Josh's Froz-T-Freez Internet Drive-Inn

A couple of weeks ago, I started writing a post about all the things that I never follow through with, all my daydreaming and inaction and candles under bushels and stuff like that. I never got it done and posted, though.

I don’t know what to do with this, but I need to put it out somewhere to someone, so I am putting it here.

Tonight I went to my church’s family home evening. That sounds really strange if you don’t know much about my church, I guess. (I go to a student or singles ward of the LDS faith, which is basically a church congregation consisting exclusively of single 18-30 year olds. Every Monday there is a church activity called Family Home Evening, held as a congregation because as single people, obviously we have no families to be at home with for the evening.) I hardly ever go due to my social trepidation, but I was feeling a need to get out and do something worthwhile and give myself another chance, so I went. I got there five minutes after it was supposed to start, and there weren’t many people there yet. Everyone was just standing around. This, for me, is worst case scenario. I feel much better about things if there is some place to sit and something or someone to watch and listen to. There was supposed to be a lesson and some kind of game tonight. But it hadn’t started yet. So I just sort of stood there. There wasn’t really anyone I felt comfortable just going up to and starting to talk to them. After a minute I made the obligatory run to the drinking fountain. A couple minutes later I made the obligatory look around for a place to spit out and throw away my gum. I passed by a girl with whom I had had what I thought was a decent conversation a week or two ago, and I said hi to her and she barely even said hi back. I don’t know if this is because she is as shy as I am, or if she really just does not like me at all. I stood around for another minute or so, wondering whether I should try to start a conversation with her. Just as I had about decided to say something to her she walked away, joining the defense line of girls (more on the line of girls later).

A member of the Bishopric came over to me and talked for a second, and said how much his son liked playing basketball (the boy was shooting hoops while everyone stood around) and kind of complained that if his son could be there at the gym in the church playing basketball all day every day that is what he would want to do. I said that his boy was good at basketball and had made almost every single shot he took. He seemed kind of irritated by that comment, and walked away after a second. Now, from what little I know of humanity and social interactions (and as you can see it is very little), I kind of thought that complimenting a person’s kid (especially when the compliment is entirely genuine) would pretty much always be a winning way to go, but apparently not.

Then this other guy in the ward I know, let’s call him Wes (because that’s his name) comes up to me and starts talking. In some strange turn of the conversation that I do not quite understand, he begins to talk about some secret torture chamber that I have in my house, listing off numerous items that I don’t even know what they are but I assume are devices of torture that I supposedly have and use to inflict abuse upoon people in said chamber. I tried to twist this subject matter into a worn-out joke, telling him that he was making me out like I was a young Dick Cheney. He quickly walked away from me. Apparently it’s okay to accuse me of torture, but Cheney is sacrosanct. Or maybe the Cheney-as-a-cartoon-bad-guy joke is just too tired.

Everyone was still standing around. There was literally this long line of girls, about thirty or so, standing at the edge of the basketball court, while the aforementioned boy and two of the guys in the ward played Horse. Impenetrable. Give me a break, I just can’t deal with that. I went and sat down in the one the chairs, and hoped things would get started soon. There were at least fifty or sixty chairs set up, all completely empty. A couple more minutes, and nothing started. I couldn’t deal with it any more. I walked out of the doors of the church, and looked at my phone. More people were coming in, so I quickly dialed up my parents phone number so I could look like I was just standing outside because I had a phone call and not because I’m a socially-retarded freak, but no one answered. I didn’t want to walk back in there, and I was about to head for my car, but I decided to just walk around instead.

I walked around and down the street in the cool night. It was quite pleasant. After a few minutes, I had calmed down a bit, and I figured things would have started and I could sneak back in quietly and find a nice chair in the back. So I walk back into the gym/cultural hall and there are couple of people sitting on the stage and talking in front of everyone else (who are now seated and in rapt attention of course). I walk closer to where all the chairs are, at which point I realize that there is not one single empty chair. This is absolutely impossible. Usually at church things the first couple of rows are mostly empty, even if everywhere further back is mostly filled in. And then there are still empty spots here and there. But it was so perfectly filled that it almost looked like all unfilled seats had been removed from the premises as soon as everyone present had sat down. There weren’t even any chairs propped against any wall to go grab and unfold. I walked back out, thinking about going into one of the classrooms and finding a chair and carrying it back in there. I felt like some kind of cosmic joke was being played on me. I decided I had had enough and I was finished. I think I even said that out loud, and I’m not sure if anyone heard me or noticed me angrily shove the door open and walk out. Stupid behavior, I know. But whatever. I felt like swearing and laughing and kicking stuff and making a scene and crashing my car. I settled for mumbling and shoving a door open and leaving.

