#being homeless is basically that. you pass the time w new technology yeah

[minksextremeunction]

If I were alive back then I would simply be a BookWorm or I would be a craftsman.....I help make books......I would def just lay there and do fuck all I would fish sell it and then sit on my ass and just listen to the birds and watch the waves lap the shore all day and maybe press and observe some local wildlife 😭😭

[quixotic--s]

LIKE ITS 2010

tagged by @oceanstatic​ yes i was looking for it lol

When you were younger, were you ever in a relationship with someone you now realize was way too old for you? yeah but thanks to my parents protecting me it never became a relationship. i’m glad about that, cause you never know, but i don’t think he had bad intentions. he was a fun prom date, years after my parents made me stop seeing him. but by then i was almost 18. and nothing happened. it’s a good memory. Is your family dysfunctional? not really but i think we pretend to be more normal than we are lol How old were you the first time you traveled alone?

I walked around unfamiliar countries alone when I was 15 but I actually traveled alone out of the country at 20 to New Zealand.

When did you last leave the state/province you live in? january to visit my mom for her birthday Did you ever take an intro to law class in high school/college/uni? never Is there anything you feel like you need a break from? technology, being inside, on computers hunched over ow my back

What do you hate to hear people joke about? mental health, child abuse

What architectural style was your childhood home? Cookie-cutter suburbia. (keeping your answer @oceanstatic) Have you ever been in a situation where you had to live off of savings? no, fortunately but I think it’s coming when I go to grad school Tell me a bit about your last relationship. What was it like dating them? the one before this one? hmm. boring and full of anger. we never did anything but we had only been together for 4 months. and he said things like “i’m not racist i have black friends” !!!!! Have you ever been in weather so severe that you feared for your safety? yes when i worked at the country club! I had to do things outside to close for the shift but in the summer where i live we have thunderstorms almost every day. i would be out there in an empty golf field and see lightning strike so close. i would try to wait until it would pass but it’s just so constant sometimes and i’m on the clock and wanted to go home so i would hurry and try to get the golf cart in the garage etc and it was so scary

there was also a time when i was a kid that my dad was driving near a tornado. we didn’t see the tornado but there was a warning where we were and we were near washington DC when this happened trying to drive home. i remember our car was lifting off the ground and he was trying to cross train tracks. the “train is coming” signal arms were going up and down and up and down over and over again. we didn’t know if a train was actually coming or if it was a power fail. so he just kinda went for it. it was terrifying.

there was also a time in new zealand i experienced an earth quake. i thought it was my bunkmate beneath me being really restless, cause i was half asleep, but then someone woke me up and said we have to go outside because there was a 7.8 magnitude earthquake.

What political issues are the most important to you personally?

quality public education and affordable childcare. so many things matter to me in politics but this is one of the first things i look at when considering a candidate. What small thing makes you automatically distrust someone?

talking about another person behind their back to me that i know they consider their friend. it basically means you’re talking about me, too, behind my back.  What countries have you been to?

Norway, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Italy, New Zealand, U.S. (I live in), The Bahamas and Canada. What’s the kindest thing a total stranger has done for you? Nothing comes to mind.

Do you have any pets? If so, how old are they?

My dog Mary Jane I love her so much she is 5 years old we think. She’s a rescue so I don’t know for sure. She is a literal angel. I’m so grateful I found her.

Where do you want to live?

I used to want to move out west. I just want to be happy now. and be with my family. After I get my masters degree I want to be closer to my friends and family from back home. That’s what matters most in life is being near my family and right now they are so far. As long as I have my love, GOOD FRIENDS, my dog, a job I love and trails to bike on and just a home I feel safe and happy in I will be happy. Are you working full-time?

Yes but this pandemic has changed everything. I miss being in the field with my children and I worry about them every day. I can’t contact them. I made them cards. I think the addresses will reach them but some are homeless and I’m not sure if these will actually reach them. We might be able to put some things online but I teach preschool in the roughest areas of where I live and most of my kids don’t have internet, transportation, so I’m pretty sure some are more worried about meeting their basic needs than preschool enrichment right now to be frank. All my staff is figuring out how to navigate this together and I admire everyone’s adaptability. I just hope we can reach our families and help them and teach our students but I’m heartbroken knowing that some of my kids are missing out on essential speech and behavioral services they can’t get over a computer. I feel pretty powerless. I can do read-alouds and activities online which help working parents and help children’s literacy skills, I can brush up on professional development, but that connection and time with my children is lost. I’m literally grieving.

What are your favorite hobbies?

Mountain biking, penny boarding, tennis, thrift shopping

If you could instantly change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

more confident, less nervous around other people.

What’s something not a lot of people know about you?

I don’t know. a lot of people when they first meet me think I’m really innocent, timid, and inexperienced, but I have done a lot of things and I have a lot to share. I just don’t share it unless I’m asked.

I tag @awkwardleznerd

[davidfostercomedyblog]

Old Friends Just Crossing Paths... Wishing It Was More

One of my most valued compliments from my early 20’s came from a pretty female friend telling me: “I wish there was another one of me, so I could sleep with you.”

 Okay, admittedly there are higher compliments, not the least of which being the indirect one of a girl actually sleeping with me with the one of her that does exist; although such instances were few and far between during that time in my life.

