Breaking out of the Bubble

My post-pandemic life

I did something this past weekend I haven’t done in a long time: I took an unplanned day off. It was Father’s Day and Nuvia and I had plans to drive up to L.A. to spend the day with her family. A relaxed, unmasked gathering in the backyard of her parents’ home in Paramount. 

I got up early enough to do some work, but didn’t. I lingered over coffee, called my father in West Virginia, and took the day as it came. “I’ll write later,” I thought. We got a late start and there was traffic on the way to L.A. and the extra time allowed us to listen to Annette Gordon-Reed’s excellent On Juneteenth, which we finished on the way back. We talked about what we’d learned and talked about our earlier memories of the now official holiday. Can you name the six flags that have flown over what we now consider Texas? If not, maybe On Juneteenth is for you. (Yes, those six flags inspired the theme park Six Flags Over Texas.)  

When we got to Paramount the day unfolded in leisurely fashion. Nuvia’s nieces were disappointed that Annie couldn’t make the trip. Annie had started a new job at a fast food restaurant last week and picked up shifts on both Saturday and Sunday. Nuvia’s nieces are both college students who also work part-time in the food service industry so they understood. That got everyone to share stories about their own adventures in fast food. Nuvia’s brother, Martin, told the story about the old white man who came to McDonald’s every day seemingly to insult the crew by calling them “beaner” and “fag.” There were never any repercussions for the customer, but he earned himself a number of “special orders.” (If you’ve worked in food service you know exactly what I mean.) My own adventures as a midnight cook are pretty well documented in this “Ode to the Fluffiest Biscuit.”

I love Nuvia’s backyard. It’s dominated by a massive orange tree that towers over the house and produces the sweetest oranges I have ever tasted. There is one way to eat them and that is bare chested in a rain storm or, barring that, over the kitchen sink. A glorious mess they are.

Nuvia’s mom maintains a beautiful garden. It’s not a garden in the traditional sense of a place designated for plants and vegetables, but every corner of the yard is bursting with life. The more you look, the more you see. I feel very relaxed in this place. A long time ago I was in the farthest reaches of the backyard when I asked Nuvia’s father permission to marry his daughter. It was a nice moment that inadvertently set off a minor family drama. See, Nuvia’s father decided to keep this moment to himself and never told Nuvia’s mother about my asking for her hand in marriage. This wasn’t an oversight, but retaliation for the time when she kept him in the dark about another one Nuvia’s siblings wedding plans. 

The hours went by and by the time we left our bellies were full and we had containers full of leftovers and we were badly in need of coffee. We got home well after dark and went straight to bed. I didn’t write a word and I didn’t feel the least bit guilty about it. Nor did I feel guilty about taking the previous Friday evening off to go to the movies with Annie. We saw A Quiet Place: Part Two, a tension-filled monster thriller that was lots of fun to watch as long as you don’t think about it too much. The best part was eating popcorn and Red Vines and talking about the movie with Annie afterwards. 

As the country becomes more open I have secretly worried about how I was going to deal with the social aspects of life after the pandemic. For the last year-and-a-half, I’ve had a built-in excuse for not meeting with people. There’s no vaccine. I’m not vaccinated. You’re not vaccinated. But as more and more people get the vaccine, especially here in California, social life has come roaring back. My fear was I’d become a bit too comfortable in my pandemic bubble. All those trips to L.A., all those barbecues, all those movies, add up.

I don’t know how much leisure time I’ve enjoyed these last few weeks. It’s probably a pretty small number. But I do know that going forward it will be impossible to maintain the work schedule I established during the pandemic. There’s no way I can work all those hours and take days off and expect the same results. It’s like the old saying we had in advertising. You can have it fast, you can have it cheap, and you can have it good, but you can only have two out of three. 

I’m choosing family. I’m choosing flowers. I’m choosing baseball and barbecues and birthday parties. I’m choosing live music, and coffee with friends, and long walks on the beach with Nuvia.

This all seems obvious set down in black and white, but it’s less obvious when the work is my dream job and all the anxiety that entails: What if I can’t do this? What if I fail? During the pandemic my response was to push through the doubts by working my ass off. But not only are these leisurely pursuits the stuff of life, they nourish other aspects of it. Since I’ve been out in the world with more regularity (and less anxiety) I’ve been sleeping better, which has helped me work smarter and more efficiently. Good lord, is this what balance looks like? 

PsssSST! (Law Enforcement Edition)

Since the last update about my book, Corporate Rock Sucks, I’ve received tons of feedback on my manuscript from my panel of punk rock experts, Gen X advisors, and grammar disciplinarians. 

The general consensus has been overwhelmingly positive. They’ve also pointed out some blunders and helped me understand what it is I’m trying to do. (When it comes to grammar, I’m a bit of masochist: willfully ignorant, but I’ll gladly take my punishment.) It’s a humbling experience to be sure, but also tremendously exciting. My feeling is if an author truly cares about a book, they will take every opportunity to make it better. The ego can get in the way of this, of course, but I feel that all those years of working in advertising where the copy I created was only “mine” in the nominal sense has helped me deal with feedback. The copy belonged to the client. I was merely the vessel through which the client made their intentions known. Then the copy became something else: a radio spot, a billboard, junk mail. 

The same thing is happening here. The book is only mine while I’m writing it. After that it belongs to the reader. So why not do everything I can to make it the best reading experience I’m capable of creating? 

My sobriety also plays a role in this. My number one goal is to get through the day without taking a drink. My second goal is to live resentment free. This is actually harder to do then abstaining from alcohol, but man does it make it easier. And guess what? It makes everything easier. I’ve found it especially helpful for navigating what Edward Gorey calls “the unspeakable horror of the literary life.” It’s hard to approach the challenges of a writing career while burdened with resentments about “disappointing sales, inadequate publicity, worse than inadequate royalties, idiotic or criminal reviews” and so forth.

Right now I’m wading through hundreds—if not thousands—of suggestions at every level of the manuscript: from the sentences to the overall structure, which I’ll share with you now. One of the popular misconceptions about SST Records is that things were going swimmingly until it owner, Greg Ginn, lost the plot and started suing everyone. That simply isn’t the case. Underneath Ginn’s mostly pleasant and generally mellow exterior is a man who is combative to the core. To demonstrate that he’s always been this way I organized the material like the career of a heavyweight boxer: SST vs. Unicorn, SST vs. Negativland, etc. In fact, the book’s original title was We Can’t Win, which I took from the ultimate “us versus them” song. (It’s also Evan Dando’s favorite Black Flag song.) 

What the feedback has told me is that, in at least one instance, I went too far. I had an entire chapter organized around SST vs. the LAPD. Black Flag had many, many battles with the cops, which was fascinating to read and write about, but does it relate to SST Records? Not really. So I’ve slashed the chapter in half and will probably either get rid of it altogether or fold it into other chapters. We’ll see. I’ve still got a long way to go. I’ll give a proper shout out to my early readers during the run-up to publication next year, but if you’re reading this you have my gratitude.

Vermin Enterprises

I’ve created a coupon code for 15% off my Etsy store. Just enter promo code VERMIN21 at check out. This applies to all pins, zines, and books. Basically everything in the store. So if you’d like a signed copy of Do What You Want, you know what to do.

I’ll take the discount down in a couple weeks when I start traveling again. I’ve also been rewarding random customers with gift subscriptions to Razorcake for the June Subscription Drive. There’s a week to go and they’re close to reaching their goal. 

Thanks for making it this far. I hope your summer is off to a swell start.