June 21st, 2025

I like jobs that you don’t have to think about what you’re doing. 

Jobs that you just do and your brain can do something else. Whatever it wants. 
In school, my brain did whatever it wanted to too much. The teachers commented on it at the parent teacher conferences. I was a day dreamer. 
School is not also automatic. You have to think about what you’re doing most of the time unless you’re smart. I’m not smart. It’s one of the things I’m most mad about not being.
I don’t mind if my hands are occupied. When I’m working my hands are usually filled. Sometimes for my job now I have to take calls on the radio. It requires me to put things down, take out the radio, and push a little button, and affirm I’m listening. 
I’ve made everyone since becoming middle management just say who they are and what they’ve done and promised beforehand I heard them and thank you. 
I don’t want to put the things down. 
I also don’t want to stop thinking whatever it was that I was thinking. 
I hate being interrupted in a daydream. It’s why being alone is important. I get into it deep. When another person’s around I can’t go that deep. 
The other day there was a moonrise that was supposed to be extra epic. I invited a guy I was talking to on hinge to drive to Redmond and see it at my sky gazing spot.
He said “sure, sounds good. I’m a little nervous but sounds good,” which was sweet to say. Showing vulnerability like that is cool these days. But then I realized I didn’t want to lift out of the thought patterns I was having all day to be around new energy. And I realized to see a moonrise by own self gives god a good opportunity to talk to you and I didn’t want to miss that.
I guess being alone means god gets to talk to you. And I always kinda want to be ready for that. And it gets in the way of things, like new energy. Maybe that’s a cop out.
I hated teaching. Teaching was the ultimate job where you have to be physically and intellectually present at the same time. I always hoped an autopilot mode might sneak in but it didn’t. I was always present. Making eye contact. If anything, I wanted students to feel seen. In my regular job I try not to make eye contact with anyone unless I know them. And even then. I’ve developed a great sense of NPC disassociation. A real uncanny valley softness in the eyes. But with students I tried to make meaningful warm eye contact so they felt ok to do art and make mistakes or whatever they needed to do in the space I cultivated for them. It was so exhausting because they were so unhappy. Being a kid is the worst. I was a kid once and it was so horrible. A kid in school anyway. I don’t know what it is to be a wild kid. To be a kid in school is lousy. School takes away from what could be a good fun time of one’s life. I can’t even imagine. 
I like knowing how to read though. 
I remember learning to read and write was so hard. I’m grateful for that. Before I could write I wanted to write so I drew letter like symbols on a paper hoping to infuse them with meaning. Learning read and write wasn’t easy, despite wanting it so bad. When “writing” I don’t remember if I had a good story to put down, it was just the act in and of itself, alchemy and transformation of the inside to the outside. 
To share. 

But before we go too far I need to ground this story in some place or moment. We can’t just be in my head. Or if we are, we have to make a room out of it. Let’s make the room the one I’m in right now. A hotel room. A Wesley snipes movie Passenger 57 is on representing all the horniness of the 90s. From the perspective of time all the plot points have been laid for the story to knock them out one-by-one. All predictable. The love-interest. The baddies. 

A man walks by the window screaming profanities holding a thick book with lots of pieces of paper poking out, reference tabs. He seems to be in a state of crisis, psychosis. Anthony walks behind him a little bit later. 

In the hallways I move like a scared animal, not wanting to seem approachable. A older white man in the hallway has been locked out of room 9 and asks to be let in but I tell him “sorry I can’t help you,” even though I can. It’s policy, but I’ve been unhelpful to everyone lately. 
I think about checking in with Anthony later about the guy. 
Anthony and I give each other a hard time and he’s not sincere often but I am. And trailing someone who is going through psychosis with the intention of buffering anyone from potential harm would be stressful for me. 

