Writer's Block: The Gun Has No Trigger

I haven’t been writing lately. Well, that’s a lie. I write all day at work, five days a week. But that doesn’t really seem to count.

This blog hasn’t been updated in weeks. The last entry in my journal was in March. There’s just…nothing.

So I write all day at work. Then I come home, and my laptop sits, closed, on the chair, on the table, on the cat-hair covered rug. It might as well be locked in a closet (which apparently, I did to my poor little kitty all day yesterday). I read The Hunger Games series. I do yoga. I watch New Girl and Mad Men. I keep having the same conversation, over and over. I look at my laptop. I feel my journal in my bag, smacking against my thigh as I walk to the train.

But still: nothing. No writing.

I went to Indiana last weekend to visit my family. By Sunday afternoon, my dread at driving back to Chicago, alone, was overwhelming. I felt it in my stomach. I didn’t want to go. It’s not that I was dreading coming back to the city. I shouldn't have been dreading the drive; after all, it’s not like I haven’t taken the trip alone, countless times.

I just didn’t want to do it.

About halfway back to Chicago, right when I was passing the windmills that seem to go on for infinity, the little red lights blinking, the blades spinning rhythmically, I figured it out: I didn’t want to be alone with my own thoughts.

No wonder I can’t write.

You guys, I don't mean to get all emo on you and everything, but it makes me feel like this:




Maybe that's not it, exactly, but I had to get that song on here, somehow. And it's something. (In more uplifting news, I'll be seeing The Dirty Projectors at Pitchfork this year!)

I'm off to my hot yoga class now, where I'll try to focus, find my center, and most importantly, not fall down. In the meantime, I'll just try to keep in mind:

You'd see a million colors if you really looked.

Monday Mix Tapes: The Ambiguity of It All (Maybe, Perhaps?)

Some songs I've been listening to, and loving. Maybe they have a common theme (in my mind)? Maybe?

In this first video, Sharon Van Etten talks about her song, "It's Not Like," saying it's about "being happy, and being sad; cliché human emotions that everybody feels about love; frustration and excitement, the ambiguity of it all" and I really love it. I listened to all of her albums at work today for the first time before I listened to her new album that's streaming on NPR. Her new album is called "Tramp," and I love that, too. The title and the content.

Without further ado, here she is talking about, and singing, "It's Not Like":



I also recently spent a day listening to a lot of Leonard Cohen after listening to his newest album, "Old Ideas," on (surprise!) NPR. It's fantastic, and I listened to it three times in a row.

But you might know this track a little better. I just love every damn lyric in this song, from "I used to think I was some kind of gypsy boy" to "You held on to me like I was a crucifix" to "I'm cold as a new razor blade/you left when I told you I was curious/I never said that I was brave" ... but that's kind of just Leonard Cohen for you, isn't it? Okay, I'll shut up now.

Just listen:



When I was home a couple weeks ago, I snagged a copy of my dad's 92.3 WTTS Collector's Edition, which happened to include a live recording of Ray LaMontagne singing "For the Summer" at The Lawn at White River State Park in Indianapolis—the same performance I saw with my family this summer. When I listen to it, I remember exactly how I felt that night at the show. And how I felt moving back home for the summer (well, a little longer than just the summer) as an adult two years ago.

Here's Ray singing "For the Summer":



"The ambiguity of it all," right? Maybe it's not always good, but it doesn't have to be bad, either, I don't think. After all, like Ray sings, 

Through the years I have learned / Some things worth the tellin' / And you'd be right in guessin'/ that each and every lesson they were hard won

Now, so long. "It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again."

The Comfort of Cats

I think one of the reasons I gladly accept being a cat lady is because of the ridiculous joy my cats bring to my life. I know, I know, you're thinking: What a weirdo! You're blogging about your cats?

Damn right I am. Here's why, and why I wanna talk about Miss Layla (pictured above) in particular. She's one of my two cats. (Only two. I swear.)

Back in the day, six years ago, when I'd graduated from college and was about to start real adulthood, I decided the thing to do, obviously, was to get a cat.

I would no longer have roommates. I would be a grown up. I had visions of blissful Sunday afternoons spent curled up in my old hand-me-down chair I'd had since high school, reading a book, drinking tea, with a beautiful long-haired feline perched on my lap, purring.

Not long after I expressed this desire to my Aunt Linda, who had so many barn cats running around the yard that they were impossible to count, she and my cousin Claire told me they'd found my cat. I was in Italy at an internet cafe when I got the picture from Claire of my new kitty. Her name was Mufasa. I beamed. She was beautiful! Perfect!