I got in my car and drove around for a while. Thought about going to the record store, but that felt really stupid. I had been planning to go there after FHE anyway. Drove around a little more. Decided I would go to the record store (Graywhale — This is what their pathetic website has said for at least a year or two now) and see if they had this CD. I was going to go to Best Buy and buy it after work, but I had decided that I would check if Graywhale had it first, because I like to support local businesses. I find a parking spot and walk up there and the guy in the music section upstairs is playing what is possibly the most uninviting, inhospitable music I have ever heard. It started out just being hardcore, but then it turned into some kind of miserable funeral dirge or something. “Doomcore” might be an appropriate description. Maybe it was my mood, I don’t know. The guy didn’t say a word to me. Overall, not exactly the kind of vibe that makes me pull out my wallet, even if I am kind of anti-social. Sometimes they are really nice, and other times it’s like they don’t even want your business. Like if you are not dressed right and buying the right thing, you are not worthy to patronize their establishment. Great way to make money. Tonight they didn’t have the CD I really wanted, and I didn’t feel like buying anything else even though they did have other things I wanted. I don’t know why I give a crap if a place like that stays in business, and go out of my way to spend my money there. Next time I’ll just go to Best Buy.

I’ll explain these later, maybe. (Man, I hate how bad my camera sucks. It never focuses quite right since the accident.)

This blog has been interrupted by the Red Sox v. Indians series (Red Sox all the way), Radiohead B-Sides, The Legend of Zelda: Majorca’s Mask, pining after a new iMac, and otherwise just sitting in a chair and staring at a wall. Thank you for your patience as we resolve these technical difficulties.

This is just a special little shout-out to my friend Zak, who of his own initiative doctored up my Drive-In photo so that it says “Josh’s Froz-T-Freez” on the marquee (as seen above). It was really cool of him to do that. It probably would have been months before I got around to doing such a thing, if I ever did it. So thanks, Zak. And speaking of Zak, he has his own blog which, among other honest truths, contains a virtual video compendium of the sayings of Dwight Schrute, inspiring television personality of that beloved television program The Office (beloved by Zak and I, at least). So go check it out, whoever you are.

Now that a friend has contributed to the betterment of my blog, I guess I’d really better start using it.

