for a little bit but was feeling restless. I wandered around the city a bit looking for a coffee shop that would be open past 9 with wireless. There is only one, and it was mobbed. I ended up sitting on the steps of the architecture building so I could at least log on to the school's wireless network, but I packed it up after only 10 minutes or so—afraid I would get mugged. I thought about seeing a movie, but I had an hour to kill, so I rode around on my bike and thought about how the only reason I want to see a movie is that this particular movie theater has the best popcorn ever but the last time I went and saw a movie there just so I could eat the popcorn I got sick and I probably shouldn't do that again. So I went and got a cheeseburger instead. For breakfast I'd had a bagel with cream cheese. For lunch I'd had hot wings and fries. Completely disgusting. At least I got a ton of exercise though... (Dear Reader, you are rubbing your hands together with glee aren't you?) The bloom is off the rose of healthiness. Now I'm just feeling ornery. I think a good deal of it is feeling ready to start making work again and not having my materials/space set up to allow for that. I just finished reading John McPhee's The Ransom of Russian Art which described how Norton Dodge collected the work of “unofficial artists” in the USSR. Strange to think about how these people, with limited to no access to materials, hounded by the KGB, with no space to work and broke managed to make art and M and A are all over pulling teeth style. Any volunteers to rough us up in our apartment late at night?

Madeleine Plagued by Doubts

I will never finish Story #2.
Story #2 is so difficult--how did I ever think I could write it?
Or write anything at all?
And, anyway, no one will want to read it.
It's too long.
It sounds like the other story I wrote.
Why can't I just write a simple story?
Contests want stories that are 250, 3000, 5000 words long, yet I can't write a story that's 250, 3000, 5000 words long.
I must be a bad writer.
I would love to write a simple story!
I could win a contest if I wrote a simple story.
I should not want to win contests.
I should not even enter contests.
The NYTimes Book Review said today that writers write their best fiction before they are 40, so all my best fiction is behind me already.
He has an agent!?! How did he get an agent?
I'm happy for him.
I am wasting my time.
I should write the novel I want to write, not the stories.
No one reads stories.
No one reads novels.
I always write the wrong things.
Why aren't I one of those people who write the right things?
Why aren't I one of those people who get encouraging notes from editors at literary journals?
A rejection letter would be so much more encouraging if it included an encouraging note.
As soon as I finish my book, publishing will die.
I can't even write an interesting blog post.
I wish my doubts were more interesting.
Joyce Carol Oates has interesting doubts, I bet, if she has any.
She doesn't have any.
I can't manage my time.
I should write a play.
I should write a screenplay.
I don't send out my work enough.
I don't send out my work to the right places.
Story #3 will be even harder to write than Story #2, and Story #4 will be even harder to write than Story #3, and so on and so on and so on...

What's Up With Agnes Is... The Miseducation of Rita

No posts for a couple of days. I've been lying low not wanting to make Madeleine too crazy with manic posting. Plus had to spend two entire days dusting books and making slipcovers for our bookshelves. I also threw out a bunch of stuff to try and make a little way for the impending influx of giant amounts of stuff from New Haven, but mostly it was bookshelf slipcovering.
Our gentleman friend Kruger was visiting us from Texas. Kruger is amazing--a writer who is now doing speechwriting for muckity mucks--and Kruger smokes. It wasn't too bad for me, though last night he smoked about three cigarettes in the apartment as we were having a drink and unwinding/getting ready for bed. All night I had smoking dreams. I also dreamed that I had a bunch of pets and they all died. The death toll was significant: two hamsters, a cat, a kitten, and a puppy. I am not sure what this means. Dear Reader, any suggestions? I know that you've been analyzed....

And for those who aren't Our Dear Reader, she and I have engaged in a weight loss battle. We shall see who loses those 15 pounds first. I think it is going to be me, actually, as I am fierce and determined. But ODR has much better tits than I do. Sigh.

DAY 11

What's up with Madeleine?, or Actually, What's up with Agnes?

