Free Refills

Up in the wee hours again…

I’ve been applying for jobs. Jobs I’m not sure I want but also not sure I don’t. I can envision what would be good about them and what wouldn’t be so good.

The process opens me to things, things I haven’t felt in a long time. I haven’t had a boss, not the way we normally mean we have bosses, since 1999. I don’t really want one now.

Of course I understand that, whatever I choose, I really have the same boss I’ve come to have over all these years. Every other boss I have, I will ever have, is just a game we’re playing. An agreement hedged with a glance of misdirection. At least, it is for me. They might not understand that.

I am scared, if I take those jobs, that I will struggle with my sleep. Not struggle the way I used to struggle. Now I sit on the cushion in the dark and play with energy and eventually I get back to sleep. But sometimes I sleep well into the morning. And those morning hours are the best hunting…

Am I awake this morning because something scares me? Or because there are some things that are easiest to say in the dark quiet hours of the nighttime morning?

Waking up in the middle of the night doesn’t scare me the way it used to. I’d realize I was truly awake, that sleep would not return, and a feeling would grab hold of me as I gave up and turned to look at the clock’s red numerals’ infernal glow to see just how few hours I’d slept and how many hours until morning. We call that feeling despair.

The waking still happens sometimes, but I’m confident now that I’ll ultimately get back to sleep. It might take a while, often a couple hours, and while I’m up I’d certainly prefer to be able to fall right back to sleep. But I’m confident now that sleep will return.

Of course it’s best when I just sleep through the night.

Sometimes I can point to something that happened: Oh, I did this and it kept me over-energized at bedtime, and so now I’m awake. Sometimes, though, it isn’t clear. Tonight, this morning, I woke up at 3:00am and asked, “Why am I awake?” I couldn’t see a good reason for it. Nothing in yesterday’s behavior seemed to push me towards it. But I’m awake and not falling back asleep. Fine. I’ll write. It’s 3:54am right now.

Jerry wonders why I have to figure things out, what’s the purpose of turning my mind to find answers to questions like this. Are you sure you aren’t just putting energy into the problem itself? he asks.

It’s certainly possible. But at the same time, there’s this: I think my mind turns itself to answering questions, just like my eye turns to a sunset, my ear to music. It’s what it does.

Do the answers matter? I don’t know. Either way, sleep comes, or it does not.

These days, mostly it comes. 4:19am right now and I am not afraid.

HEY GUYS WHICH WAS YOUR FAVORITE SPICE GIRL? I REALLY LIKED GINGER AND I WAS REALLY SAD WHEN SHE LEFT BUT I ENDED UP LIKING THE GIRL THEY GOT TO REPLACE HER, TOO.

I tend to have a problem wherein I hold on to things forever and ever. What if I need them? That’s the impulse that arises in my brain.

Thus the hard drive on my DVR fills up.

A few days ago I was scrolling through the recordings and found the last Super Bowl. Maybe I’ll want to watch it again.

As is proper for Super Bowl Sunday, I was not 100% entirely sober when I watched the game. Thus while I was definitely entertained I find upon reflection that I remember exactly one play from the entire game, and if you watched you already know which one that was.

I started fast-forwarding through the game to see what memories it would jar. No score at the end of the first quarter. 7-7 just before the two-minute warning. A Patriots touchdown with 31 seconds left in the first half. An answer by the Seahawks 29 seconds later. “Goodness,” I said. “This was an entertaining game. Should I actually watch it?”

I thought about it. Did I really want to see the Seahawks, the team with the human monster truck at running back, elect to pass on 2nd and goal from the one with 26 seconds left on the clock and still one timeout? Did I really want to see stupid, cheating Tom Brady and the stupid, cheating Patriots win for a second time?

I did not.

However, I remembered that there was one part that I definitely needed to watch a second time:
YOU’RE GONNA HEAR ME ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!

She held the knife just so. There is such a thing as a practiced casualness and then there is the casualness that is earned. There, a oneness that cannot be faked.

