Internship

I had a meeting with my internship supervisor today, in which he gave me a whole host of new assignments. Here's a brief history of the jobs I have had so far in my life:

In my senior year of high school, I got my first job working as a volunteer at the local public library. I knew I wanted to volunteer, and I thought the library might be a good place to do it considering my voracious love of books. I learned how to organize, shelve, and do inventory, but I think the only other thing I learned there was that I didn't want to be a librarian. It really was deadly dull.

In college, I edited someone's book for publication for them. The book was an autobiography covering the author's experiences with mental illness. It was an entirely virtual job -- we met on a forum and lived across the country from each other; we communicated by email -- but at the end of the job he sent me the money and a letter of recommendation.

During my year off from college, I worked for my father. He works on shotguns for a living. It was my job to make and count parts, and to organize his files. This wasn't terribly fascinating either, but it was work and it made me feel accomplished. (I don't like feeling lazy -- it's anathema to me.)

And now I have my first (non paid) summer internship.

My college major is Creative Writing and my minor is Marketing. (I knew I wanted to write for a living, but I also knew I had to make that marketable, so I got a business minor with the goal of being able to be a speech writer, publishing agent, advertiser, etc.) With that in mind, I found this job:

I'm working for an environmental company which asks restaurants and bars to use reusable cups in place of paper or plastic ones. I'm what's called a "business writer" -- I write inspirational quotes, advertisements, infographics, blog posts, research papers. Anything they need me to write, basically.

The internship is entirely virtual, like my editing job was. I meet with my supervisor once a week via Skype, and email him the document I'm working on, wherever I've gotten on it, each week.

It seems to be going well. My supervisor has admitted that I'm great at keeping him updated and have gone above and beyond his expectations for me. He's sent my work to other people within the company, mentioned something about putting some of my work up on the company's website once it's up and running, and seems to like what I put out.

Some people might be bothered by his constant criticism and consider him overly strict. He's very perfectionistic and sends documents back countless times for revisions, asking us to change anything and everything. But I've found that as long as you're creative and you keep trying, he generally doesn't get too much on your case about it. Criticisms and arguments -- as long as they're polite -- don't really bother me.

The thing that threw me more, honestly, was how hands-off he is. What he'll do is let you come up with the assignment yourself, or -- if he does have to give you an assignment -- he'll tell you almost nothing about his expectations for it. He lets you take a stab at it yourself, and then mercilessly criticizes your fledgling work until it's up to standard. I guess it's more of a learning experience that way -- he's said he doesn't want his interns to "just get him coffee" -- but that kind of tripped me up at first, because I'm so used to being ordered what to do in school.

Another thing I wasn't expecting is how friendly and personal he gets. He wants to hear all about how my life and summer are going, and tells me freely about things like his in-laws showing up for a visit, or the chores he has to do around his house. Mom says that's normal, for a coworker or employer to take an interest in your personal life, but I've never had that experience before. My father already knew me, my editing client only knew me through email and wasn't a superior, and my supervisor at the library was very reserved and distant.

So we've actually become friends of a sort -- as much as an older man and a young woman living on opposite sides of the country can be friends, anyway -- and that's a nice surprise.

So far, so good. I enjoy writing, so the internship isn't a dreadful chore like the library job was.

Dorm Living

I am here to complain about dorm living. Oddly enough, I'm not going to be complaining about roommate problems at all. I've already covered those, as can be seen in this post:

https://grimrose-eilwynn.dreamwidth.org/470.html

But wait, there's more!

I lived for a year in the dorms at my current college. It was pretty awful.

Let's start with the cafeteria. The minute you walked in, an awful smell wafted through your nostrils, coming from the dirty dishes piled up near the door. The food ranged from okay to subpar to downright dreadful. A lot of it was cold, or soggy, or lumpy, or had almost no flavor whatsoever. Some of it actually made me gag.

As a classmate of mine once put it, "Well, the food there will keep you alive."

Then there were all the things that didn't work. The shower head didn't wash all the soap off of you, and the spray came down so hard it irritated your eyes. The bathroom door slide didn't work. Neither did the light switch. I got head lice while staying there.

Roommates could be sprung on you with little notice. Once, I got an email at five o'clock on a Friday afternoon. "You will be getting a new roommate," it said. Everyone in the housing office had by that point already gone home for the afternoon, so there was no one I could talk to. At nine o'clock at night on that same Friday, a new roommate showed up to move in with me.