I woke up early this morning and among(st?) the things on my agenda for today--I just remembered that I was going to get my driver's license renewed today! Is it already too late to do that? Will I be in line at the DMV (I almost wrote DMZ) for the entire day if I go now?--was to write on the Mildred, and to read Agnes's entry on the Mildred. And to my surprise Agnes has TWO new entries on the Mildred! Yay, Agnes! That was my first thought, followed quickly by: Boo, Madeleine! Then my third thought was that this is not a competition, Madeleine, and my fourth thought was why do I always turn EVERYTHING into a competition? Why, if someone is doing well, do I turn that into a referendum on me, i.e., Agnes's writing on the Mildred only highlights the fact that I have NOT been writing on the Mildred, not meeting my deadlines, not holding up my end of the bargain, not working hard enough, not doing everything I need to do to change my situation and make all of my dreams come true? Fifth thought: Actually, I am much better about that--that being "turning everything into a competition," "making everything a referendum on me"--than I used to be. (Thought number five is dedicated to Our Dear Reader.) Sixth thought: this just proves what I thought about the Mildred all along, i.e., that it only works or it works best if both Agnes and I are writing on it, that we spur each other on to write on the blog; this is exciting and gives new energy to the Mildred! Then finally the seventh thought: I am so glad Agnes is still not smoking.

I would like to train myself to skip from Thought 1 directly to Thought 6.

Anyway, I am going to renew my license today. If I don't do it today, I will never do it, and I need a valid license before I go on vacation.

I still have plenty of time in the day. I always feel like I don't have enough time in the day, even when I have the entire day free. On free days, I feel like I have to go grocery shopping, for example, and then I have to make dinner at some point and that takes up a lot of time. The good thing about Agnes being back, or one of the many good things, is that she has been making me dinner every night and doing the shopping (see Stepford Wife reference from one of her last entries). But she's away today, and I am off, and I agreed to make dinner. Maybe I will take you out instead, Agnes, if you are reading this.

I can feel the whole day slipping away and it's only 9:30 a.m. This is a problem. But this is how I think a lot of the time. Agnes knows this all to well.

I did write Saturday and Sunday. And I will write today.

I was going to post about something else today--about my new process and how it is working so well, both for Story #2 and for Story #3--but I will save it for tomorrow. The driver's license thing threw me off! Madeleine, get thee to the DMV!

On Fire; Not Burning: In which we hear from Agnes once again

So this is the point in the trajectory when I get very crusty. I start obsessively making agenda-point to-do lists on my iCal and running around. Frankly I like it when I am in this mood, and I do get a LOT of shit took care of. Madeleine, however, does not appreciate it. Why she wouldn't like to get bulldozed by an affectless Stepford Wife is beyond me, but there you go.

It does make things easier to have someone else around--at least when things are going well, which they usually are. But there are drawbacks. As I may have mentioned before, I like to blame other people for things; even if I don't do this consciously, my negative behavior patterns are often reactive. Madeleine leaving town after a visit was often a cue for me to go on a bender, for example. The thing about this transferred blame is that it actually makes me feel less lonely. Doing something wrong or stupid or damaging to oneself (or others) can be redeemed in a perverse way if it was done because of somebody else. It's not my fault means that it is someone else's--and that means that we have a connection with that other person. Maybe not the best connection, but still it is something.

Last night I went to a birthday party for a school friend. It was too soon to be seeing all of those people again. I wasn't drinking, which was probably why it seemed so absolutely impossible to be around other people.

I am not smoking today. No smoking since tuesday morning.

La Agnes Nuova

I am writing this on June 2nd—the second day of the rest of my life—and I am writing it in Brooklyn. I don't know if other people are like this or not, but I fetishize “new beginnings” and this one is no exception. But let me back up a bit.

On Sunday and Monday with the heroic help of the indefatigable Madeleine, I moved completely out of my studio. As one of my classmates said, this was a much more significant thing to me than graduation. Since the year began last fall there was not a single day that I was in New Haven that I did not go to that building, and there were many days that I left it only to take a shower in the gym nearby. And yesterday, although my access card would still have worked and although I was in New Haven, I didn't go back at all. I wonder when the next time I will enter that building will be? I don't feel any animosity toward it, but I don't want to go back there for a long time. I am ready to move on (Self magazine are you listening??? (Is Self magazine even around anymore?)).

I am also unexpectedly excited. Hooray for excitation. Now I am back in the city at a coffeeshop. I am sitting outside and everybody all around me is smoking. They are smoking and talking about quitting. That is the funny thing about cigarettes: they are a reification self-loathing. And the self-loathing is almost universal amongst smokers—even the defiant ones use these shadows to heighten the narrative of their addiction/pose. I am not smoking today. I quit.

