this failure was good for me

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Remember, a month ago, when I said I was going out of town for a few days, and then I'd be back? Well, it didn't quit work out like that.

First, I did go out of town:

photo by Michael Zelner / more at www.blunderbusst.com

Then I got sick.

Then I went out of town again.

Then I got sick again.

Then Kettle Season started.

Then I helped launch a webcast event.

Then I got sick again (maybe I have blood sugar/pressure issues).

Then it was Thanksgiving, and then my half-dog got nearly-fatally ill (for the second time this year).

So I decided to take a break from the box blog project until after the holidays, if that's ok with you guys.

This is good, and I think re-starting the project in January, when resolutions usually go unresolved, will add some extra heft and motivation.

And maybe I'll get more shelves for Christmas.

Happy Holidays, all!
 

the first checkpoint

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I walked in and out of the blue room many times today. If I had to guess, I would say I went in there with the intention of box-blogging at least 15 times, which doesn't count the number of times I went in there for other, non-box reasons. I was having trouble motivating myself to launch into something and I thought today might be another "hey, guys, I failed" kind of day. But after standing and staring and removing some garbage and consolidating a few still-homeless piles, I realized: I haven't been slacking off at all.

So much is done. So many things have been discarded or given away, organized and shelved. The difficulty proceeding is due to having run out of places to put things. I need another bookshelf for these boxes of photo albums, and a trunk for these piles of notebooks. Some of these display curios could be displayed on shelves if I had more shelves, and that would help me decide which to keep, which to store, and which to toss. All of those items must be dealt with before exploring the bigger boxes underneath, and it's time to tackle the childhood toys on the right side of the closet, too. Before that happens, though, I need some sturdier storage to contain our heirloom Fisher-Price baubles. A few things in the blue room closet could maybe move into my bedroom closet if I moved some things around in there. But I've come so far since I started this project that shuffling things from place to place just to halfway explore things that have no "away" place seems like the wrong direction and I don't wanna.

Such a relief! And a renewed sense of purpose and direction. Even if the going must slow while hunting for shelves, containers, or time to organize a bedroom closet, more boxes will be unpacked, and more of their contents will be organized, discarded, repurposed, or set aflame.

But not this weekend.

I'll be away from the internet for a few days; the BUSST is playing the 8th Annual Murder Ballads Bash in Berkeley, CA on Saturday and there is much to do to prepare, experience, and decompress before, during, and after.

When I return, I will have a clearer idea of what to do here and in what order to do it. While I'm gone, feel free to leave any unused bookshelves in my driveway (but don't try to steal my toaster - other people who live here will still be around and so will their attack chihuahua). Enjoy the time off, and Happy Nevada Day!
 

links are easier than scans, ok?

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Tonight I delivered all the things I've found (so far) belonging to Mr. Eric Foreman and all the things I've thus promised to Miss Jess. I was going to write about unpacking the microscope box, but mostly it involved Jess getting excited and me going "ew. guinea pig blood. ew." We should've taken pictures anyway. (Hey Jess, how about some snaps in the comments when you refurbish the thing?)

It feels good to have followed through on some next steps of The Project. Plus, Eric was confused ("um, this isn't my copy of The Tommyknockers.") and Jess was so happy (reading the note dated 6-6-07 sealed inside the envelop, "this took longer to mail than I expected."). Even better, though, is that I made it back to Carson City in time to unpack an actual box of my own before midnight. I am awesome (and Jess says my awesomeness is not a fluke).

So let's get to it, shall we? It's cold in here and I'm sleepy from tea partying with the parents this morning.

Tonight, I'm approaching the zine box from last week. Facing real, breathing, funny, handsome history tonight, plus chatting with old friends and girl-talking with even older friends has given me the fortitude to complete this potentially sentimentally ruinous task. I hope.

Ok, I'm not even into the box itself, just the top layer, and I've found something written by Katherine Strickland (girl hero extraordinaire, with extra handwriting radicalness), two color-cover, offset press-printed issues of The Match, and the very first zine anyone ever handed me not written by a friend (something titled the rain that fell last night made me fall in love with you). I'm not going to make it.

I am going to end up keeping most of these.

Especially these:

• The last issue of Second Guess.
• All three The Fox and the Hound comic books (nowhere near mint).
  
• The first 10 issues of Punk Planet.
• Several issues of the BG Biweekly, including the issue featuring Narcissistic Freds and a picture of our pre-punk, high-school, not-cool selves. Not. Good.
  
• Charlie Maffitt's Brainchild, issue number one. The zine that started a friendship that would span decades and continents (and long gaps of silence).
  
