Yesterday was a bad day.
The last few weeks have been full of change, and much of it has been excellent change. I picked up a freelance writing gig. I quit my job, which I’ve hated for a year and a half, and I did it a few months ahead of schedule because I picked up that freelance writing gig. I drank up the courage to debut a new ren faire act. I planned two albums and launched a Kickstarter with my singing partner of six years. And then I went on a short, cheap trip to Charleston, a city I like a lot, with mr. biscuit, who I also like a lot, and between a five hour drive and two hours struggling to get around an unfamiliar city all the anxiety that I had been struggling with bubbled over like poison, and after a day spent picking fights, I started crying on the streets of Charleston because we had accidentally walked two blocks in the wrong direction on a beautiful evening in a charming, walkable city.
My new writing gig has me doing a lot of bullet-point blogs, so let’s break all this down in a style I’m becoming used to.
- I quit my job. This is an objectively positive thing. As soon as I made the decision, I felt a huge weight lift from my shoulders. Giving my notice brought a similar feeling of relief. I’ve been so happy since.
- As I said, I’ve hated this job for a year and a half of the two years I’ve been working there, and been trying to find a new job for almost as long. I had finally given up on the job search, because there are only so many Almosts that I could bring myself to tolerate, but had contemplated self-harm to get out of work. More than once.
- mr. biscuit got a big promotion at work, which came with a substantial raise that was not quite enough to replace my lost income were I to quit, but we had decided that I would leave my job at the end of July anyway and we would make it work.
- When a friend turned me on to a freelance writing gig at her company, which I could do from home without having to talk to customers or put on shoes, we decided to push that date up.
- My last day at my full time job is June 1st, and I’m thrilled. Between graduation and summer classes starting, I have been yelled at half a dozen times over the last three weeks and cried at work four times. I’m done. I’m so done. This place has poisoned my mind for long enough. It is time to cast it into the fire.
- I’m also crushingly nervous. Quitting means a pretty substantial decrease in our income. That really only means that we will have to limit our spending, which a) I am bad at and b) I do not enjoy, but we’re in no danger of starving on the street or not having shoes. We haven’t had time to sit down and hash out what the new budget will look like, though, which is increasing my sense of impending doom. Objectively I know that we will be fine. mr. biscuit is making more than he ever has before, and the less miserable I am the less incentive I have to try and spend my way out of misery.
- But still.
- I launched a Kickstarter. I’ve been singing with a friend for six+ years under the name The Voices of Virtue, and for a majority of that time we’ve been saying “man, we need to record an album.” About a month ago she sent me an email saying essentially “Let’s do this shit.” And we are doing it.
- This led to me finally getting my shit together and launching a new renaissance festival act: SERFs, Inc., starring Lilly Bragg, Village Protest Singer. I’ve been working on a peasant revolution since my first year as a faire performer, way back in 2004, and I finally get to start using jokes and songs I’ve been hanging onto for so long. It’s amazing. It’s exhilarating. I feel very strongly about protest music, songs of revolution and social justice and the like, and I’m learning to play the guitar, and I just love it all. It feels so important and so useful, and my God these songs are so good.
- My partner’s character is named Prudence and at the time mine was named Esperanza, and we tend to bawdy songs, so our group name made a lot more sense at the time than it does now that I’ve officially begun performing under the name Lilly, but we still do a lot of bawdy stuff, so it works out. Just not as well.
- Our Kickstarter is going really well. I don’t know how I imagined it would go so I can’t tell you it’s exceeding my expectations, but I do know that on day six of 18, we are almost 40% funded.
- The idea that people want to hear music that I’m making is absolutely thrilling.
- The idea that people want to hear music that I’m making is also absolutely terrifying. I’ve been making music my whole damn life and I’m still terrified. Every single time. The amount of nerves varies, but I have never not been nervous before a performance.
- Not once.
- I went to Charleston. mr. scone plays with a volunteer street band (and has a sedately great time doing it, as is his nature), and every year they paly a festival in Charleston. This is the first year he’s been free to go, and rather than hang out at home alone all weekend, I’ve tagged along. It’s heavily subsidized by the band, Charleston is beautiful, and the weather this weekend is pretty perfect (for me, anyway; I like it warm and sunny).
- It’s a longer drive than I anticipated. I don’t like long car trips to begin with, but in the last year or so I’ve become prone to carsickness, which was never really a problem before. That means I can’t read in the car without danger of yakking on the side of the road anymore, and mr. biscuit isn’t a very chatty person, and though he tries, he was tired and hungry and also driving, so for a lot of the drive I was at the mercy of my brain, which has been behaving Very Badly lately.