Agnes Needs a Cigarette (or 20)

As Madeleine mentioned, this has been a busy time. I remember hearing a story on the radio about a survey of some of the most stressful events in life: death of a loved one, marriage/divorce, having a child, but two of the top ones were: moving and looking for a job/graduating with an expensive degree and no intention of getting, as one graduation card so strangely put it, "a satisfying job with a good salary." Who says something like that to a recent MFA graduate? Oh, yeah, my grandparents from Arizona...

SO, as may come as a surprise to no one, I have been smoking. As everything wraps up and people are packing and moving out of the studio building things get stranger and stranger. I want to be gone, but I also don't like feeling pushed out. Then there was the graduation ceremony itself--the single worst graduation ceremony I have yet encountered. (Though perhaps one day I may be lucky enough to be a faculty member of a worse one--fingers crossed!!!)
Then there is the issue of grad school having put a few pounds on Agnes' once-sylphlike hips. Agnes feeling a little less Agnes than usual. Or a little more, depending on how you look at it.
The good news is that I am rapidly homeward bound. I have a few projects for the apartment and am looking forward to being a predominantly bike-commuter. We joined a CSA this summer so will have lots of fresh vegetables. The apartment lawsuit craziness continues to be a psychological drain, but will be something of a financial boon (for right now, anyhow) in that we aren't obligated by the court to save our rent.

And I am really, really serious about quitting when I am back in the city. Change is good, yes? Yes.

Madeleine Gets Nothing Done

I planned on writing today. I didn't. Not sure why.

Possible reasons: working extra hours at my office the past few weeks; Agnes's graduation (last weekend) and move (this weekend); paralyzing lawsuit developments; I want to write something else.

The lawsuit developments, incidentally, aren't so bad, but they are distracting and make me lose focus. Or I allow them to make me lose focus.

Story #2 is a tough one. This sounds familiar, right, readers? But it IS tough, and it keeps getting longer and longer.

I hate all this complaining! I just have to do it. And I am enjoying it when I write it. I should be happy about that--I am happy about that.

I am not happy about this post, however. I should retitle this post: Madeleine Gets Nothing Done Then Writes This Lame Post.

I will say that the comment on my last post was very inspiring. Thank you. I will do better next time. And I am trying to get Agnes to post again.

Time Passes Fast, Thinks Madeleine

Yes, readers, I am back finally.

I have been meaning to..., I have been wanting to..., etc.

I am still on Story #2, still writing my quick loose first draft. And I am enjoying it, even though I wish I had finished it already.

When I wrote in my old way--slowly, deliberately--I ended up spending so much time on the beginning of the story, making it as perfect as can be, and then spending relatively little time on the end of the story. That is probably why I am always disappointed by the endings of my stories--but I love the beginnings! The beginnings are great!

With my new process, I am falling into the same old pattern--that is to say, even though I am writing quickly, I am still spending a lot of time on the beginning of the story, not writing the same paragraph, the same sentences, over and over again, but writing many many paragraphs at the beginning of the story, and now rushing to the end.

More on this later. Or if any readers wish to comment, please do.

But here's some hopeful news: I am beginning to feel, and feel it every day--maybe I should say "believe" instead of "feel"--that I will be able to finish these stories, that I could write a novel, that, really, I can do it. I've felt this at various times in my life when I'm working, but now I feel it every day. A consistent feeling. Maybe I shouldn't have written about it; maybe now I won't feel it tomorrow.

Actually, I think I will.

agnès b. Fucked Up

As Madeleine and our one or perhaps two readers have noticed, I have been missing from this blog for a very long time. As is obvious, although the reasons I told myself were many, this was because I didn't think it was important enough. But today I am feeling differently.

Shall we recap? Agnes' role on this blog was the role of the "smoke quitter", though she proved rather better at quitting that. The winter was spent in a nicotine-infused fog right through to the beginning of March, the 8th to be exact, when she quit again, this time "for real." She did a perfect job for a month, and then, well, she fucked up again. So that's where we are now.

