one box of legislative office contents

...

Maybe you didn't know this: from January to June of this year, I worked in the Nevada State Assembly as a Personal Attaché (a fancy title for "person who runs this office, so please just go where I tell you").

I learned so much about state government, the political process, and my personal philosophical idiosyncrasies while I was there. My favorite part? The hours and hours I spent holed up in my office watching broadcasts of committee meetings and floor sessions.

Meet the box of the day: a box of things I packed out of that office at the end of the 76th Session:

that i left with just one box of personal items is impressive, no?

Let's see what made the cut:

• A copy of the journal (that's the record of the daily actions on the floor of each house) for April 20, 2011. The Assembly adjourned that day in memory of a friend-of-a-friend who had been killed in a car accident. I meant to show the journal to said friend. I forgot.
• Some certificates and accolades, like the certificate commemorating one of the days I was "extended the privilege of the floor of the Assembly." I believe that was Staff Appreciation Day. Here's a picture of me on the floor:

the office that just wants to go back to work, already

 

• A Christmas stocking. Huh? Let's assume I threw this in here after the box came to live in the blue room.
• A cd booklet full of music I listened to when my legislator was in session or otherwise out of the office. In particular, the Black Keys' Brothers; directly responsible for me surviving the last two or three weeks of the session.
• Assorted vitamins, teas, envelope soups, and, oh lord, Tupperware... to the dishwasher that goes.
• A box of Miracle-Gro Plant Food Spikes. Please hold while I feed all my plants. Thank you for holding.
• My old glasses and a cleaning cloth. Hooray for health insurance that enabled me to get my first eye exam in 8 years.
• Some really great notepads made from old legislative stationary. The paper soaks up the ink from my favorite pens in a highly satisfying, only-a-stationary-nerd-would-understand, kind of way. 
• A coupon good for one free drink at the Carson Cigar Company: espresso martini, here I come. 
• A stack of my dad's business cards. Because, when you work for Republicans, it's never a misstep to say, "Here, this guy would love to help you pick out a gun." 
• Another stack of business cards, one each from every person who visited our office. I feel like I should save these, but why? If I needed to contact a lobbyist or the head of a special interest group, couldn't I just use the internet to find them? Yes, yes, I think I could. This sort of thinking out loud helps me to just throw things away already, damn it. 
• A birthday card from my legislator. I guffawed, loudly, whenever I looked at it, even though it isn't really all that funny:
 
i don't know why, but i crack up every time!

 

• A steno pad with training "notes;" i.e., doodles.
• A 5th grade social studies textbook given to our office. I read parts of it one day while passing time waiting for a committee meeting to end, and I loved it, so I kept it.
• A handful of weird personal effects, like floss, and a band-aid, and lip gloss, and whatnot.
• And a cartoon describing "How a Bill Becomes Law" that is the most accurate representation of the political process I've ever seen:

it's funny cuz it's true

Negative: I unpacked the box in a quarter of the time it took me to write about it.

Positive: I remembered that I don't have to participate in another conversation about politics until the 77th Session.

one very large blue tub of unknown contents

...

After a ten-month hiatus, tonight I stepped into the blue room and unpacked a box. This box:

superboobs shown here for scale

Since the label on the outside read "linen closet," I figured it was a safe bet that there would be towels and sheets and things inside:

I wasn't expecting stuffed animals or other boxes

After almost two years of this project, it's discouraging to find boxes inside of boxes, but I've learned to live with the discouragement. It's short work to throw all the linens into a laundry basket, put the stuffed animals into a box in the closet, and stack the boxes for another day.

Ten minutes it took to empty the tub, and ten minutes it took to obsess about sentimentality, and space, and purpose, and usefulness. Why hang on to Burt and Ernie? Couldn't I use the closet space for something more immediate? If I could learn to let things go, wouldn't I have a better shot at efficiency, creativity, productivity?

And I wonder why I avoid this room for months at a time.

post hoc ergo propter hoc

...