- We got here in decent time, but since this is a budget trip we are staying in College of Charleston dorms. They’re fine. They’re dorms. They’re…whatever, they’re fine. Getting to them was a giant pain in the ass. Check in was at one building, parking at another, the rooms at a third; there are streets closed everywhere; we have only been here once like six years ago; my phone was dead; mr. biscuit refuses to use nav apps on his phone; we left home about 1:30, got to Charleston about 7:30, finally finished unpacking and parking and got back to our lodging at 10:30.
- I’m comfortable with who I am. I like my aesthetic. Do I wish things were different about my body/face? Sure. Do I need a haircut? Yes. But in general I’m aware I’m pretty great, even when my brain hates me. Charleston is a beautiful city. It’s also a very old, very Southern city. It’s a holiday weekend in the summer, and two major cultural festivals are going on downtown. There are wealthy, beautifully put-together women everywhere. They are wearing breezy coastal tops, soft pretty makeup. Their hair is perfect. They all look lovely, in that very particular way that wealthy white Southern women look in the summer. They are small and dainty almost to a woman. The streets last night were overrun with beautiful rich white Southern young women and drunk rich white Southern frat boys. By the time we got back to the room last night I felt like a giant hulking monster. A walking tree with none of the grace or majesty of trees. A bipedal cow crossed with a sheepdog, whose makeup is always going to be shitty, whose jawline will never be perfectly sculpted, whose jeans will always be out of style.
So last night I cried on the streets of a beautiful coastal city, and then rather than go to the (outstanding) free concert across the street, or even to dinner, I buried myself in the blankets of a college dorm bed, texted a friend about my self-pity, and fell asleep with my contacts on.
I sent mr. biscuit out to hang out with his friends in the band. He insisted on staying and cuddling me until I started to get sleepy, and he brought me back some dinner and made sure I took my contacts out when he returned, even though I was too deeply asleep to eat or even remember any of that, and even though he had worked a half day while I went to breakfast with one of my besties, had driven all day, and had objectively more reason to be tired and cranky. 
My friend texted me back to soothe my feelings of being out of place. “Honey,” she said. “Which bitch made you cry? It’s a jeans and t-shirt festival if that’s what you want to wear. And you could come home and we’ll go to tea and talk shit about people. The option is there.” It made me laugh, and then I fell asleep.
Today is better. Today is great. I slept super well, and we went next door to get breakfast at a dinosaur-themed coffee shop where I’m currently drinking my third iced mocha of the day (this one is decaf) while he plays a gig somewhere nearby. The weather is beautiful, the city is charming–we walked around a little bit between breakfast and getting him dressed for the gig, and all the shops are nonsense for the wealthy, but the sunshine and the ocean breeze are free, and this iced mocha is in budget. I’m sitting at the window in a dinosaur coffee shop, watching people walk, drive, and bicycle past.
I feel better today.
Sometimes I wonder why I think about myself in ways that I would never think about a friend. If someone I loved was having a particularly rough day during a long and stressful series of rough days, and I heard someone say my friend was being lazy/melodramatic/stupid/ungrateful/a horrible wife/a terrible bitch, I would punch that person in the face. Metaphorically speaking. I would punch them with my impressive range of profanity and carefully crafted bitch face. So why do I let me say those things about myself?
I’m in a weird place right now. On the one hand I’m optimistic as fuck: I’ve quit my job without much of a backup plan and launched an all-or-nothing crowdfunding plan for a fairly ambitious recording project. On the other hand I’m nauseous and tense all the time with the fear of failure, or even worse: the fear of success followed by failure. What if this funds but I fuck up these records? What if everyone realizes I’m a fraud? What if I never finish all the things I have left to do? What if I suck?
At the darkest points I am paralyzed by fear of disappointing everyone in the world. Literally. I named my peasant revolution character after Billy Bragg, and I had a nightmare that someone told him about the act and he called me a fauxgressive shilbot*, and then a bunch of women who were involved in the Peasant’s Revolt of 1318 came and told me I am an insult to their struggle.
I am terrified. All the time.
I’m enjoying today, though. The weather is beautiful, Charleston is pretty, those mochas were delicious. I’m sure all that whole milk will catch up with me in a bit, but for now I’m well. There’s a free girls’ choir performance tomorrow, and there’s also a beach. Things will work out.
Make no mistake: I’m creative. I’m smart. I’m funny. I am capable of producing some pretty great stuff. Other people know this. I know this. Anxiety doesn’t know this. Depression doesn’t know this.
Anxiety is a liar. Depression is a liar. For all its creative power, my brain is a liar.
I’m not doing any work today. I’m going to nourish the part of my brain that isn’t a liar with sunshine and walks. And another mocha.
*HMMM I wonder where this came from
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Tags: anxiety, charleston, depression, kickstarter, my brain is a liar, ren faire, travel