• The Posters and Art of Frank Kozik (his official website is down, but you'd know his work if you saw it).
• ET and Return of the Jedi storybooks.
• That book Jonathan lent me (The Shock of the New: The Hundred-Year History of Modern Art...)
  
• Issues of Profane Existence, Styzine, Thorozine, Greedy Bastard, Beans and Rice, Lookout!, 10 Things, and dozens of other mid- to late-90s zines. No Cometbus or Dishwasher though? Weird.
• And a big stack of Maximum Rock 'n' Roll.
  

And on the questionable pile:

• Many issues of Sassy magazine. I'm keeping the one on loan from the Alpine Library (due 9-18-90). Johnny Depp is on the cover. Screw it.
• (I'm also keeping the one with happy Kurt and pre-surgery Courtney on the cover.)
• (Shut up.)

Ok, so, I  kind of failed. Or maybe not. Maybe these readables from times past are worth keeping. If I can squeeze them onto the bookshelf, then I think I'm allowed to keep them. At least until it's time to pack up the books again.

Right?

And whatever happened to zines? Have we replaced them entirely with blogs? Did we lose interest in zines, or are they solely the domain of teenagers and punk rockers? Looking at these relics, I miss the days when getting the mail could be the most exciting part of my day. I miss reading a stranger's thoughts, written in his or her own handwriting, about music, politics, and crushes.

Rekindle the old flame. Send me some mail:
Jen Scaffidi / PO BOX 4364 / Carson City NV 89702.
 

tedium

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Today, I did not accomplish much in the way of super-exciting-box-related-stuff-that's-also-fun-to-write-and-read-about. Mostly, I played that checkers-esque game of moving boxes around, over, under, and on top of each other, and exchanged some boxes in the blue room for some others in the bedroom. I wanted to make space, and to survey the surroundings for a clue to the elusive next step.

Only I am to blame for the lack of focus exhibited here recently, and I'm blurring the rituals and schedules of many other aspects of my life as well. I'm not sure if it's due to a list full of fun and exciting things that need crossing off, or the normal routines of everyday life, or the big question marks hovering over the big decisions facing me in the weeks and months ahead, or my general laziness and love of blowing things off.

I suppose it might also be due to not allowing myself enough "fun time." When I'm unemployed, it's so easy to slip into an unexamined useless laze-about life of leisure that I may push myself to fill all of my days with meaning and accomplishment which, as we know, leads a person to feel burned out and unfocused.

As some areas go blurry, though, other areas sharpen into my consciousness, and I am drawn to pursue them even as I let other, beloved, pursuits slide. I have never been good at limiting my commitments, and I have often longed for more hours in a day or more days in a week, that I might be able to master all of my loves and still leave myself time to do absolutely nothing productive.

Or maybe I'm just making excuses for the fact that I got distracted tonight by something (of which I'm still unsure) and then forgot to return to the blue room and apply myself to the task I had scheduled for today's Project entry.

Which now, it seems, will have to wait until tomorrow.

And so it is.
 

the secret lives of purses

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I looked around the blue room today and I said to myself, "what pile can I tackle that will yield the largest result with the least effort?" Not that I am feeling lazy - far from it in fact - but so many piles in The Project now require shelving or storage solutions and I, being unemployed, am out of the dollars needed to acquire such things.

But this pile here, this one comes with its own storage solution(s)!

ladies and gentlemen: luggage and purses

Of course, once I've sorted these and whittled the collection down to things that fit in the blue bin plus a suitcase or two, where am I going to put the bin and the suitcase or two?

I'm starting to suspect that I need to get even more serious about getting rid of things. And I'm going to start by returning this suitcase to Mr. Eric Foreman, or at least offering it back to him. I spilled NyQuil all over the inside flap while I was on tour in 2005, but it's still usable if you put a hand towel between the lid and the flap.

hey, eric: you want this back?

Truly amazing fact: inside this suitcase is a towel actually belonging to Eric himself, plus my travel neck pillow that I can NEVER find when I want it.

While I am going through this pile, I am thinking about the sentimentality of purses. Maybe this is weird and I am unique, but people aren't as special as we often think we are, so I bet other girls have encountered this phenomenon.

On average, I use a purse for about six months before I replace it. Sometimes the replacement is passive, like someone gives me a bacon-themed tin lunchbox for Christmas, and other times it's active, like my bookbag is full of cat pee and I must buy myself a new one. These purses come to represent chunks of history; they carry memory along with the lip glosses and cell phones.