Like the Latin implies, just because a first thing happens and then a second thing happens doesn't mean the first thing caused the second thing. Still, I'm a relatively self-aware spazz/romantic/dreamer/doer-type, and I can recognize that record player+interesting boy+road trip+new band lineup might be the form that this every-so-often "hey, you like to make music, jackass" reminder is taking. And yes, I'm wondering how to convince the Parents and the Marrieds to let me cut a square out of the closets that connect the blue room to my room so I can make a window from a studio to a control room, but first I have to admit that I need to MOVE on getting non-music-making things out of the blue room before any fun can be had in here.

I think I need a storage unit.

But, since I don't have a truck or a steady paycheck (yet), in lieu of a storage unit, I'm just continuing to get rid of stuff, including the desk.

Anybody want a desk?

(Never mind. We put it in the garage to use for PA storage now that other band is practicing out there.)

Also, I am cheating at this blog a bunch. I started writing this post a month ago and never finished (today is actually November 10, 2010). I moved a bunch of things around in that month and I didn't take pictures. I opened a few boxes, looking for things, and didn't document what I found or how I felt. I have strayed so far from the original box-a-day plan that last year seems a lifetime ago.

Still, a thought recently came to me, and that is that I sometimes have to live with a thing to learn how to use it. I have known for a while that I am a kinesthetic learner, and the experience of this project has given me plenty of opportunity to feel out how I want to use this space. Now that I know that I want it to be a creative working space, I can much more easily move toward that (another lesson I am continually learning: set goals or you end up treading water).

And with my 18-month unemployment hopefully, finally, coming to a close, I am motivated by the deadlines imposed by going to a job every day. And by the fact that it's 58 degrees in this house, and moving boxes will keep me warm.
 

dormant

...
I am lost.

I read Penelope Trunk’s blog and she is lost, too. And when I read her blog in large quantities, my voice takes on qualities of her voice, and I should apologize for that: I’m sorry.

She is good at admitting when things aren’t working for her, or when she doesn’t know what she’s doing, or when she’s treading water, like I do with this blog. I don’t link to her as often as I read her, because this space is so tiny and personal and self-indulgent and silly, and her blog has thousands of readers and career advice and prurient sexual details, and mine has none of that.

But a thing we have in common is that we both know when we are lost.

How I know I am lost is because I am staring down a task list that looked interesting two weeks ago and now looks like pointless busywork. How I know I am floundering is because applications for Nevada State Legislature jobs are due tomorrow, and I am dragging ass to complete them. How I know I am unsure of my place in life is because I am driving back roads of my town in the middle of the night and sobbing and feeling sorry for myself.

I don’t know why, but being lost seems to be related to this: I finally unpacked my turntable. And all my records. And with it, I unpacked something dormant in my psyche that is not surviving the wake-up call very well.

I would have loved for this post to be about the Christmas-like fun that was unpacking and connecting the turntable, and then unpacking and connecting with many albums. I would love to tell you about all the laughing that erupted over the two or three days I indulged this project, and how I think that the person who finally pushed me to unpack these boxes may have saved my life (and how I will not defend that potential hyperbole, because I saw, for a moment, what a miserable bastard I have been for much longer than I thought I had been, and I am having panic attacks because I might not know how to be happy anymore, but at least I have an idea that there is maybe a person here who sort of understands what I mean when I say “I feel not-right today” and doesn’t judge me or yell at me to stop feeling wrong).

But instead, this post is about feeling lost, and not having a solution for that, and finding a place to feel safe, so what I will write, instead, is this: I missed my Orange Rhyming Dictionary and my If You’re Feeling Sinister and my Pixies 12” singles and Joy Division and Unwound and Pell Mell and Sleater-Kinney. And I don't feel lost when I am with them.

chickening out (one medium-sized blue tub of notebooks)

...
(Yes, I know that in my last post, I promised to unpack one bank box of political contents this time around, but I am postponing that post until my partner-in-politics completes a relevant and related video project. Please excuse the inconvenience? Whatever, you'll enjoy this post only slightly less for being off-topic...)

