Act II: Part II

I can tell you another person who agrees with me that there are second acts in American lives: Anthony Bourdain.

Bourdain freely admits that he spent years of his early life as a drug addict. In Kitchen Confidential (or maybe one of his other books -- I've read most, if not all, of them), he talks about selling his belongings on a blanket on the sidewalk for drug money. As fictional American philosopher Cher Horowitz would say, "It is one thing to spark up a doobie and get laced at parties, but is quite another to be fried all day." Bourdain was in the latter category. But look at him now. He's basically in the third act of his life. He went from junkie, to successful chef, and now he's a talented author and host of an enjoyable travel program. He even quit smoking, got remarried, and had a baby. The third act of his life started in his mid to late 40s, so who knows what Bourdain will be doing in his 60s. Maybe he'll become an astronaut or a merman. (Whatever he does, I'm sure he'll look good doing it. He is sexy. I'm sorry, but it's true.)

I just watched the Washington, D.C. episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. One featured guest, who works at DC Central Kitchen, served 18 years in prison for bank robbery, assault and attempted murder (I believe). He's out now, and he's learned a new trade in the culinary arts, and he has a son I considered kidnapping due to his overwhelming cuteness. I'm sure that while this fellow was cooling his heels in jail, he didn't think to himself, "Hey, I'll bet that one of these days, I'm going to become a respected cook, have a healthy son and be on a cool TV show."

I feel like life is showing me examples of how it's possible to reinvent yourself from one year to the next as well as examples of how opportunities can come along that you could not have predicted.

The Shield: Season 6

Nobody rests in peace indeed, least of all my fictional husband Curtis Lemansky. Season six of The Shield is the darkest season yet. I spent the entirety of the first couple of episodes weeping over the raw pain of Lem's death driving all the action.

The most wrenching moment of the entire series so far was when Vic, Ronnie and Shane opened the box of books Lem bought himself to read in prison. He had books on wildlife, art, dreams, science...all to broaden his mind and make the most of his time inside. I knew my baby was as smart as he was sensitive. Oh, Lem. You are missed.

The Shield: Nobody Rests in Peace

I'm watching the Season 6 prequel mini-sode, which is available as an extra on the Season 5 DVDs. The mini-sode intermixes scenes from Lem's sad little excuse for a funeral (he was not given a police funeral with a motorcade and scores of officers paying their respects because he died in disgrace), his murder at the hands of the callow Shane Vendrell and his participation in an interdepartmental arm wrestling competition.

Clearly, Lem is my favorite character on the show. I think his three closest colleagues are named the Bald Fella, the Redneck and 'Stache -- so great is my inability to focus on other characters when Lem is on screen. When Shane murdered him, tears streamed down my face. But this mini-sode was even crueler to me as the viewer than the actual episode in which he died. There is something wrenching about seeing someone at his zenith (in good stead at work, with his three best friends and colleagues, beloved by everyone in the office for winning a competition, everyone chanting his name when he won) cut together with scenes of him dying like an animal at the hands of his best friend, his name tarnished and his reputation sullied. You deserved better, Lem.

The Shield: Season 5

Oh, Lem. Didn't we almost have it all? The fifth season of The Shield is Lem's last because his loyalty to his three friends got his (fine) ass blown up by a hand grenade.

Oh, Lem. I wish we'd had more time together. Also, I wish you were not a fictional character with a tramp stamp. (Seriously, bro. You are basically the perfect man except for this inexplicable lower back tattoo of Chinese characters. I can overlook it though.)

I wish I could meet a guy like Lem in real life. I'd tolerate the ill-conceived tat and the dirty cop business for a man as loyal, kind and fucking sexy as Lem. I'd settle for the occasional freezing of my assets due to an IAD investigation in exchange for a good-hearted man who loves dogs and kids and comes home every night.

The Shield: Season 4

Detective Curtis Lemansky continues his ceaseless and highly successful campaign to make me love him in Season 4 of The Shield.