I understood what she meant. At the time she’d been sleeping with my best friend and couldn’t bring herself to sleep with the both of us with her same physical structure. I respected that. My boy was better looking than me and got more girls, but often when he kept them around long enough they came to find me very not bad. Girls are impressive like that, in their innate ability to find someone more physically attractive with greater familiarity. Guys are better at sports.

Last night in the train station at W. 4th St. I ran into a former comedy colleague in Liz Miele, and it wasn’t coincidental at all. I’d walked across town from my job on Houston and Forsyth for dinner, basically because I wanted to walk by all the comedy clubs and run into someone I know. Wish granted.

As Liz and I recognized one another on the train platform we simultaneously smiled. She looked rushed, I assumed headed to a show in the local hood. For a moment I wasn’t sure whether we were going to actually stop and chat or just exchange a pleasant greeting and K.I.M. (keep it moving). Liz and I know each other for 15 years, but we’ve probably only been in each other’s presence 50 or 60 times total (as is the case with many comics), and never outside of a show venue. I was happy to see her take her headphones out one ear at a time, and throw her arms up as high as she could for a hug. We would stop and chat.

I began to hear the expression: “It’s good to see you,” long before I realized people ever actually meant it sincerely. I thought it was another colloquial synonym for: “Hi,” like “How ya doing?” or “What up?” I’m grateful for the opposite experience in adulthood to have enlightened me otherwise. It was so good to see Liz.

“Where are you living?” Liz asked, a typical but sincere question people offer in a best effort to connect while passing on the street.

I told her I was living with my girlfriend, to which she responded: “Great!”

I asked her where she was living but didn’t get an answer. Was she homeless? No, she was flustered. I could tell she had to go, so I cut her off in order to liberate her social obligation.

“You got a spot, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Go ahead,” I encouraged her, but could tell she didn’t want to leave me. Liz is so fucking sweet. But she’s also fucking funny, and had to go to her spot.

“Okay, okay,” she panicked, desperately scrambling for some way to make the world different than it is… “I’ll text you… or I’ll— I dunno. I want to be friends!” and we laughed at how unfiltered and lovely it was. She went to her show. I went home.

I almost cried before I got on the train. I wished the world wasn’t the way it was. I wished there was another one of me – actually eight or nine others – the first of whom would do comedy again, full-time. The others wouldn’t work at all, but would simply spend time sitting and reminiscing with the many loved ones I’ve come across, not only in comedy, but all the jobs I’ve had – all the people I’ve been so touched by and been fortunate enough to touch in return.

When I was in my early 20’s and the highest compliment I’d get was of hypothetical sexual interest I thought the experience of love was reserved only for family, significant others, and close friends with whom I spent every waking hour and considered soul mates. I’m grateful to realize, now entering my early 40’s, the opposite experience. I can love people I’ve known very briefly, bus boys who I worked with for only a few months in California, receptionists who only saw me part-time at my first job back in New York; plenty of people who couldn’t be further from soul mates with whom I’ve barely spent a full week’s time with. How do I know I love them? I don’t know. I just do.

I love Liz, in spite of not knowing her so well, maybe because I know her for so long, or because we shared a concurrent journey, and what a journey it is. My experience is that it is easier to fall in love with people when you’ve shared mutual vulnerability, regardless of whether your personalities would be compatible outside of the work place. While a “work friend” to me used to mean someone I didn’t like enough to be a real friend, it now often means someone I wish there was another one of me to become best friends forever with.

I love many of my old comedian friends, and often wonder if it’s not the fraternity I miss even more than performing. Probably not, but it’s surely a component. I miss the grumbling ciphers by the bar, a circle of comics either talking shop or talking shit; whining about how awful the business is, how awful their life is or their latest bit is going. I miss the misery, admittedly, I can be honest about that now. I don’t miss the nightly late nights, the daily rejection and hopeless fear of ultimate failure, but I do miss a lot of the grind and hilarious cynicism that comes with it.

“Get back into it,” say to me only laypeople - never other comics - because comics know better. Laypeople have no idea the energy comedy sucks from your soul and havoc it wreaks on your physiology and central nervous system. It’s unhealthy, objectively, and most comics who I’ve run into and relayed my retirement status to have replied: “Congratulations, dude, good for you.” They get it.

I got a random text from Zach Sherwin about a month ago with a picture of a sign in L.A. with my last name on it. This is one of the few great things about texting and iphone technology: More peripheral friends from your past who ordinarily might balk at actually taking the time to call send cute expressions of “hello” out of the blue. It lets you know they’re thinking of you, and forces you to think of them, which otherwise might not happen. It’s sweet.

Zach Sherwin is another great comic and an old friend from Los Angeles. We couldn’t have done more than ten shows together and definitely didn’t meet up for lunch outside of show settings more than five times. But we loved each other way before the respective fifth and tenth instances. We had a lot in common. We’re both comedians, both white nerds who grew up loving hardcore hip hop, though my façade betrays the latter a bit better than his. We also both shared a passion for the subjective realm: Buddhist philosophy, astrology, psychedelic plant medicine and such; most of all we loved talking to each other. I felt we admired each other, and I was so flattered to be admired by someone so great, which is pretty much the definition of friendship. It’s pretty much the definition of love, and I so wish there was another one of me who could just sit around and relish in these relationships and dynamics, but that isn’t how the world works.

Thanks for stopping, Liz. I want to be friends too.