[listen above, read below]
Hi there, it's me, Jen.
I sat down to talk about editing in the sense that I used to constantly edit out essays and pieces of my life that I didn't like, or that didn't fit the narrative I wanted to create. And I'm not going to say that I'm still not going to do that. I just would like to think that hopefully I've started living a life that I don't want to edit, that isn't full of dead space and filler and distractions that are keeping me from the topic. Hopefully I'm no longer doing that.
I wanted to find an essay that I thought I'd written about editing one's life, like in the memoiristic literature sense. Like looking back and going, “oh, I’ll just erase this story from my google docs.” But now I can’t find it, and I’m wondering if it was one of those things I imagined and never wrote down.
I'd been struggling with this idea for a good while. Like, I really want to talk about my life, but how? I've been traditionally and sometimes professionally blogging for years. Like, I don't know, I guess since MySpace, though I never had a Geocities or a LiveJournal, which is a fact that surprises people. And I'm sure at some point I'll deeply lament at great lengths how I've accidentally on purpose typecast myself as alt-scene-flexible.
My problem with regular hosted posted blogging is that there's a definite start like if you go back far enough, you find that first post from 10 years ago, you know? That always fucked me up, and I've always, like, through time, gone back and erased and moved things around and said, “you know, I don't know if I this is where I want my story to begin.”
Even as a semi-professional blogger with some insider connections and authority on a nerdy subject, (this is the time I will call being a transit journalist) I would constantly edit and move posts around chronologically, particularly the ones that my writing partner had. (Like I don't even talk to her anymore.) Life continues and then I just feel like I'm sorting and retelling and cutting people out and adding things in, trying to create the most narrative whole that gives the most encompassing idea of me so that it can be best understood. And then it's like, well, how much does this event really matter in the whole of you? Are you really a sum of all your parts?
I wrote an essay back in 2020 called “I Once Wrote About That! (and other half lies),” which contained a screenshot of articles that I had half written… and they are all still here. This is why I had to do something.
Also, I promise promise promise I will go into the details with the screenshots and the receipts of all the guys in the community who are, like, horrible and I know that I promised that that was the next thing but… honestly it's gonna be rad. Trust me I have so many things to say. Wow, I'm terrified at all the things that I have to say… So many things to get to that I've never gotten to… Oh, my goodness, alrighty. Who knows, I might record another one right away now that I'm all…
One of the questions was, what is your biggest fear? And at the time, hi, it's me, Modern Jen. At the time that I wrote this, it was 2020. And I said:
…Considering everything that's happening right now, all? I don't know, not being recognized, not achieving, failure.
So those are the things that I was afraid of back then. Because I don't really have any real fears. Like, I've swam with sharks by accident and it was fine. Now, I recently have conceived of my biggest fear, which is being one of those headless bodies that farts on a thermal cam.
Isn't everyone's fear ultimately failure? (And also being caught farting on thermal cam?)
A small child's fear of the dark is a fear of the blinding unknown, that potentially holds dangers, which we cannot possibly navigate, to our probable detriment. Now, failure of what?Failure to thrive. Failure to be.
Failure to be this person that I am trying to be.Failure to have this writing , this occupation of space, this stack of paper, never be seen.
Failure to be seen.
Here be me, sitting parts of me,
and all of these things, all of these writings
that are unfinished and incomplete and unseen…
I lost it for a second there but I felt like a poet. Like if I said it out loud you'd have to be like “right on, Jen.” Maybe I'll change the formatting and retype it, you'll see.
Now that I have this time alone in this room and I sit and I stare at all these stacks of ideas that we've been moving back and forth because there's nowhere else to put them. I said to him and myself, not as a deal but as an out loud in the beginning, just that I'd be working on them, that I'd be sorting through these things, these old scripts, these movies unmade, sort through my life and then what? They're just going to sit, still.
