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Risk Averse

2 Sep
Burning of the Witches Festival, Prague, 2007

Burning of the Witches Festival, Prague, 2007

About two weeks ago, I had dinner with a friend of mine who has a knack for popping in and out of my life. We fomented our friendship in Prague and for a while when I was new to New York, he was living in Brooklyn.

I admire him a lot. He can lean towards the hipster side of things, but he leads a life that I envy in a lot of ways. After college, he cultivated his bartending skills. He spends a couple of months in one place, living a meager existence while squirreling away as much money as possible, working at as many bars that will take him. Then he heads somewhere new to him with one tiny backpack and wanders wherever he wants to go, until he has barely enough money to fly him back to the states where he can crash on someone’s couch until he finds a bartending gig that will start the cycle over again.

During desperate times in my life, I’ve thought of his travels and adventures and thought that’s exactly what I should do. But for better or worse, I like my things. I like my life. I like the friendships that I’ve established and the career (however humble it may be) that I’ve built. So I stay. I settle for the vacations here and there and go about my daily routine.

Back to our dinner. We went to a Himalayan restaurant near my apartment, and we caught up. I heard about his upcoming travel plans which include train hopping and road tripping across the country and then booking a flight for Southeast Asia where he’ll ramble at will. I asked him for Central American travel advice. I want to go to Costa Rica, or Nicaragua, or Ecuador. Anywhere new! But I can’t find a travel companion, and I’m nervous about going alone.

“Well, that’s because you are risk averse,” he told me.
“RISK AVERSE!? That’s not true.”
“It’s absolutely true.”
“I took a boxing class today for the first time!”
“That’s spontaneous, not risky. You’re spontaneous and brave. But you are risk averse.”

I spent the rest of the night making him regret he ever said that. I somehow found a way to repeatedly circle the conversation back to “risk averse” and how I could not be risk averse, what are the steps I could take. He couldn’t give me a real answer on it and resorted to teasing me for trying to plan out how to be less “risk averse.” They Type A in me just can’t hide.

Risk averse. I have spent the last two weeks walking around thinking about that. It pops up in my head like a catchy pop song. I’ll be buying a salad for lunch and as I order, I think, “risk averse?!” Part of me wants to say I’m not. I’ve taken risks, tis true. Staying in New York after a devastating break-up. Risky. Battling evil cats at work. Risky. Drinking whiskey after beer. Risky.

But another part of me wants to be mature enough to take it as constructive criticism. I tried to think about how he must see my life and my choices. While I know he respects them, they could seem risk averse. Some of them are. I see the choices in my life that have been the easiest path or the path of least risk of pain. And while I don’t believe that I am one to be labeled as risk averse, I don’t think it’s a bad thing that he got that annoying phrase stuck in my head. My life could use a few more risks, a few more hasty decisions.

He left for Chicago yesterday morning. I have no idea when our paths will cross again. But when they do, I can’t wait to enumerate to him the ways in which my life in the interim has NOT been risk averse. Knowing me, I’ll probably have an outline.

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How to Use the Ladies Room

21 May
Blurry Bathroom Art

Blurry Bathroom Art

A bizarre epidemic has swept female restrooms, particularly in bars. I’ve been encountering it more and more the past couple of years, and it is on its way to becoming ubiquitous. It strikes women in their twenties, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that women in their thirties are doing it as well. It’s causing unsanitary conditions, and it needs to stop. I’m talking about women hovering when they pee.

Most of us were raised to sit on the toilet, but women, in scores, have decided to not do this in public, but instead to squat over the seat while they urinate. These misguided souls are so disgusted by public bathrooms that they imagine a toilet seat covered in disease-causing germs. This is simply not the case.