I always kind of thought that I would grow up and be a writer. In 1st grade I started writing stories, and I kept on with it through elementary and junior high (Most of them I never quite finished, though). In high school I signed up for creative writing classes, and I discovered I liked poetry. So I wrote poems, and I wrote more never-finished stories with grandiose aspirations that were never fulfilled. I always maintained an impeccable GPA. I edited my high school literary magazine that nobody read. I stayed living at home, but went to college for a year. I took an intro to creative writing class. I started on classes for the English major. I submitted a poem to the New Yorker. Funny. Then I served an LDS mission in Ohio for two years. I sometimes tried to write things on my preparatory day, but it wouldn’t come. I sent some poems into a church magazine contest. I didn’t win, but they bought one of my poems and sent me a check for twenty-five bucks. I don’t know that they ever actually published it, though. I came home from my mission and took more English classes. I took poetry workshops. I felt like I did pretty good. The deadlines forced me to produce things, plus in a workshop you have a built-in test audience that has to read and react to your writing. I thought I would try to get an MFA in Creative Writing, and eventually become a Creative Writing professor. Because that is what poets do, right? They become professors and teach other people to write poetry and they get their poems published in the journals of all the other universities, right? That’s how all the great canonized ones did it, right? So I guess even then I was a little disillusioned with the state of poetry in society, as a niche academic specialty that seemed a little too cloistered, self-affirming and self-perpetuating. But I still wanted to play the game, because writing poetry doesn’t pay the bills unless you’re Kanye or 50. My senior year, I found that the two professors that I had planned on asking to write recommendation letters had both gone on sabbatical. I also was feeling very poor and like I wanted a job and to try something a little different. So I decided I would take a break from school for a year after I graduated, and try substitute teaching in the public schools, because I wanted to see if I liked teaching. I would then apply for MFA programs the next fall after graduation. So I started substitute teaching. My grandmother got really sick, and that took up a lot of time and made me kind of stressed. I didn’t write any poems. Fall came around. I kept putting off trying to get in contact with my old professors, kept putting off getting my portfolio polished. When I finally started trying to talk with the professors, I found it incredibly hard because I was no longer in school and didn’t know what was going on. I wasn’t a student so I had no claim upon their time any more. I asked them for letters at the last minute. I wrote a horrible self-sabotaging letter of intention. I slapped together a portfolio of old poems at a time when I basically hadn’t written a line of poetry in months. Needless to say, Spring rolled around and I got my rejection. I kept substituting. I told myself I didn’t really want to be part of that whole esoteric contemporary poetry crowd, that I didn’t want to teach stuffy academic classes to college students. My heart wasn’t in it, that is why I had sabotaged my own application. I’m still unsure if that is true or not. I kept substituting, I had nothing else to do. I read Harry Potter books and I read other children’s’ books I discovered while substituting, and I started to remember the kind of books and feelings that had gotten me interested in writing in the first place, when I was a kid: Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis, Brian Jacques, Tolkien, Lois Lowry. I realized that an idea I had been kicking around for some poems ever since college was actually a better idea for a children’s/young adult novel. I started writing the thing during the summer when I didn’t sub. I wondered about trying to get a better job that had benefits, but I didn’t have a clue where to look and felt like I had no qualifications, just a B.A. in English literature. I did happen to get offered a better subbing job that payed a little more and was a little more fun. I didn’t write poetry. I got halfway through my first draft of the novel, and I got stuck. I decided to put it away. I just worked, and otherwise was lazy. At the end of the year, the good subbing job went away, but for some reason I didn’t feel overly concerned about this. Then early in the summer, the office through which I had worked as a substitute (Instructional Technology) called me up because a couple of secretaries were out with extended illnesses, and they wanted to know if I would help in the office. I did it for a month. I worked hard and enjoyed it. They decided to keep me as a sort of substitute-at-large for the department and just have me fill in anywhere extra help is needed. I discovered that, in addition to being in charge of the technology specialists who are supposed to train teachers in how to use computers and other technology for teaching, my department was also going to be inheriting all the library media people. I had always thought being a school librarian could be interesting, but I didn’t have a clue how to get into it. Now I am in the department that is over all such positions, and they are becoming more technology-centered. The idea of a job where I get to spend some time messing around with computers and the rest of the time trying to run a library and get kids interested in reading and help them learn to do research and stuff is quite appealing to me. So I’m thinking about starting next semester (January 2008) to take the classes necessary to get a media endorsement. But that book is still back there somewhere, whimpering for attention. And then there are the memories of my high school teachers who gave up their own writing to be teachers; I appreciated them, but I was never going to become like them. Books that never get finished don’t pay bills, though, and working a good ole’ 7-4 job and then coming home and watching t.v. or whatever feels pretty nice right now. The burning two-tongued question: If put in the work to become a librarian, do I give up the other dream, or can I do them both? Did my laziness give up the dream long ago? This is where my life is at at this moment.

Every week I tell myself I’m going to start a daily writing regiment, but I always put it off until the next day. No deadlines, nobody waiting to see what I come up with, nobody to answer to but myself, no paycheck, no easy finish like a fourteen line sonnet, not a thing about it easy or engaging in the least. But it’s still back there in the darkness, yelping and whimpering. Do I dress the wounds, pet it and feed it, give it therapy, put one of those big plastic cones around its head so it won’t lick itself, and take it out for a walk every day? Or do I get out the .22 and make it quick and painless? Not even PETA would care, in this case. Daydreams don’t have any feelings, they don’t have any advocates.

I think I’ll start writing again tomorrow.