Two Fried Eggs and Corned Beef Hash

Nothing says the beginning of the year like the month of January.

January 1st - I get a call from the airline informing me that I have been scheduled for a red eye from Denver to Philly later that day. I am told I will fly there, have a thirteen hour layover, then deadhead back home. Looking at the scheduling app on my phone, I notice the airline has not booked a hotel room for me, so I call crew scheduling every thirty minutes and apply a bit of pressure to get them to give me somewhere to nap upon landing. I am the only Denver-based flight attendant on this trip— the other girls are Philly-based, and I’m just replacing someone who has reached the end of her legal duty hours for the day. They're all very friendly and extremely funny, and they compliment me on my announcement voice. I forgot the name of the one I hit it off with the most within ten minutes of her telling me, but I opt out of feeling bad about it. It doesn’t matter so much when you have different coworkers every time you punch in. She is very wise for a freshly twenty-two year old, and she's wearing black Uggs, which is definitely illegal in the flight crew world, but I don't care since I too have committed a couple infractions against my employer already, none of which I will disclose at this time. The flight takes off at 2am MST, and I spend most of it eating carrots and hummus and trying my damndest to read Quentin Tarantino’s novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I will not mince words: it sucks. We arrive in Philly at 7am EST, and the hotel shuttle driver and I listen to The Rickey Smiley Morning Show and laugh, even though I’m straining to hear it because the severe nasal congestion I've been trying to get rid of since Christmas has migrated over to my right ear due to the pressure buildup from landing. I change into casual clothes, eat an everything bagel and scroll Twitter by the pool, then fall asleep around 10am to the relaxing sounds of King of The Hill.

January 3rd — It's my birthday!! I'm [redacted] years old. I wake up alone in the house; the relatives I'm living with have gone to Florida for a cruise for a whole week. I slam one of those pre-workout drinks that makes your skin tingle, put in an intense half hour on the Peloton in the garage, shower, change, and drive to the train station. I've made plans to see a movie and eat an early dinner alone, then be in bed before midnight. It's not as pitiful as it sounds. Originally, I wanted to get a group of friends together and get dressed up and go to a club, where I would likely spend most of my time nursing a vodka tonic alone and rejecting all advances from men smelling of Bacardi and Axe body spray. I'd spent several weeks looking for the perfect dress to go with a pair of blue suede d’orsay pumps I bought for my previous birthday, and still had not worn. But after some time, I realized I didn't want the headache of organizing a Thing and being responsible for a bunch of drunk girls when I was supposed to be the hammered and irresponsible one. My mom and I share a trait that she calls being “sometime-y”. I'll complain about not having close friends to go out with, but the second someone expresses interest in hanging out with me, I'm annoyed that they've even asked. I'm not rude, I'm friendly and very sincere, for real! But my time is mine, and I just don't like to be bothered. I take social cues very seriously, whether I'm giving or receiving them. If I am holding a book up to my face with my headphones on, what about my presentation suggests I am open to engaging in a conversation at that moment? Whenever I find myself a boyfriend, I'll know he's the one because on top of being brilliant, gorgeous, motivated and sensitive, he'll understand that in order for us to stay together he'll have to learn to leave me alone…

Anyway, I got on the train, then a bus, then walked a block to the Mayan Theater, which was showing a Stanley Kubrick retrospective for the month. I bought my ticket for Dr. Strangelove, talked my way into some free popcorn, and entered the theater. Only about ten people were in attendance, and a guy in his mid thirties sat in the row in front of me. We talked for a while before the movie started, and the first few moments of our conversation were pretty pleasant, though I  started to get anxious that it was going on for too long. He told me he didn't have any plans for after the movie, and would I be up for getting a drink at Sputnik just two blocks up? My exact response was as follows: “hmm, I could maybe be open to that.” Not a yes, not a no. I was very attached to the idea of spending the entire day by myself, and I didn't want to get trapped into a social situation that might become a headache, especially on the one day of the year where the world revolves around me, but I was sincerely willing to consider the hypothetical possibility of potentially having up to two alcoholic beverages with this dude, depending. Alas, it only took a few seconds for me to remove this from the realm of possibility. An employee welcomed us to the theater and provided us with a few Kubrick fun facts, and this guy in front of me kept whooping and shouting and standing up to applaud in response to every single thing she said. Once the movie began, he started ripping his weed pen at four minute intervals, commenting on everything that occurred on screen, laughing at inappropriate moments and dropping all of his possessions at least seven times, then using his phone's flashlight to find them on the ground. Sometimes he would rip his pen too hard and have loud ass coughing fits that seemed a little melodramatic.

 I knew he was probably too stoned at this point to remember asking me to hang out, but I didn't want to leave myself vulnerable when the lights came up, so I devised an exit strategy. When “We’ll Meet Again” by Vera Lynn began playing in the last two minutes of the movie, I got up and rushed out of the building. I ducked into a nearby boutique and pretended to shop with my sunglasses on, lingering by the window so I could see when the guy walked past. After fifteen minutes, I left, figuring the coast was clear. I walked in the other direction, toward my chosen dinner location, trying to decide if I wanted red wine or prosecco tonight. As I opened the door, I glanced to my left and noticed the guy, standing right there, smoking a cigarette and smiling my way. 