To clarify, I’m talking about the seat. The bowl, the flusher, the door handle, the floor. Yes, those areas are riddled with billions of bacteria, and I fear those areas of the bathroom myself. Yet, the seat really isn’t a problem. Our butts do sit on them. But not the germy part of our butts. When sitting on a toilet seat correctly, no genitals or anuses will touch the seat. If you find your nasty bits coming into contact with the seat, you are doing it wrong and should seek out someone you trust to talk to about your problem. If you do it right, only the skin of the thighs, and maybe a little bit of buttocks will come into contact with the seat, not much more skin contact that sitting on a public bench wearing short shorts.

When you hover, you are part of the problem, not the solution. In this hover/squat position, women tend to sprinkle the seat with their urine. Sometimes a gentle mist, sometimes more. I’ve had friends defend themselves to me saying that they wipe it down after they’re done. You are still wiping urine off of what would otherwise be a clean seat. Unless you’re wiping it down with Lysol wet naps, you are still leaving the toilet seat more germy that when you began.

The toilet is an engineering marvel, making all our lives easier. The beauty of it is that if you sit down, your vagina and anus are hovering in air, not touching or contaminating anything. Your urine falls perfectly into the bowl and is flushed away. If we all peed while sitting on the seat, no one would have to errantly sit on a damp seat in a darkened stall.

So by all means, be a germaphone who carries around hand sanitizer and uses paper towels to touch door handles. Indulge yourself. Just stop being a menace to society and sit down when you pee. Learn to pee like a lady.

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School Daze

5 Mar

HPIM3464 On Tuesday I went to a lecture at the ASPCA about Animal Cruelty laws and the veterinarian’s role in prosecution.

As I sat there watching the PowerPoint presentation, taking notes on my handouts on body conditioning score, and New York State laws, I felt at home. Not in that building, but in that role, as student.

I miss being in school. From kindergarten on, I loved school. I didn’t talk about it much, because it was not a popular opinion as a child, but I adored it. I got so excited when September came around. All the new notebooks and binders, the list of classes. I loved sitting at my desk and spreading out my things, getting ready to learn something new. College was the best, because it wasn’t formulaic teaching. I took classes in Architecture, Japanese History, Horror Literature, Advanced Spanish, Animal Behavior. I had enough credits to graduate early, and I went to my adviser and begged her to let me stay an extra semester. She told me I was insane, and I had to enter the real world.

The real world is rough. I’ve spent the last couple of years dreaming endlessly of returning to school. I just never could settle on what for. Technically, I am back in school with my veterinary technician program. I love it. I don’t meditate or work out, because to me, studying is my zen. I understand that you might be rereading that sentence in horror and confusion. I know I’m strange. But I feel such bliss when I turn off my phone, close my computer, and read through a text book, highlighting, taking notes. At the end of the hour I have allotted myself, I often crave more, but force myself to step away.

But these online courses aren’t enough for me. I want to walk through the regal and solemn halls of a university and sit once again in a classroom, becoming an expert in a million different fields. Is there a job where one can be an ever-learning student of life? I’m already a student at the University of Books, but I need MORE.

This is the year. I’m going to figure it out. Where I want to lend my talents to the world, what career can keep my thirsty mind studying and learning. I’m going to find it, apply to it, and in fall 2015 be back in a classroom where I belong.

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Start Your Engines…

25 Feb

RuPaul”s Drag Race Season 6 – Trailer from Eduardo Roza on Vimeo.

A couple of years ago, I was spending a lazy Friday night at my friend Brian’s apartment on the Upper West Side. We were drinking Gin and Tonics and catching up on “30 Rock” on Netflix. Once we were Liz Lemoned out, he suggested we watch old episodes of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

“It’s so campy and cheap and ridiculous, you’re going to love it!”

I was reluctant. I was skeptical. Brian is gay. I’m not. It wasn’t my culture, and drag queens had never interested me. Two episodes in, the show was growing on me. First, it’s hilarious. Queens insult (“read”) each other with quick-witted, smart one-liners. The competitions they were put in were over-the-top camp. Photo shoots in a wind tunnel that pulled their wigs off, getting thrown in a dunk tank. The tongue in cheek humor is unparalleled. The winner is whoever displays the most “cunning, uniqueness, nerve, and talent.” Think about that acronym.