“I once wrote about that!” I find myself saying to my boyfriend about something. I don't know. A throwaway line on TV? I say these things with a pointing finger, with a proud smirk. I don't think he believes me anymore, despite of, or because of, the stack of papers that he moves every day to turn the dining table into his office. I can't help but feel like he becomes disenchanted with me a little bit each time he moves my pile of lies.
Trust me, I'd love to have finished one of the other vain pieces of bullshit that I've been stuck on all week, like why didn't I ever get in a tarot, you know? But I want to know what kind of shoe I am anyway, is that okay?
The problem with writing, with calling yourself a writer, a combiner of words, is that people cling to your occupation and have, like, wrongly conceived milestones about it.“Have you written anything new?” They ask with true interest and hope.
Like, yeah, a million things. A million. I have written a million things. But they mean, have I finished something.
I also do other things, like hair, and I'm rarely asked about those, but I guess it's because it's assumed that of course I do them. It's like a job. And only one person has ever asked me if I've made a new wig lately, and she won't let me cut her hair. But writing is a thing that when people ask you about it, they're very disappointed that you don't have any updates.
For the last six years, I haven't stopped formulating stories, quotes, characters, and catchphrases. The problem is organizing them, getting them down into some kind of physical form. Writing doesn't count unless it's written. And if it's not anywhere but in my head, then it's just thoughts, huh?
I have to think about what makes me stop and then also why I do it. I used to be the type of person who wrote for myself and for the future, sometimes realizing only later that I was writing about the life I wanted.
This isn't as obvious as people think. I once wrote a script about this divorcing couple who gets stalked by the twin of the guy who died and everyone assumed that it was because that's where I was in my own life story. But jokes on them, like I had no idea I was getting divorced yet, so haha.
There's a simplicity in being a hairdresser that people assume I've got, and there's a recognition to being and doing the other things that I've done. I can't find a way that feels all-encompassing and accurate so that when I bring up some other facet of myself, I'm not met with, like, that “oh!” of surprise. Like, how do you get from maneuvering scissors to political philosophies? The other day I mentioned that I studied Greek mythology and I was met with a genuine wow of such, like, impress that I felt like am I lying? I didn't think it would be that surprising.
Maybe it's just me feeling all of these things, but sometimes I feel like I'm standing there knotting someone's hair with my anxiety about how I didn't do the thing that literally everyone was behind me to do, “but now I do hair, which I've been doing for 15 years anyway. But like, yeah, I've been writing a lot of political theory lately, and now I'm thinking of running for governor.”
Someone recently asked me if I liked doing this, like doing hair, after trying to understand how I got here, to Permanent Vacation and the career path that is not the one I'm on. That they know of. It's complicated. To them it looks like I'm not, and that I can't be, and that I won't, and that it's stopped.
“But of course I like doing what I do. It's all I've ever done. It's the only thing I know how to do. Hair and writing.” It's what I always say to people. Sometimes I get their confusion and concern and I have it too because I want to explain, like, what happened even though I don't have all of the answers. Like, why am I here and not, you know, somewhere else?
(I was told that I had a privilege and when I wanted to use it, it wasn't available to me. I have a bit of resentment about that, but I'll get into that someday.)
Speaking of editing, as I read through some of these pieces to get some inspiration and ideas together for things I want to say here, things I've already typed out and wanted to say for a million years. I found this one that I really liked and I remembered how I felt. It was about Sparkle Summer, that feeling of excitement, like there's all these fresh possibilities and your vitamin D is up. It's the way the song “Unwritten” makes you feel. In fact, that's even when I called it, I said:
“It took me a really long time to figure out how to end this piece without triggering Unwritten to play in your head.” The sparkle in the air that I hadn't felt since 2015, which is still, I maintain, one of the best years for pop music. I was also looking forward to a lot of things then, to coming to Permanent Vacation, to making the decision to pursue all of my ideas. So yeah, feeling that feeling again, that kind of excitement, that the world is your fucking oyster. Here comes your route 66 road trip, your coming of age indie film.