When I returned home a month later, I eagerly went to the farmhouse to collect Mufasa. But, surprise! Linda had also brought in another kitten, a particularly sick, teeny one, and nursed her back to health. Knowing me, she was rightly convinced that I would gladly take two cats instead of one, especially because this one and Mufasa had bonded. When I first saw the cats, they were curled up, playing on the floor together.

It never crossed my mind to say no. I promptly named her Layla, and took her and Mufasa home. Well, actually, Linda brought them to my Bloomington apartment a short time later, but...details, details. Whatever. The point is, I now had two cats.

I realize that I'm talking about cats, here, so I'll try not to get too weird. Now, I don't play favorites with my children. I love them both. But Layla is this crazy, unique little being. She high fives. She wags her tail like a dog. She has scar tissue on both of her eyes, and she sneezes constantly.

Over the years, Layla's had her share of health problems, the worst being the first year I had her, when I had to give her a course of five different antibiotics. This meant that, twice a day, I had to take my finger and push a pill down her throat. Five times. I became adept at this, and thought with pride that maybe I did have some of my Grandma Hamm's chops. For instance, when I'd go to the barn to collect eggs with Grandma Hamm, she'd just shove her hand under a nesting hen without flinching, and place the eggs in her bucket. Grandma would scoff at my mother's obvious terror of the geese and chickens, and if I showed the least bit of fear while we were collecting eggs, she'd make me follow suit, to my terror. I know that's really not a big deal to all you farm folks, but ask my oldest brother sometime about how this same woman also picked up a possum by the tail. She was a hard ass.

"What are you scared of?" Grandma Hamm would say, as I watched her with big eyes, or flinched as all the animals came running as we threw out the corn.

I mention this, because it's something I say lately to Layla, who has become a bit of a scaredy cat. Yes: 1) I talk to Layla; 2) I just called her a scaredy cat.

One minute, she'll be sitting on my lap, purring. The next, her nails will clamp onto my thigh, and then she'll bolt. I don't know what's scaring her. I try to comfort her as best I can. Because, after all, that's what she does for me.

I'd only had the cats for a few weeks when, one day, I came back to my apartment after a bad day at work, flopped on my stomach on the bed, and started to cry. No more than a minute later, I felt Layla pressing her little paws against my back, one at a time. (I knew it was Layla because Mufasa was perched near my head, staring at me in her cat way.) Layla laid down and started rubbing her little cat face against the back of my neck, purring loudly. I felt better instantly.

I know it's scoffed at, this idea of cat ladies and their blogs, but I'll succumb to the stereotype for today. Because even when Layla claws the shit out of me when she gets scared by something invisible to me, I know that she'll also high five me later, wag her tail, and tilt her head up at me as she sits on my lap, purring and content.

Not long ago, I was really anxious about Layla's odd behavior. But then, right when I needed her the most, she was there. I wrote about it in my journal the next day:

Last night she slept with me, curled up in the crook of my arm like old times.


I held on to her, tight. And laid my face against her fur, feeling the consistent purr, and the comfort of each little cat breath she took.

Look, it's really not even just about the cats. It's about comfort. Recently, I wondered what my friends without pets do for tiny comforts such as these. I wonder how lonely certain nights in my apartment in Bloomington, or Chicago, might have been, had I not had these two furry things to care for and love.

What gives you comfort?

A Morning Walk

I turned my heel walking to work this morning. I'm wearing these new boots, and they don't even have a high heel—just a slight one. But they're slightly loose around the ankle, and as I was walking too fast, my heel turned, and I lost my balance.

I didn't fall; I wasn't hurt; no one saw. Still, my face flushed with embarrassment and my heart sank a little bit. It's so ridiculous. It wasn't a big deal at all.

But to me, it just felt like another small example of how I fail at all these simple things so many other adults seem to intuitively grasp. You know, like walking. Why am I so hard on myself? I regained my balance, took a deep, slightly shaky breath, and grabbed the railing as I walked up the stairs.

The season is changing, and the air has that crisp, cool feel once again. It's my favorite time of year, but it also makes me feel homesick as well. Not even homesick, exactly, but more like longing for something lost, a place that no longer really exists.

This morning, before I turned my heel, and before I let my confidence shatter over something so small and so silly, I sat on the train next to this woman reading The New York Times. She held the paper, and even her head, exactly the way my mother did when she read the paper at the kitchen table. I had my New Yorker out to read, but I just let it sit on my lap, strangely contented by this complete stranger who looked nothing like my mother, but read the paper in the exact same way.