I am just about finished with school--I have my last class this afternoon, on Friday morning I have a exit interview/critique, and Saturday is Open Studios. After that, everything is indeterminate. In a way this is liberating, but it's also massively anxiety-provoking--freedom is terrifying. I was feeling truly rotten last week but for some reason today I feel great. I shouldn't, as I was drinking alone last night, but I do. A big part of my problem is the way that I am always thinking about the future. A cherished reader reminded me of the old saw about "one day at a time," and aesthetically displeasing as it is, I am slowly coming to the realization that it is in fact sort of true, and while it is certainly okay to look forward to things, it doesn't help to get there by postponing living. It also doesn't help to reify self-loathing with self-destructive behavior. Which I think very much plays a role in the whole smoking thing. I have mentioned before how much more difficult it is just to live without smoking because I feel like I don't have a way of checking out of life. But I'm not sure that this "checking out" is a good thing as it usually manifests itself in strange, time-consuming, compulsive behaviors like watching entire seasons of Black Adder in one sitting to avoid the fact that I haven't been able to make any (much) new work for two months. But is the inability to make work because of the checking out? Fallow periods are important for most artists, I think, and two months is not technically that long, but God do they suck. Especially when one is at the tail end of a graduate program that costs *ahem* more than one can afford and one feels as though one is wasting opportunities. Wasting opportunities was kind of a mortal sin in my family, along with waste of any kind, especially money. So you'd think that I would be more conscientious of the fact that cigarettes cost $8-$8.50/pack here.

ANYHOW, I am going to be back here in a serious way. I need The Mildred's help and I need Madeleine's help and I need your help, dear readers. I hate asking for help. But here is my plea! And I promise to be more entertaining and less incoherent in future. I am rusty.

Madeleine Feels the Heat, or Madeleine Worries

I am still working on my quick, loose, first draft of Story #2, and I have gotten to a certain point, but now I am starting to think about the end, think about how the different elements in the story will come together, how I will make it to the end.  (Yes, I mentioned the end twice in that sentence, because, yes, I am worried about the end.)

This is the anticipation, the anxiety, I was hoping to avoid by doing the quick, loose, first draft.

I have to focus on what I am writing now, where I am in the story now, and keep moving forward, and write the end when I get to the end.

("Moving forward" makes me think of my workplace.  That's how they talk there.)

Another observation: every story I write becomes the hardest story I ever wrote.  So I thought Story #1 was the hardest story I ever wrote and ever would write when I was writing it, but now that I am writing Story #2, it is BY FAR the hardest story I have ever written and will ever write.

One more thought: a psychic once told me that I was working on a story, or I would work on a story that should actually be split into two stories.  Perhaps Story #2 is that story.

Madeleine Learns Something (Again)

What I've learned this week, reader(s), is that I can't take breaks from my writing.  Except for maybe one day, like I said in my last post.  But if the break from writing stretches into two days, it will inevitably stretch into three days, and then I start feeling guilty--but don't start writing.

This rule might be especially important in my new process, i.e., when I am writing a quick, loose first draft of a story, as I am doing now with Story #2.

I took a break last Sunday--I was tired! I was not in the mood! I wanted to see a movie and hang out!--and that was a mistake.  I didn't write all week and my schedule got thrown off.  I wanted to have the loose, first draft finished by the end of April.  It's May 2nd, and guess what? It's not finished.

I'm sure I made this same discovery in the past, maybe even countless times in the past--and I might have even written about it on the Mildred (I am not going to search the blog, readers, but one of you, if there are any of you, can do it and tell me what you find)--but this time it will stick!  (I don't like the use of that word "stick."  But I will not correct it!)

That said, I wrote yesterday, and I'm still all fired up with my loose first draft!  In fact, I am going to go work on it now, reader(s)!

Later: Actually, I just remembered what happened last Sunday.  I remembered it when I was rereading this posted post to make sure there were no egregious spelling errors.  Last Sunday, I was visiting Agnes, and I went to the place where I like to write when I am visiting Agnes, and it was closed!  I then tried to find another place, some other cafe, but they were all crowded and I settled on going to Agnes's studio to write.  This is never good for either of us, but it's especially not good for me, because I am easily distracted.  Agnes still got a lot done, as I recall, so this was not Agnes's fault AT ALL.  