Today, I was planning to empty:

 one medium-sized blue tub of notebooks

In no particular order and without reading their contents, onto:

 one empty shelf

But look what I found that stopped such a simple plan from succeeding:

 box in a box!

That's just sneaky! Then I opened it:

whoa

Yup, that's a zip-top bag full of junior high school diary goodness, right on top. 

Damn it.

Underneath the diaries, I found one United Airlines Young Travelers Flight Kit (huh?) and a stack of essays, poems, and papers I'd written. Working chronologically backwards until I reached the bottom of the box and the late 80s, everything I read made me cringe, so I gave up, chickened out, hid the whole pile in the bank box labeled "sentimementalos," and called it a day.

Almost.

I had forgotten the part of my plan where I was going to move all the cds from the short shelves to that empty shelf, since the empty shelf is all stupid big and I don't have an immediate means of fixing it. So I did that, instead:

progress, salvaged

I even grouped them roughly alphabetically and labeled the stacks so I can find things easily. Now I can put the writings on the short shelves like I wanted to do. (But who has my copy of 24 Hour Revenge Therapy?)

This turn of events is for the best, because as I was checkers-ing stacks of cds, I remembered that one of the "two trunks of unknown contents" probably contains notebooks and journals as well, so today's box was going to be the first of a potentially multi-part adventure anyway.

part one

I'll get back to those cringe-worthy tales of teenage love lost some other day.

* * *

postscript

While I was working, I got it into my head to listen to The Twilight Project, a short-lived three-piece in which I played bass and sang and wrote songs for the first time, circa summer and fall 1999. Alec Harrington, who later went on to assume the identity of Dr. Go-Go, played guitar and sang and wrote the other half of the songs. John Butler, who played with Kung-Fu Sophie for a time, wailed on the fiddle and sang backups and generally provided unwavering optimism.

Either Alec or John sent the album files over, like, two years ago (the filedate suggests 9-24-08), and I never got around to listening to the album again. Until now.

Wow. You want to hear it? It's an almost painfully realistic snapshot of the sloppy shambling we perpetrated, and it takes me right back to 11 years ago. How much fun it was to make music with those guys! I can really hear the Grant Lee Buffalo influence in Alec's songwriting, the tentativeness of my first steps out into the spotlight post-Crushstory, and the joy of John's violinistic enthusiasm. For how much of a novice effort this was for we musicians, I can also hear real patience and passion in Vince's engineering and production, which is no surprise to me now.

I think it's funny that my songs are the songs with the extended jammy intros. A reaction to the tightly controlled three-minute powerpop tyranny I had just escaped, I suppose.

Anyway, leave me a note in the comments if you'd like to hear it.

 

the master list

...
While no one was looking (i.e., I didn't bother to take any pictures), I completed a mini-reorganization of the blue room, and also moved some furniture around. Nothing major, but in a project like this, periodically the project-doer has to make space for no other reason than making space can help a person figure out where s/he is within it.

(This is also true in an intellectual, emotional, and metaphysical sense: I have spent more time on the project lately because I'm not sure of my next life move.)

No specifics are necessary, and would be really really boring anyway, but the result is a clearer picture of what is finished and what needs doing.

So, what has yet to be unpacked and poked and prodded, now, would seem to be:

• One very large blue tub of unknown contents
  
• Five boxes (and an overflowing pile) of what we might loosely call "knick-knacks"
• Two trunks of unknown contents
• One medium-sized blue tub of notebooks
• One bank box labeled "sentimementalos"
• One bank box of political contents
• One very large purple tub of assumed-to-be-ex-boyfriend-related contents
• One small tub of jewelry
• Three cardboard containers of posters
• One bank box of photographs
• One bank box of flyers
• One small tub of instruction manuals
• One five-piece drum kit
• One small portable PA
• One small guitar practice amp
• One card table and accompanying folding chair 
• One stepladder
• One large stack of empty containers, tubs, and boxes
• And one closet