My foot hurts. I think it might be the man from room 9 cursing me. He watches me dart from room to room fully aware I could help him. All I need in this last room is an ice bag which my brain calls a sandwich bag. My brain gives names to things and oftentimes they become the real name everyone on the team uses. It’s hard for us to have labels and speak about things which have no name. It’s hard for us to pull out of the deep-think we cultivate while cleaning rooms. 
Cleaning rooms is hypnotic. 
If you’re doing it right you enter a trance state. 

In a new room someone has left $5. Noël calls me to the front desk to give me $40 from another room. It’s not the money I’m after, it’s the trance state. The no-think zone that was pulled away from me when she called me to the front-desk. 
I’m working with Haley today, who understands this deep state thinking. Sometimes someone will ask “how are your rooms?” And I will have to surface a bit to answer, “good,” even though I know i should try and remember if there was anything interesting in the trash. A clue. Treasure. A cool shaped box. 
I’m thinking of that NYtimes review of that autofic. 
"Writers of autofiction have been accused of trying to preempt criticism by couching their work in self-awareness. That's not the play here. What preempts criticism of 'Next to Heaven' is simply how bad the book is."

I’m thinking of that text from my sister this morning:
“I wake up to go to the toilet and I always see left over poop Particles from bobs morning poops. I need him to do a second flush lol”

And my response:
“I clean my toilet almost every morning with toilet cleaner and a brush. That stuff is waxy and won’t often come off with two flushes. Nor will a flush to get flecks in other places.
Which is to say, not because I’m a clean freak, but my poops are gross af and I’m afraid I’ll die at some point during the day and someone will have to see it.”

Emma says she can’t think for the whole department. When Emma is here I don’t have to think. But I try not to make her think for me. Yesterday she did some thinking over a toilet with me that had a broken flush mechanism. 

There were so many previously unknown words to have to make up or discover and wield to try and talk about it with maintenance. There’s a part of me that loves learning these words and having this world of connection and accessibility open up. A lot of the time my brain can’t or won’t access words. Names. We make a lot up. 

Here’s the part where I look in the mirror and describe myself to you. Here’s the part where I snake the drain and the smell of brimstone makes me swallow hard. The sight of hair mixed with black chunks. Why does our brain feel like these things are in our mouths? My sister has a fear of clusters because her body is afraid of infections. She almost failed chemistry in college because she couldn’t look at the textbooks without feeling dizzy. Without her heart racing. Because of all the microscopic slide images of cells clustering. 

Trying something new and being bad at it is so embarrassing. We’re trying to reset that narrative but it’s just a fact. When I was teaching, making eye contact with everyone, I saw it all the time. It’s horrifying. I’d come in and show an example, an example I hate that I created that the kids think is quality, and they try to reproduce it and they hate it and themselves. And I tell them I hate myself to and everything I create and it’s part of the process. I tell them there’s almost no joy in art and that I’m sorry we have to do this. The best part was in the beginning, when we believed we could. Before trying. If we could just stay there forever I would. 
Sometimes the teachers would come around and also tell the students their art sucked. In the program I worked for it was supposed to be my job to teach the teachers on how to execute an arts curriculum in public schools.
This involved encouraging teachers to ask leading questions about choices rather than critiques/praise. I could never get around to doing this because they often let me know I sucked. And I wasn’t helping. I was making messes that they would have to clean up. Or tell a custodian to, who would vacuum while I was trying to talk. 

A man asks where the bathroom is. 
I let him talk to the side of my face without turning. I tell him it’s up the stairs and past the front-desk. I point. I demonstrate that I have no social skills. This used to be a trick, because I had social skills. But now the antisocial persona is taking over and when I need to be social I’m weird and quiet. 
It’s hard to think of a relevant story to add to a conversation. 
It’s hard to tell the story and know if it’s any good. I have friends who listen and don’t interrupt. 
One of the things I’ve lost the ability do is listen to myself while telling the story. I gotten accustomed to staying in my body, and when I tell the story that’s all that can happen. I used to be able to scan myself and those listening to know when it’s important to tell a little lie, or exaggerate something. Or find a way to remember something about the listener to tell in a way that it will appeal to them more. I just tell the story and am done.
In this way I’ve deepened my authenticity. This was the goal. There’s this person who talks for me and tells discreet lies and I hated it so I’ve been reeling her back in recent years. The hope is to integrate her with a more authentic version of myself.