Speaking of Agnes, I saw her log onto the Mildred earlier this morning.  I thought, "Agnes is going to post on the Mildred?!?"  That's what made me think that i should post on the Mildred. But she didn't post!  What happened, Agnes?  We all want to know.

Madeleine Is Shocked

Really? I haven't posted since April 2nd? I knew that I hadn't posted in a long time, but I didn't think it had been that long. I certainly thought I had posted several times in April.

Anyway, here I am again, excusing my inconsistency.

I was thinking about the Mildred, though, all weekend--thinking, actually, that I have to post soon. Then I was speaking to Our Dear Reader (though, frankly, I am not sure that he or anyone else is reading this blog anymore) and he asked me when I was going to post on the Mildred again and insisted that I do it. And I agree with him; I do have to do it. I have to see this blog through (it will end once I have finished five stories). Writing on the blog is just as important as finishing the five stories, or at least it is all part of the same project, i.e., to complete things.

So I am working on Story #2--yes, still just #2--but it's going pretty well. I am writing a quick first draft, which means that I am writing out a complete draft of the story in longhand. And by writing out I mean that I am writing down everything that comes into my head when I am sitting at my desk--everything to do with the story, I mean--and writing it in paragraphs (NOT notes) and moving through the story from the beginning to the end. This will help me get a basic structure for the story, I hope, keep me from getting blocked and from working on the same paragraph (or even sentence) for weeks or months, and help me make organic connections in the story--or help organic connections to make themselves in the story. (Does that make sense? I'm not sure it does.) But it seems to be working: I am progressing through the story from the beginning to the end (I am in the middle right now); I am not blocking myself from writing; I have figured out ideas/connections/themes in the story that I wouldn't have figured out otherwise, or at least I wouldn't have figured them out this quickly.

Does it sound like I am feeling pretty good about this new process? Well, I am.

For the first week or so, I still had thoughts like, yuck I have to go write, and I would delay and delay and delay and eventually get something done. Now, though, I feel like I have to write, even look forward to it, though I didn't write yesterday. I don't feel guilty about not writing one day, though, because all the other days I have been writing and I am on target to finish this first draft of Story #2 at the end of the week, which is amazing for me. And if I don't, I will not wallow in my failure, I'll just keep going until it is done.

The next step--after the loose first draft--is to type it into my computer, then edit. Scary thoughts just came into my head... But that's all later. For now, I am pleased with my progress--and pleased that I wrote on the Mildred. Yay for me. I will try to update this more then twice a month from now on, but I've said that before...

Madeleine Needs a Change

I have been neglecting the Mildred again this week, and, yes, readers, that means I have been neglecting Story #2 as well. I say "that means" because my Mildred writing is a perfect reflection of the progress of my fiction writing.

But I have excuses! I was sick for most of the week, fighting a cold, and I was working at my crap office, too, more than usual. I could not focus with my head all stuffed up and my boss having breakdowns. Next week I have days off and I am planning to get a lot of writing done, but, then, I am planning a lot for those days, per usual. Agnes is sick, too, sicker than I am; that does NOT explain, however, why she has not written on the Mildred since March 23rd. And she is doing so well with her not smoking. Come back, Agnes!

So, okay, I haven't been writing, but I have been thinking about Story #2 a lot. When I write "Story #2" I think: really, only Story #2??? And then I think, well, at least it's not Story #1. (I can only imagine what you think, readers.) It's funny. After all my struggles with Story #1, I haven't looked at it since I finished it and sent it to some friends. That is progress, I think. I used to finish a story and then continue to look at it and fetishize it and feel so good about myself for having finished it. This time I feel like I finished that story and moved on because I have so much more to do.

I have also been thinking a lot about change this week, as in: I need a change. (My birthday is coming up, and that's when these thoughts crop up.) How will I bring about a substantial change in my life? Agnes will be moving back soon, so that will be a change for the good, but the change I really want is for my work to be out there in the world, for people I don't know to be reading it and discussing it and hating it or loving it or skipping over it. This is a good thought and a bad thought. (I must judge every thought.) Good because it will inspire me to finish, etc., etc., but bad because it can't be the reason I write, by which I mean, too much pressure! And also writing for the wrong reason. ERT! I feel like I'm falling into self-help speak (especially using THAT phrase) but you know what I mean, readers. And this is important, too: as I'm writing this, I'm thinking, this is such a dumb blog entry, this can't count, just as I've been worrying all week that I can only write things now that count--time cannot be wasted!--I cannot write a bad blog entry, a bad novel, a bad story, a bad paragraph, even, because I need to finish, because finishing will lead to change and change will lead to...I don't know what.