I felt a little sad as I got off at Clark and Lake and started walking to the office. There's a small part of me that keeps telling myself, "Someday, you won't miss her so much," but there's another part that holds on to the feeling, tight, because it's all I have of her now. I clutched my phone in my hands and wished away the desperate part of me that so badly wanted to call my mother, and that's when, lost in my thoughts, I turned my heel and almost fell down.

I know I won't stop missing her. It's constant, and expected, like the inevitable turn of the season. Today, I guess, it's just like that crisp, cool feel of the beginnings of fall—you feel a chill that you haven't in some time, but it's not entirely unpleasant. And just as I start to feel like I'm a little too cold, I turn the corner, the sun hits my face, and I'm warm again.

No One Can Get to You Here

Hey Rainbow Groupies! It's a beautiful, sunny Sunday in Chi city, and seeing as how it's Labor Day weekend, and Obama's talking to us about jobs (or the lack thereof), I thought it was a good time to take another blast from the past.

I wrote this essay a little more than a year ago, right after moving back home to my dad's house. Nothing will kill a lady's self-esteem (and bank account) like not being able to find a job, and at the time when I wrote this, I was feeling pretty damn defeated. But at the same time, I was still clutching the last strings of hope. Barely, just barely. I also laid awake at night in my childhood bedroom, heart racing, worrying that I'd still be there when I was 40.

Maybe I'm still struggling to really be a "grownup," but I made it back to Chicago, and drove a new car here. I felt like total, complete shit when I got rejected from that job (and countless others). But the thing is, if I had gotten that job, I'd never have made it back to Chicago. Who knows what might have happened?

It's tough out there. But if I can do it, YOU can do it. uggh, that was cheesy, but whatever. I meant it from the bottom of my little heart.

So! Read this essay! (After the jump.)

The Art of Timing

The other day, for what might have been the first time in my life, I ran out of shampoo and conditioner at the exact same time. After I used the last of my shampoo, I grabbed the bottle of conditioner, expecting that, like usual, I would still have at least a fourth of the bottle left.

I held out my hand and squeezed the bottle. As the dollop of conditioner shot onto my palm, it made the kind of squirting noise that only happens when you’re squeezing something that’s almost empty—you know, that squirt! that tends to make people uncomfortable for some reason when you’re out to eat and the ketchup bottle does it. (I mean, is it really necessary to always make fart jokes when this happens? It makes me feel like I’m permanently in a high school cafeteria.)

I couldn’t believe it. I had used the last of my shampoo and conditioner at the exact same time. Do other people run out of these things at the same time, I wonder? Am I some kind of freak that this is an event? For me, it’s even more unlikely than it was to find a parking spot directly in front of my old apartment building in Chicago. Think about it: does anyone actually use the same amount of shampoo and conditioner each shower? I, for one, don’t keep measuring spoons in my shower. Because that would be weird.

Plus, sometimes maybe I don’t feel like conditioning. Or shampooing. Or maybe I want to use my deep conditioner that day. I don’t know. It just never happens. I stood in my shower and felt like something monumental had just occurred in my life.

After my shower, as I threw my empty Pantene bottles in the recycling bin, I felt so damn pleased with myself I wanted to celebrate. I had accomplished something. For once, I wouldn’t end up with two half-empty bottles of the same conditioner in my shower! When I normally run out of only shampoo, I still buy a bottle of shampoo and conditioner. I can’t stand to buy only the shampoo. They are a pair. A couple. Shampoo plus conditioner. You can’t just buy shampoo! It would be wrong. Who does that?

It’s amazing how rare it is to time anything perfectly in life. Even when it’s something ridiculous, like using the last of your shampoo and conditioner at the same time. I tend to find that my timing in life never makes any sense. Like right now, for example. I’m 26, and I recently moved back in with my dad. Most of my friends from college moved back in with their parents right after graduation. Now, they’re out on their own, making money and being grownups. I, on the other hand, landed a job right after college and didn’t have to do that. My timing was great right then, I had thought. I remember thinking how lucky I was that I didn’t have to move back home. I never imagined that only two years after landing the job I had agonized over for months, I would quit, move to Chicago and, slowly but surely, run completely out of money as I waited tables, interned, and hoped and waited for the full-time job that never came.

The timing of my move to Chicago was ridiculous. It was July 2008, and there really weren’t any jobs to be had. So why, why, would any reasonable adult in her right mind quit a good job with fantastic benefits? WHY? Why not at least wait until she found a job in said city before quitting the good job?