So I became hooked. To this day, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is the only show that I look forward to, make sure to watch on a weekly basis. I’ve even gone to events in the city that feature some of the past and present queens. Over the years, I’ve begun to see the show as more than outrageous fashion and campy attitudes. Beneath all the glitter, the show has a distinct message about being yourself, and to me, it’s taught me a lot about being a woman.

Despite our equality strides, women are still not portrayed as powerful as often as they should be. When they are, it’s with a frumpy bitch overtone (see Hillary Clinton). Men dressing as women has traditionally been seen as humiliating, weak. What the drag queens do is elevate the ideals of womanhood. They are smart, creative, and tough. They are beautiful and commanding. The queens that win are the ones with the strongest personalities. Last year was Jinkx Monsoon with her vaudeville humor and flapper glamor. The year before that was Sharon Needles who has a gothic appearance and a penchant for using fake blood in her outfits. But these lady boys aren’t laughed at for dressing up as women, they are respected and admired.

We should all be that proud to be ourselves.

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Jealousy

10 Jan

Two types of veterinary technicians exist. There are the ones like me that enjoy the career as is, possibly want to do it their whole lives and bask in the freedom of much less responsibility. Then there are veterinary technicians who are earning an income and gaining experience on the road to becoming a veterinarian. I work with three of this second type of technician, and in this last week, two of them were accepted to Cornell University’s Vet School.

I SHOULD be happy for them. It’s an amazing accomplishment, and they are both hard-working and deserving girls. They’re going to make wonderful veterinarians one day, and I know that. But that wasn’t my internal reaction when I found out about their news. I was jealous, angry, spiteful. I found myself thinking that maybe they’d fail out of school eventually. And I felt disgust with myself soon after.

I carried around this ugly, jealous feeling for most of the day, ashamed of it, and trying to decide exactly what to do with it. I don’t even like to think that I’m capable of those thoughts.

I decided two things. One, I will be happy for them. I will find a way. I will smile and ask all about it and support them until I make myself believe it. Not sure if it is possible to kill those jealousy feelings in there, but succumbing to that kind of resentment is the first step on the road to bitterness. Two, I have to focus those feelings on myself and change them into something else.

I don’t want to be a veterinarian. I know that. I’ve thought long and hard about it, and the medical/science field is not for me. My creative spirit pulls me elsewhere. But the jealousy comes from their accomplishment. Those two lovely ladies worked hard, for years, and will have to work hard for years to come. And while I don’t want to follow the path they’re on, I have dreams and aspirations that require hard work, perhaps years of it, perhaps a lifetime of it. The last week I have brainstormed a good New Year’s Resolution for this brave and glorious year ahead. I tend to pick many specific commitments, but this year I have decided to pick one that is vague and noncommital.

Work Harder.

If I want things to happen for me. If I want those big accomplishments, I need to make some changes. When I think of the hours spent playing Candy Crush or the hours watching the same youtube videos over and over again or the dozens of times a day when I refresh my news feed on Facebook, such a waste of time! This isn’t to say that there won’t be any of that. I love relaxing and unwinding. There just needs to be less of it. I need to work harder, and I need to start now.

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On Listening to Advice

5 Nov

I have a younger co-worker who got into an argument with one of the veterinarians. She is 23 and engaged to her boyfriend of two years. The veterinarian had lectured her about getting married too young, how it’s a huge mistake, and she will end up divorced one day. Needless to say, this was not his place to tell her that.

I was infuriated and stewed over the situation for a while. It didn’t take me long to remember when I met her over a year ago when her and boyfriend had just moved to the city. At the time, I thought she was making a huge mistake. I was sure that her boyfriend was going to smash her heart, and this city would eat that little Arizona girl alive. I thought that if I could have prevented her from moving to New York, I would have.