Is there anything worse than hearing the same story twice? 
Telling the same story twice. 
Sometimes I’ll let someone tell the same story twice. Sometimes I’ll let someone know I’ve heard it before. Sometimes I tell them I’ve heard it before they and they still finish it. Leaving out no detail. 

When my hips hurt I do a kick like the munchkins in the Wizard of Oz singing about the lollipop guild. I’ve never done it in front of anyone. 

There’s nothing worse than a memoir that’s aware of itself 

There’s nothing interesting in any of the rooms I’ve cleaned today except for money, which is the least interesting thing ever.

In the room I’m in there’s a package of half-eaten pickles which ingredients say contains no sugar, a half-eaten whipped dip that contains dairy, and $20. 
There’s also an empty bottle floating in the ice-bucket of water.

The guest left a pair of blue striped shorts which I bring to lost and found. They are very cute shorts. From what I can tell from this room I would probably be friends with these people. I like liking people that I’m cleaning rooms for. It’s why the clues are important. I tell the front desk when I hand them the shorts “these remind me of Jack,” and one face offers recognition. 
I also found a map in this room of the High Desert Museum. 

I say we would be friends because the pickles and white wine, but we could never be friends meeting this way. My biggest fear is someone coming back to their room and seeing me. I feel like a potato bug when a rock is lifted.
I like being a secret. Until someone sees me I don’t have to exist. I am just a doing thing. A cleaning thing. Not a person. To be an energy doing, not a person, is to embody something magic. To be a person is gross. The nakedness of being caught cleaning a person’s room while they’re in the room is humiliating for everyone. It dispels the myth. 

My favorite segment is on the tourist channel. “Visitors Channel.” It’s a geologist and historian walking around the Peterson Rock Garden.
I don’t know how long this segment will air. Maybe a week or two? They walk through the garden and talk about the mineral history and the social history of all everything. They seem like they’re both on mushrooms, and I feel like I’m on mushrooms watching them. They also seem to be children and falling in love. I’m also in love. They get softer and dreamier as the program moves on. They show surprise and awe and humility at all the things they see. 

The hallway smells like pot. I find a penny under a bed I’m inspecting. I throw all coins onto the sidewalk. I hate coins.  

I turn on the tv in the pickle room. CNN is on and I let it play while stripping the bed. They’re talking about the Israeli Iran war 

Ugh, the pickles are spicy. 

Tommy didn’t give me his French fries at lunch. 

This new room smells like that too-dry man deodorant. We would not be friends. The memory of this smell is of dating Tyler early on and he smelled like that. Everything about Tyler was amazing except his smell so I steered him towards a new deodorant at the grocery store. We settled on a kind of cedar deodorant. He’s since thanked me for this help as women have loved it. 

Sometimes I catch myself in the mirror and think “ah ok she is cute,” and sometimes I see nothing. 

My vagina feels like it’s clearing its throat. 

We keep running low on pillow cases. 

Anthony and I hid our faces from each other in the hall.

The service berries are ripe. 

There are some folks in the hallway and I said “sneak by ya” and this woman said “not sneaky if you say something” and I laughed a loud hollow laugh and now feel bad because that was rude of me. I just want to be invisible, but people already sense me as invisible. It’s impolite to say “move.”

Writing a story is a lot like riding a bike without training wheels. You can feel your body lock into the balance and momentum. But then you have to stop at some point. I never know when this is. The story will end in a crash. I’ve been using chat gpt to write the endings. I don’t use the ending they produce but I want to know that it’s possible. Like watching a simulated version of self slow to a stop, slide forward on the seat to straddle the bar, and put her little foot on the concrete. It would be impossible to know this and execute it, you just have to know it’s possible. 

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