A better story doesn’t make for a happier life.

Here’s a story:

I’m 17, and I can taste freedom. It’s at the tip of my tongue, my senses are alive, but I’m just a few mere months away from fully grasping onto it. Graduation day. 

2020 is my year. My classmates’ year. We know where we’re going, geographically speaking, but we can hardly wait to see where the next chapter truly takes us. Okay, fine; not all of us know where we’re going geographically or metaphorically speaking, but we all have dreams, in one form or another.

With every passing school day comes a bit more casualty: not caring about what the teacher is writing on the board or what our assignments are or what looks good on a resume. My resume has been sent out. I have been accepted by a university and have scheduled my freshman orientation weekend. I have checked out of high school. I couldn’t be happier to get out of this place.

Amidst the increasing check-out mindset, the world is ablaze and the flames are blowing toward us. In this case, the flames are coronavirus and while we’ve all heard about it and made jokes about it in hallway hangouts, shit is getting real now. Perfect. School is at risk of getting closed down and this time it’s not because of a snow day.

The doors are closed and it’s virus day after virus day. Weeks of shutdown. What I thought would be unexpected added freedom is actually more imprisonment. I’m at home with my parents unable to escape. And this time, I’m not taking metaphorically.

I can’t go to school. I can’t partake in the added activities I did after class. I’m unable to work. I can’t hang out with friends. 

Days pass; weeks go by. We’re still at home. Doors are still locked shut. Cancellations are the new trend, and it hits prom, class day, and graduation. 

You know all of this, but here’s what you don’t know.

Every night at 2:03AM,  I jump out my window. Why 2:03? Because that’s when the school bell rang letting students out for the day. (I like symbolism, what can I say?) 2:03 is a liberating time, and we’re all looking for some perspective, some clarity. And just when we think things can’t get more foggy, more complex, more confusing… it does. I guess this is what our parents were talking about when they said we have it easy, when they took they took the shortcut explanation of, “I’ll tell you when you’re older”, when they say “These are the best days of your life.” 

I run through yards, dewy grass hugging my feet and soaking up to my ankles more and more with every step I take. Each block a new friend joins in the midnight escape. It’s a temporary escape, but still one nonetheless. You’re the star of the night if you snag some alcohol on your way out of your house. I have yet to be that star, but I’ll happily be the soul that drinks in the benefits of the steal.

We paint abandoned walls with the images, words, and ideas that fill our heads. We climb on rooftops for a clear view of the skies while we drink in bottles and whispers. We throw our hands up on the arches of bridges for the thrill of falling without having to die. But without the thrill, without the elevation gain, without the expression of what’s in our minds, can you ever truly find clarity? Do you ever gain the full perspective? 

This one night that’s far from our first but unknowingly our last for some time to come, we get caught. Caught with our hands in the air and our feet on grounds that are marked “No Trespassing”, but we went anyways, chasing for we don’t really know what. Cans, bottles, jaws drop. Some stammer, some run.

I run.

I dodge a kid from 3 blocks down who’s standing between me and the train tracks behind me. I jump the tracks, roll through a stopped and open cargo train car on the next set of tracks and race for the brush and woods ahead. Thick with weeds, untended trees, and litter collected from the breeze. I dive forward like it’s all a closed door that could stop me. I stumble into the thick of it, etching my skin with thorns and twigs. Beams of focused lights juggle around me from behind. Low yells follow my path growing meeker the further, the faster I run. 

Nothing feels better than freedom blowing through your hair, tingling the taste buds, pumping blood through your entire body. Nothing.

Another story:

I’m home, and I’m in love.

Does it ever occur to you that the better story does not necessarily result in the happier person?

“Writing Cubed” (ch. 2)

From somewhere beyond a cubicle wall, someone’s slurping the last drops out of their drink, sucking it like they’re doing it for cash, and considering we’re all paid the same here, I really can’t blame them.

“If there’s more work to be done, then so be it; I’ll make sure it gets done.” A pause lingers after our boss screams into her office phone. No, she’s not mad – that’s just her norm level. Monotone at an all-time high volume. “Whatever, it’s fine. A monkey could do their jobs, Rick, so there’s no reason we can’t have it done in the next week.”

The clicking keyboards come to a stop. The accused prostitute-in-training stops sucking. I hear a gasp nearby, followed by the chat window on my computer flashing.

Xtine: are you fcking kidding me?!
Xtine: she has to know her door is wide open
Xtine: can you see c? did she hear?
By “c”, she means our boss’ sidekick, Candace – the supervisor – and their offices share a wall.
Xtine: and they think i’m gonna fckin work now?
Xtine: wanna go on vacation
Xtine: aka drink at panera?
Now I know the slurper wasn’t her.
me: yea, let’s just talk outside of this hell

me: hey, wanna go on vacation?
collcoll: YES

Per usual, we meet downstairs by the front door. Nothing feels as good as the escape from this office’s four walls. Colleen, built like Taylor Swift, drags her feet in heels while Christine throws her hands up and on top of her head, mouthing the words, “what the fuck?!” I walk alongside them in my usual attire, which is almost always whatever was left on my bedroom floor, with my eyes on the pavement and my soul in the dirt.