And I would have been wrong.

The thing about advice is that there are few things in life that are universal for everyone. When I moved to New York for a boyfriend, I barely survived. In retrospect, moving here with him was not the wisest decision nor was it the right one for me. But that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong one for someone else.

I survived a dark couple of years in my life, and I spent most of that time desperate for a way out, a simple solution to fix my problem. I read endless amounts of inspirational blogs/books/magazines. Every time I met someone who seemed to have their life together, I would mull over in my brain what was their secret, how did they have it together. I ended up learning a lot of things that did help me, and a lot of things that didn’t. I’m still embarrassed that I used to attach my photo to my resume, simply because a girl I worked with as a barista got a job that way. How weird.

The main thing I learned is that while people tend to give you advice from the bottom of their heart, what worked in their situation won’t always work in yours. Everyone who gives advice is pulling it from what worked for them. That doctor who warned my co-worker against getting married too young has been through three divorces. So, yeah, I bet he thinks getting married young is a huge mistake. On the other hand, my grandparents weren’t much older than my co-worker when they got married, and they were very much in love for over 50 years of marriage. All of my friends who swear by online dating honestly have a blast skimming through profiles and meeting up with new people every week. It only convinced me that I was going to die alone.

Advice is great. People giving advice is even greater. It means they give a shit and want you to learn from their experiences. And maybe what they tell you will make all the difference. But we still have to carve it all out for ourselves at the end of the day.

Some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten has been the simplest.

Work Hard. Be Honest. Smile and Laugh as much as possible.

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Hiking in the Catskills

10 Oct

2013-10-06 11.46.57 Life in the city has been stressful. So to get away for awhile, my boyfriend and I planned a weekend in the Catskills. We got a room at a Bed and Breakfast in a no stoplight town called Fleishmann. We wanted to enjoy some quiet, some fresh air, take in a bit of hiking.

We almost didn’t survive.

We asked our innkeeper Ben for some advice on different trails. He pointed out his favorite one called “Giant Ledge.” Ben described it as an “aggressive” 4-5 mile hike which I found intimidating, but I ended up deciding I could take the challenge. The next morning, around 10:30, we bought water, chips, Ring pops, and Reese’s Pieces at the corner store and headed to the summit.

The weather wasn’t ideal. Crisp fall air in the 60’s with some sprinkling rain. Describing the hike as aggressive was the perfect adjective. There were some steep sections of the trail with high rocks to climb on. I’m not in shape and found myself out of breath for most of the hike. After an hour or so, we reached what looked like a Giant Ledge. The trail was self-explanatory with blue markers scattered on the trees and no other signage. So we only assumed it was the lookout point we had been promised. Because of the poor conditions, the view was underwhelming and bizarre. It was an abyss.

"View" from Giant Ledge.

“View” from Giant Ledge.

We spent some time resting, eating our snacks, and throwing Reese’s Pieces into the mist. We had no concept of how high we were. The light rain was making us chilly, so we wanted to keep going and get back to our inn to shower and rest.

We continued on the path which after a brief decline, became sharply steep with huge rocks to climb over. My legs were shaking with each climb. We assumed that the trail was taking us to a smoother descent than the rocky climb we had just done.

We seemed to reach another summit, but we were both so tired, cold, and wet that we opted to not stare into the mist but keep going. Finally the trail started to descend. It was steep and the trail seemed less defined. We walked through brush that scraped our legs as we tried to not step in mud or slip on the leaves. The path became so misty that it was difficult to see where the next blue marker was. After about an hour of descent, without seeing any other people, and not being able to see up or down the mountain, worry set in.

We began the hike just before 11, and it was well after 3. The trail was only supposed to be 4-5 miles, at that point we should have been done, we shouldn’t still be walking. We didn’t know what else to do but to keep following the blue marked trail. If we had turned around, we were worried that we wouldn’t make it back before dark. As long as we stuck to the trail, we weren’t too lost in the mountains. It was frustrating and a bit unnerving, but our only option was to keep moving forward.