The fourth season featured two major guest stars: Glenn Close and Anthony Anderson. Anthony Anderson needs to become a major star as soon as possible because he is a lot more talented than I imagine his work in Kangaroo Jack (unseen by me) would suggest. The Close is already a prominent star, and she acquitted herself well in her role as a put-upon police captain with few higher-ups in her corner. I don't understand why people be trying to step to Glenn Close. I mean, Glenn Close will totally come to your house and kill your pets (see: Fatal Attraction, Damages). If Glenn Close asked me to do anything, I'd be like, "Right away, Ms. Close. Anything else, Ms. Close?" or I'd be coming home to my beloved dog's corpse.

The Shield: Season 3

I'm still watching The Shield while I work from home. Sometime during Season 3, Kenneth Johnson's agent must have re-negotiated his contract to say that the actor is no longer required to wear sleeves. That agent is doing the Lord's work. Seriously, Lem hasn't had a full sleeve on in several episodes. I even saw him wearing a shirt he had previously worn in the second season (when it had real sleeves) with the sleeves cut off. Thank you, God.

The Shield: Season 2

While I'm busy working 80-hour weeks, I'm catching up on the series The Shield, thanks to the public library's collection of DVDs. I might be in love with Detective Curtis Lemansky, a character portrayed by Kenneth Johnson. He's sweet, he loves animals, he's bad enough without being beyond redemption, and he has sexy guns (both weaponry and arm varieties).









And look how cute he is holding this baby. And I don't even like babies.

Act II

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, "There are no second acts in American lives." To that I say, "Scott, you drank too much and The Great Gatsby is kind of overrated."

I feel like my life is entering its second act right now. Act I was my 20s, in which I tried to distance myself from my less-advantaged background (not to say I grew up poor, but compared to most of my university classmates, I was a barefoot hillbilly). I worked very, very hard to build the life I thought I should be leading. When I was in high school, I was a big fish in a small pond. I wanted to prove to myself and even more to other people that I could be a big fish in a big pond as well. I went to a big, private university, where I was in an elite scholars group. I chose a highly competitive career, training for it at one of the top schools in the country, and, after much toil, got to one of the top law firms in the country. If I had gone to my high school reunion, I would have presented an image of success to my former classmates. I would have presented the image of someone who "made it" instead of becoming a townie and having a bunch of kids and getting married
young and finding Jesus like most of them did.

It all looked great from the outside, but I was unhappy. I had the trappings of success, but I didn't have the human connections and interactions in my life that I wanted. I admit that I looked enviously at my married, baby-having high school friends and thought that I wanted what they had.

The heart, like nature, abhors a vacuum. I filled the empty spaces inside me with food and stuff, and I ended up overweight and buried in credit card debt. Food and stuff did nothing long-term to cure my loneliness or sense of isolation, so I ended up piling problems on top of problems without directly solving or addressing anything. And then even the facade of happiness I had crumbled to crap when I was laid off.

The world is full of stories where people take some monstrous tragedy and end up saying, "It was the best thing that ever happened to me." I tend to think these people are full of crap. I will say, however, that I think something good is coming out of something bad in that I am using this major setback in life as a reset. I'm giving myself a do-over, but retaining the knowledge that I gained from making so many misguided choices.

I don't know exactly what I'm going to do with my life from this point forward. I've lost a lot of weight, and I'm in the process of working very hard to pay off my credit card bills, so those are first steps to cope with some of the symptoms of the deeper problems I need to grapple with. I want to do something that involves human relationships more. I want to do something that lets me be myself more, enjoy my life more.

Your Love is Like a Shadow on Me All of the Time

I recently started listening to podcasts, and I heard one by a life coach (Cheryl Richardson) analyzing the movie version of Sense and Sensibility. It was pretty interesting, and only about 20 minutes long. She made one statement about Marianne Dashwood's attraction to the caddish John Willoughby that resonated with me. She said that women are attracted to "bad boys" because they allow us to express our darker sides.