“Hey! You ready for that drink?”

January 12th-  I picked up knitting in November so I would have something to do with my hands. The original idea was to learn the basics well enough to make myself a balaclava or two. I took a few weeks to learn two simple stitches on small needles, then started my first real project: a five-foot long scarf in golden yellow and brown, made with chunky yarn in a fisherman’s rib knit. It took me five days to make - there are some errors in it, usually brought on by being so distracted by the episode of Hoarders I was watching (or rather, re-watching, since I've already seen every episode three times) that I missed a stitch, but I think the little boo boos add character. 

I sent my family pictures of the finished product, and my older brother requested I make him a thinner scarf from whatever yarn I had remaining. Unfortunately, by the twelfth of January, I was already over my newest hobby. I could not will myself to complete the project. Maybe it’s because the scarf I'm making is too plain, or maybe it’s because now that I've completed one project, I feel like I've mastered the entire craft and don’t need to learn more. I have this same problem when it comes to learning new instruments. I picked up the flute at age eleven and took to it very quickly, and now I expect to learn everything with a similar ease. I had a brief relationship with the banjo – as in I bought one, along with a couple how-to books – then sold it back to Total Entertainment on International Speedway about two months later. It wasn’t that it was hard, exactly, it was mostly that I didn’t care enough to try. Shameful, really… patience is my most-hated virtue.

January 18th - I take umbrage with the lack of microwave accessibility at the San Francisco Hyatt Regency. There is an atrium at the center of the hotel, so the rooms are constructed around the perimeter of the oval shaped building. All microwaves are positioned in the same room as the ice and vending machines, the latter of which sells Rockstar energy drinks and Lipton iced tea, beverages that are only chosen if no other option is available. Each ice/vending room is positioned next to the elevators, which seem to be a 20-minute walk from whichever room you’ve been assigned. By the time you make the trek to the microwave and warm your meal, walk back and sit down to eat, your food has come down to room temperature again. The hotel contains 789 rentable rooms and eight microwaves, meaning if each room were occupied by at least one person, let’s say, and each of them had tofu pad thai leftovers they wanted to warm up at the exact same time, there would be a minimum of 98 guests fighting over microwave access, playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, bribing each other with soggy 5-dollar bills, slamming each other’s heads into the vending machine and throwing Styrofoam containers of noodles and chopped peanuts at anyone who dared cut in line.

January 20th - Have you noticed how every thrift store in the United States has at least four copies of Water for Elephants in their book section? What’s with that?

January 21st - Moved into my new place today. Most of my belongings are still in Florida, so I only needed to move a few boxes, two suitcases full of shoes, and a mattress in a box I ordered from Amazon. My new roommate is a middle school teacher and she likes elephants and those 300 calorie hard smoothies called Smooj, and she has every spice and kitchen appliance one could ask for but she doesn’t cook. Which is great for me, because I do cook, and there is virtually no chance of us both trying to prepare a meal at the same time. My mom is really into interior design and likes shopping for decorations for me, as long as she’s provided with a theme and a color palette. I have no intentional theme: if I like it, it’s going in the room. Right now, I have a blue floral Ralph Lauren comforter set, a lime green throw pillow, orange “tribal” sheets, little accents of leopard print everywhere, a rococo style chair, and an Eastbound and Down poster. 

January 24th - The house is within the Denver city limits and a ten-minute walk to the light rail station. My new commute requires me to take the H-line from that station into the city on days when I work at the Denver Art Museum. My first shift post-moving is Tuesday, so I walk to the stop, only there is a ton of ice on the ground and I’m prone to klutz-like behavior. The next day, I decide to drive to the stop to save myself the embarrassment of slipping on the slick sidewalk. If it’s a ten-minute walk, then it’s gonna be like a three-minute drive, right? No, not according to Apple Maps. I drive to the edge of the neighborhood where I can see the train station, but there is no entry on this side of the road. So, I plug “Dayton Station” into my GPS, and it tells me that it’s a fifteen minute drive that involves getting on the highway…

I’m very skeptical but I also can’t say for sure if that’s right or wrong since I’m new here. I pull out of the neighborhood onto a busy main road at 8am and do my best to put my trust in a path I know is going to fail me. I make one right turn, then another, then another, and I take the on ramp onto I-225, which is extremely backed up in the right two lanes, practically at a stand still. There’s a little break between two eighteen-wheelers, and I wiggle my car over to the far left lane since Apple Maps is telling me the train station is coming up on my left in a mile and half. On this side of the road, I’m able to drive at a normal speed, and I can see the R-line train traveling in the opposite direction, but I see no exit signs coming up on the left. From what I can tell, the only way I’ll be able to reach the train station from the road is if I pull all the way to the left, park the car and turn my hazards on, then stand on the roof of the car and use my negligible upper body strength to hoist myself up over the concrete wall that separates the interstate from the train tracks. I keep driving, trying to plan an alternative route even though I don’t know where I am. Apple Maps guides me past my destination, tells me I have arrived, and then turns itself off. I’m trying not to cry. I don’t know where I’m going, my GPS is a lying bitch and I’m going to be late!