At one point, I slipped on leaves and fell smack on my butt. I sat in the rain and the mud and began to cry. My boyfriend knelt down to comfort me.

“We’re going to die up here,” I told him through my tears.
“Do you want to rest a while?” he asked.
I thought about it and shook my head “no.” He helped me up, I wiped my tears, and just put one foot in front of the other.

A little while later, I heard an ESPN alert go off on my phone.

“The Seahawks must have scored,” my boyfriend said.
“Since I have service, maybe I should look up the trail.”

I googled the trail name and found a site that said in all caps, “WHEN YOU REACH GIANT LEDGE, TURN BACK. DO NOT GO STRAIGHT.”

Shit.

We called innkeeper Ben and told him our predicament. My phone was almost out of battery and the call kept cutting in and out. He said he thought he knew where we were, but that we should keep walking, and he would come meet us. We had continued on to a 15-mile trail.

We had no idea how far into this trail we were, but we had been descending for a while and decided to continue on. After about 90 minutes more, we see Ben on the trail ahead of us. A light at the end of the tunnel. He breathed a sigh of relief as well as he had been hiking for 45 minutes to find us. My legs have never felt more strained. I took to counting to keep them moving forward. As soon as I saw the road, I wanted to throw myself upon it and sleep for days. It was past 6pm.

Back at the inn, a hot shower has never felt quite that amazing. We threw out our muddy, soaked socks and headed to a fancy restaurant up the road. We feasted. Beer, onion rings, steak, fish, apple cake. As hyperbole as it may be, I was happy to be alive. I was happy to not be lost in the woods, to be a news story of hikers gone missing. I’m not going on another hike for a long time.

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Urgent Care

7 Sep

When this situation happened to me a couple of days ago, I was mildly annoyed and uncomfortable, but the more I think about it, the more upset I become.  And when I’ve told co-workers and friends the story, the look of horror on their face has made me realize how much worse the situation was than I realized.

I’ve been sick. A week or so ago, my left submandibular lymph gland became swollen. Last weekend my ear started hurting…a lot. By Wednesday this week, I was sent home from work for “looking like death” and feeling dizzy and nauseous. By Thursday I decided it was time to see a doctor. I walked to an Urgent Care near my boyfriend’s apartment where I had been staying the night before. I was taken into a children’s exam room, walls covered with Toy Story stickers and sneaker scuff marks on the walls. A nurse look my vitals and asked me some questions about my ear pain.

About five minutes later, a doctor walks in. He doesn’t introduce himself. He doesn’t even say hello. He walks up to me, stands about a foot from my face.

“Your eyes are puffy,” he says to me.
“Oh, that’s not why I’m here. My ear hurts.”
“You have dark circles under your eyes.”
“I know. I’ve had them since childhood. That’s not why I’m here.” He lifts his hand to my face and runs his fingers along the skin under my eyes.
“We are in the same boat, you know. I have rings under my eyes too. I know what it’s like.”
I sit there silently, confused as to why he’s talking about this. He goes on for the next 5-10 minutes telling me about different products from Clinique that he has used and that I should use. All I can think about is how much pain I’m in and how all I want is a prescription to fix it, some advice on what I can do to make it better.

Once he finishes my makeup lecture, he finally looks at the notes the nurse took and grabs an otoscope. Not to look in my ear mind you. He comes over and asks to look at my throat. I open up and say, “Ah.”

“So do you use cucumber or ice packs or anything?”
“On my ear? No. I’ve put a warm towel…”
“No, your eyes!” he interrupts me.
“Oh, no. I don’t. I put makeup on sometimes.”
“Do you…not care?”
“No, no I don’t.”
He sighs and turns away from me, “It’s just that most women CARE about their appearance.”
I sit there feeling awkward, reminding myself in my head that at least my boyfriend thinks I’m pretty. It can’t be all that bad.