My Mother's Old Taurus

I'm driving my mother's old car every day
to this job that makes me feel 100 years old
and every day I drive past these

same cornfields back to the

same house where I used to live

when everything was different

and I was different

Back when my mom was the one
pulling in the drive in this stupid old blue Taurus
that wasn't old or stupid then,
but that was back then
in a different life

and now I'm not quite sure
how to live in this place
where most things are changed
but some stay just the same.

So I drove to Chicago in my mother's old Taurus
and I didn't feel like myself again
until I was driving toward those giant buildings.

Finally, there they were.

They were there before,
even when my mom was still the one
driving that blue Taurus to work every day,
even in that life I used to have.

They're still there now
even when I'm back here
driving past these same cornfields
to the same job
back to the same house
in my mother's old Taurus.

She is no longer here.

I've got to get a new car.

Homesick at Home

Today was the first time since I've been living back home that I actually started questioning the limits of my sanity.

Being home alone while my roommates, aka my dad and Deb, are at work, makes me feel useless and restless. AKA, like I'm going off my fucking rocker. I guess I shouldn't feel that way, since I'm midway through server training at a new place in Indianapolis, thanks to a friend of mine hooking me up with a job. (I'm at least qualified to wait tables at this point, wouldn't you agree?)

But, still. From the moment I woke up today I was missing Chicago (or more accurately, my life and the people there) like crazy. I tried to cheer myself up by watching the Modern Family season finale. That helped, for the 21 minutes of the show. I had no idea what to do next. So I sat on the couch and stared at Mufasa for a few minutes. That did not help.

I paced around the house for a couple minutes, trying to decide what to do with myself. I made my bed. I washed some towels. I wrote some e-mails. I tried to think of something funny to tweet. (Nothing came to me, clearly.) I did a workout video (you know how I love those! but alas, it was not Jane Fonda).

After the 45 minutes of exercise, considering my legs were starting to twitch and I had actually worked up a sweat, I felt like I had accomplished something. I took a shower, feeling considerably better. But the Chicago-sickness waves kept creeping back. It felt just like homesickness, except I was already as home as I could possibly be.

I had to do something. You might be thinking, "Um, Alison? You could have been applying for jobs this whole time you were moping around, feeling sorry for yourself. Maybe this is why you haven't found a good job in the first place!"

That's what I was thinking to myself, anyway. So, on a whim, I decided to see if I met the qualifications to teach English at a community college. Turns out, I might. Who knew?

I applied for the job. We'll see if maybe, just maybe, this time something might come out of it. At the very least, I can now say I've written a teaching philosophy. 

And don't worry, Rainbow groupies. I promise I'll cheer up soon.

If not, I guess I'm just going to get in really great shape.

A walk with my dad.

This weekend I took a walk with my dad. Normally, we take our walks at the cemetery where my mother is buried. That might sound a little weird, but it’s actually a great place to walk. It’s peaceful, somehow.

Every time we go to the cemetery for a walk, we have an unspoken ritual. Dad parks the car in the same spot, by the same tree. We walk over to the grave, sometimes with flowers from the yard to put next to it, more often, not. We stand there for a minute. Nothing is said. I look over at him. Then he says, “Ready?”

And we walk.

This past weekend, we didn’t walk in the cemetery—there’s a new trail along the old railroad lines that he wanted to show me, so we took our walk there—but it still felt like our old ritual.

When we take our walks, sometimes, it’s just a walk. But sometimes I get out all the things I want or need to tell my dad, but can’t seem to otherwise.

Home Sweet Home

Okay, I know August was not a good blogging month for me. But now it's officially September, summer is officially over, and I took a sorely needed long weekend in Indiana which has given me the inspiration to get off my uninspired ass and blog again. 

However, you're going to have to wait just a little bit longer for a "real" post, as I am still at Poppa Hamm's house. He's making omelets. I'm in heaven. 

While at home, I schooled my cousin Ian on blog etiquette, and I'm happy to see that for once, he actually listened to me and is now following my blog. The visit home has provided me with so much blog material that I'm overwhelmed and will have to spend the drive up 65 plotting which parts to share on the blogosphere.

Do I write about Ian's coyote and black panther conversation? The number of Asians at Rib Fest? The number of white teenagers chain smoking Marlboros at Rib Fest? Scolding Butler undergrads at the Margot & the Nuclear So and So's show? The cat training school my Uncle Roy has encouraged me to start? My dad calling Debbie while in the same house? 