In the closet, we will find:

• A selection of instruments and musical equipment
• Several boxes labeled "kitchen"
• Two medium tubs of Christmas ornaments and other holiday decorations
• One medium tub of t-shirts that no longer fit but might someday be made into a punk rock quilt
• One medium tub of games and toys
• One small tub of camping gear 
• One sleeping bag
• Two lawn chairs
• One window fan
• One bed frame
• And between eight and ten boxes of books and toys from the collective childhoods of the Scaffidi children

Most of the boxes in the closet have already been assessed; for example, the ornaments and decorations belong in a closet. Same with the camping gear. All those instruments need a home. The sister and I recently discussed the need to revisit the Scaffidi childhood boxes, probably with the brother around, which is something we'll have to schedule. And I know I'm not going to unpack any more of those kitchen boxes in this house.

I could really use the space all those boxes are occupying.

There are also some things in other rooms that need to be integrated into the blue room:

• One Peavey 15" bass cabinet (unpowered)
• One busted SWR combo bass amp
• One medium cooler
• Three folding chairs

Some prioritizing is in order.

Looks to me like the key will be to continue delving into the items on what we're now going to call the master list (that first bulleted section above).

Which is really what I've been doing all along.

It helps to make lists, though, doesn't it?

In honor of this week's state primary, in the next post we'll investigate the contents of "One bank box of political contents."

For now, I'm just going to run around in circles in the big empty space in the middle of the blue room:

weeee!

 

Nicole's box (pretty much NSFW)

...
First, a little post-craft-series catch-up. The sister advised me to add my fabric-and-sewing things to her trunk of fabric-and-sewing things. When I asked her what to do about the too-big-to-be-a-scarf that I was crocheting for Eric Foreman in 2000-whatever, she said she could use the string if I didn't want it, so I turned:

this

into this

Not bad for a non-knitter, eh?

And then suddenly I got really excited to unpack the remaining boxes. What's in this one? Will this one have my long-lost art projects? How much ex-boyfriend stuff could possibly be in that purple trunk? And so on. I must've turned a corner when I finished the craft series.

So I started in on these:

photo albums and yearbooks

and turned:

this

into this

I was ready to keep going until I looked through the photos and saw how young and happy I was, at all the different points of my life so far. And then, a note dropped out of one of the albums.

I can assume, because it was folded tent-style, that I had made myself a little reminder to divvy up my paycheck in a particular way. That's my handwriting there on the first three lines. Someone thought perhaps the note was meant for him, though...

outside

inside

Oh, when I saw this the first time, I laughed and laughed, and when I saw it this time, I laughed until I cried.

And I thought there was no way I could possibly go on with this project now. I felt so much disappointment and sadness over all the things that might have been, and looking through those pictures at all the people I have loved and who have left (friends, boyfriends, people now deceased) and ... not to be maudlin here, but there are moments when it seems so much easier to stay home and just stop... trying... and this was one of them.

Fortunately, I wasn't stuck in the drowning place for long; the sister found a box of mine in the den. The contents happened to coincide with the albums I was thumbing through at that exact moment:

Nicole's box

Why do we call it Nicole's box? Well, here is a picture of her creating the things that lived inside:

circa 1999

Let's have a look at the contents today:

are those boobs?

is that a torso?

Oh right. This is a box of pornographic clay figures that Nicole made and that I have been carrying around with me for 10 years. Why? You know, because they're funny and I miss her.

in their original form

There's no great lesson here, no nugget of wisdom to buoy me along or make me feel the weight of loss any less. But you try to stay depressed while you're scraping your friend's clay genitals out of a tin your mother gave you.

I bet you couldn't do it without laughing either.

(p.s. Nicole, if this post is offensive to you now, let me know and I will take it down. You filthy pervert.)