Guess which one I find more frightening. Guess which one she had.

She turned the blade back and forth, watching the light play against its sheen. She glanced up at me. “It seems we have a lot to talk about,” she said.

I wanted to get a feel for how many words I’ve published on Free Refills since I started Season 1, so I did a quick-and-dirty word count on the folder in which I keep the final drafts to the pieces. The total? Somewhere around 40,000 words.

Now, I recognize that it doesn’t all read with the hard-edged, gleam-faceted, cut-gemstone quality of, say, Cormac McCarthy. I think we can safely say that no more than 60% of the pieces published here are Pulitzer-worthy. But still. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished so far. 40,000 words is about half the length of a novel, all of it drafted and published in a bit more than half a year.

But I still feel a lot of shame every time I bring Free Refills up in my browser to read something and see the ugly default theme I’m still using. It’s like I hear a voice berating me: “How dare you prioritize the writing itself over making the writing look pretty?”

Dear Voice: You just answered your own question and furthermore you are an asshole.

From my 20-year high school reunion:

“How come you decided to sell your helicopter?”

If you are around my age and my level of geekiness, you might remember the pre-Internet phenomenon of Bulletin Board Systems, or BBSs. BBSs were computers you could call up from your computer (via, yes, you remember correctly: a modem) and connect with, and then you could…well, you could do stuff. Mostly you would write posts on message boards and send messages to other people. Some BBSs were places you could download software (usually hacked). Some BBSs had multiple phone lines so you could real-time chat with other users. If you were a teenage geek/nerd like me, this passed for something like a social life.

Most everyone in BBS land used a handle rather than their real name. Whatever my main handle was, it’s lost to me now, which I’m sure is for the best. I’m certain I thought it was cool at the time, and I’m certain now it wasn’t cool at all.

But at some point I decided to develop an alter ego named Ima Radster, who posed as a relatively novice user and WROTE ENTIRELY IN ALL CAPS. You know how people now hate it when other people online write in all caps? Well, they hated it even more back then. If you were on a BBS at all, it implied you had a certain minimum level of geekiness/nerdiness, a level that set you into a particular subculture–and boy oh boy ignore the social norms of a subculture at your peril.

But the thing was, being Ima Radster was fun. First of all, Ima Radster was totally convinced that he was, in fact, a radster. He was impervious to all forms of criticism and attack (and boy was he met with criticism and attack); he just plodded cheerfully on. But there was also something kind of delightful about the way he expressed himself, a certain freedom found in those ALL CAPS. He blithely plunged into any conversation he entered, jovial and ignorant, unapologetic to the last. I guess this would fall into what we now consider trolling. But my oh my was it fun.

I MEAN SERIOUSLY GUYS YOU SHOULD TRY IT SOMETIME. JUST HAPPILY TYPE AWAY IN ALL CAPS IN YOUR DAY-TO-DAY WORLD AND SEE IF IT DOESN’T MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER ABOUT THINGS. YOU HAVE TO FOCUS ON THE “HAPPILY” PART, THOUGH–THIS IS NOT THE SPACE TO GET MEAN OR AGGRESSIVE. THIS IS THE SPACE WHERE YOU’RE LIKE, “HEY, REMEMBER THE SPICE GIRLS? THEY WERE GREAT, HUH?”

It’s like being the opposite of a ninja.

25 YEARS LATER, AND STILL A RADSTER.

DAMN RIGHT.

I got on the scale this morning and egads.

When I stepped off I found a text from my ex-girlfriend Allison, Warrior Princess, who used to scoop me into her arms and carry me to bed, where we would spoon and hunger for each other and do nothing else, for we had each pledged chastity to the gods of Valhalla until such time as we had vanquished the demons from this realm and could finally rest from our battles. But we broke up before that happened.

The text read, “CARRY UR OWN DAMN SELF TO BED, FATBOY,” which hurt. It was also kinda weird. I hadn’t heard from Allison in years.