That got me thinking about what attracted me to Goose to begin with. I've never made a secret of the fact that sex scares the shit out of me. I've been a sexually reserved and selective person my whole life, but after being assaulted at 21, I pretty much shut down completely. At some semi-conscious level, my mind and body are trying to protect themselves from ever being harmed that way again by making me avoid sexual situations and freeze up when they are presented. Then, you can add to that initial defense mechanism my worries that it has been so long since I had sex with anyone that I won't know what to do or be any good at it. And on top of all that, until about eighteen months ago, I had a minor physical issue that made sexual activity painful (though that has now been resolved, I didn't know that it was just a little bitty physical thing that was creating this problem -- I thought there was just something wrong with me). So, there's a lot of shit going on here that basically makes the prospect of sexual congress a horrifying and nerve-wracking one for me.

Goose did two things for me. First, he made me feel safe around him. He managed to be both sexual and non-threatening at the same time, which is surprisingly tough to do. I've had a lot of male friends I found non-threatening, but I found them non-threatening because I completely lacked sexual interest in them. On the other hand, there are guys like The New Guy in whom I had a (brief and ill-advised) sexual interest but who intimidated me in a lot of ways. I don't know that Goose's particular formula here could be replicated in the sense that I don't think I could become unthreatened by or sexually attracted to men who did not make me feel like that initially. Second, he created a safe space for me to express my more sexual side without feeling threatened or judged. Mostly, we just joked around about stuff, but I felt like he thought I was funny and that it turned him on. Whenever I tried to be more sexually flirtatious with The New Guy, he acted like I was being a total whore and if I was being more aloof, he acted like I was being a total prude.

Goose has a lot of problems, at least with respect to trying to interact with me. Chief among these is that he doesn't tell the truth to himself, so he can't tell the truth to anyone else, and this leads to he and I not being able to have a relationship founded on truth or even one in which truth makes the occasional cameo. However, one thing that I must thank Goose for is that he allowed me to be this more sexual person for a little while. I learned from spending time with him that that person is still in there and that she can surface under the right conditions. Maybe I don't have to enter the convent after all.

Give Me Some Credit

As I continue my efforts toward credit card sainthood, I am looking for ways to keep my future self out of trouble. I have heard that it is not a good idea to cancel credit cards because it increases the debt utilization ratio, which can lead to a lower credit score. After careful consideration, I have decided to take this advice with a grain of salt.

I estimated today that if I were to max out all my credit cards, I could generate about $40,000 to $50,000 in credit card debt. Yikes. Even when I made more money, I would not have had any prayer of repaying that much money. Surely, any potential creditor looking at my credit report would know that and feel trepidation about the possibility of extending me even more credit. So, that isn't good. Also, I have proved that I am not the best when it comes to handling credit cards wisely, so it's better for me to have a slightly lower credit score with a greatly decreased ability to get myself in over my head in debt than to keep the possibility of debt for an extra one or two points.

Based on my internet research, I determined that it is best to keep cards under two circumstances: (1) the card has a high limit and (2) you have had the card for a long period of time. I chose to cancel three cards today. Two of the cards had limits of $200 or less (seriously -- what is even the point of giving someone a credit card with such a miserly spending limit?), and I had not had any of them for more than a year and a half.

Happy Worker

I'm trying to remember to blog regularly while I work to pay down my credit card debt. I want to be able to recall how unpleasant it was to work so much in case I'm tempted to run up a lot of debt again in the future.

I guess overspending is just like any other addiction. Shopping provides a temporary rush of excitement and happiness, and, when it ends, another rush must be sought. Like with drugs or alcohol, the rush of spending money tries to compensate for what is lacking in other areas. It combats loneliness, sadness and disappointment. It attempts to stand in for honest emotions or a true feeling of connection.

While I've been chiseling away at my credit card debt, I have surprised myself a few times by feeling really sad. I'm sure part of it is fatigue, but I think another part of it is because I'm chipping away at the outward manifestation of an emotional buffer I created and trying to address what got me to that point in the first place.

Anyway, I'm just trying to keep at the task of working to pay off these bills. Sometimes, it seems like I'm making rapid progress and other times, it seems like I'll never get to the end of it.