Simply too much material. I'm going to eat my omelet. 

Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda: A Friday Tribute to Appreciating the Now

Today is one of those days where I am giving myself a big mental ass-kicking for quitting my job at IU. A serious ass-kicking. What I wouldn’t do to be Alison Hamm, Content Specialist, right now. Because if I was, I’d be managing an intern—a decently paid intern, at that—instead of actually being the lowly, unpaid intern with no work to do. The sun is shining! It’s Friday! If I’m going to be sitting in an office, I’d love to be actually working on something. BAH. But alas, this is not the case. I have officially been dicking around on the Internet for three and a half solid hours. I don’t even have a Starbucks buddy up here (Work Wife Jen, I need you!).

Okay, so boo hoo me. I’m an intern again, waaah waah waah. I miss being a professional, full-time employee. Yada yada yada.

I guess I just keep waiting for that “ah ha” moment up here in Chicago, when suddenly it all makes sense and I realize that I made the right decision to come up here. You know, when I get hired for that perfect job, and everything turns into rainbows and unicorns.

But then again, maybe we don’t all have those moments—maybe it’s not the case of it being wrong or right. Maybe it just is.

I think that’s the problem when you build something up in your head—Chicago was always part of this fantasy life I had for myself, so when I actually made it a reality, my expectations for what my life was going to be like up here were a little ridiculous. I think I envisioned living in a loft downtown and being a famous columnist in six months. (I also think I’ve been watching too much Sex and the City.)

From the time I was 17, before I’d even been to Chicago, I was telling my mom that I wanted to move there after college. Then, right before I started at IU, I came to visit. That sealed the deal for me. I was definitely going to live in Chicago one day. I knew it. I talked about it all through college with my roommates.

Then, graduation day came, and the reality that it was time to become an adult hit. I was lucky enough to land a great job working for Indiana University’s Office of Creative Services, and so my plans changed. Looked like I was staying in Bloomington. But I loved Bloomington, and I loved being close to my family. It made sense.

Yet still I was unhappy. My friends had all moved on, and I was still in Bloomington. I was tired of Bloomington! I was supposed to be in Chicago! I was restless. I had to get out. I was missing out on something bigger. Every time I’d go up to Chicago for a weekend to visit friends, I’d think, this is where I’m supposed to be.

And because—aside from a semester in London—I’d never lived more than two hours away from home, I took for granted how great that is. And also because I’d gotten hired for every job I’d ever applied to, I arrogantly thought, no big deal if I quit my job. I’ll find a better one in Chicago.

So here I am. Living in Chicago isn’t exactly what I thought it would be—I got a well-deserved kick in the ass when I realized there are about a million other ambitious young writers and editors out there—but it’s still exciting. I can’t regret leaving Bloomington, because then I’d always regret not following my dream to live in this city.

But some Friday evenings, I’d give anything to be able to hop in my little Neon and make the hour and 40 minute drive from Bloomington to Knightstown. I’d gotten so used to that drive on 37 over the last six years that I would make the trip basically on auto-pilot. The best part of that trip was turning on to Mill Road and pulling in the driveway of my childhood home, where my dad would always meet me out on the back porch and grab my bag for me. After I’d make my immediate bathroom run—an hour and a half is too short of a drive to make a pit stop, and too long for me not to guzzle an entire bottle of water—I’d meet my dad in the kitchen, and he’d say, “Ready for a beer?”

There’s something about sitting in my dad’s kitchen, drinking a Heineken with him and telling him what went on that week, that always made me happy I was in Bloomington. It was the best way to spend a Friday night, geeky as that might seem. And even better if some of the other family came by to eat dinner with us. It was home.

Of course, although I definitely appreciated those moments at the time, I appreciate and miss them even more now. (Kind of like appreciating having health insurance and a salary.) But I’ve realized something: I can either wallow in all the things I miss from home, or I can appreciate all the great things about being in this city. Like my friends. Like Kuma’s Corner. Like my adventures on the blue line. Myopic Books. Hipsters galore. The list goes on. And I might bitch about waiting tables, but without that experience I wouldn’t have met some really great people. I’ve met some pretty awful ones, too, but that’s just material for my book.

And I’ll get that great job eventually. Maybe there won’t be any rainbows or unicorns, but I’ll sure as hell be more appreciative this time around.

Besides, I can still hop in my little Neon and drive to Knightstown to have a beer with my pops. The drive is just a little longer now.