I signed up for dorm living for the next year, before deciding partway through the year that I was going to look for an apartment instead. I told housing, four months ahead of time, that I'd changed my mind and would not be moving in next year. They still kept ninety dollars worth of the deposit money.

So I get to the end of the year, and find out I have a final on Friday of finals week. I then find out the dorm requires me to be moved out by noon on Saturday. I ask if I can get a one day time extension -- they refuse.

So in less than twenty-four hours, I have to:

- Pack up all my things

- Get some of it to a storage warehouse

- Get the rest into a suitcase

- Catch a bus to the airport

- Take a plane back home

I get back home and find out I forgot to return my mail key. Which, by the way, my RA never reminded me about. I offer to give the key back to the school; they refuse and fine me thirty-five more dollars.

I am just so fucking done with dorm living. My parents and I sent in a formal letter of complaint and I am very, very ready to have my own apartment next year. It'll be my first time living completely on my own -- I'm nervous, but excited!

Beatle with Mental Illness

I read this article and it was very thought provoking for me:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jun/25/musicians-touring-psychological-dangers-willis-earl-beal-kate-nash?CMP=share_btn_fb

It made me think of John Lennon.

I have studied John's life extensively, and I am of the very strong belief that he was bipolar. Something about certain things concerning him just fundamentally connects with me. There's his history of violence, his drug and alcohol abuse, his rampant sex addiction, his extremely well documented moodiness, his frequent suicidal periods, and what he said in an interview once, that there are "just some days when he wants to throw himself off a building." (He claimed the mood swings got better as he got older -- in the last years of his life, he'd stopped taking drugs. Also, surprise surprise! He's a jumper, like me.)

And now, after reading that article above, I want you to consider a couple of things:

1. If it's that hard being an ordinary musician, what would it have been like being a Beatle? With the screaming fans, the utter impossibility of ever going outside, and the constant demands for yet another album or tour?

2. And if it's that hard being a Beatle, what would it have been like being a Beatle with mental illness?

Because being bipolar is hard. You can't stand crowds. You can't take loud noise. You need a certain amount of exercise per day. You can't take drugs or alcohol unless you want to cycle into an episode. You need plenty of sleep. And even then, you're moody and prone to periods of extreme panic.

Can you imagine being a Beatle and being bipolar?

There's one moment I remember keenly. I was watching video footage of John Lennon's apology after the Bigger Than Jesus scandal. A little background:

John, a great reader, gives an interview in which he mentions Nietzsche's theory of the decentralization of Christianity in the twentieth century. John predicts that at the rate we're going, Christianity will soon disappear. Some asshole disc jockey from Alabama takes one part of one sentence from a whole paragraph, reads it so that it will sound like John thinks he's better than Jesus, and then bans Beatles music from his station. No one bothers to verify with the original source, of course -- it makes for a better media story if John's just an asshole.

So John's sitting there, crowded on a couch that's too small for all the Beatles to sit on together, with a clamor of hundreds of voices shouting accusations at him and wall to wall cameras flashing really bright lights. And I remember watching that footage, and feeling so intensely what John felt. The isolation, the pain, the fear (people were setting things on fire and threatening to shoot him), and the anger.

Later, a photographer tells the story of barging into the bathroom to find John hiding inside. John is crying. "Why couldn't I have just kept me big mouth shut?" he says.

And I think that was the first time John thought he really couldn't do this anymore.

Because being a Beatle basically ruined his life. It totaled his relationship with his first wife and oldest son. He was never home, and even when he was he was either busy or exhausted He got addicted to drugs and alcohol to try to deal with the pain. He went through periods of extreme depression and extraordinary self hatred. (His pictures from the mid sixties are hard for me to even look at, the self hatred and despair is so clear to me.)

They asked for two albums a year. Two albums a year. On top of all the touring. And the noise. And the screaming. And the never seeing his family.

And then John fell in love with Yoko Ono. He tried to include her in his world at first, and when that didn't work he did the right thing for the first time in a decade. He dropped the band and kept the family. It was an incredibly courageous thing to do, frankly.

I think by the end of the Beatles, John just couldn't do it anymore.

And when I think of it like that, all his anger makes sense to me. I can totally understand John thinking, by the end, "Fuck them! I gave ten years of my life to that fucking band! Isn't that enough?"

Isn't that enough?