When You Call Me on the Phone, You're Buggin' Me

If I needed any additional confirmation that paying off my credit card bills is the right thing to do, I got it today.

I'm signed up for electronic receipt of my credit card statements with all my cards. I realized last night that I couldn't remember when the last time was that I received a statement email from one of my two remaining cards, so I checked online. To my dismay, I was already a few days late with my payment, so I scheduled one immediately. Today, I received three phone calls in about seven hours hounding me to make a payment. When I finally spoke to someone after the third call, I informed him shirtily that (1) I had already scheduled a payment and (2) it's annoying and unnecessary to call people that frequently. Then I had to talk to two other departments about my missed statement email.

Seriously, though. Why do collections agencies have these practices. Nowadays, everyone has caller ID, so the chances of a collections agent getting you on the phone are slim unless you want to talk with them. If you've already scheduled your payment, it will just piss you off. If you haven't scheduled it, then it won't suddenly cause you to find money and give it to them. Weird.

Who's Gonna Take Your Place? There Ain't Nobody Better. Oh, Baby, Baby, We Belong Together

I dreamed last night about shopping for wedding rings with Goose. Fuck you, subconscious mind.

Confessions of a Shopaholic

I paid off my smallest credit card balance today. It represents only about 10 percent of my overall credit card debt, but I'm trying to be proud of myself anyway. Even reducing my total burden by 10% is an accomplishment, a step in the right direction, and I need to feel good about this win to sustain me for the more difficult work of paying off the two larger balances.

When I first started thinking seriously about getting my credit card debt in hand, I researched the best way to do it. (Answer: find a leprechaun, steal his gold, give enough of it to the creditors to make them go away.) It makes the most financial sense to pay off the credit card with the highest interest rate first, but several sources suggested paying off the credit cards in order of smallest to largest balances to give yourself some early successes to boost your spirits and resolve. It makes sense. The interest rates on most people's credit cards will probably be sufficiently similar that if you're paying an extra percentage point up or down, it won't really kill you compared with how much money you've already squandered on interest. But I didn't get in to credit card debt because I'm good with delayed gratification, so it's important to keeping myself focused on my goals that I see some pay-off to my hard work early on.

Anyway, the actual scheduling of the payment was a little bit anti-climactic, I have to say. I had hoped to feel more excited about it. Maybe I should have set up a balloon drop for myself. It's also hard to know what to do to reward myself for a job well done if I'm not supposed to be overspending or overeating. But, good for me. I'm making progress on my new year's resolutions and it's only January 4th.

Bills, Bills, Bills

My new year's resolution for 2010 is to pay off my credit card debt.

I'm sure I'm not alone in having an amount of credit card debt that freaks me out a little bit, but everyone who finds themselves in that situation gets there their own way. I've made numerous attempts over the years to rid myself of the scourge of credit card debt without success. I started thinking about that today, and it occurs to me that I failed because I never addressed the underlying issues that lead me to overspend.

Overspending, for me, is like overeating. It's pretty much exactly like overeating. The two problems both originate from issues of control, punishing myself, shame and a sense of lack. I grew up feeling like I never had enough love from my father, so I tried to fill the void with food and goods. I hate feeling out of control of my life, so I cheer myself up when things get hairy with rewards of food and goods. When I see a reading on the scale or the balance on my credit card statements, I feel ashamed of my lack of self-control, which then leads to further binging. And at some level, I suppose all this emanates from a feeling that I don't deserve real love and happiness, so I try to make do with substitutes.

I've more or less got my food issues in hand. I'm far from perfect, and it's a constant struggle, but I'm doing pretty well. Now it's time to address the overspending.

Two things need to happen in concert for me to be done with this issue. First, I need to make enough money to be able to pay off my outstanding debt. To that end, I started working a second job a few weeks ago. At this point, I've earned enough money to pay off the smallest of my three credit card bills, so I'm happy about that. The job could end at any time, but at least I'm making progress. Second, I have to believe I deserve real love, real things, real happiness. That's the part I haven't quite figured out yet.