I will leave it at that. I had something else to add but my despised neighbor just turned up his music and I lost my train of thought.

No writing last night.

Madeleine Works on Story #2

I am writing Story #2, readers.

As always, it is a daunting task, and I have been putting it off for all the old reasons: where to begin?; so many thoughts in my head makes it confusing; so much to do!; I'm not getting it right! etc. etc.

These are all the old habits I am trying to break. Or perhaps they make up one old habit that I'm trying to break. Overthinking meets perfectionism meets self-doubt with a touch of laziness.

It is so much easier not to write than it is to write! But when I don't write I hate myself and feel worthless.

But today I am feeling good, because I already have almost 20 pages for Story #2. They are all pages I have written previously, but they are a start and provide some relief.

I decided to dive in. I know where the story begins and that's where I am starting.

The sentences are unpolished, the ideas are not connected, and on and on, but I will fix that in another draft. I am trying to write a quick first draft. Quick quick quick!

This seems like a crazy post, but it is a perfect reflection of my thought process as I am trying to write this (or any) new story.

Tomorrow Arrives Three Days Later

Yes, readers, it took me three days to follow up on my last post. I apologize if you have been checking daily--or even hourly--to find out about my bad habits.

Well, this is one of them. Not posting daily, I mean. Bad Habit #1! I am trying, readers! Blogging is hard, especially when you don't have Internet service at home (though right now I do! Thank you, B's MacBook Pro!) and you work in a crap office like I do, with random people walking behind you and staring at your computer screen all day long. Bad Habit #1 can also be translated as "Not writing every day." That is definitely a bad habit. I remember saying at some point, probably at the start of the new year, when everything seems possible, that I was going to definitely, definitely, DEFINITELY write five pages of fiction per week. Five pages per week was nothing! It was going to be so easy! In fact, I could write five pages per week of fiction and also write a full-length play at the same time. Or a screenplay. A play or a screenplay, one of them, with all that writing time I would have freed up by writing just five pages of fiction per week. Also, five pages of fiction per week meant that I would definitely, definitely, DEFINITELY meet my Mildred challenge, which was, if you remember, and I'm sure you do, to write five new stories by the end of May 2010. Well, readers, I wrote five pages per week maybe the first two weeks of the year, but that was it. Was I lying about it on my blog? I might have been. I am afraid to go back and look. Please don't look, readers.

As an aside, or not, I have decided to keep the Mildred going until I finish five new stories. This means that I realize that I won't finish five stories by the end of May 2010--I am shooting for three stories now--but it also means that I think writing the Mildred is an important tool or method or (what's the word?) for completing my stories.

Another aside: while I was writing the above paragraphs, I interrupted myself twice, first to get some food, and second to get my checkbook, because I thought it would be a good time to pay my bills. This gets to Bad Habit #2: not blogging when I should be blogging, not writing when I should be writing. You will notice, as I have, that the bad habits that have been long established in my writing process have also become an integral part of my blogging process. Isn't that interesting--and instructive! That breakdown I had in February on the blog, i.e., my last post about being mortified when I said I had to stop writing on the Mildred because the fact that I hadn't finished Story #1 was too depressing for me to think about and have to admit to (both of) my blog readers, was a mirror of what was happening in my writing, i.e., I was paralyzing myself because I couldn't think of the ending. Maybe that description (of the writing) was not an apt mirror description of the blogging, but I lost my train of thought, because I left my computer to show Agnes something in this week's Time Out New York that is unrelated to any of this. This habit might be a tough one for me to break. (Yes, Agnes is here, and she is still NOT smoking. Her skin looks amazing! Hopefully, she will write again on the blog.)