Take this purse for example:

winter 2006 - 2007

I remember that this purse was large enough to carry a book and a clean shirt in addition to the normal purse contents. I remember this because when I look at it, I immediately recall the memory of setting it down on PKD's couch when we very first started spending time alone together. I remember that the red stripes matched my red hair. I remember that it always smelled like smoke and PKD's cologne when I got to work the next day. And I remember that one day at Maytan, Drumist startled me and I dumped an entire mug of coffee into it. Which is probably when I stopped using it: I washed it, hung it on the line to dry, and then got a new purse while this one joined the others in obsolescence.

Then there's this gem:

hello, kitty

I carried this Hello Kitty ™ shoulder bag (with matching change purse!) all over clubs and bars in the wake of my dad's heart attack in 2004. I could see my cell phone through the translucent vinyl, back when text messages were replacing calls as my preferred method of contact. I carried it while dancing to the Sounds and "Train in Vain," which Mat would always play when I showed up, every night I tried to dance and drink away the fear of mortality and loss that comes after the crisis goes.

Or this Air Force-issue duffel bag:

basic training teaches you how to fold it like this, I think

Jim sent it to me right before I moved to Texas. I packed everything I owned into this and one other bag, and lugged them from bus to train to train to bus, from Davis to San Antonio, over two-and-a-half days, to start my new life. I stood there, backpack over my shoulder, duffel at my feet, on the steps outside the visitor's center at Kelly AFB, wearing a Zoinks! t-shirt and greasy hair, and watched my new weird future walk toward me.

So what is one to do with all this useless history? Well, I have been meaning to try out one of Ramit Sethi's tips from his 30 Day Challenge to Save $1,000. Tip three is "Sell something on eBay today," which is more about teaching yourself about sacrificing to meet goals than it is about making money. So I think I will auction off these purses as a way to do that. I will.

librarian-like determination?

And finally, I just want to share with you this pile of things I pulled out of all the purses and luggage in this pile, including the world's largest maxi pad, and a five-year-old pack of gum:

the secret lives of purses

 

utilitariantholapology

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Today's box might be the box equivalent of what Rory refers to as "throat clearing." In writing, I believe, this refers to a weak opening thought, one that doesn't make the point or grab the reader the way a better, more thoughtfully crafted opening might. Box-wise, this box isn't valuable or important or attention-grabbing. But I need things, and I think these things are in this box, so this is what I'm doing today.

This box, as you might deduce, is one of several that I have employed during this project. These boxes, these halfway houses of cardboard, these way stations of storage, these cartons of crap, they contain things I have uncovered but which do not yet have a home. Things like batteries and tape measures, which I really need immediately, to power my overdrive pedal and measure some shelves, respectively.

This need provides me an excellent opportunity to begin assembling my utility drawer, which I will not picture here because I'm certain you're tired of seeing photos of my plastic drawer units.

This need also means that many things taken out of this box may have to go back into this box until such time as I find a home for them. But instead of despairing over rework (which I hate), we will rejoice in the small progress we are making, and in the rediscovery of the label-maker, again.

And in the opportunity to organize the leftover contents into other temporary box-piles, like sentimementalos, craft stuff, manuals, and stuffed animals.

While we're on the subject, what is the rule about adults and stuffed animals? Some things we just have to keep, right? Like childhood relics, thoughtful gifts, or the weird things that Jewbles, the Savant of Crane Machinery, rescues from the claw machines? This is one of those times I need advice and anecdotes. Tell me about your adult stuffed animal rules, please.

While you do that, I will assign additional subdivisions of organization to include jewelery, bathroom items (mostly of the lip balm variety), guitar picks, BBs (not that I have an operational BB gun, of course), and "things for display."

I can not, however, bring myself to sort through the bag of loot from last year's Scheels VIP event, so I will put it back in this box of "um, huh?" and then put all the utility items away and go to bed.
 

mystery video camera

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Ok, I can see how you might think today's box is a cop-out. I mean, "vid cam" is written pretty clearly on the outside. But let me assure you, I've carted this taped-up video camera to at least four homes. I've had it so long that I don't even know if it runs tape or digital media.

what kind of video camera?

In keeping with the mission statement, I'm handing it over to PKD, as soon as he shows up to get me, so he can organize, discard, repurpose, or set aflame its contents.

Maybe he'll choose "set aflame?"

* * *

Update:

PKD said it runs, shockingly, Hi8 video tape. Ha! I seem to remember, now, that maybe it is broken. Like it eats tapes. Like I think I got it from The Parents after they deemed it worthless. PKD said, "I wonder what kind of magic I can create with this?" and then tossed it in the backseat.

I hope that's not where he plans to test it out... or set it on fire.