At one point, I used to want to do this series of topics I deleted, which were basically, you know, the paragraphs that I could not expand into an essay, like the thought was just that small. I once wrote to a friend that I was just going to start jamming half-finished ideas out there for the sake of exercise... And then I started going through my unfinished half-ideas and I was like, “no, this is a bad idea.” Some of these are just seedlings in a permanent winter and, like, no fruit shall be borne. Every so often I try to mine the old mind, but some of these are really tiny, complete thoughts taken to their highly logical end.
I had this one called “Time is a Palindrome,” which is when I was first working on the idea about how we're in a rare time warp that is self-correcting for how we went out of our own ways a decade ago. I was focused too much on the events that immediately occurred and not the bigger picture of my life patterns, but I still do believe in this idea.
I had one I called “I Think This Weed Makes Me Negative As Fuck” which I think is a pretty self-explanatory title. I had to learn to differentiate between, like, energy and action, which I used to accidentally combine. I would not let the feelings flow through me. I would hitch a ride on them and then become pissed off about it.
At certain points not only have I removed an idea from the internet. I've also taken apart notebooks. I wrote about one time I did it. It was published under the title “The Journal of Grief.”
Synthetic leather with its bookmarking ribbon and elastic closure. This was supposed to be one of those artsy New England guy journals. It was given as a gift by someone trying to woo me with promotional items. Notebooks and journals are easy to come by, but the best are given with the purpose of holding your thoughts for you, in place of the person giving the gift.
Deconstructing a notebook on purpose is weird, considering that I have gone through great lengths to hold on to my old journals. When I was held up at gunpoint, I didn't think twice about telling them that I was going to take my journal out of my bag before handing it over, even in the middle of being a victim of a crime. How dumb.
That journal had a green fabric cover and was supposed to become my book. Back when I wanted to write one. For the first time. I mean, doesn't everybody want to write a book? Like, who fucking cares, you know what I mean? When I started meeting other people who wanted to write a book, I decided that I didn't want to be one of them. My book was supposed to be a collection of essays about grief and loss that I couldn't have even possibly experienced yet.
(Including the time I ate mushrooms out of the yard, which I’ll get to someday.)
…When I began this notebook five years ago, the first thing I wrote was a list of things that make me happy. Things that were occurring in my life when I was happiest, which had only been a year before then.
I used this notebook upon waking to record the dreams when I had them and to record the anxious nightmares of the waking life that I was afraid would happen…
There's the dreams and an essay or two. Oh, the loose leaf transferred from another notebook that contains my quality manifestation list for a partner, as well as a writing to that partner (or to my last partner perhaps) about the things that pain me.
All of these things come from grief and fear during a time in my life when I was going through a lot of internal shit that I guess people would call suffering but at the time we don't really see it that way. I realized that the sparkle I felt some time ago was the occurrence of being healed, getting over it, and moving on, and whatever it is. Like, I'm not healthy, and in fact I think that some of my worst traits are hilarious, so I'll never heal them. I've actually been struggling with how we lose humor when we try to do better. Pleasantly though, I'm no longer living in sadness, fear, and suspicion for all the things that filled notebooks in the past.
So, I sat in a hotel bar, inking together the old pieces of myself to make that list, detailing the occupations and behaviors that led to happiness, (stupid shit like being in love and enjoying nature) that I think are just really, really basic requirements for the survival of any being with an awareness. Often, we treat these things like nonspecific prescriptives, like a panacea, after we’ve found ourselves in a rut, instead of keeping them with us as a daily routine. (Perhaps in a notebook.)
Back then, all I had was a drinking problem and time to write lists and reverse-engineer the roadmaps of my mistakes. And then I held onto it like an atlas, a relic and a reminder of the last time that I had to find my way.
Judging by the torn sheets, the journal had already been edited once or twice for material inspiration and embarrassment. And now it can be gotten rid of altogether.
[“Untitled” by Natasha Beddingfield]
Editing My Life