Today Is…

Today, I might very well find out the date my son will be born. It’s not exactly the romantic vision of labor pains leading to a visit to the hospital and my husband freaking out that I had envisioned this whole pregnancy. I must be reasonable though. It is 2006 and doctors knowing what they know; know that I might have to be “encouraged” to have this baby. I’m thoroughly motivated to get him here, he on the other hand seems quite content to hiccup 14 times a day, dig his heels into my ribs, and shove his entire personage into my lungs when I sit down. Ah, parenthood.

For the past two months, I’ve made an unwilling habit of getting up 2 to 6 times a night to deal with various pregnancy related, sleep interrupting concerns. Lately, whenever I roll my largeness out of bed, I stop and look inside the awaiting bassinet beside our bed and realize that soon I’ll have to take care of someone before attempting sleep again. Last night, I realized in terror that he might not always go right back to sleep the way I do (or try to do). I could feed him but he may want to play… at 3a.m.! I’ve always considered myself a night owl, but once I fell asleep that was it. I love to sleep and baby, I sure hope you do too.

“So, what do you do?”

I hate that question.

I aim to disappoint. My life is relatively uninteresting. I say this with a “I realize this fact about myself and accept it for the time being” kind of tone. See, I’m not what you’d call a big “go-getter.” I will get all ambitious when it suits me, but that generally only applies to my personal life, not my professional one. In short, my career is fairly nonexistent and I have only myself and my stupid need to make money to blame. When a decent paying job is offered to me, I take it without much regard for the impact said job will have on my career. As a result, I have been a highly paid administrative nobody since graduating from college. And no, you don’t really have to go to college to become an administrative nobody.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem with being an administrative nobody is that, in the end, you are terribly unimportant and easy to replace. That being said, when I became pregnant, my boss told me that I was terribly unimportant and now easy to replace… in so many words. Actually his exact words were, “this baby is really inconvenient for us. Toddles.”

What’s the lesson here? Oh, there are so many. 1. Never work for a man who is old enough to be your grandfather. You’ll be forced to work by his interpretation of a 1950s work ethic. 2. Never work for an office/company that employs less than 15 people (see the Civil Right Amendment poster in your break room at work). 3. Never sell your creative soul for a bigger pay check. Your muse will only torment you.

What are my plans for the future? Well darlings, I really don’t know. My personal life being what it is, I confess that I feel a tad overwhelmed and of course excited. The prospect of figuring out how to start over professionally doesn’t rank that highly at the moment. Ask me again in about three months, okay? All I do know at this point is that I’ll never be some secretary or administrative nobody again. I’m putting that out there into this great abysmal internet so the guardians of the WWW can hold me to that statement.

Wish me luck!

What I'm Listening To Now

Have you ever noticed how your musical taste shifts, sometimes slightly, sometimes drastically with different periods of your life? Personally, I believe for a musical preference shift to be sincere and not coaxed by peers, it can be only a shifting indeed and not a total abandonment of previous tastes. For example, the one time I experienced a relentless hip hop preference it was admittedly due to boyfriend that I only had for two months. My taste for Ginuwine and Puff Daddy (as he was known back then), lasted roughly as long. While I still love R&B, rap has never genuinely entered the realm of my devout musical love.

Music was my first real love. I mean it. Boys were put on the backburner longer than normal probably because I could indulge in a passionate relationship with a CD without much moral input from others. As a result of this, my boyfriends have always been musicians—I just realized this. It was an easy transition I suppose.

When I think about when it all began, I start to get the feeling that the first memory goes so far back as to be nearly primitive. My mom started it all, by playing folk guitar while pregnant with me and introducing me to Simon and Garfunkel and Joan Baez at an almost indecent age. My dad on the other hand, always sung country classics and jazz standards to me. I knew all the words to Mona Lisa and You Are My Sunshine before I knew how to ride a bike. Those roots have eerily stuck with me. I am convinced that those influences exclusively inform my obsession with James Taylor and lyrically driven music regardless of instrumental execution.

In High School, I fell for U2, Chris Isaak, Sheryl Crow, Sixpence, Nat King Cole, Blues Traveler, Martin Page, Mazzy Star, Collective Soul, Enya, Jars of Clay, Tori Amos and lots of Jazz. Hip Hop and rap became really big back then so I liked a few songs, but my tape player rarely housed that genre. I would buy a single of some hip hop song and quickly realized that when my girlfriends were in the car, out came Tori and in went Blackstreet. I got over it fast. Looking back at what moved me so intensely then, I realize that I am still that same girl, just evolved.

In college I began being heavily influenced by a wider group of more open minded and well-traveled friends. My tastes became even worldlier, and I ventured deeper into the genres of existing preferences. Everybody experiments in college, I just spent my time fiddling with music and finding new ways to express the impressions it left on me. I wrote a lot back then and I began to realize around this time how much music affects your writing and really all of your creativity. Had I chosen to write this blog entry while listening to one of my high school loves this would be even more nostalgic than I meant it to be. Instead I’m listening to one of my current obsessions, so hopefully this entry is true to this moment.

Right now, I’m listening to Imogene Heap, Delays, Ivy, Ryan Adams, Clem Snide, Rufus Wainwright, Broken Social Scene and far too many others to mention. The most obvious thing that’s changed lately is the fact that my taste has gotten mellower and I’m going for more lyrical, more introspective and even sweeter sounds than I ever have in the past. At this moment I’m softening, I suppose.