Anyway, Bad Habit #3: overthinking what I write. Again, in both my blogging and in my writing, though I have an easier time with it when blogging, as evidenced above, when my last thought is not perfectly linked to my first thought. Or is it? I am not going back to read my blog post as I am posting in an effort to combat Bad Habit #3! In my writing, I am trying to write faster, let things come out more organically, unplanned, etc., etc. That's how writers can discover things and ideas and connections, or not. I learned that I can do this--write faster, I mean--when I was finishing Story #1 and wrote six pages (or maybe more) in one day.

Story #2 has begun. I have a dinner date with Our Dear Reader on April 16th and have said that it will be a celebration for me as I will have finished Story #2 on April 15th. I know you all doubt this--I am including you here, Agnes--but I am going to do it! Or I am going to try to do it, at least. Really I think I will finish it at the end of April.

MADELEINE FINISHES STORY #1 3/12/10

I am back. And I must say I was surprised to see when I signed on that Agnes is back, too.

Yes, readers, I finished Story #1 over a week ago. I don't know why it has taken me this long to report this on the Mildred--I had been so looking forward to telling you (both) that I had finished Story #1--but I guess I needed some time to reflect and think about what I wanted to say and also some time to begin Story #2. I didn't want to return to the Mildred without beginning Story #2 because I thought that might be one way to stop me from falling into my bad habits.

As for those bad habits--I will write about them in tomorrow's post.

Agnes is Back

Agnes quit smoking for reals on March 8. Now that it has been officially over two weeks of freedom from evil weeds, she is beginning to think that she is ready to start posting again.
And to all of our two readers who have doubts, she wants you to know that Madeleine HAS finished story #1.
We are rocking without stopping.
We even has our glitters on.

Madeleine, Mortified

I can't write on this blog again until I finish Story #1.

I still have not finished Story #1.

I feel bad about all of it.

Madeleine Thinks the Answer Is

Ever Hopeful.

I rewrote some sections today, wrote some upcoming paragraphs. I have skipped over Dreaded Paragraph #3 for the time being. Tomorrow, readers! Or Monday.

It takes as long as it takes. Meanwhile I've been writing a play.

I am hopeful. I am positive that this story will be completed this week and I will celebrate.

I am also hopeful that Story #2 will be written much faster than Story #1. I am going to write a complete draft very quickly and then go back and revise. I am realy going to try to do that this time, though, yes, I have said this before.

I don't like this post.

Madeleine: Ever Hopeful or Deluded or Both

Even though it is taking me far too long to finish Story #1, and Dreaded Paragraph #3 is making me crazy, I somehow never lose hope. I still believe I will finish this story; I think that Story #2 will be finished much faster than Story #1, perhaps, even, in a month; I am sure that I will finish at least three stories, but probably four more stories, by the end of May; and this morning I'm thinking about the novel I want to write, and should I be writing that now, too, along with the stories? I can do it. I know I can.

Am I nuts? Or is this positive thinking or am I being hopeful so that I can go on?

This is the disconnect or I don't know the exact word at the moment that Our Dear Reader often chides me for; you have to be realistic, look at your past performance to see what you'll do in the future, etc. etc. I know that's true, but still I believe...

It's especially funny or odd or sad because most people who know me would not say that I am not a hopeful person. I am not a bright-side, glass-half-full, sunny-side-of-the-street kind of guy.

I don't know what it all means--are you shuddering at home, readers, thinking, OMG, Madeleine is so not aware of herself, she doesn't get it, she's in for a rude awakening; or are you thinking, good for you, Madeleine, be positive! Be hopeful! We believe in you!

Anyway, I'm still hopeful, even after this post.

Wrote yesterday and last night and even this morning.

Madeleine Wonders What Happened

It was all so clear to me yesterday after I talked to Agnes. I knew exactly what I had to do to finish dreaded paragraph #3 and then this section and then Story #1! But today I am overwhelmed again, and confused. The sentences do not make sense and they don't follow one another and they are ugly! I need more information and details and then I need less information and details--and then, inevitably, I choose the wrong information and details! Nothing is right, not even the first sentence, which is the one sentence I've been sure about ever since I started writing this penultimate section of Story #1.

If I could just finish this paragraph, get past it, then I could finish this section--and Story #1--in no time at all!

This is a crucial moment--should I take a break, go for a walk, clear my head? Or should I keep at it, rewrite the sentences again, rearrange them again, refuse to leave my seat until I have finished dreaded paragraph #3?

I think I need to take a break. Probably that is the wrong decision.