Promises
I promise to write more here, in order to publish elsewhere; to keep myself accountable to my creative dreams. Or: ffs why can't I keep up with myself.
It has been a long time since I’ve posted, and there are many reasons why but I guess I just want to jump right into it and avoid my own posturing, except to note that what’s brought me back here after weeks of avoidance, is my irascibility.
I’m annoyed with my husband because he can’t seem to do any of the paperwork required for our child’s education. And when I say “do” I mean: finding out what forms to fill, requesting the forms, filling out the forms, sending them, requesting other forms required from other places, attaching requested materials to follow up with the forms, calling to make sure the forms were received so that our full applications for basic needs like public education and child welfare services are met. Which is to also say, I am so mad at how hard it is to meet these basic needs because of the paperwork, not just the paper boy. I am easy to rage where it concerns inefficiency especially where it concerns bureaucracies designed to make people seek exclusive alternatives. In an age when everything else can presumably be had for the cost of thinking it up (e.g. artificial intelligence), why are we still subjected to the mimeograph quality of vital statistics on children, and facilities that are run with the grace of an inner city DMV? Yes I said inner city. I am mad.
I get mad at the cost of doing business, but I get mad at my husband for thinking I am the artificial intelligence that makes our child’s life so pleasant.
There. Rant finished. The point of this precursor is to promise myself I will write regularly here on my artificially, if emotionally, intelligent premise of love letters, personal essays, ruminations. I have some great stories to share. In the coming days I will post about:
Buck wild racist community leaders at industry events telling me their nasty thoughts on Asians because somehow I lead people to believe that I am an information processor with a sense of humor. I have reasons to air laundry. It will be aired.
The story I want to write versus the story everyone wants to hear.
The high suggestibility and value of gifts of object.
Rich cheapskates (this subject never gets old and you all deserve to be defamed for infinity).
Hot sauce business plans.
And by the way: please don’t register this opening salvo as some preamble to divorce, just because I’m ripping on my husband. I know at this age, friends tend to register this stuff in a fantasy sports league of futures in simulated singledom. I don’t need this statement as evidence of anything. Years of flashing my hungry wet ego-vulva at the internet is enough to create an entire division A franchise of sex sports. Perhaps in an alternate universe, this post is about how annoying it is to me that my generic complaints about the home are always met with pearl-clutching, even from (or especially from) my self-stated feminist friends. The stay-at-home-father (which is how my husband and I both describe him), is such a virtuous saint. How dare I complain. Well I am not writing that post because I think you need to get over the idea that any aspect of marriage is more sacred than the holiness of conflict itself. Besides, it’s 2024. We’ve all been told what mature and self-aware couples are supposed to get for paying attention in class: pseudo-polyamorous paradise or Eat Pray Love-style emancipation with bonus points for European lesbianism. I read Miranda July. So did you.
So no. This is not that alternate universe and this post is just a litte hot air. A promise I’m forcing myself to make, to get back on my writing regime. I’m naming the trigger—being mad at my husband over our kid’s school paperwork—because it’s helpful for me to remember how rational anger serves me. How I make it my bitch—“my bitch” in the arcane and derogatory sense of subjugating a partner to an ungodly status of service and reluctant dependency.