“What if we just quit?”
“They’d be screwed without us.”
“I’d love to fuck them over by just leaving and not having anyone trained on the extra bullshit I do for them.”
“Does she even realize what she just said?”
“I heard Rick was fucking some chick in SEO.”

Just some of the things we word vomit on our short walk down the street to Panera Bread. Our saving grace.

Christine says she has $12 left for the week before she buys an iced tea. Colleen digs out scattered, crumped dollars from her purse which is equally a mess as her desk. We sit outside where a poor-excuse-for-a-patio is setup. In reality, it’s just a slice of the parking lot that’s paved a different color and bordered with a cheap railing that a smart car could wipe out by just looking at it wrong.

“Guys, who is hiring? We need to get out of here,” Christine says as she sloshes her tea around in the cup.
After talking about the job openings we’ve seen around the area and how they’re more competitive than Regina George and Cady Heron over Aaron Samuels, we walk back to the office and fall into our desk chairs, knowing that the only option of escaping this job is death.

Or alternatively, releasing a cage full of monkeys into the office on our floor until they destroy all of our computers, pull at our boss’ hair and throw shit against the walls, further proving that a monkey, indeed, cannot do our job.

 

 

“Writing Cubed” (ch. 1)

“Cheers! To you and the new job and wherever it takes you!” My parents and I clink our glasses, as we celebrate my latest job offer, the first “real” job since graduating from college. As if any other job I’ve held before wasn’t “real” or hard work, but that’s what everyone refers to these opportunities as: “real jobs.”

Well, in real life, real jobs suck. Michael Scott may be a prick, but at least we all get a good laugh from him, with undeniable entertainment. But that’s not real life. In real life when your boss is a real bitch, the overheard conversations and conference room meetings are less exciting.

---

 

Within a 60-90 second time frame, everyone files in, smacking bags on desks and bumping into dirty coffee mugs from days prior. This is the cubicle life of a writer, and we’re all thinking about how thankful we are to be getting paid to do just that: write.

The office of a writer… bookshelves of old literature and best-sellers, bottomless tea and coffee and the smell of the bitter blackness filling the room. The only madness is the creativity in our heads and our fingertips on keyboards, pumping out words that will soon be embraced by readers who are also curled up with a hot mug of whatever you envision in their cozy chair by a window with their own towering bookshelves of classics.

That’s the dream.

It’s not real life.

The office is laid out like a grid of square walls, some towering over the tallest guy’s head. The walls are gray – the cubicle walls, the building’s walls, the drop ceiling, and the carpeting, though I don’t think it always was gray. The walls of the room are cinderblock and speaking of cinder, the evil stepmother herself is passive-aggressively peering in on the 2-minutes of movements as we settle in, with her mousey sidekick to the door on her left. By title, they’re a team, but by judgment, the stepmother clearly always knows best.

I file in first with my cubicle neighbor, Carm,  just a couple paces behind, Starbucks tea in hand: “Good morning, peanut.” We have tea time chat over the short wall between us as our third in our row arrives, minutes late, sneaking in the back way to avoid being spotted by this cinder tower’s keeper.

“I woke up like 10 minutes ago in my car downtown, and I’m pretty sure Molly’s still got me high this morning.”

Welcome to real life, our “real” job – writing cubed.

Write, but Don’t Count the Words

Perspective on six- and ten-word stories

This idea was birthed into my life during my upper-classman semesters at college: “Write a story using only six words… It can be about anything, and you can write more than one, but it can’t be more or less than six words,” my professor had said to our 12-person class.

Now, you’re expecting me to tell you about the stories I wrote or the best one in the class, but the truth is I can’t remember a single word I wrote or any others that I heard from my peers. But I do remember thinking it was a clever idea. It forces us to write something with severe complexity into utter simplicity. Six words. That’s all you get.

More recently, I came up with one that has remained my Twitter bio for a year or more now: “Wanderlust, but afraid to be lost.” For me, it’s pure accuracy. After being comfortable with who I am for probably the first time in my life, I have this dire urge to take a jump and go somewhere new, but I’m afraid that I’ll lose myself along the journey.

However, the more time I spend on Twitter and especially Tumblr, the more I see these creative six-word stories… and ten-word, 12-word, 13-word, 20-word and 27-word… (Are you catching what I’m throwing down here?)

It seems that writers, bloggers and social media moguls around the world have wrung out the restriction and creativity of a six-word story altogether. Rather than using this concept to construct their complex idea into six words, they’ve decided to write a quote, count how many words there are and then title it as such.

There is nothing impressive about a 23-word story — you might as well just title it as you find suitable because the 23 isn’t impressive and it’s not adding to your quote about heartbreak. Now, a 10-word story? Well, it’s just a six-word with a bone tossed to the writer, so I think it still has that sense of creativity to it.

The trend of this x-amount-of-word story has really picked up and taken off with all sorts of turns and twists that, for me, dissolved its uniqueness and creativity. So for all of you writers, bloggers, or artistic expressers, leave the math out of it and just write something that feels real to you. Quit counting the words.

And that’s my 393-word perspective piece. (Just kidding…)