January 31st - I think it’s time I go back to college. That was not in my plans at all when I first moved to Denver, but now that it’s crossed my mind, I think it’s here to stay. I’d been turned off to the idea since the fall of 2020, but I think I’m finally ready, for real this time. I’ve been trying to lean into the autodidactic anti-establishment refined hipster thing for a while now, but such a lifestyle has its limitations. Anyway, it’s hard to truly be a hipster when one of your jobs requires you to be compliant with the standards of the Federal Aviation Administration, and the other is at an art museum founded 130 years ago. 

I think it’s a tall order to expect eighteen-year-olds to make a commitment as big as college when many of them still don’t understand the basic requirements of a hygienic lifestyle. It’s not just about knowing what you want to do for the rest of your life and then choosing a path in alignment with that; post-high school college also puts pressure on young people to have a stable sense of self immediately following a time in their lives when they are the most impressionable and inexperienced they’ll ever be. Having so much potential and not knowing what to do with it can be overwhelming. I think it’s unlikely that anyone can know exactly who they are without risk of those characteristics potentially changing over time; it’s far easier to learn, through life experience, who you aren’t – in this way, the more things you learn do not fit into the constitution of your identity, the closer you get to solidifying the things that make you you. Some things about me: 

1. On the extremely rare occasions that I might go to a nightclub, I am probably not going to dance. I enjoy dancing, but in the choreographed sense. Nightclub dancing is exactly the same as high school dance dancing (except with more drugs and alcohol), and I sobbed after my freshman homecoming and never went to a school dance again. I’m just not a bump and grind kinda girl. I’d rather stand on the wall absorbing the whole scene, or talking to (re: shouting into the ear of) a stranger, doing bits, asking them impossible hypothetical Would You Rather? type questions a la Chuck Klosterman. This might suggest that I am mostly introverted and prefer to connect with others in a more personal, one-on-one way, or, that deep down, I’m a somewhat-annoying but mostly-charming redheaded man from Breckenridge, Minnesota.

2. I don’t care for minimalism in the aesthetic sense, whether it’s in someone’s style of dress or interior design. Neutral-colored wardrobes are for people who hate themselves. (Black is the exception, of course.) This might suggest that I am a more shallow person than I'd prefer to admit and I do, in fact, judge books by their covers, but who doesn’t?

3. I’d rather take a challenging job with decent pay over an easy job with the same or greater pay. Nothing makes me more restless than living a completely comfortable, predictable life. I’m pretty sure this means my greatest anxiety in life is not loneliness or the afterlife or not being fulfilled, it’s falling into a pattern of passivity and complacency.

Most everyone can learn to make a living, even if it’s not the most comfortable one. That’s what I spent my time since high school learning to do. I know I can find work and maintain it; if my parents did everything else wrong when raising my brothers and me, they were sure to instill in us a strong work ethic. My older brother used to ride his bike seven miles one way to work at the U-Haul by Bethune Cookman University. My younger brother has earned several raises and promotions at his grocery store job, the only place he’s ever worked. I don’t think I’ve ever been rejected from any job I’ve applied for. Time away from school forced me to learn what I’m capable of, in a broader sense. It showed me the things that I value in myself and in life. And what matters to me is making the most of my skills and ideas and desire to learn, and not being afraid to pursue what feels real in my heart for fear of not knowing what’ll happen on the other side.

I needed to flunk out of community college two times, change my major four times, and then develop a three-year allergy to higher education before I could decide for myself what college should mean to me, personally. Being smart stopped being a good enough reason after a while. I would ask myself, ‘why should I welcome additional stress into my life and be exhausted all the time if what I’m working toward is not of any real value to me? Why do anything because other people think I should? Why choose something that makes me miserable while trying to convince myself I’ll be happier when it’s over?’ Couples get married all the time with this mentality: they think the marriage will fix their already-broken relationship, and it literally never works that way; it only ever breeds resentment, and I don’t want to make choices that cause me to be at odds with myself. I needed a reason, and the reason isn’t about earning more money, and it’s barely about the degree itself. It’s about not wanting to look back on my life in twenty years and wish I’d done things differently. I want to live an experience-oriented life, rather than a linear one. I reserve the right to change my mind if I want or need to. Not everything is about a fixed end game. I don’t need to solve the algorithm of my entire life and legacy today. A legacy is an amalgam of all the little choices and experiences that add up to the next thing, anyway. The knowledge that one plus two equals three, for now, is good enough for me.