He comes back over and uses his stethoscope to listen to me breath.
“Well I think you have a throat infection. I’m going to give you an antibiotic, take some advil, and you’ll need more vitamin C this winter. Oh, and get plenty of sleep. I’m not going to see you in the club at 4am tonight, am I?” He turns to me and smiles.
“I don’t go to clubs.” I mentally decide I hate this man.
“Okay, come with me, and we’ll get you some prescriptions.”

I follow him to his office where he writes up the prescription. THEN, he goes on the Clinique website and starts showing me the products he thinks I should use. I’m not paying attention. All I want is my prescription so I can start taking care of the ear that is throbbing with pain.
“You know, these products would only cost you about 60 bucks and they’ll last you like five months. It’s an investment you really should make.”
“Can I just have my prescriptions?” I say coldly.

Three days later. I don’t feel better. My ear is throbbing. I get out of the subway after work to go to a different urgent care. I walk by this one and see him standing outside. I’m so furious. I’m also incredulous at how unprofessional the whole experience was. How dare he critique my appearance? I rolled out of bed and went to a doctor’s office in pain, not to have my makeup criticized. I wish I’d said something.

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You Could Try

23 May

I knew May was going to be difficult. I signed up to cover extra shifts at work, agreed to attend a vet tech seminar, made cat sitting arrangements, scheduled my first semester final exam for the first week of June, booked a 24-hour jaunt to Boston to visit my Mom and sister. But this is something I tend to do, overbook myself.

I hate that writing falls by the wayside. It’s always on my mind. I’ve written dozens of posts in my head, come home and fallen asleep doing the New York Times crossword instead. I’ve also plotted new careers as a journalist, a travel writer, a hippy poet. But instead of working toward these things, I’ve fallen prey to some bad habits. I waste a lot of time playing games on my phone, making myself feel jealous and upset by refreshing the facebook window too often and watching youtube videos instead of setting aside distractions and getting to the business of writing.

So at the moment, this is what I have to offer, this youtube video of an adorable pug. I’ve watched it endlessly and shown it to a bunch of friends who don’t seem to get as much joy out of it as me. But the thing about it that gets me is the shift in the dog’s expression when his owner suggests that he could try. Sure, he licks everything and chases the big kitty, but he could TRY to be a better dog.

I guess watching enough silly animal videos online can somehow become an existential experience. Because I have bad habits, I’m not completely where I want to be. But each new day is an opportunity to face those things down and try to be better.

I’m ready to try and be better. And that’s all I can do.

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In Print

7 May

I have waited for this day for as long as I can remember. Seeing my name in a national magazine, in a full-length article. When the June issue of Cosmopolitan came out, I ran out on my lunch break to the drug store to buy the magazine. There it was, on page 197, Chrissy Wilson. Only, I didn’t write the article.

cosmo

I was recently messaged on Facebook by a friend of mine who is a freelance journalist. She told me she was writing an article about 20-somethings pushing off having kids until their 30s. She wanted my opinion on the subject. I sent her back a quick message about how I feel about it, my experience. I thought that would be it. What ensued was a month of facebook exchanges, email exchanges, fact checking with Cosmo editors. It was a lot of work…for me.

It’s fun to see my name and my quotes in a magazine article, but also a little disappointing. After all those messages and interviews, my piece came down to two paragraphs. I wasn’t surprised, though. The writer was trying to push me in a certain direction, and I could tell I wasn’t giving her the quotes she wanted. The questions leaned toward a desperation at having children, starting a family quickly which is completely the opposite of how I feel. Reading the article, the other 20-something she interviewed served up baby-making anxiety much more than myself, saying how she only goes to bars where she can meet potential husbands/fathers. I had no idea people my age even felt that way.

Either way it was a fun experience, and the June issue is on the stands for anybody who’s interested. One day I’ll be the byline. One day!

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